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Text-Messaging Prank Sheds Light on the Reach of Mobile Posted: May 7, 2008 A text-messaging prank has led thousands of people to call the Dublin Zoo every day since it was launched this weekend. The callers asked to speak with “Mr. G. Raff” and other fake animal names after being prompted to do so by a text message. Oddly enough, the Houston Zoo is currently dealing with a similar issue. A different text message urging people to call the zoo has resulted in 10 times the normal amount of calls, including around 3,500 on Sunday alone. While Cellit obviously does not condone the use of text-messaging for malicious means, it is interesting to note that even random, unexpected calls-to-action delivered via text can garner such an immediate and widespread reaction. If a prank can deliver these sorts of results, just imagine what a legitimate and robust mobile marketing campaign could do. Mobile Marketing Ahead of the Consumer Advocacy Curve Posted: May 6, 2008 The Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group have announced their intention to file a joint complaint to the FTC about mobile marketing. Their main concerns include behavioral targeting and profiling techniques which internet marketers have used for years to gather information on potential customers without their consent. Interestingly enough, the FCC already prohibits marketers from sending text message ads to consumers without their opt-in consent, which is one of the main reasons that Cellit has chosen text-messaging as their main delivery technique. It is other techniques, such as wireless application protocol banners or search ads, which are not regulated, that give the advocacy groups the most reason for concern. They want to make sure that regulations are put into place that prevent the sorts of abuses that internet marketers have committed from re-occurring in the mobile space. Ironically, mobile marketing has the most potential for both extremes. Unwarranted data collection and location-based targeting can of course lead to highly invasive marketing. Yet, when used in a responsible, opt-in-based manner, it becomes the least intrusive type of advertising, as consumers are only subjected to marketing they have specifically asked for. This is what most mobile marketers, including Cellit, have chosen to pursue. The CTIA has already released guidelines which prohibit location-based services that do not include obvious consumer consent. The mobile marketing community has shown time and time again a willingness to police itself and protect the privacy rights of consumers before they are ever asked to do so. We are determined not to repeat the mistakes made by internet advertisers and will continue to foster an environment of trust and transparency as mobile marketing becomes a larger part of the advertising world. New Study Urges Mobile Marketing Adoption Posted: May 5, 2008 A new study from Jupiter Research has shown that mobile marketing adoption rates are far below what they should be. Although text-messaging is far and away the most popular feature for cellular users, it is being severely under-utilized by the majority of companies. Jupiter has recommended that a text messaging campaign should be the first avenue any company explores when starting a mobile marketing initiative. The decision by legitimate mobile marketing firms, such as Cellit, to operate on an opt-in only basis for their subscribers further enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of the technology. “If a marketing message reaches a cell phone, the recipient is more than likely the owner,” states the report. “Gaining access to this phone through an opt-in process holds great value for marketers.” Not only does the customer only receive advertising that they have specifically asked for, but the ads themselves have the ability to be much narrower in focus, both of which lead to much higher read rates than traditional media. Thus, Jupiter believes that these factors will lead to an eventual embrace of mobile marketing by most companies and they strongly suggest that those wishing to get ahead of the game should start as soon as possible. Marketing to the Marketers? Not Us Posted: May 1, 2008 Nearly every day we get a ridiculous request. And nearly every day we turn one down. Some examples:
The whole point of this is: a lot of what’s going on in mobile marketing these days is more about marketing to marketers than it is marketing to the consumers. The mobile hype-sters out there are very good at selling crazy marketing ideas that won’t work. The fact of the matter is, we want to sell campaigns that will work. Sure, they might not always be as sexy, but they will drive ROI. And ROI will keep our customer coming back to us year after year… hopefully they won’t have to learn too many lessons from Cellfire and Mobot before they do! Cellit Teams with Amare Stoudemire to Wake Kids Up! Posted: April 30, 2008 Cellit Mobile Marketing recently teamed with Boostup.org and Amare Stoudemire of the Phoenix Suns on a unique campaign to improve attendance for school-aged children. Kids can download free alarm ringtones or send wake-up calls recorded by Amare himself to their friends. Check it out at http://www.boostup.org/wakeup/ or see Amare in the recording studio in this video. Coolest Campaign Ever Posted: April 22, 2008 We at Cellit do a lot of great work. A lot. I wish we could announce to the world all of the great campaigns we do. Due to NDAs, however, we cannot. One of the coolest campaigns we’ve worked on is near and dear to my heart, as:
Here’s a video of Amare talking about this amazing campaign: http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/adcouncil/32663/ Taking steps to protect yourself makes you less safe? Posted: March 13, 2008 Carrying a cell phone may cause some college students - especially women - to take risks with their safety, a new study suggests. A survey of 305 students at one campus found that 40 percent of cell phone users said they walked somewhere after dark that they normally wouldn’t go. A separate survey found that about three-quarters of students said that carrying a cell phone while walking alone at night made them feel somewhat or a lot safer. “Students seem to feel less vulnerable when they carry a cell phone, although there’s not evidence that they really are,” said Jack Nasar, co-author of the study and professor of city and regional planning at Ohio State University. “If anything, they are probably less safe because they are paying less attention to their surroundings.” Women reported feeling a greater increase in safety carrying a cell phone than did male students, probably because they felt more vulnerable in the first place, Nasar said. As a result, more women than men said that, if they had a cell phone they would be willing to walk somewhere after dark that they would normally not go (42 percent of women vs. 28 percent of men). “Especially for women, cell phones offer a sense of security that may make them more willing to put themselves in risky situations,” Nasar said. While this study is certainly useful, it is just another in a long line of victim-blaming statistics which put the onus on us to prevent crime, and not the criminals themselves. Walking alone at night, especially on a college campus, should ideally not be a risky situation, and if carrying a cell phone makes this situation safer, then isn’t that the point? Saying that carrying a cell phone makes you engage in riskier behavior is like saying that fire fighters’ uniforms make them more susceptible to smoke inhalation because they wouldn’t be fighting fires without it. You can’t blame equipment or products designed to protect people for the situations within which the use these tools. That attitude simply makes people not invest in potentially live-saving technologies and adds to the culture of fear. Students should be able to walk alone at any time without fear, and cell phones are one positive step towards that ideal. Text message alert systems have already been used in numerous emergency situations on college campuses, and being able to call a friend or 911 immediately could never be seen as a detriment to one’s safety. The only facts this study offers are that students feel so much safer with cell phones that they are beginning to go about their daily lives with a little less fear. We should stop accepting a life of paranoia and begin to fight back by embracing programs and products which give potential victims the tools to protect themselves. All-In-One is All-The-Rage. Posted: February 29, 2008 Sprint recently announced it will launch Simply Everything, a domestic pricing plan giving subscribers unlimited voice, data, text, e-mail, web surfing, Sprint TV, Sprint Music, GPS Navigation, Direct Connect and Group Connect for $99.99 per month. Sprint becomes the first of the four major U.S. operators to include both voice, data and multimedia services together under the same all-you-can-eat plan. The company also has an unlimited voice only plan for $89.99 per month. For families, Simply Everything includes an incremental $5 discount for each incremental line, up to five lines on the same bill. For example, two lines would amount to $194.98 ($99.99 + $94.99); a third line would cost an additional $89.99. Other flat-rate plans are already available, but with restrictions. Sprint’s Boost Unlimited service offers a monthly $45 plan that allows for unlimited calling to anyone in the U.S., but the caller must stay within a specified home region. Thus comes right after carriers Verizon Wireless and AT&T announced unlimited voice plans for $99.99, and T-Mobile USA introduced an unlimited voice and text message plan for $99.99. In addition to changing its wireless calling plan, Verizon is also offering a plan to its wireless broadband customers with pricing based on capacity of downloads. The new plan, which starts March 2, will offer customers monthly data plan options of 50 megabytes for $39.99 a month or five gigabytes for $59.99 a month. Verizon also offers an all-in-one unlimited package covering voice, messaging, its V CAST data service, VZ Navigator GPS service, and mobile email for $140 a month. Alltel, which offers unlimited calling to certain phone numbers within a subscribers “circle” found that when it launched its MyCircle plan in 2006 offering unlimited calling to 10 numbers for $59, the plan attracted existing customers but not a lot of new customers. However, when the company offered a second MyCircle calling plan for $49 and unlimited calling to five numbers, it saw a lot more traction from new customers. In addition, MetroPCS and Leap Wireless offer unlimited calling plans in the $35-$60 per month range. Cellular South joined the fray by highlighting its own unlimited plan. The release claims that Cellular South’s unlimited plan is more competitively priced than other carriers at a flat monthly rate of $79.99 for phones and $99.99 for smartphones. HAPPY NEW YEAR MOBILE! Posted: January 21, 2008 In belated appreciation of the dawning of another new year, we have compiled several indicators which point to the awe-inspiring growth of mobile adoption and the role of SMS as the most popular application for mobile subscribers. PHONES FOR EVERYONE…ALMOST. Figures released by industry analyst Informa Telecoms & Media reveal that worldwide mobile penetration hit 50 per cent - or around 3.3 billion subscriptions - on November 26, 2007, just over 26 years since the first cellular network was launched. This is all the more impressive when it is revealed that global penetration was 10% , with only 500 million subscriptions, in the year 2000 and took another 5 years to reach 30%, but only two more after that to reach 50%! As of the end of September there were operational networks in 224 countries around the globe, a figure that has increased from 192 in 1997 and 35 in 1987. Informa estimates that mobile networks covered 90 per cent of the global population by mid-2007. A large number of more mature markets worldwide already have in excess of 100 per cent mobile penetration, as users increasingly sign up for more than one subscription. As of the end of September, 59 countries had mobile penetration of over 100 per cent. WHAT’S A LANDLINE? More than one in eight U.S. households have cell phones but lack traditional landline telephones, according to a federal study that tracks the country’s growing dependence on wireless phones. The report showed that for the first half of 2007, 14 percent of households had cell phone service but no landline telephones. Nearly one in five Hispanic adults (18 percent) have cell phones but no landline phones, the survey showed. In addition for the first half of 2007, 11 percent of white adults and 14 percent of black adults had only cell phone service. Roughly three in 10 people age 18 to 29 had only wireless telephones — more than double the portion of those aged 30 and older who rely only on cell phones. 14 percent of males and 12 percent of females only had cell phone service. The National Health Interview Survey, conducted by the CDC, involved in-person interviews with people in 15,996 households conducted from January through June of this year. Researchers found that more than 55% of all adults living with unrelated roommates relied solely on cellphones, and noted that this is the “highest prevalence rate among the population subgroups examined.” With Americans cutting the cord to their land lines, 2007 is likely to be the first calendar year in which U.S. households spend more on cell phone services, industry and government officials say. SMS = SO MANY SUBSCRIBERS! As the popularity of SMS continues to grow, Gartner forecasts 2.3 trillion messages will be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008, a 19.6 percent increase from the 2007 total of 1.9 trillion messages. Mobile messaging revenue across major markets will grow 15.7 percent in 2008 to $60.2 billion, up from $52 billion in 2007. Gartner estimated that there were 189 billion mobile messages sent in 2007 in North America, and this is forecast to reach 301 billion in 2008. Verizon, AT&T do an about-face on open networks thanks to Google Posted: December 7, 2007 My how the times are changing. Verizon, historically one of the most “closed” carrier networks in the United States, announced at the end of November that by the end of 2008, it will allow an “any device” policy, enabling users to use nearly any phone on the Verizon network, accessing nearly any application via the network. Perhaps more notably, this announcement was followed-up by the company stating that they will be switching from their CDMA network to a GSM one, further enabling the ease of transport of phones across networks. (GSM networks, the most common in the world, use the SIM card interface to easily switch carriers.) Switching to GSM from the closed CDMA architecture is by definition a move towards a more open network, so by announcing open access strategy first, Verizon avoids looking internally conflicted. AT&T, the #1 mobile carrier in the US, followed up by announcing to the world that it too would be embracing the “open explosion”. In reality, you could always bring an unlocked GSM handset to AT&T and use it on its network. The real big news here is that when you’re contract’s up, AT&T will unlock your phone (unless of course, you have the coveted iPhone). So what does this mean for mobile marketing? The big PR blitz was actually initiated by a little company called Google, with its effort to “open” the carrier networks to allow for “any app” on “any phone” on “any network.” What they really mean is “any app” on “any GOOGLE phone” on “any network”. And Google’s PR tantrum worked; Sprint and T-Mobile signed up to be Google partners (with rumors that Verizon is next). The Google platform will allow for ease of development of rich mobile applications that can run cross-network, adding yet another standard to the mix, on top of J2ME, BREW, Windows Mobile, and the ever-so-sexy-yet-ever-so-closed iPhone. If Google has it’s way, and the world goes “gPhone”, our job as mobile marketers will be easier. Cool new apps (mobile catalogs of products, custom-branded games, and more) will be easier to develop and have a higher likelihood of working on more phones. More likely, however, we will be left with one more “standard” on top of J2ME, BREW, Windows Mobile and iPhone. It will be up to companies like Cellit to make solutions that work no matter what “standard” you’re on. The first phones sporting the Google technology (named “Android”) aren’t expected to hit the market until the end of next year. That’s still a long way and the show-down for “mobile platform dominance” is far from over. The “end” of closed networks marks the very early start of a new age of delivering more powerful applications into the hands of the end-users. This end was predicted and prayed for. (In fact, I did it back in September of 2006.) We will just have to see how quickly the “open factor” affects our abilities to deliver richer, more compelling content to the consumer. — Next Page » |
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| Cellit™ is a leading mobile provider of mobile marketing solutions for both large and small companies in North America. Using Cellit's services and platforms, Cellit clients can create compelling mobile content, run exciting contests and polls, and deliver premium downloads. With unique, best-of-breed platforms, including House4Cell and CouponZap, Cellit empowers smaller businesses to harness the power of mobile marketing while generating valuable customer leads. | |||||||