Advertisings next space to conquer, those four square inches.
As advertisers struggle to recapture the medium of TV, and use the primitive methods of search engines to penetrate the Internet, another media is now available and will be the most effective form of advertising ever.
What media is always turned on, carried with you everywhere, commands your attention when it flashes and has 5 forms of communication? What is the next medium advertiser will conquer?
How many hours a day are you watching TV a day, in front of your PC, listening to the radio, reading the newspaper???
Now how many hours is your cell phone on and with you? Never realized how connected you really are, did you? This device is the most personal to us and is the least untapped by advertisers, until now.
What if an advertisers had the ability to see that you spent 10 minutes looking in their catalog. Would they pay for this info?
What if there was a way a consumer could get immediate info on a product right there in the store, would this lead to more sales, or more trust in a brand? Would brands pay for this?
What if there was a way a consumer could initiate interaction with a brand and get immediate feedback for more info?
What if every “ for more info” email and postcard came back to that company, at the instant it was requested, with a name, location and a cell phone number?
How can brands find out if a consumer is interested in their product? Is there a way they can initiate an interactive “electronic dialog” with a consumer?
Would Sony Records pay to know that you clicked on a Mariah Carey CD to listen to samples of her songs?
Would Campbell Soup pay to know that you bought a recipe book that consisted of all the meals you can make using Campbell Soup?
Can advertisers find infinite ways to advertise to this specific person once they are alerted?
What is this info worth per customer $100, $500, $1000, $10,000…?
Do you think Sony hates knowing Best Buy knows more about their customer than they do?
When that person walks out the door with his brand new DVD player, who utilizes that information? What if there was a way Sony could directly market to that person once he leaves the store? Whose customer is it really? Sony’s or Best Buys?
What if Sony could maintain contact with that customer from the time of purchase till the life of the product?
What if every company had the ability to have their own private search engine?
The SMS text message will be the initial response FROM the brand. But what will initiate their response.
The SMS text message cost is less that one tenth of a stamp. It seems funny that advertisers haven’t realized this enormous cost savings ability yet. Imagine an SMS text is a letter than is opened as soon as it is sent. There’s no waiting for the mail to deliver, or not knowing if the user was watching the program or if the email was blocked by a Spam service. Email can’t guarantee the ability to be delivered anywhere and anytime like a SMS can.
A “letter” that was opened immediately, which gives the advertiser instant feedback for minimal cost.
Those 160 characters, the small band of text will be more effective than the most expensive TV ad or the best keyword.
A SMS text message gets our attention. It can reach us wherever and whenever. You just found your killer app for mobile marketing. The question is how do advertisers get permission to advertise to you through this method?
This will be a private conversation between the advertiser and the cell phone user in ANY environment. This will be a personalized advertisement machine.
This is a personalized, real-time, interaction between a brand and a consumer. Isn’t this the ultimate goal for EVERY advertiser? Now it can be done if brands simply “turn on” their own products.
The cell phone is as personal as an advertiser can get to a potential customer
A cell phone is always with you, not the case with the Internet.
But this time its different, broadcast media has always been one-way, the advertiser to the consumer.
Instead of trying to find your potential consumer (as the case with most advertising) what happens when the consumer tries to get more info about your brand? The shift takes place. With TV ads there’s no interaction. With the Internet there’s limited interaction.
When brands “turn on” their own products with a physical world hyperlink, there will be direct interaction, not just with the company, but also with the specific product.
What will this cost, and what’s it worth?
Ideally you would like the consumer to call up and give you their cell number and say, “advertise to me”. What is the application that combines interest and cell phone number?
The advertiser needs to know four things.
1. Who is my customer (and what are his/her preferences)
2. What product is he/she interested in?
3. How do I reach him, get his attention?
4. How will he buy my product
What if there’s a way an advertiser could get all these answers by doing ONE thing? Would they be interested?
What will be the killer app that initiates the conversation between brand and consumer?
Brands can now “turn on” their product and let the cell phone become the true remote of the physical world.. The brand will speak to the consumer through their most personal device.
How can a brand “turn on “ every product and allow an instant electronic dialog with every potential customer?
What is the one thing almost every product has (and the ones that don’t, can get one) that allows an Internet connection with the targeted destination of the owner of that brand? What is the universal identifier that you see on every product in your cupboard, bookshelf, and desktop? When that universal is clicked on, or typed, or said (soon) will allow a personal bond between the brand and the consumer.
Do you know what happens when that bond gets initiated?
Brands will now be able to advertise/market a way for direct interaction. No more “go to www.anysite.com for more details”. Or “for more info dial 1-800-“. It will now be “click here with your cell phone”.
The middleman (supermarket, record store, electronics store, book store) gets minimized. The brand now has direct contact with his consumer and can advertise accordingly. The consumer is saying “I want more info, does this, can I etc.”. Brands will now use their own products to advertise with.
This is an immediate customer feedback form, with an immediate way to interact. Now that’s powerful.
Will the brand take advantage of this new powerful medium or will they abuse it?
What society (mainly advertisers) needs to accept (and the individual is starting to) is that the cell phone is more like a PC now than a phone. Mobile devices are just portable PC’s with the ability to communicate. The cell phone is becoming the remote control of our everyday life.
The sooner advertisers realize this, the quicker they will tap into this enormous opportunity.
SMS advertising campaigns are receiving incredible response rates (in Japan and Europe), far higher than early Internet ads. And the cost for this is minimal compared to pop-ups, banners too.
What industry will see it first? What service provider will find a way to charge for it? What operating system will incorporate it first? What search engine will recognize this transformation?
What will the vehicle of choice for advertising be on the mobile phone?
What is the killer app that turns every physical product into a real-time, one-on-one, personalized search engine?
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