Into thin air
In the not-too-distant future, wireless devices will deliver the marketing pitch right into consumers’ pockets.
In the rapidly emerging battle to reach mobile consumers, a look to the future seems similar to the end of an episode of a high-tech, teenage soap opera.
Marketers want to know which wireless devices will one day let them send brand messages to on-the-go consumers. Will pagers capture their imagination with the ability to inform consumers about virtual coupons at a moment’s notice? Will it be cell phones and their ability to connect customers with brands thousands of miles away? Or will the mistakes caused by immaturity ruin the relationship before it’s even blossomed?
As in all love stories, the only certainty is change. And when it comes to the wireless market, change comes quickly.
“One day in wireless can be likened to a dog year,” says Craig Krueger, president of Target Wireless, a Silver Spring, MD-based wireless media consultant. “Nothing is constant.”
International Data Corp., Framingham, MA, estimates that about 1.3 billion people will have Web-capable phones by 2004. And with the shift to wireless devices, the makeup of promotional budgets will change over the next few years, predicts Krueger. “Millions of dollars will shift. Marketers and promotion executives will reexamine their campaigns” with respect to how to deliver their marketing messages, he says.
“Wireless devices [let marketers] contact people away from home,” concurs Jeffrey Kay, president of Performance Marketing Communications.
While many brands are already accustomed to e-mailing consumers, wireless components can complement land-based work. “We’ve found that people aren’t sitting at their computers 24-7,” says Kay. “Some e-mail marketers have forgotten that consumers have lives. We continue to reach consumers while they’re living their lives.”
PAGE TURNING
Pagers as promotional devices are evolving. An estimated 20 million alpha-numeric pagers currently grace the hips of Americans. Research shows that 65 percent of all pager users carry the devices at all times, thereby offering the chance to communicate to consumers quickly and directly. Performance Marketing, a Mount Kisco, NY-based promotion agency that works with pager reseller PageMaster Corp., last year helped set up the World Wrestling Federation’s toe-dipping experiment into wireless promotions. (PMC also handles efforts for such companies as Seagram’s, Quaker State, Disney, Wilson Golf Balls, Warner Bros., and No-Nonsense Pantyhose.)
The WWF bestowed free pagers on fans who bought various wrestling merchandise. The Stamford, CT-based company then paged the faithful with messages from its wrestlers, news, and other information. Pager-wearing consumers got the inside scoop on The Rock and first access to new merchandise hitting retail shelves.
“It’s incredibly cost-effective,” Kay says. “It doesn’t cost anything to send messages once you give the pagers away and have a critical mass of consumers.”
The promotion’s format – giving away the pager as a premium, then motivating consumers to “opt in” for marketing messages – is now the standard Kay is using in upcoming promotions for other clients (although the WWF effort did run into one problem, when it found that wireless companies who sponsored wrestling events were unhappy with the activity cutting into their “territory”).
Like eighth-graders with crushes, Kay and other agency executives aren’t naming the clients who are courting wireless promotions. He did, however, offer insight into some of the promotions his agency is handling. For instance, an online auction site will shortly begin serving pagers to regular visitors, and will alert them about items up for bid. “It’s a great service for people who are fanatical about these auction sites,” Kay says. (Target Marketing has run similar promotions for restaurant clients in which consumers are sent a toll-free number to learn about lunch specials.)
Performance Marketing is wrapping up development on work for a cable network that will offer free pagers through a watch-and-win promotion. Viewers who opt in will receive alerts for programming and special offers and contests. An unidentified music retailer’s Web site is planning a similar initiative.
HOLD THE PHONE
Meanwhile, cell phones are coming into their own as a promotional medium. New York City-based smartRay.com last month began wireless marketing efforts for cable television movie network Showtime Networks, which will offer content, programming, show schedules, and behind-the-scenes information to consumers via their mobile phones. New York City-based Showtime will use the new medium to “target our brand to a core audience of mobile consumers,” says Gina Goldberg, the company’s senior vp-marketing.
Highland Park, IL-based ewireless will roll out a marketing tool later this summer in which consumers can dial #333 on their cell phones to respond to outdoor billboards. Other companies such as Go2 Systems, GeePS.com, and AirFlash.com are also rolling out location-sensitive marketing offerings that allow marketers to send messages to consumers based on where they are.
“It’s a response mechanism that makes radio, outdoor, print, or other media interactive to a captive audience inside their cars,” says Dean Becker, ewireless chairman and ceo.
Dialing #333 leads the consumer to an operator, who directs their calls wherever brands want. These calls, toll-free and airtime free to the consumer, cost about $25 to the marketer. “I don’t think it would work to give away 100 tickets to the Reba McIntyre show. But if you’re a mortgage company saying `refinance your home, call #333 and we’ll waive the $300 fee,’ it would work,” says Becker.
Technological limitations, however, are still an obstacle. In pagers, there’s limited character capacity. With many other devices now reading only 300 characters, “promotions can only be 10 to 12 words or less. That is not a lot of words,” says Target Wireless’s Krueger.
Brad Wendkos, chairman of Aspen Interactive, says there are other challenges for marketers beyond text boundaries. His St. Petersburg, FL, company handles such high-tech clients as Nokia and Radio Shack. While acknowledging e-mail as “a killer application for wireless [marketing] easily picked up with a personal digital assistant,” he challenges the idea of sending e-mail to wireless users.
“How do you think that is going to go over? You can’t get your e-mail until you get through this spam? Consumers don’t want to carry around [wireless devices] for immediacy and then have them cluttered,” he says.
Such perceived invasion of privacy is a major challenge, Kay concurs. “A lot of expectant parents get pagers. If their pager is constantly going off with ad messages, they’re going to think they’re having a baby and [get annoyed].”
Many brands are also waiting for technology to allow them more mainstream interactive access to personal digital assistants, such as the millions of 3Com PalmPilots being toted around the nation in purses and breast pockets. For that to happen, the mindset of PDA users must change, so that they’re not just using the devices as high-tech Rolodexes and schedulers but for Web dial-in, experts say. (Microsoft last month got into the mix with a new Pocket PC product to rival 3Com’s flagship PDA.)
San Francisco-based Software marketer Avantgo, which allows PDA users to install software for Internet access, is setting up kiosks in hotel lobbies and rental car stations to entice business travelers. Another company is inking a deal with a national retailer to distribute software as a premium with PDA purchase.
Most experts agree that hand-held devices will wrestle with the same security issues currently plaguing the Internet.
Wendkos believes other problems may crop up, noting that the portability of wireless devices may be a curse as well as a blessing. “People don’t really lose theircomputers. But you know people are going to lose their hand-held devices.”
All agree that the next technological revolution – the one that creates a small color screen for wireless devices, reliable two-way pagers with keyboards, and software programs that allow easy downloading of gee-whiz Internet features like music and graphics – will offer more opportunities and challenges. All also agree that these advances will come sooner rather than later.
“Someone has to invent a mini-laptop. It will take off and someone will put the device in people’s hands,” says Wendkos.
When that happens, “Wireless could ultimately evolve into the primary media. Wireless will become as important as radio, TV, and the Internet,” says Kruger.
While there are many challenges, the bond between wireless devices and the marketers who want to use them grows stronger everyday.
The best is yet to come – right there where you’re sitting.
