They’ve Got Their Number

Eyeing an opportunity to extend its brand, Los Angeles-based Petersen Companies, publisher of Teen magazine, partnered with Motorola pagers and Virgin Records on an unprecedented consumer offer. Teens who called in and pre-paid for one year of air time got a free pager worth $80 to $100, a sampler CD from Virgin Records’ hottest new musical act 911, and a chance to win $911. The first 1,000 teens to respond and sign up got a 10-minute phonecard.

But here was the kicker: Once the teens had registered, Schaumburg, IL-based Motorola put their pager numbers in a database and shared them with its partner. Virgin, whose main U.S. office is in Beverly Hills, CA, automatically paged fans the next time 911 was going to perform near their area codes, leaving a toll-free number blinking on the LCDs. A call to the number triggered a recorded message with info on where and when the band would be playing and how to get tickets.

The deal was put together by PageMaster, a Thousand Oaks, CA-based pager promotion specialist that brought Petersen Enterprises together with Motorola and an airtime carrier. “What we try to do is bundle the whole thing together and make it a turn-key promotion,” says PageMaster ceo Marc Resnick.

Young adults ages 18 to 24 account for 31 percent of pager sales, making pager promotions a hot item among this segment. In another deal late last year, PageMaster got Motorola partner Lee Jeans & Sportswear, Merriam, KS, to mount a joint promo designed to spike holiday sales. According to Resnick, the result was a nationwide pager promo that reached more than 3,000 retail department stores. The program offered shoppers who bought a pair of Lee Original Straight Leg jeans or khakis a free Motorola Pronto FLX pager, plus a connection fee of only $8.25 and $10 for shipping. More than 50 retailers participated, including JCPenney. Sears, Kohl’s, and Mervyn’s.

In-store signage featured Buddy Lee, star of a series of ads launched last fall. “When danger can’t find Buddy Lee, it pages him,” said one point-of-purchase card created by Minneapolis-based ad agency Fallon McElligott, which also put together the supporting campaign of retailer co-op ads that ran in newspapers and circulars.

Shoppers who provided proof-of-purchase through a toll-free number received the pager within days, along with a Lee-branded packet containing info cards to hand out to friends and family.

Again, Lee had consumer page numbers on file that they could page at will to leave new offers, new promos, and other information.

“We have won the war to get consumer attention,” says Resnick, adding that PageMaster promos have created a “closed circuit, one-on-one communications system.”

PageMaster is perhaps the most aggressive pager promoter, and is ever-alert for new demographic niches to market. “We’ve targeted families with children, males 18-45 years old, ethnic groups, business-to-business groups. We are quite tireless,” says Resnick.

In every promo run by PageMaster, the marketing partner increased its subscriber base while offering an array of value-added services to consumers, according to Jeff Kay, PageMaster account director at Performance Marketing Communications, the Mt. Kisco, NY, agency that partners on promotions with PageMaster.

The ultimate? Resnick and Kay believe the pager could become the ultimate promotional delivery system by the year 2000, due to declining prices that are making the devices affordable for all. Price drops helped drive growth by 25 percent this year, according to the State of the Paging Industry, a report from the Strategis Group in Washington, DC.

But to Kay and Resnick, improvements in pager technology have opened up “virtually unlimited” promotional possibilities for pager-based promos. “The limitations are really off,” says Kay.

All PageMaster’s previous promos used numeric pagers – devices that receive automated numerical messages.

PageMaster’s latest offering, the AlphaNumeric pager, will go into operation early this year. Instead of numbers, the pagers use text, transmitted via satellite.

In the past, the gift of a free $80 pager and free activation has been “a great stand-alone consumer offer” that has blossomed into selling ventures for partners and helped them accomplish merchandising objectives, Kay explains. But with an AlphaNumeric pager, a multi-divisional entertainment company – one with theme parks, cruise lines, home video, and music product lines all in the portfolio – can use the pager to stimulate dialog between its various units and create new avenues of promotional effectiveness, holds Kay.

“Usually, each of these units has its own promotional marketing strategy to implement. But by deploying this new technology, we can provide an outlet for each so it can cross-merchadise itself through the paging network,” he says.

As Resnick sees it, between every business and its customers is a series of hurdles. In many cases, a business’s sales and distribution channel poses the biggest obstacle to continued dialog between buyer and seller. Pagers eliminate that.

“Think of being able to type in a message on a computer and reach pager consumers anywhere in the U.S. with the stroke of a key. That’s what we’re talking about: guaranteed delivery of message, via satellite, to every single pager at the same time,” crows Resnick.

The new pager will still require that the customer take action. A consumer must buy a video, sign up for a credit card, or visit a Web site. But in return, the consumer will get a free, added-value pager and free air time, Resnick says.

Sometime in March, the Stamford, CT-based World Wrestling Federation will distribute free pagers to anyone who visits its Web site. Once pagers are distributed among consumers, WWF can send text that will deliver “added-value offers” to people who participate in WWF events, Kay says.

Plans call for an interactive sweepstakes program in which a wrestling superstar will page a winner on-air during a TV broadcast to announce the prize, Kay says. But the promo will also allow the WWF to broadcast schedules of upcoming events to the entire field of pager-holders, or offer exclusive information on what’s happening in the world of wrestling.

Resnick adds that sponsors also can send out news about consumers products – a free Stone Cold Steve Austin T-shirt, for instance – or any other item. “Once again, the great advantage is that it’s a one-on-one message,” he says.

Kay says that the software used to transmit pager messages “is incredibly user friendly, able to beam through any desktop computer, through satellites in space down to pagers instantly, without any preplanning.”

Two-way street PageNet’s Joy Jennings agrees that the general public is no longer interested in simple numerical messaging, but rather in a whole range of information services. She sees the future of the pager as a two-way device: “Pagers are going to have full e-mail capability, which means they not only will receive text but send text to any e-mail address in the world. It’s only a matter of time,” she says.

The Dallas-based PageNet’s Two-Way Service is a good example of the most advanced pager technology. It is currently being used as a promotional and informational device to help launch the LPGA/PageNet Tour Championship. Guests of the tournament receive a limited preview of a new wireless information service from the Golf Channel. Users will also be able to submit queries for updated tournament leaderboard information or to inquire about the performance of their favorite players. (The Golf Channel is also using pagers to send text to pagers featuring a variety of news and features.)

The pager is also being used as an “electric concierge,” through which guests at the Desert Inn Resort, site of the tournament, can make dinner reservations, book tee times, order flowers, schedule wake-up calls, or book other services. The hotel or resort staff then sends the user a confirmation notice. PageNet is supporting this promo with ads in daily newspapers like The Wall Street Journal andUSA Today, plus ads in business and trade publications, Jennings says.

Unlike PageMaster, PageNet does not generally employ pagers as premiums, although in 1997 it did hand them out to ceos and other bigwigs attending a Forbes conference, offering three months of free service as well, Jennings says. Jennings thinks the future of the two-way text pager is promising, though she admits that the pager-as-e-mailer service is still in inception stage and may take a couple of years to catch on. By 2000, however, two-way paging will be everywhere, she believes.

Both business customers and consumers are “very interested in the text services,” Jennings says. But she also goes so far as to suggest that two-way paging will eventually become “the legs of the Internet” used by Web advertisers, retailers and manufacturers to transmit special offers and promos, as well as to deliver sports information, news, and other services that will draw traffic to the Net.

Says Jennings: “This is real area to watch.”