Celling the perfect medium
I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone these days who does not own a cellphone. The market penetration forecasts, done way back in the last few years of last century, when these devices were launched in South Africa, have been exceeded way beyond the wildest dreams of Alan Knott-Craig Snr and his colleagues, when seated around their boardroom tables planning implementation.
Whether you are the CEO of a JSE listed corporation, or the guy standing in the rain at the traffic lights selling the daily newspaper, chances are you have some or other model of cellphone in your pocket. These wonderful devices have progressed from black foot-sized 'bricks', which could play a 'beep-beep' monotonous ringtone and maybe remind you of a diarised event, to handsets smaller than a business card which are available in any colour you choose and are more powerful than some desktop computers.
The power of these tools is beyond most of us, and except for a small minority who are technological wizzkids (myself excluded), and most of the functions probably go unused. Let me give you a small example: I am a freelance designer. I do not have offices, and work off two cellphones and a laptop. But, the one thing I am never without is my cellphone.
I can be anywhere in the country and can receive an email as soon as it hits my server. The attachments are viewed on the phone and mails can be replied to as easily as you would on your laptop. In fact, I have a number of different email addresses all of which are organised and viewed just as easily. And, if I need a document sitting on the laptop at home, I can access it and 'collect' it straight from my iPhone. I can film a clip for use on a web page, and edit it right there and then while I am still with the client - saving time and money.
How often do you receive an sms from some car showroom, or restaurant, or perfume outlet informing you of a special they are having? Those companies which specialise in cellphone marketing have one thing in their favour that no other marketing medium has - instant notification. Who honestly ignores an sms on their phone when it arrives. Boom! - message grasped. Shopping malls are already disseminating messages via bluetooth to people in their mall - now you ve got the people and product together at the right time. Boom! - product sold. Marketing made easy.
This brings me to one of my pet-peeves: Call Me messages. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure (not!) of receiving one of these delightful messages, you receive an sms saying Please call Engelbert Humperdinck on 082 555 5555 followed by a long message advertising the profound secret love-making techniques available to you by calling another number. Yawn..., but it is advertising none the less.
Cellphone text messages seem to be the medium of choice today, for entering competitions. Whether you are voting for the next teen idol, or entering a competition to win something (how I won one of my iPhones) you are giving marketing companies your contact details. They now have 'X' amount of contact details for a market interested in whatever was being given away, or voted on. And with the high cost companies are charging for data lists these days, they aren't complaining. All they have to do next is sms a message back to those numbers at a later stage and they can clarify even more, based on the responses they get. An added bonus lies in the cost of these sms'. The amount of money made from the cost involved in entering more than covers the cost of the product being given away. Polls are also being done via cellphone - participants are given a choice of options and they can then respond accordingly. The data is collected electronically, negating the need for human intervention tallying the results - all this translates into savings in terms of cost and time.
People usually voluntarily request that certain information is sent to them on their cellphones - whether news updates or special offers - and as such, you have a qualified recipient who is actively interested in your product, and services.
I write a regular marketing column for Invisage, a subsection of IE Magazine. Read it here with the most recent listed first.