Marketers are looking to take their promotional programs and sales OTT (over the top) with ad campaigns delivered to individual cell phones using text messaging.
The medium and message delivery is a natural as it allows marketers to reach consumers A3 (anytime, anywhere, anyplace) on a platform that is increasingly being perceived as an essential tool for living by large segments of the American population.
Gerry Purdy, an analyst for Frost and Sullivan, is sold on cell phone text messaging as an advertising medium and he told The Associated Press product marketers and their agencies are only getting started.
"Probably the most important medium for advertising in the 21st century is going to be the cell phone, not print media, not billboards. It's just a matter of time; there are just too many of them," he said.
As cell phone use has increased, so has text messaging. Today, 95 million Americans are considered active text messengers, according to the Yankee Group.
Laura Marriott, executive director of the Mobile Marketing Association, said contests and sweepstakes consumers enter by sending a text message have been the most popular of cell phone promotional programs.
Companies such as McDonald's, Burger King, Procter & Gamble, General Motors and CBS have all run programs where consumers could participate by sending a text message entry.
On Tuesday, an independent retailer in the Washington, D.C. area, Chevy Chase Supermarket, began offering shoppers a new service that sends them text message alerts through their mobile phones alerting them to special sales, store events, etc.
Kevin Kirsch of Chevy Chase Supermarket said in a press release, "Shoppers can now get instant savings without carrying a card, and receive just-in-time shopping information about new products, events, sales and promotions on their cell phones. And down the road we expect to add mobile payments to the mix as well."
Discussion Question: What do you see as the potential for using the cell phone as a means to deliver marketers' advertising and informational messages?
If consumers like the answer to the WIIFM (What's in it for me?) question, then the approach will work. If it doesn't, marketers will find consumers tuning them out PDQ.