Mobile solutions company Incentivated power the new SMS flight info service for British Airways. Fantastic, SMS is easy peasy, so let’s hear more about it:
According to Mobile Marketing Watch:
The service, available for UK- and US-registered mobile phones, enables users to get up-to-the-minute flight information for yesterday, today and the next five days. Users text D for Departures or A for Arrivals followed by a space, the departure date of the flight (in the form DDMMYY or MMDDYY for the US) and the British Airways flight number (eg BAXXXX) to 60747 in the UK, 70615 in the US.
OOohh laawwd – how the hell is anyone meant to use this service again if they have to remember all that?
So I decided to give it a try and deliberately entered false details to see if I would get a error message back saying explaining how to do it correctly. I.e “Sorry that was wrong, please try again by entering D or A….”
No sooner than my post about location about to become interesting for consumers, Techcrunch posted an article about a concept by AT&T for ‘on-the-go’ mobile coupons.
Ever since the dawn of time mobile marketers have been using the ‘Starbucks coupon’ example to sell the idea of location based coupons into brands and businesses. I’ve used it a few times because it’s the easiest way to explain to someone who’s ‘non-mobile’ about location and the possibilities.
The scenario goes like this, you sign up for a mobile coupon service, fill out your profile, ticking coffee and various other things as your interests. You walk past Starbucks one day and BAM, your mobile beeps and it’s a 20% discount SMS coupon for a cup of coffee. Then you stroll in, extremely happy and redeem your coupon. Win for you and a win for Starbucks.
This basically applies to the concept by operator AT&T, the idea is simple, as consumers walk around a city, they get mobile alerts whenever their favourite nearby stores and restaurants have a deal. It works by the mobile operator constantly monitoring the customers location (opt-in of course), then matching that info to available retailers to push coupons/info.
Sounds great, apart from one problem….it uses SMS.
Firstly you will never escape the fact that SMS advertising messages are intrusive. They arrive into your inbox just like personal messages, they don’t have a separate folder, they don’t arrive silently, they don’t generate a different on-screen alert or icon. Oh and if it’s a coupon, you can’t sort by expiry date.
Just like any consumer, I’m interested in around 100+ different brands, everything from clothing, electronics, all the way to peanut butter. Do I want discounts on these brands? Hell yes (I love those printed vouchers), gimme as much as possible. Do I want my phone beeping several times a day and my inbox filling up? Hell no.
No matter how targeted the coupon is, there is no way a location based SMS service can remain useful and scale to cover the amount of brands an average consumer likes without severely pissing them off. Read More
God damn you Nike, letting your agencies run wild and be massively innovative with the brand. How dare you.
I totally missed this campaign which ran in the summer, it’s off the hook. Nike teamed up with the guys at Tour De France to display messages of “hope, perseverance and love” with the road-printing Chalk Bot. Read More
Orange UK customers can now upload their pictures to their Twitter stream by simply sending them to 86444.
The service is run through a photo site called Snapshot which is run by Orange, and it all works pretty seemlessly too. I tried it out today and you just send your first MMS and get a SMS back which links you to a Twitter authorisation page. Read More
Does your child own a mobile phone and still believe in Santa? (Is this even possible?)
If so then TextSanta.net is the service for you, for a mere $5.49 an SMS can be sent to your child appearing to be from Santa himself. A choice of three pre-set SMS message themes is available, here is a sample:
Hi <insert name here> It snowed a foot here@ the North Pole! Elves had 2 dig my sleigh out of the snow Hope the weather n St. Louis is good.cu soon luv Santa
You can also insert your own custom message and schedule the time for the SMS to be sent.
..and that’s about all it does.
However Text Santa does give $1.00 from that hefty fee to March Of Dimes which is a charity which improves the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality.
A cheaper way to do this is to put your number (or someone else’s) into your childs phone contacts as ‘Santa’ then send them a text with the desired message. If they aren’t smart enough to figure out Santa doesn’t exist then they probably won’t work out what you’ve done.
….then give extra to the March of Dimes with all that money you saved 
You can donate here.
[Via Textually]
During a global viral pandemic, there is no question that the quickest and most effective way to inform the public is by using mobile phones. It has the ability not only to save peoples lives but also to combat the virus being spread by providing real time alerts and information.
Initiatives such as Project Masiluleke shows that a simple SMS message to millions of people can raise awareness to levels that TV and radio cannot. Eventually this leads to prevention.
The clever guys Harvard Medical School hope to achieve the same thing with their new iPhone App, Swine Flu Center. It features everything you need to educate yourself about swine flu including video guides, symptom checks, hotlines to call in case of an emergency (based on your location) and a ‘Health Map’ showing the state of the epidemic in your area. All this for $1.99.
After recently hitting the jackpot by finding a Pay As You Go sim card topped up with £14 credit under a sock in my flat, I’ve decided test out premium rate SMS question and answer services.
The concept behind of these services is very simple, once you text in your question it gets routed to a researcher who will send you back an answer within one SMS. At the cost of around £1 per answer, it’s not cheap.
Most people are familiar with AQA (Answer Question Answered) who are undoubtedly the grandaddy of the whole SMS answering thing. They started out in 2004 and have answered over 20 million questions to date.
However competition is never far away from a good idea and since the AQA launch there have been dozens of identical services launched in the UK and abroad.
It’s really interesting that people are still willing to pay up to £1 to have their question answered when services such as Google and Yahoo Answers (plus dozens more) could potentially answer your questions for free on your mobile.
Even Twitter is a potential treasure chest of answers, just tweet your question out to your network and sit back. However you probably need more than the 54 followers I have to get the kind of knowledge range needed, I bet Ashton Kutcher never has a problem with a tweeted question.
Lets face it, there is nothing easier for a consumer than sending a text which is why they are paying £1 for the pleasure. You text a question then get an answer back. Simple.
But who is the best in the UK? Lets find out and move onto the main contestants for the UK showdown.
The Challengers
AQA: The Peoples Champion (http://www.aqa.63336.com)
The original SMS answering service, but are they still the best? Generally liked by most people and a recent BBC Watchdog experiment revealed they are the most accurate. Lets see about that. Cost per answer: £1
118 118: The Contender (http://www.text118118.com)
The quality of the service has been in question ever since they made the headlines last year by sending out racist jokes. The website has some nice touches such as the live question feed, plus decent exposure on TV and outdoor ads, but can they provide me answers without offending me? Cost per answer: £1
ANSA: The Unknown (http://www.ansanow.com)
Started 2 years ago by Rok, ANSA is relatively unknown, to be honest I have no idea how I found them. The website is horrible so I’m not expecting much here. Cost per answer: £1 Read More
If you’re a commuter in London, you will no doubt have at one time or another felt the pain of the waiting ages for a bus. Finally, a solution is being developed using the mobile web and SMS to give commuters much needed bus arrival information.
The London bus service isn’t as predictable as the Underground for obvious reasons. Things such as traffic, crazy school kids, crazy passengers and accidents all happen hundreds of times every day across nearly a thousand bus routes, which is why the printed time tables displayed on bus shelters can only give you approximate times. These times mean nothing if any of the previous incidents have happened and delay the bus. During the day this is a pain and at night it could be dangerous if you’re on your own. There also might be situations where it could be quicker to take the next available bus and change again rather than wait for your bus to arrive in time.
TFL currently has a system called Countdown (below) which provides real-time bus arrival information at stops, which is great apart from….
..its not on every bus stop:
Although Countdown is on ‘key’ bus stops, it’s not on nearly enough across the capital. That’s where the SMS and mobile web step in. TFL already have a pretty good suite of mobile services using WAP, SMS and Java Apps that cover live updates, journey planning, interactive maps and taxi hire – all for free. Read More
Director Sally Porter is embracing mobile in a big way with the release of her new low-budget film called Rage starring Jude Law, Judi Dench, Eddie Izzard and loads of other big names. The movie is (according to the trailer but probably isn’t) filmed on a mobile phone, is in cinemas this week.
The film went straight-to-mobile as well as being broadcast live across theatres in London and Europe. There was also be a chance to be part of the Q&A after the film by sending SMS messages directly to the director and cast. A very cool bit of mobile interaction. See the webcast here.
Viewers will need to download a Bablegum application (groan) before being able to view the movie on their mobile.
Rage takes the format of being a series of ‘interviews’ over a 7 day period. Bablegum will release a ‘interview’ a day for one week to cover the entire film. Read More
What do you get when you take the Schiesser Bluetooth underwear campaign and use SMS instead? You get this ad from Axe deodorant (or Lynx if you’re in the UK). Click to enlarge.
The print ad displays a picture of a model looking like she could be naked and a call to action. The message says “To complete this ad send Axe to 2345 after 9pm”, once you send the text you get a picture message (MMS) back with the rest of the ad showing the model in her underwear. Great, so you paid 11p to basically look at a Marks & Spencer’s advert. Read More
As you may have noticed in the last couple of years there has been a surge of popularity in online discount vouchers in the UK. A week doesn’t go by without a voucher for Gap, GBK, Ask, Urban Outfitters or H&M landing in my inbox. All you have to do is print them out and take them in-store. Sites like Money Saving Expert are visited by millions looking for discount vouchers to download.
Voucher Background
The peak of the craze was in December 2006 when Thresher’s saw its ‘40% off all wine and champagne’ voucher downloaded and printed by millions of people and was so popular that it made the news. The following year they relaunched the offer.
Since then printable vouchers have exploded and been in constant supply from top high street retailers, in fact I’m holding a 30% one for Gap right now. If you head over to the discount section on Money Saving Expert you can literally download hundreds of different printable vouchers from restaurants to shopping.
At first the vouchers were either PDF or JPEGs that just circulated around via email. Many had a space to fill in your details such as name, age but you never had to fill them out to use them (or they just weren’t enforced properly). Often you don’t even have to hand the voucher to staff, simply display it.
Now it seems these companies have realised that they could be capturing the information of thousands of consumers. This means that store and restaurant websites are requesting some information before allowing to download vouchers such as name, age and email address, some are making it compulsory to sign up to newsletters or become website members. This allows the company to keep the customer updated on new offers, products and news.
A couple of things to note about these printed vouchers is that they almost always contain no unique numbers or barcodes. After asking a few stores about the process, they simply said that staff are told the length of the offer, the button to press on the cash register to apply the discount and to put the store receipt in a separate pile to be counted later. How old school is that process! We are talking about massive chains like Gap here. This is perfect for mobile. Read More
McDonald’s has launched a national premier DJ competition called Flavor Battle, where three DJs will battle it out online and at Sprite Steff Off events.
Each DJ will represent a McDonald’s burger (I’m praying they have to dress up like them too) and audience members can vote for their favourite burger SMS. Every text will count as a entry into the Flavor Battle sweepstakes as an extra incentive to vote.
Some blurb from McD’s:
“Utilizing text as the voting mechanism offers instant gratification to our young consumers in attendance at the McDonald’s Flavor Battle,” Mr. Jackson said. “We were looking for a mechanism that captured their response immediately – voting for their favorite DJ and, at the conclusion of each event, seeing the measurable results.
“We’re also excited to be able to offer them a benefit – an entry into the Flavor Battle sweepstakes,” he said.
I really like SMS voting mechanics especially for live events, it’s a great way to engage the audience especially when they can make a difference on the outcome. You can also carry on the dialogue with them once the event has finished alerting them to new competitions, promotions, battle dates or downloadable content (with a opt-out option of course).
How One Mobile Developer Created Its Own Local Ad Network To Boost Fill Rates 
