Now, son, Mobile can be a media !

By Fabian Tilmant on 14 February 2009 in Mobile Marketing | 1 Comment

It is always interesting for a Son of a Phone like me to see how other worlds are looking at Mobile. It can be other cultures like Asia or USA, it can be through women eyes like I did while working at Sanoma for Flair Mobile and it is certainly while witnessing people from traditional advertising or media discussing about it. And I learned a lot of things during GRP’s Media Session over Mobile Marketing.

The host list was already very promising. Laurent Deramaix from RMB who represents perfectly the risky and innovative initiative this company took taking care of media part of Pumbby. Alexis Picard from Mediaedge:cia presented figures from their exclusive study on Belgian Market. And last but not least, Blyk Belgium CEO Eric Samson who represents perfectly what the debate was about: a media savvy entering the mobile world.

Let’s start with figures: Alexis highlighted the fact that 26% of 24-65 Belgians are ready to give their mobile phone number for receiving information and/or advertising. Which is roughly 1.6M people! Most expected services are Mobile Banking, Mobile Couponing (but keeping in mind that distribution sector doesn’t accept it yet) and Advertising. Quite encouraging for Blyk, then. What is also interesting to note is that French-speaking part is more willing than the dutch-speaking one. Another key fact is that older age classes are increasingly using SMS and MMS, especially for reaching their family members. Adapting to their grand-children communication channels.

Pumbby and Blyk have quite similarities. On one hand, Pumbby is being sold by a Sales House, at rates and in a customer experience closer to Direct Marketing than webvertising. Subscribers are rewarded with cents (44 cents per message) while Blyk rewards them with phone call minutes and SMS. Pumbby is only starting creating an interaction and bringing added value to consumer (Cliniclown case) while Blyk knows it will be needed from start. Eric Samson considers Blyk as a Media and not as an advertising channel. The recipe is ready and has been successfully tested in UK, now it’s time to roll it out in Europe:

• Exclusive focus on 16-24 target group
• Messages are sent regarding customer preferences, which positions Blyk as database-marketing rather than webvertising like Skynet (for Proximus) and Microsoft (for Mobistar and Base) currently do
• Create engagement towards the “advertising message”: an interaction is expected from the member each time in order to start a conversation between the brand and the member
• Members are only accepted via invitations. It creates a buzz and an happy few feeling for the chosen ones
• It is NOT webvertising on members phone, it is Direct Marketing
• Average response rate of 25%, advertiser retention rate of 60%, 2000 campaigns for 200 advertisers in less than 2 years. All this on UK market.

After the presentation, I had the chance to discuss further with Eric Samson who highlighted the need to, beside working with all media value chain members, talk to advertisers at top level to convince them adding this new media in their plans because it simply just works! Blyk will focus at first on (of course relevant for the 16-24 target group) brands who are looking for innovation. He would be happy gaining very quickly a critical mass of 50.000 to 100.000 (that was exactly our goal at Sanoma too=o) members and expect campaign budgets between 5.000 and 20.000 euros. Also what we experienced at Sanoma!

As a conclusion, it is very interesting that Media World is accepting Mobile as a (7^th Mass, for Laurent from RMB) Media. But they expect to manage it with their rules, inside their value system and considering all traditional media value chain members. That’s why legal constraints (especially around opt-in rules), metrics and socio-demographic data are key for adoption of mobile media in marketing plans. That’s what MNO have not considered until now.
It was funny to hear Laurent telling that Mobile Operators will play a major role in this new media while they officially claim now that they won’t play that game in Belgium and focus on Customer User Experience and Connectivity.

Tags: Blyk, media, mobile

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