Carvel Goes Mobile With Summer Sweepstakes

What do Fudgie the whale, the short code 78247, and five 42" TVs have in common?

The nation's favorite spokeswhale, Fudgie, is breaking into mobile marketing and asking consumers to text "FUDGIE" to 78247 to receive a coupon for one of the new blended coffees or Arctic Blenders and a chance to win one of five 42-inch TVs.

Read more about this mobile couponing effort at MarketingDaily.

Check out Club Texting for more information about Text Messaging for Retail (including mobile coupons).

Can a Coupon Live Inside a Cellphone?

The New York Times recently ran an interesting article about mobile coupons:

Is a coupon still a coupon if you can’t clip ’n’ save it? Betting that the answer is yes, some advertisers are beginning to invest in mobile coupons — discounts that are delivered to customers’ cellphones (with their permission), often via text messages.

Read more at the New York Times.

Hearst Links Mag Print Ads To Mobile Marketing

OnlineMediaDaily reports on a Hearst's major mobile marketing move:

Hearst Magazines Digital Media will extend a service that links print ads to mobile marketing across titles including CosmoGIRL, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Redbook and O The Oprah Magazine.

For the last two years, Hearst has partnered with mobile tech provider ShopText to place mobile codes in CosmoGIRL ads that allow readers to order product samples or enter sweepstakes via their cell phones. After an initial purchase, users need only text a keyword and PIN to buy products advertised in the magazine.

Read more at OnlineMediaDaily.

Visit Club Texting for more information about mobile marketing for magazines.

"Take a Picture of an Ad, Earn a Reward"

The New York Times recently ran a story about an interesting phone-cam marketing program run by two popular magazines:

Rolling Stone and Men’s Health are both testing programs in which readers can take cameraphone pictures of icons on ads, then send them to a certain number. In exchange, they’ll receive more information or an offer from the advertiser.

What's in it for the reader?

In Rolling Stone’s current issue, five advertisers are running these offers. They include a motorcycle ring tone for Allstate’s motorcycle-insurance program and a video preview of The Discovery Channel’s new season of “Man vs. Wild.” Men’s Health is going even further, saying each full-page advertisement in its July-August issue will have the added feature.

Read more at the New York Times.

Visit Club Texting for more information about mobile marketing for magazines.

The Real Threat to Google

BusinessWeek has an interesting story about mobile advertising and the threat that it poses to Google:

As more people use cell phones and their tiny glass screens to gain access to the Internet, Google and its fellow online advertisers will have less space, or what's called ad inventory, to place marketing messages for customers. Google makes money selling ad inventory. And its ad inventory is diminished on a cell phone.

What does the future hold?

Consumer use of mobile Internet in the U.S. has longed trailed Asia and Europe, where standardized cell networks made it easier for handset makers to produce gadgets that tap the Web at blazingly fast speeds. But in the summer of 2007, Apple rocked America by launching the iPhone. The computer maker wasn't the first to put the Web on phones, but for many consumers, the iPhone made the experience more robust.

Almost two-thirds of Americans have had some experience with mobile Internet use, and the adoption trend is most pronounced among teens and young adults, according to Pew Research Center. About 60% of adults 18 to 29 use text messaging every day, compared with only 14% of their parents. Nearly one-third of young adults use mobile Internet. This is the future, because people take their media habits with them as they age.

Read more @ BusinessWeek

10 Killer Texting Tips

ComputerWorld has put together a list of ten informative tips that will help you become a better texter in no time:

To many people over the age of 30, text messaging can seem like one of those strange, complicated behaviors only teenagers understand. In reality, it's one more great tool in your productivity arsenal, right up there with e-mail and instant messaging.

Such as:

If your phone lacks GPS and you need to find your way between points A and B, let SMS be your guide. Before you hit the road, head to MapQuest in your desktop browser and input your destination. Once the site generates the driving directions, click the Send to Cell option and enter your cell number. In seconds you'll receive a text message containing a link to turn-by-turn directions for your route.

 If you're away from your PC, tap Google SMS for on-the-fly navigation. Create a new message with your starting point and destination, then send it to GOOGLE (dial 466453). In return, you'll receive Google Maps directions in one or more text messages (depending on the length of the route). You can also get an actual map by texting "map" and your location.

Read all ten tips at ComputerWorld.

U.S. Cell Phone Users Open to Texting Their Vote for President

Despite their distrust of electronic voting machines, Americans appear ready to embrace SMS voting:

According to the short survey, more than half of all Democrats, Republicans and Independents surveyed say that if allowed, they’d text in their Presidential vote.

If we look to future voters, the numbers are even greater:

Eight in ten (80%) teens, ages 13-17, say that if they were allowed to     vote in this year’s Presidential election, they’d do it by text message     instead of going to the polls.

Read more at Cellular News.

Survey: Mobile Search Ads to Soar

Adweek let's us know about a new mobile search report:

The mobile search advertising market will surge from $815 million in 2008 to $5 billion by 2013, according to new research published Wednesday.

Search will become as important in the mobile space as on the desktop, ABI Research said. Consumers will have escalating options to conduct searches by SMS and via branded providers, which will help advertising growth.

The outlook for SMS?

Total SMS searches will grow from 13 billion in 2008 to more than 76 billion by 2013, ABI forecasts.

Read more at Adweek.

Report: Marketers Can Reach Young Males Via Mobile

A new report from M:Metrics suggests that mobile marketing is the way to reach the elusive young male demographic:

With 36% of men ages 18 to 34 in Western Europe using mobile media, and 48% in the U.S. as of February, that demographic is an especially attractive audience for mobile advertisers, according to market researcher M:Metrics.

Furthermore, men in that age group are highly receptive to SMS text messages, with 9% responding to a text ad compared to only 4% of mobile users on average.

"Reaching the 18- to-34-year-old age demographic is a real challenge to advertisers, as this group is spending less time consuming print and broadcast media," said Paul Goode, a senior analyst at M:Metrics, in a statement.

Read more at OnlineMediaDaily.

OMG, Parents Are Texting

The Washington Post recently ran a story about parents who text. While the teenagers might not like this, it is good news for mobile marketers:

Parents are horning in on their teenagers' lives through text messaging. Sending shorthand cellphone messages used to be the province of the younger set -- under the dinner table, in the car, at all hours of the night.

Now, parents are responding with their own quick dispatches -- "RU there," "Running L8" -- and becoming the fastest-growing demographic in text messaging, which is one of the biggest areas of the mobile-phone industry.

Read more at The Washington Post.