Integrate and innovate, this is the lesson Kinetic Worldwide is trying to teach its clients, educating them to the benefits of including mobile shortcodes on outdoor advertising. New Media Age (sub. req.) reports the company believes starting a mobile relationship via SMS is even more important than driving traffic online by adding an URL on billboards.
I absolutely believe shortcodes are an extremely attractive way to communicate with mobile users while they are waiting for something (a bus, a plane, a train) or for someone (in a square, in a pub, in a movie theatre). But we need to keep in mind why we want to start a relationship with a prospect. If it's just to entertain him (and so work on branding), than mobile phones can do an excellent job, but if we want to deliver information and therefore drive purchase intent, than Internet communications could be far more effective. Furthermore we need to consider shortcodes can be rather expensive to implement or if we choose the reverse billing model (premium SMS), we have to clearly state the costs the user is going to sustain.
Of course, when the mass of users will embrace the mobile Internet, this discussion will become obsolete, and we will probably see URLs on every piece of advertising. Everywhere.
What do you think?
Tag = mobile marketing.
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