Friday, June 26, 2009

Doritos Text Messaging


A while back, I wrote about the Doritos Guru campaign. This was not specifically a mobile campaign, but I liked it so much that I wrote about it anyway.

Now, in the USA at least, Doritos is utilizing text-message based mobile marketing to help launch a new product. At least, that's what they claim. It appears to me that they are using the hype of the new product to build their mobile contact list. Something that I have recommended to all my clients.

Read the full article here.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Facebook Vanity URL


Our friend Phil, who writes on his Burning the Bacon with Barrett blog, reminds us all to go and get your own vanity URL from Facebook, before the one you want is taken by somebody else.

I got mine: http://www.facebook.com/steve.kibble

Monday, June 8, 2009

Proximity Marketing for Restaurants


I have previously written on Proximity marketing. While I believe that proximity is, for the most part, somewhat ahead of what Canadian consumers are ready for, there also exists a few opportunities for proximity right now.

One of those is restaurants. Typically, customers experience some idle time in restaurants, while waiting for a table, while waiting for their order to be taken and while waiting for their food to arrive. What better time to take advantage of a captive audience that these points in a restaurant experience.

A fellow blogger from Greece recently wrote about mobile marketing in restaurants on his blog. You can read it here.

Keep in mind that Greece, as well as the rest of Europe, has been engaged in mobile marketing activities much longer than North America. Many of the concepts he discusses are in the good-to-know-for-the-future category. But some of them can be executed locally right away.

Monday, June 1, 2009

My Other Gig

While I am primarily a marketer, I also have a little side job with the Canadian Auto Press. They arrange to give me a new press car from an auto manufacturer once in a while, and I write them an article about that car.

My first ever article was just published online:
http://www.carpages.ca/article/2009/05/30/2010-toyota-corolla-preview

It's a review of the 2010 Toyota Corolla. Coming up in the next few weeks, I have the following articles scheduled to be published:
- preview of BMW X5-M and X6-M
- 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee
- Mini E (all electric vehicle)

After this, I generally won't be posting on this blog about car articles, but if you want to find out when they are published, sign up for my twitter feed. That way you can read my new car articles, AND find out about new posts on this blog.

Twitter ID: 3rdscreenmarket

Outdoor Goes Mobile



For a time this spring I was contacting local radio stations, major daily newspapers and outdoor media companies to offer bulk text-messaging services, and suggest that they offer it to their advertising clients.

Text, as we know, is the entry-point for all mobile marketing activities. And certainly at this time in the evolution of mobile, and for most mainstream consumer products, text should be the primary mobile point of contact between the brand and the consumer.

As I have previously written, text does not work by itself. It does works very well when promoted via mainstream media - specifically newspaper, radio and outdoor.

So it was little surprise when I heard that CBS Outdoor Media in the US now officially offer mobile to it's advertisers. Their package offers a keyword and use of a shortcode, and allows their advertisers to start developing a database of consumers who are interested in their brand, and interested in receiving text message communications from that brand.

For an outdoor media company (or a newspaper or radio station), this is a no brainer. Corporate marketing departments and advertising agencies are going to be sourcing their bulk text messaging from somewhere, and it makes sense that they can get it in a one-stop-shop process from the media company that is going to carry the text-message call-to-action.

Source article on CBS Outdoor is available here.