Mobile Marketing's Use To Skyrocket

We've heard about the advent of mobile marketing (yawn) for years. And yeah, teens could long use short text messaging (SMS) to vote for contestants on 'American Idol'. A few cosmetics companies sent out a few hundred SMSs advertising their hair products. A synagogue recently sent Sabbath greetings to its members via SMS. Other than that, we haven't seen much of this much-hyped mobile marketing around. But you wait.
Chances are, mobile marketing will blossom, along with cherry trees, this spring. Paul Cushman, of mobile marketing consultancy M-Qube, tells me of an upcoming campaign that a major beverage maker has slated for May. As part of the campaign, this yet-unnamed company will give away more than 1 million prizes, including Xbox gaming consoles and 200,000 ringtones.

To me, this campaign is an indication that mobile marketing is about to enter the big league, until now occupied by TV, newspaper and online ads. The fact that the campaign uses ringtones could also be hinting at an advent of mobile multimedia advertising.
Up till now, most of the wireless promotions out there - they were mostly pilots and trials -- involved short-text messaging. And yes, teens use SMS a lot. But in this rich-media world, text is rather boring. Soon, however, I think, we might actually start seeing multimedia promotions, involving photos, audio and video.

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