Mobilizing

I know that many, including some members of our group, are very skeptical of mobile marketing and content. Herewith, another attempt to persuade, in the words of Russell Buckley, writing on Nokia's Local Marketing Solution.

The system works by allowing users to set their preferences as to the sort of advertising they'll accept on their phones. Then, when ever they're in range of a special Service Point, they get the ads they're interested in by Bluetooth.

After reading that, I thought about my favorite meme-- but Russell is there too:

The most exciting thing about this for me, if it can be made to work, is the long tail angle. Much of Google's success is via the Adsense and Adwords concepts, that allows small companies/advertisers to place highly targeted ads which work. This has allowed Google to access the long tail of advertisers or make sales to millions of first-time advertisers.

This Local Marketing Solution is the same - potentially. It allows small corner shops and retailers to plunge into low cost, tightly targeted advertising and CRM programmes, for the first time.

And he has a key question:

2.  Who will do the selling?

Let's assume operators are convinced to give it a go. They sign on the dotted line and put up a meaningful amount of service points. Who is going to sell the ads and administer them?

I nominate us.

Comments

[Brynn Mow, CEO]

I am very excited about this Dallas blog! I found it while doing a google search on my company, and read where our jalerts for personalized traffic(on KRLD.com) is actually helpful. Jericho Systems developed this public service pilot to showcase our technology products which deliver 1:1 personalization and security decisioning. Our technology changes advertising messages from "Broadcast" to "Unicast" and causes a paradigm shift in the way a consumer interacts with an enterprise. The KRLD Personalized Traffic System, powered by Jericho, enables a consumer to set the rules around which they want to recieve information, and has the potential to offer local, "mom and pop" retailers a vehicle to send personalized messages or digital coupons based upon attribute and location based information. For example, with our system, a local "fix a dent" shop owner may only want to advertise to certain zip codes during a hail storm. Our system also allows that shop owner to multi channel the sell, via any SMS delivery mechanism (email, cell phone, pda or all three). Because Jericho Systems is a technology company and not an advertising firm, we have not promoted the retail sponsorships in the pilot. To date we have four main sponsors.

Jericho Systems does not require persoanlized traffic subscribers to pay for the information, nor does it sell the sponsorship or advertising service, nor does it sell the consumer information it receives during sign-up. This pilot is a public service and we are interested in learning if this type of system is helpful and positively received; i.e. are consumers interested in receiving information via the SMS vehicle of their choice if the information is useful and tailored to their interests? Would consumers like to recieve a daily digital coupon for the lunch special in their zip code each day? We are open to feedback and will gladly offer free digital advertising coupons to DFW based companies only ... go to www.jalerts.com or info@jalerts.com We also welcome more traffic subscribers.

Lastly, Dear Russell @ Nokia: Why promote BlueTooth when Dallas has Jericho?