Blyk and you'll miss it?

'I want you.....I need you....I can't get enough of you.....'

The year was 2002 and these were the opening lines of a text message sent out to 2,500 people living in Stockport. A recruitment message sent out on behalf of Sainsbury's, who were opening a store in the area and needed customer service assistants. I couldn't have anticipated the headline in the national newspapers the next day, it screamed:

'Saucy Text Message sent out by Supermarket'

The story recounted how a woman's husband went into a rage when he discovered the above opening three lines sent to his wife on her mobile phone. He didn't proceed to read the final line of the text message, which read...'opportunities for customer service agents in our new Sainsbury's Stockport store'. Not so saucy.

Needless to say, I had a small kitten and worried I was in big trouble. The copywriter Craig, on the other hand, who to his credit, had only 130 characters to work with, was delighted his handiwork had made it into the national papers.

I realised that there was a fatal flaw in the targeted SMS lists from the provider, who insisted they had been double opt-ins from subscribers on a mobile ring tones site. It was then and there, I knew that, with the mobile being such a personal medium, the potential damage and annoyance to a brand from unsolicited messages, was too great in exchange for some targeted impactful messages. My ardour dampened and I was happy to use and explore mobile as a response mechanism in the intervening years...that was until last year, when I read all about a new ad funded mobile service being launched by ex President of Nokia, it was to be named Blyk.

I was seriously interested. Free text messages and minutes for 16-24 year olds in exchange for relevant and personalised messages. We explored how it may be relevant for our clients and one of our global clients will be piloting it to the UK graduate market next month, being able to have a dialogue with specific students, studying certain courses in certain universities.

The really interesting approach of this model is that it achieves a number of things - Personalised messages. Relevant messaging. And Added Value to our audience. All critical to brands in todays communication landscape.

With the web access over mobile growing month on month (and interestingly, more so among the older demographic, due to no cost restrictions) the medium and the opportunties to truly communicate with candidates may just be ready to be re-explored again.

Comments

[Matt]

I remember that campaign.....half page news story in the Daily Mail on the back of it! Seem to be a lot of people in the recruitment communications world talking about mobile at the moment. TMP had some sort of press release out yeterday and Riley's presented on test messaging at the AGR. I'm amazed no one is mentioning the iPhone though....if ever there was a game changing technology then the 3G iPhone is it. Will write a post on all this later

Matt

[Adam]

Dear Matt

could you please back up your argument of the game changing technology of the iPhone 3G? Afaik, the advertising landscape of the mobile world isnt dependent on the iPhone, but change in social attitude to advertising as well as the greater availability of mediums to deliver rich content to people.

Br
Adam

[Matt]

Dear Adam

Expect to see a post explaining what I mean shortly

Matt