Texting next big thing in marketing

One reason why Kiwis are text users is the high cost of cellphone calls. Picture / Bay of Plenty Times

Beware: the menace of the inattentive pedestrian mobile phone user takes different forms around the world.

On a crowded New York street, this hazardous creature - dangerously ignorant of his surroundings - will be yelling into his handset as he collides with you.

The Tokyo version, arm out-stretched, distractedly staring at her handset, will be midway through a video call to a friend.

And in Auckland it will be a bowed-headed, frantic-thumbed text message sender who smacks into you on a Queen St footpath.

The cellphone may be globally ubiquitous, but the way it is used varies from nation to nation.

Local industry players agree the relative popularity of text messaging in New Zealand is the result of the comparatively high cost of making a cellular voice call in this country.

Serge van Dam, of Auckland mobile application development company M-Com, says our familiarity with text messaging as a cheap communication tool flows on into a willingness to use text as a consumer tool for tasks such as checking bank account balances.

"I guess that's the whole No. 8 fencing wire mentality, the willingness to adopt new technologies," says van Dam.

"It's the fact that technology for the sake of technology intrigues a whole lot of New Zealanders."

North Americans, in comparison, have for years been offered cheap mobile voice calling packages and at the same time interoperability issues - transmission barriers between networks - have meant texting has not been an attractive communication alternative.

But that is changing as text usage picks up as part of a wave of mobile technology hype bankrolled by large corporates keen to tap into the potential of mobile marketing and advertising.

"It's definitely been the case that American use of text messaging has been lower, but it's changing in a big way at the moment and really starting to crank up," says Derek Handley, of Auckland-based mobile marketing company The Hyperfactory.

Handley has spent much of his time this year working out of The Hyperfactory's newly established New York office and says the company is working on several US projects for clients who are using customer interaction over the mobile phone as part of a promotional campaign.

He says US TV entertainment phenomenon American Idol is the classic example of text messaging's late but powerful uptake in the US.

During Idol's first season on air, the show's presenters had to talk viewers through how to text their vote for their favourite performer.

But by last season, the show was receiving 41 million texts, triple the response the previous year.

US mobile network operator Verizon Wireless pumped through 20 billion texts last quarter, double what it did for the same period a year ago.

Handley says "every type of media and marketing company" is turning to text messaging as an entry point into the Holy Grail of mobile marketing.

Tom Eslinger, Saatchi & Saatchi's Auckland-based worldwide interactive creative director, says the US's strong "BlackBerry culture" - the prevalence of mobile email - has been one factor limiting the uptake of text messaging.

But he predicts text will remain a well-used tool for personal messaging and for communication between businesses and consumers.

He says its strengths are that it is an easy, efficient way to communicate, is part of youth culture and has the allure of being "a bit like passing a note in class".

From a marketing perspective, whether an advertiser chooses to use text messaging or higher-end mobile multi-media tools for an interactive campaign depends largely on the product they are selling.

"Text is still really powerful. If you send a great short text message to somebody that's also got some marketing and branding opportunity in it, it can be amazing if you pull the right chords."

Texting is certainly an entrenched method of communication in New Zealand; we send about 10 million text messages a day.

Ben Northrop, of Wellington mobile application developer Run The Red, says New Zealand businesses are beginning to use text-based applications as a way of encouraging consumers to use more sophisticated Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and 3G-based mobile services.

An example of how this works is sending a mobile user a text containing a link to a website they will then access on their WAP-enabled phone.

But the move from text to 3G-dependent applications will take time.

Northrop gives the example of a bank that may be interested in offering its customers a sophisticated transaction platform over their mobiles.

"The reality is that unless you want to spend millions of dollars setting up a service when only 3 to 5 per cent of the population have the appropriate handsets to use it, that's a lot of money," he says.

"It's much better to set up a banking service using text, where everyone knows how to use it, get a good return on your investment and then gradually evolve the service with the users' knowledge and comfortableness with [3G] handsets."

Run The Red has been working with corporate and government agency clients to develop texting platforms that offer a cheaper alternative than call centres for handling some client inquiries.

He believes text will retain its effectiveness.

"We've got 75-year-olds who use our PSIS text banking service because they're hard of hearing and prefer that to using the 0800 number."

M-Com's van Dam has just returned from Europe where he says there is a marketing push by network operators to get phone users to move from using text to multi-media services.

"There's definitely a strong drive from the mobile operators to get people to move forward because SMS revenues have peaked."

He expects the same to happen in New Zealand and predicts a wave of "customer-centric" 3G phone applications will be released on the market this year, meaning "all of a sudden we will have moved beyond SMS".

An example of the type of mobile applications that will help to usurp text is a property information service his company is developing with geographic information provider Terralink.

Presently being trialled by a group of real estate agents, it allows home buyers to access property details and neighbourhood sales information from their phone while they are out house-hunting.

One company relying on the humble text message surviving as 3G grows is listed enigma Plus SMS, which is promising to develop a global short-code texting platform it says will be highly attractive to multinational brands running cross-country text promotions.

Despite having a service that is still in the development stage, and no income, Plus SMS's shareholders have valued the company at more than $200 million, an apparent vote of confidence in the future of texting.

The Hyperfactory's Handley is one of those who believe the simplicity of text means it will stay around for several more years at least.