The Shortest Distance Between Two Points

I was driving the other day and saw a billboard for an event in Vegas called “Singles in Sin City.”

The amazing thing about this billboard? The entire call to action was mobile. It featured an SMS short code – and nothing else.

No web site, no 800 number – just text. Check it out:

It got me thinking about how far mobile marketing has come in the last several years, and specifically how natural mobile commerce feels to the young men this event was clearly trying to reach.

Out-of-home (OOH) plays like this billboard are no-brainers for marketers trying to create targeted, precise, personalized brand impressions. Think about it. You’re single, you’re sitting at a traffic light, you like Vegas, you see this thing – hell, why not? Tap out a quick text, then continue on your way.

(Note: Waterfall Mobile does not advocate the practice of texting while driving, which might soon be outlawed by federal statute. And we’ve certainly never been guilty of that ourselves. Ahem.)

Some other examples of campaigns where SMS was the principal call to action:

• Earlier this year, Hawaiian Airlines gave away trips to Hawaii as part of a promotion with the San Diego Padres – and the opt-in was mobile.
• Our client Nokia ran an extremely smart campaign for Unilever in Brazil targeted at teens; this one featured a custom-edition phone called the Nokia 5200 Pink.
• MTV + Axe + mobile = “Hair Crisis Relief.”

Marketers have woken up to the fact that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line: a line that runs directly from your brand message into your target customer’s pocket.

Smart Thinking

CBS Outdoor recently announced it will be offering text message advertising as part of the company’s suite of out of home (OOH) marketing services.

Now the many thousands of billboards, checkout screens and bus kiosks owned by CBS will be launching pads for SMS-based marketing programs.

That means people who are looking for something to do while standing in line at the grocery store or waiting at a traffic light will have the opportunity to get targeted messages asking them to opt-in for SMS promotions.

Meanwhile, OOH video network operator Indoor Direct will be putting branded screens into 133 Carl’s Jr. restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Imagine if all of those young, hungry guys – Carl’s Jr.’s bulls-eye demo – could opt in for SMS too?  Chances are they’ll be texting anyway until their fries show up.

By all accounts, texting continues to grow in popularity – and not just among young people.

As CBS Outdoor’s statistics note,

• 131 million mobile phone owners use text messaging according to Pew Internet Project
• 68% of parents communicate with their kids through text messaging (Kelton Research, 2008)
• 51% of women aged 35-44 and 42% of women aged 45-54 use text messaging (Mobile Marketing Association, 2007 Mobile Attitude & Usage Study)
• 35-44 year olds send an average of 236 texts per month, compared to making 223 calls during the same time period (Nielsen Mobile 2008)
• 46% of tweens aged 8-12 use cell phones (the tween population equals 20MM)
• 58 million of all U.S. mobile subscribers say they’ve been exposed to advertising on their phones in the past 30 days (Nielsen Mobile, March 2008)
• 26% of those who saw an ad responded at least once by sending an SMS text-message, the most popular ad response (Nielsen Mobile, March 2008)

Seems like the OOH market is heading in this direction. How long until CBS Outdoor’s competitors jump into the fray?