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Follow UsIdeally, any promotion, be it TV, print, online or mobile is supposed
to create a sort of brand recall. Whether that is done through good or
bad ads is another debate. And it is applicable to all mediums.
However, there is one thing different with the mobile. And that is,
there are not many options available to be creative. Mobile promotions
thus are fairly direct, in terms of offerings and benefits. Without the
aid of visuals, they are also quite flat.
But despite all that,
advertising is hot. And the reasons can be many- ranging from
target audience to delivery time. And organizations have woken up to
this fact with a vengeance. Ofcourse there will be some verticals that
shall be (and are) adopting mobile as their primary medium.
Hospitality, real estate and retail being the primary ones.
But is mobile advertising yielding any tangible benefits? That is the
question that everyone is shying from. And while the effects of any
promotion can't be estimated holistically, there are other things that
clearly seem to have gone wrong with mobile promotions in India.
For one, the target audience seems to have gone all wrong. Database of
customers are brought only with keeping one factor in mind- and that is
that all these individuals are of high net worth. However, in more
advanced markets, there are segregated databases in terms of
professionals, businessmen, and even narrow criterion like gender. But
then, this is India, and we haven't even take the first step in mobile
promotions- and that is established and clear guidelines.
As of now, the conventional route for mobile promotions is this-
a company wanting to leverage the mobile approaches a VAS company, who
at a price, also give companies' their databases. The VAS companies, in
turn, have pre-bought gateways from one or multiple
providers. The
blasts are then shot via these gateways and hence land on the screens
of our phones.
Disturb Me Not
The glitches however, during the process, are several. The first one is
the total neglect (and often misuse) of the National Do Not Disturb
Service. Ideally, a customer registers himself on the DND service with
his/her service provider. The service providers then send out these
lists to the
companies and ask them to filter these numbers from the blasts.
However, in the Indian scenario what is happening is that some
unscrupulous VAS companies are now selling even these lists to
companies.
And these DND lists usually come at a higher value because one
thing about these customers are sure- that all these people are high
net worth individuals (since they know and have used DND service).
There is another issue- that DND is being given the supreme status-
that is, it is being put over and above the opt-in service. Opt-in
service is a mechanism, whereby a customer opts for a particular type
of content ( news, gadgets, sports, music etc) to be delivered on his
mobile. Technically, opt-in should overrule the DND since it is
customer's choice oriented. But the exact opposite is happening here.
Analysts say that publicizing of DND and loads of SMSes despite being
registered there is a common phenomenon of developing mobile markets.
However, no one is denying, that mobile blasts are increasingly
becoming an intolerable nuisance.
Says Nitin Shrivastava, a professional working with (ironically) with a
service provider I get about 10-15 messages a day, mostly from
builders like Jaypee, DLF, Unitech etc. And ofcourse, he is registered
with DND.
Same is the story of most of my colleagues who dont need a sauna slim
belt at all but still get an entreating message to buy one daily. Says
Piyali Guha, a fellow worker, it is getting extremely frustrating,
especially those 'download hot bikini model wallpapers' and others.
She adds that even calls from service providers about ring tones and
caller back tones are a pain and they too mostly come when we are on
roaming.
The frustration is unanimous, and all the efforts towards a more
regulated mobile promotion environment have fizzled out sooner than
later. Now the government is planning to come up with a totally
opposite process of DND, wherein people who want to receive such
messages would register. I am not too sure that this scheme is going to
work well either.
So where is the solution?
is still struggling to find a balanced model. And everyday it seems to
be getting too late. So much the price to pay for a mobile revolution.
Have SMS Blasts Gone Beyond Law?
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