Mobile Marketing: On its Way to a Theatre Near You

Wed, March 28, 2007

Tags: Advertising, Mobile Media, Text Messaging

Having been aggressively testing mobile marketing over the past year, it's clear to us that this new form of marketing will be making its way into theatrical marketing plans in the near future. While it may not be right for all shows, we've seen it work in the live entertainment forum quite well as a powerful marketing channel. On the flip side, we've also seen it be a huge waste of money.

For example, we've seen in-theatre interaction rates as high as 20% with venues of 5,000+ patrons (that's an insane statistic in case you missed it!). That means 2 out of every 10 people in the venue said - "sure, I'll text in." For some productions, we can't get 20% of the audience to even applaud! We've seen other productions yield a varying response of 1% - 12% which isn't so hot. As for integrating mobile marketing with print and outdoor advertising - some did OK, but most did not.

At the end of the day, it's all about the messaging, the technology platform and, most importantly, what is the consumer getting out of the interaction. Moreover, it's important to define what your production is getting out of running the campaign (i.e., sales, awareness, etc.) and how it's working into your larger CRM (customer relationship management) solution so you are maximizing your advertising dollars.

Without clearly defining the goals, you are shooting in the dark.

At a recent conference at South-by-Southwest, mobile marketing was an issue, front and center, for many media folks.

"According to The Mobile Marketing Association there are more than 235 million mobile phones in the United States, a fraction of the more than two billion users worldwide. Nearly 60 percent of mobile users in the U.S. have sent a text message; six billion SMS messages were passed in 2006, more than 300 times the total at the end of 2000. The promise of increasing usage had SXSW attendees and investors looking at opportunities to push feature content and advertising through the mobile Web. User-generated content created and delivered through mobile phones and functions that leverage GPS were also discussed."

Would love to hear your thoughts on the topic and any success or failures you are seeing.

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