Monday, June 18, 2007

other news of a pre-Glastonbury Monday morning

RoadChef, the motorway services provider is running its first mobile loyalty initiative. You can join the scheme by texting ROAD to 60066 and then you will receive mobile vouchers over a 12-week period. These will be special deals from RoadChef as well as brand partners including Nestle and Coca-Cola and there's also a chance to win a plasma TV. Question - what happens after 12 weeks? And does that really describe loyalty? I'm interested to know what's going to happen next.

The Big Brother season is well under way in the UK and we've already had one walker and one evictee (I say Charley should be the next one). The big difference this year is that there is no text voting as a result of the scandals revealed earlier in the year around TV text voting and competitions. I think this is a real shame and I'm disappointed that they went down this road, but understand the rationale. However, to sweeten the pill, Virgin Mobile (this year's sponsor) is offering free texts to its customers whilst Big Brother is on so that fans can text each other during the programme. Or is it that they want to give fans something to do as the programmes are losing their appeal?!

Is there a future for MVNO's with the recent bankruptcy filing from Amp'd in the US? Well Pyramid research seems to think the future isn't so bleak in the MVNO world. And in the UK, Virgin is most certainly a success.

ITN is serving up Bollywood glamour with Bollywood Insider, a two minute round up of news, views and promos from India’s cinema and music scene, hosted by Suzi Mann, a DJ on commercial Asian radio station, Sunrise.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:32 pm BST

    Just texted for the roadchef offer. Whoever is behind this offer needs to go on a course of basic web design. Multiple requests for data to register (and being told each time that one more click is all thats needed). Don't ask for someones name, address, email address and postcode AND location when doing wap pages.

    Come on - to grow the industry we need better content than this.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're absolutely right. They should be doing much better.

    I've just tried the campaign out myself and have some points to add..

    The text in bit worked really fast and I got my reply back quickly guiding me to click on a wapsite or reply with my postcode. I clicked on the wapsite.

    Then it tells me welcome and that for a chance to win big prizes, oh and by the way we'll send you some offers, to fill in a form. hmm. I'm getting bored now as I don't even know what kind of offers I might get and whether or not it will be worth doing. Anyway, I do it. I'm asked for

    Title
    Initial
    Last name
    date of birth
    postcode
    location

    I don't know why they need to know whether I'm Ms, Mrs or Miss.
    What use is an initial? Don't they need my first name to personalise my experience?
    Why do you need my last name?
    Why do you need my date of birth? Why not just ask folks to confirm they are over 18 if it's an over 18s thing. And moreover, make it easy to complete your date of birth. Why do you need the / key?
    Postcode - and you need that because?
    Location - and you need that because? No explanation as to where these places are or what the implication is of choosing a location.

    Of course there are no Ts and Cs anywhere, nothing about a closing date for the competition. Nothing about the kind of offers you might get BEFORE you register. No privacy policy. No contact details.

    Ok, so I didn't get the same problems as anonymous, but the site still was lacking somewhat.

    So I dig a bit deeper to find that the companies behind the campaign are I-movo, who do mobile couponing and is part of Conchango and m-send who do text messaging for a living. Where, pray tell, is the mobile experience expertise? Who designed the wapsite and why did they still have their direct marketing hat on when they were doing it?

    Grrrr. Definitely could do better. And definitely not worth pr-ing. I can't imagine the coupons are going to be much better either. Haven't had one yet...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous5:48 pm BST

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