Vote for Weymouth Carnival Queen 2005

Do you love a traditional English Carnival? Well, Weymouth Carnival is for you. It's held on 17th August and is the largest carnival in the South. The local Weymouth Round Table run it and it's a huge charity fundraiser and lots of fun to boot. And you can vote for your Carnival Queen too. Check out the pictures on the website and then follow the instructions. Anna, Kirby and Amy are waiting for your texts! The text vote lines are open until midnight 16th August 2005 and each text costs 50p + your usual charge. Profits are going to the carnival charities. The service is being run by BeepMarketing.

Blah blah blah

I stumbled upon the lovely weblog by illustrator Paige Pooler. And clicking through to her portfolio site I stumbled across the above picture which just about sums up where my head is at today. The picture below is where I'd like my state of mind to be - a state of tranquility.

How not to do mobile marketing. Lesson 2, Coca Cola.

oh dear oh dear oh dear.

You'd think Coca Cola, with all its experience in running mobile marketing campaigns would get it right wouldn't you? Their latest campaign is an on-pack promotion offering free 'coketags' (which is basically Shazam rebranded) and music downloads. And it's a pretty good concept - get your code from the pack, enter it online for a chance to win ringtones and coketags. Relatively simple? One would have thought.

So I gave it a go and lost a couple of times, but I persevered (I like Coke you see!) until I eventually won a free ringtone. The trouble is I wasn't able to download it. I clicked on the link and got a communication error. OK, this happens. So I tried again a couple of days later only to find that the system thought I'd already downloaded the ringtone, which I hadn't. Very disappointing.

As I work in the industry, I put this down to serendipity - very often when I test out other people's campaigns, and if there's a bug, I usually find it. This doesn't appear to happen to *real* customers in the same way. So I figured that it might be a one-off.

Then a couple of weeks back, when running one of my mobile marketing sessions for the IDM, we were discussing current mobile marketing campaigns and the Coke one came up. And a couple of people in the room had given it a go, and one of them had exactly the same problem as I had.

Ok, so technical fulfilment can be tricky sometimes. It's technology, it's not perfect.

But then I get this message yesterday at 15:44:

From: Coca-Cola [no reply path]

"Last chance 2 win ringtones or music downloads in Coke promo. All who entered in last 2 wks won. Last draw Jul 24@3pm. Pick up promo pack now. Rply stop 2 unsub" 160 characters.

Except, that I can't reply stop to unsubscribe because there's no reply path. D'oh.

I wondered if they bothered testing any of this stuff before it went live?

tags: mobile & mobile+technology & mobile+marketing & cocacola

The image is from Ohio University's advertising archive.

MTV and Motorola offering free mobile content

From Brand Republic:

Motorola and MTV have got together to provide MTV fans with free mobile content. The only charges to the user will be their data charges from their network operator. To try it for yourself, go to MTV Load.

This is a wap-based service (and you can opt to get a wap push message from the MTV load site - which I did and it was super-fast). From my testing this morning, it seems to be a relatively good site - the charges are made clear, there's a variety of content available (although there are some links not live yet) and I've been able to download stuff to my lowly Sony Ericsson K700i very easily. Although I haven't been able to view or download any of the video clips (even though my phone's pretty good on video as it happens). It keeps telling me there's a communication error.

But I really like the concept and I'm interested to see how or if they build on customer relationships using this facility. I'll keep you updated. Oh and the picture is an example of the free content available. Although they call this a MMS - dunno why - it looks like an animated picture to me and when downloaded goes straight into my picture folder.

Quote of the day

I was just sorting through my email and found this quote that I'd saved from last year.

"Most of the stress that people feel doesn't come from having too much to do -- it comes from not keeping agreements they've made with themselves."

-David Allen, David Allen and Co.

I don't know who David Allen is but there's an article on Fast Company that's related to the quote. The picture is from the BBC's page on how to deal with stress.

Glasshouse is back with craigslist

The wonderful Glasshouse is back and I went along to their networking event yesterday evening. Not only did I catch up with old friends and meet some new ones but I also listened to Craig Newmark (who's quite short) and Jim Buckmaster (who's really tall) from craigslist telling us their fascinating story of how it all happened for them (wiki link), how the concept grew, how it's community based and driven by customers needs and wants, how they're growing globally and why they do what they do. It's also a relief to meet entrepreneurs like Craig Newmark, who are genuninely nice folk. Check his blog to find out what he thinks of haggis (I'm veggie so don't partake in this kind of food)...

Also in the audience was Charles Handy, yes he of management guru fame. I chatted to him and his photographer wife Elizabeth after the event and they were both charming. I was so tongue tied though that I not only didn't ask him any pertinent questions nor did I take a picture with my cameraphone. d'oh. But I did find out that Elizabeth and I were both mature students at the University of Westminster. Still, meeting two authors in two weeks, that's not bad going. Wonder who'll be next?!