Hello everyone. Miss Mobile here. Sorry I haven’t written before now. I’ve been busy saving people from spending too much on their car insurance. No, wait. That’s that other cartoon girl.

So, I’ve been mulling over something all weekend.

I read an article on eMarketer last week entitled, “Young Adults Influenced by Mobile Ads.” Here’s what caught my attention:

Many mobile marketers are still struggling to influence consumers, judging by an analysis of BIGresearch’s “Simultaneous Media Usage Study.”

Only 6.9% of adults surveyed said that video on mobile phones influenced them to purchase electronics; 6.4% said text messaging did the same.

However, mobile media was twice as effective among young consumers, with 14.2% of 18 to 24 year-olds saying that mobile video influenced them and 15.9% saying text messaging did.

“Given the state of our economy, mobile advertisers have a unique environment in which to build strategies that influence consumers to buy via their cellphones, especially the media-elusive 18 to 24 year-old segment,” said Gary Drenik, president of BIGresearch, in a statement.

When I read that I thought, Just what exactly are these 18-24 year-olds influenced to buy? I’m 26; I’m almost in that age bracket. Would I be influenced? And media-elusive? Am I media-elusive?

This inner dialogue went on for several more minutes while I stared at my cubicle wall. I came to the conclusion that, yes, I am media-elusive. I don’t read newspapers. Touching them makes my skin crawl. And as far as TV goes, I watch CNN for about three minutes in the morning, and I watch Jon Stewart for about ten minutes at night. The radio? As soon as a commercial comes on, I change the station. And the internet? I’m on it all day long, but when it comes to banner ads and sponsored links, it’s like they’re not even there.

So somehow in this crazy, mixed-up, multimedia world, I have become media-elusive. But all of that doesn’t mean that I’d be influenced by text messages…does it?

It just might.

I believe that even if I wasn’t in the mobile industry, I’d still be curious to try some of the mobile marketing out there. Not the “Txt HOT for this steamy wallpaper” or the “Find out if he’s your soul-mate” ones, but definitely the cool ones—like the ones from Google and ChaCha and Traffic.com.

I guess that means I’m finicky about the mobile campaigns I try out. Sure I have unlimited texting, but I have limited patience for crap. So I believed it when it said that mobile marketers are still struggling to influence consumers. Of course they are. It’s a new medium. It has similarities to traditional media, but you can’t apply the same old marketing techniques. Believe me, I’ve tried. Coming up with a cool mobile marketing concept isn’t easy. But if you create a good one, and if you keep it going and keep it fresh, you can build a large consumer-base that not only appreciates your message but also looks forward to it.

Case in point? Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to talk politics, just mobile strategy.

In March I read an article about Barack’s mobile campaign. It said, Text GO to 62262 (OBAMA). I thought, sure, why not. It will probably be lame, but I’ll do it for the sake of mobile research.

I believe the first message I received was the standard ‘thanks for joining’ message. I was unimpressed, but I cut the program some lack since it was the first message. Then a few days later I received another text message, asking if I could help out at a nearby rally. Cool, I thought, but I’m not going. Sometime later I received an update, Barack won a primary somewhere. Neat. Now I know what happened, and I didn’t even have to watch the news. And then he won another primary. And another. And another. Each time I found out about it without having to do anything.

I received on average one text message per week from their campaign. And here’s the kicker: I liked it.

Was I a Barack Obama fan when I signed up for the text alerts? Not really. I was ambivalent. But somewhere along the line I came to appreciate just how on top of things the mobile program was. Every time something big happened, I was alerted, and always at a reasonable hour. Sometimes it would ask me to forward the message to my friends. Although I never did, I appreciated what a simple yet effective way that is to create viral marketing.

And it seems that the entire mobile campaign has been simple yet effective too, especially at reaching that media-elusive 18-24 segment. Maybe they’re all like me. They ignore most of the advertising out there, but they’re glued to their cell. They want to be informed, but they don’t want to work for it.

But I’m betting that the Obama mobile campaign has been effective for more than just the Gen Y crowd. I think every age range would appreciate timely, valuable information presented in a short message. I know I did. As long as I’m being told something new, I don’t mind if you text me once a week.

And a few minutes ago I found a whole page on his website devoted to mobile. Not only can you download ringtones, but you can also sign up for alerts about specific issues like health care, education, Iraq, and the economy.

Now that’s some good mobile marketing. Maybe after the election the Obama camp will publish the results of their mobile campaign. I hope they do. We mobile marketers could learn a lot from it.

Tags: BIGresearch, Chacha, consumers, Gen Y, Google, media, mobile alerts, mobile marketing, mobile video, text messaging, Traffic.com, virual marketing

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 11:32 am and is filed under In the News, Miss Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.