Location Based Marketing: Atlernative 3

James at MocoNews responds to Russel's post "Could It Really Work."

Frist Russell's expereince at Zagme:

"Firstly, let’s bust the Pull myth. Most ordinary people don’t want the hassle of pulling down information. They want it presented to them as a seamless part of their device experience, to ignore or act on, as they see fit.

That’s not to say that there isn’t an important role for Pull - I think being able to access information to supplement other media, as an example, is a great idea. And some die-hards will always stick to Pull and that’s fine too."

Russell ends part one with this:

"So, in fact, the really important question when studying LBM, the-answer-to-life-death-and-the-universe question of the subject, is: what kind of marketing messages should you say you’re going to send that will attract opt-in in the first place, that recipients will welcome and that they’ll respond to? In other words, what kind of messages will work? Knowing what the user wants is key to both opt-in in the first place and subsequently, optimising the channel’s effectiveness."

Now James:

"There is a third option though…

The trick would be a method to push messages to a handset without using messages. That way there wouldn’t be the message tone (getting you to check your phone only to find an ad) but the person wouldn’t have to actively request the message, it would be sent to their phone for them to see when they look at it. This could require a specific application on the phone, but I think there’s a more elegant solution: scrolling tickers.

Many telcos are now providing a “scrolling ticker” to send information such as news, weather and mobile content to the handset (check out Cingular’s ticker for an example). It would be simple to add targeted advertisements to the service which users could opt-in to either because they were keen to receive targeted marketing messages that interest them or (and this is far more likely) there is some other benefit, such as free or discounted mobile services."