Sales & Business Development Manager
Dependant on experience
UK - London
Full launch of Orange Shots gives brands chance to target 100,000 opted in customers
The service, which has been in trial since September, will roll out on February 1st. It will initially target Orange’s Pay As You Go Monkey customer base. This offers free music and texts to users when they top up their mobile.
However, the operator plans to make Orange Shots available to its entire (opted in) mobile customer base over time.
The project marks an evolution of Orange's relationship with Blyk Media, the original pioneer of the ad-funded mobile model, which switched from an MVNO approach to one of white-labelling for operators last year. Blyk will provide the technological platform, with Unanimis UK building brand relationships.
Orange Shots works across SMS and MMS mobile platforms, encouraging customers to message back and give views and opinions. Users receive a variety of benefits, including news and gossip, content, film and games previews, and sports information.
Brands including 4Music, Ubisoft, COI and Snickers have already trialled the service and – Orange clains – found it to provide a higher conversion rate than any other media, offering response rates of between 21-39 per cent.
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Orange’s decision to specifically target consumers based on their personal interests (“Orange ramps up Blyk-based ad service”, 26 January), is certainly an innovative step in the evolution of mobile marketing, but could throw up additional, initial challenges to overcome.
Taking mobile marketing to such a granular level relies on consumer trust more than ever, and in a “spam-conscious” age, brands need to ensure they are not turning away potential leads through their very appearance. A fundamental part to achieving this is displaying all brands and logos legibly on the small screen. This is often down to the brand’s typeface.
The humble font is often forgotten as a powerful communication tool. Consumers are used to seeing written communication displayed a certain way and implementing typefaces across new media must be considered from an aesthetic and technical standpoint.
Implementing typefaces across new media is a process that needs to be at the forefront of a new mobile marketing strategy. Consistent text delivery will help customers trust the messages they receive. Our recent survey with Opinion Matters of 2000 UK consumers, showed that if the branding within an organisation’s mobile promotion was displayed in the wrong font, more than 86% of the surveyed audience would not trust it and therefore it would fall at the first hurdle.
