2008: The Year For Mobile…Spam?

This is why mobile marketing is going to struggle to generate a return, much less goodwill amongst consumers…

This rubbish was served up in the form of a banner ad running on the Techcrunch blog. High marks for audience targeting but the promotion and execution was straight out of the Dodgy Bros. operating manual.

With the incentive of a $500 gift card, the promotion is simply designed to capture mobile phone numbers. It’s not certain if Woolworths itself is behind the promotion, but the brand is prominent enough to give the impression that the company’s marketing department has had some involvement in the sign-off.

Now the rub. Read the following text which appears on-screen after the individual submits their mobile number:

If you enter the received pin you will join the Wixawin subscription service. Stop service? Text ’stop’ to 19993500 | Subscription: 8 msg per month, $2.50/msg each way and $2.50 joining fee. Competition ends 31-12-’08 | Age: 14+ only - ask bill payer’s permission.

In short, for the privilege of entering the competition and submitting your personal details, you’re slugged with a $2.50 joining fee and $20 worth of spam each month! And if you respond to each of those messages, that’s another $20 in fees. Further, to ensure the gift voucher pays for itself 100 times over, the competition runs until the end of year.

That means if you fail to copy down the number to stop this abuse, you’re in for $120 worth of mobile spam when the year’s up, or $240 if you respond to each spam with an abusive text message of your own.

In many ways the mobile industry has no-one but itself to blame for its poor development as a legitimate and valued marketing service. Examples like this put real, constructive mobile CRM initiatives back another 12 months or more.