Meandering through marketing blog archives, I recently came across this fantastic application of human psychology in the domain of marketing. Fantastic because the idea was almost there on the shelf waiting for someone to give it a lease of life while on the other side I foresee a negative feedback in the reaction of the end consumers due to too smart marketing.At http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2006/09/013576.htm, Emily gives us a fabulous insight into "missed call marketing", a new form of mobile marketing.
"Missed call' marketing is the term that has been given to the practice of calling a mobile telephone for such a short period of time that the owner cannot answer the call. When the marketer disconnects the call, most mobile phones present a 'missed call' notification with the marketer's number. The marketer intends that the owner of the phone will think that they have missed a legitimate call and ring the number back, in which case they hear a recorded promotional message".
Let us spare a moment for the marketing guys who came up with this brilliant idea.In this era of marketing where consumer attention is so precious and almost fleeting ,this is nothing but revolutionary.How often do we get a missed call from an unknown number and our first reaction is to call back ?? That behaviour is on predictable lines and the marketing people are tapping exactly into this psyche to get to the consumers. And more often than not, they are reaching a dead end.
2 comments:
Anyways I think it is unethical to do this because the person who gets the missed call will try and call back (i.e. spend money) to listen to a promo song. Common I think the marketing gurus can come up with a better idea. Lets not make a customer pay to promote our goods. This might even have a negative effect on the product and even tarnish the image of the company.
If I was to start a company or I was a CEO of some I would never do this. But because I am none I would say good idea but I hope I don’t get such a call.
I agree with you, but in terms of sheer creativty of an idea, its a scorcher.
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