First was the King and his clergy; Second, the royalty; Third, the people; Fourth became the media; Fifth happened when Internet came in quietly and began reigning our everyday life; The Sixth Estate might as well be the little screen that we wake up to the sound of, sleep next to, and do many things with, in between!
None of the first five estates have escaped from the sight of the Advertising industry so far. So how come the sixth remains? Or does it?
The glitzy world of Advertising in India is slowly waking up to the potential of VAS on mobile as the powerful new medium. While the advertising industry in the west has been fast to harness the little mobile by pumping funds into the medium, one is yet to find a well-defined ad-spend in the Indian scenario.
According to an overseas mobile based ad-spend predictions report :
“Advertisers will spend some $11.35 billion worldwide on mobile advertising in 2011, according to a new Informa Telecoms & Media (a UK based research firm) study titled “Mobile Advertising Services: generating revenue through subsidized content,” reports Red Herring. Informa forecasts 2.1 billion mobile subscribers worldwide by the end of 2006, and nearly 4 billion by 2011. As mobile operators introduce less-expensive phones, faster networks, and cheaper service, they will need to increase the bottom line somehow – and that will be via ad-subsidized content, according to the study.”
Similar search to probe the Indian Advertising industry’s figures for mobile based VAS services as a medium did not fetch any worthwhile results. Even if there is some report that might have been missed, the “on-field” experience does prove the point.
Most enterprises resist using the medium of mobile VAS. At best, they treat an sms or voice messaging as a poor little communication tool, way below the all powerful mass media of radio, television and grudgingly, perhaps, the Internet. Only a few enterprises have shown foresight in discovering the two-way communication potential of this medium. Advertising agencies, though quite aware of what’s happening, seem to still treat this medium as a poor cousin to others.
Future students of mass media are likely to study the fascinating medium and analyzing why it did not catch on fast enough in India. They would see how:
·        It is a mobile – ATM Any Time Medium with numbers growing by the hour.
·        Customized to peoples’ needs and timings.
·        Once the infrastructure is in place, does not need too much production cost.
·        Non intrusive medium (SMS)
·        And saving the best for the last, the arsenal this medium derives power from… (just let this seep into the collective advertising conscious)… Well, we are talking about the all powerful feedback, the MIS, the incredibly transparent logs generated… who picked up the call, for how many seconds, how many times did a user play, what was his age, what brand does he prefer… as many W’s and H’s as you please!
This is what a mobile VAS application and content developer has on offer – a potent publicity medium and a post-activity survey (that comes back to you instantly, tells you the real story without any fudging…) all rolled into one, at lesser costs!! Too good to be true, eh?
Taking the case of a popular brand of cigarettes:-
Their need: surrogate advertising, sustaining user interest, innovation, brand building.  The response: SMS based application made operational quickly within a matter of days. The Result: An overwhelming public response from just 6 Indian cities it ran in for over 15 days. With the gathering of the data generated, the Cigarette Brand found the mobile VAS advertising a novel and very precise way of analyzing just who their typical customer is, and who could be converted, while the customer awaits in anticipation for the next scheme to roll out.
Every wind of change carries its share of nay sayers. It can be said that this is too static a medium with far to less a scope for creative exploration – that there’s only very limited one can do in 160 characters or 30 seconds of voice recording, after all.
Well, the only thing one can say is: You’d be surprised!
