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Cell Phones: the Next Great Ad Frontier?
By ANICK JESDANUN
The Associated Press
Saturday, December 29, 2007; 2:19 AM
NEW YORK -- Your cell phone is a potential gold mine for marketers: It can reveal where you are, whom you call and even what music you like.
Considering the phone is usually no more than a few feet away, these are powerful clues for figuring out just the right moment to deliver the right coupon for the store just around the corner.
But first marketers will have to wrest the personal profiles from mobile carriers worried that annoyed subscribers might defect to rivals.
"It's proceed with caution," said Jarvis Coffin, chief executive of advertising distributor Burst Media Corp. "Are consumers going to be spooked by the idea that suddenly their phone goes beep and it's a Starbucks offer, and they are standing next to a Starbucks?"
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We are no longer able to avoid the most intrusive and annoying marketing methods.
SPAM, which has very nearly ruined the beauty and integrity of e-mail, is now ready, eager and able to morph into CELL-SPAM. Imagine the joy of having your cell-phone go off in a purse or that belt-carrier (under a seatbelt, an overcoat and a suitcoat); digging it out before the caller gives up on you--and finding it's an offer for mortgage insurance.
Wow. I can hardly wait for this new $5 billion a year intrusion on my nerves and otherwise quiet moments.
Interesting that Congress waited a decade before they belatedly and ineffectually legislated 'opt-in' laws--that have not even begun to slow down the SPAM intrusions into daily life. But here they are, at the beginning of an intrusive industry--so paid-off and bloated with the pork of telecom bribery--that they will allow Russian viral-infection, African con-artists, Madison Avenue irritants and penis-enlargement device vendors to actually ring your goddam cell-phone for profit.
For which I have another business-plan, needing only a venture capitalist: the deal is, that for a very modest (perhaps a penny) fee, all one will be required to do is hit 'forward' to send on the CELL-SPAM to the legislator of your choice. The service will include constant updating of your Senator's or Representative's cell-phone number and will (should his phone be turned off) stack up 'missed call' messages by the thousands.
It's only right.
It's only just.
It's a service whose time has certainly come.
HERE'S YOUR AD-CAMPAIGN, RIGHT BACK UP YOUR BUTT!
* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Washington at Work, check out Opinion-Columns.com
