Link: GQ Mobile to offer ads by text – Engadget Mobile.
BusinessWeek is reporting that the venerable fashion rag has teamed up with content distribution specialist m-Qube to offer its four million readers "information about events, private sales, shopping nights, and giveaways" on their cellphones in the form of non-free text messages.
You know I read this on Engadget and for a second, I thought about quitting the mobile industry entirely.
How much more boring can we get? I abhore this sort of announcement. As a result of reading it, I’m suffering negative excitement. The life-energy is flowing right out of me.
Flogging premium text adverts at people? Come on!
Do something original. Innovate! Do something different than the norm. What a load of rubbish.
— ERRP ERRP ERRP … INDEPENDENT THOUGHT ALARM!!!! —
Woops, sorry! I’m back! I’m back. It’s ok. For a moment there I was having independent original thoughts. Now I’m back to the real world. Honestly, how many people are going to sign up for this? Even if they convet 100% of their 4 million readers, I’ll still be standing on the sidelines yelling "CHEAP!"
I would truly like to see the GQ team embrace the medium (I’m not just talking SMS), experiment, test and innovate. They’re often wickedly good at coming up with cool features for physical pages: so now take that creativity and apply it to mobile, the web and beyond. AAAAArgh. Don’t just flog 160 character messages.
You know what, if the service is actually good, it might be worth subscribing. If they actually sat down and dreamt up wickedly cool offers and super smart information. You, like me, are most probably correct in expecting stupid, inane nonsense to be whacked out to our mobiles by bored-out-of-their-minds mobile marketeers working to a spreadsheet.
You never know, perhaps they could take a leaf out of Daily Candy’s book and create something the captures imagination and truly informs (whilst actually marketing at/to you).