http://www.media-packs.com/blu-ray-cases-inform…

Of course, whether you have a vested in interest in either campaign isn’t really the issue … your business’s back bone is in Shorts, be they PSMS, PMMS, PVideo … so of course, you will have approached this debate with your commercial interest at heart.

Fair’s fair, if I were in your shoes I’d have come to the argument from your perspective.

It is a fact that consumer confidence in PSMS is waning. Michael Grade’s comments and the fall in ITV revenue reported today are the tip of the iceberg.

As an end user, I’d prefer to spend 12p on a raffle ticket, than £1.50 for goods of the same value I’ll have the same chance of winning.

And if people like me (who have had the MiG experience and whored my companies across the whole sector and can give Operators and Service Providers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to system failures and operator error) are having little confidence in PSMS promotions and wouldn’t (as an end user) touch them with the proverbial barge pole, then surely that is a sad inditement of the PSMS industry at present?

PSMS has its place, but whether it will continue to be the gold standard for raising competition/voting revenue is the real point of debate.

And due diligence or not, this won’t be the last time PSMS and competition entries will come under the media spotlight – there is more chance of Everton winning the Premiership this season than all CMS and voting systems/operator network delays never having a spanner thrown in the works at the peak of an XFactor/Celebrity Jungle thingy/ Endemol trite fest peak period.

They are systems, and with the best will in the world, they will fall on their bottoms again, be it through db/system/network latency or human error. And all the prior permission/due diligence in the Universe by the Service Providers can’t account for that.

ps Alex/Nick, “may” is the right word … it means “Used to indicate a certain measure of likelihood or possibility” … apologies, I’m a ex Westwood/Warwick lit student pedant lol!

May be something that ICSTIS wants to pick up on at some point, when it gets a spare moment? As you say, ‘may’ is pretty much a lie – so why allow it?

It seems to you have drawn the wrong conclusions from my post. My main point was to compare the two forms of promotion, as they were for a similar prize value. One cost me a standard text rate to enter, and my data seems to have been handled with respect. The other cost would have cost me £1 plus up to seven standard texts.

I considered the two side by side. One is Nearly £2 to enter, with the other tops of 12p. I thought to be honest it’d be the one that cost the 12p, and spending their own money sending me texts, that would have wanted my data – not the one I’m paying for.

ITV have been losing advertising revenue for a while now – that’s no secret. Nor is it secret that a lot of bad things have happened of late with premium services, with a large amount seeming to lead back to ITV. Coincidence? We’ll never know..

At the end of the day, no one is forcing a consumer to enter these competitions, and spend the money – but they do. Then a certain proportion are peeved with the amount they’ve been charged when they get their bill in (or their prepay balance goes spiralling down). A subsection of those people then phone up, complain to their operators, then the aggregators, and sometimes the company associated with the service.

I’ve been on the receiving end of some of those calls in my time, and they’re not always pretty to deal with. People seem to be generally aggrieved that they’ve had money ‘taken’ from them, and want answers. The mobile operators are more than happy to pass the buck to the aggregators by dishing out customer service numbers like sweets, but still want their cut of the action.

Bottom line.. the industry will have to work hard to put back the confidence that’s been lost. However, we’ve also got to educate our customers – the people running premium services – on what they can honestly get away with charging for. It’s no longer a free for all and a way to make a ‘quick buck’ and retire to a nice house by the beach or whatever.. and the sooner the industry wakes up and realises that, the quicker confidence will begin to be restored.

83463 is a WINPLC code, and 63337 is run by MIG.

So I don’t have affinity to either company (in fact the opposite could be said!), and clearly therefore I have no vested interest in favouring either of them above the other.

My point is not to criticise someone about their writing a piece on how SMS and Premium Services should ideally be run, I laud anyone doing this; it’s more that I think your article just doesn’t make a huge amount of sense.

Premium SMS is dead because you believe Fanta has run a nicer campaign than one from 2006 that you found off the back of a Google search..?

For starters you’re comparing chalk with cheese. These are not similar services. One is an on pack promotion designed to increase unit sales and to generate brand buy in & interaction, the other is a premium service which is an extension of an existing service.

It seems your argument about whether or not PSMS is dead hinges on how each of these companies has treated your ‘data’. This doesn’ really seem like a coherent way to debate the merits or otherwise of PSMS. I don’t even see how the Fanta campaign comes into this argument since it doesn’t involve PSMS. If your argument was about how brands should use mobile, then fair enough. That’s a different debate altogether.

I’m all in favour of building consumer confidence in mobile services and steering the future of mobile billing in the right direction, I just think we as people in the industry need to be extra dilligent about how we go about addressing these issues.

A far more interesting debate/campaign imho would be to ask the consumer if they realise when a network/broadcaster says ‘mobile rates *may* vary’ when calling 09 and 08 numbers that there is no *may* about it. They WILL vary. It would be interesting to find out across the board how much extra the carriers do actually charge on each call, and then work out how much money they are pocketing.

Small point, but if Alex or anyone other than Ewan is writing a particular article please can you detail/caveat this. Not only will it give credit etc where it’s due, it will also allow the piece to be put in context! I base my approach to an article very much on what I know of the source….

Incidentally I think that whilst the fanta campaign is very well executed, I don’t exactly think the ITV one poses an issue, and frankly you’ve made a story out of nothing. The terms are very clear.

The network operators themselves continually seem to wash their hands of premium SMS – if you phone up to complain about a charge on your bill they’ll just give you the number of the service provider, and leave it to you to organise any refunds. In my opinion they can’t have it both ways – either take a large chunk of money and take responsibility, or don’t offer it at all.

Re: screenshots, both Ewan and I use a piece of software on our S60 Symbian phones called Screenshot. It’s freeware by a guy called Anthony Pranata – you can grab a copy here: http://www.antonypranata.com/screenshot/

Great writeup, I’m looking forward to reading the next parts. You’ve touched on the key limiting factor in these SMS campaigns – that there are some that totally screw you, and some that don’t. However, *most* consumers will not read the fine print, or chance it. I personally WILL NOT enter to win or vote on my mobile. Period. Even the Coca-Cola one. Why not? Because I’ve heard too many people getting burned by the other type.

It’s just not worth it to me. And I would guess that alot of people feel the same way. I have a close friend who organizes some of these SMS campaigns for our advertisers, and they face the same issue.

Personally, I think that the whole idea of “Premium SMS” has ruined the medium for the others who can play fair, like Coca-Cola.