BlykWatch: Campus teams doing their work

This week’s BlykWatch from Ricky Chotai covers a lot of ground. Let’s jump right in (I’m going to comment inline):

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Monday 18th February 2008
No brand messages today, so I thought I would try something new, twitter. I saw that the blog had an item about it so I signed up with my Blyk number. I was always dubious about signed up in case I got reverse SMS billed, but as my Blyk sim has no credit I decided to give it a go. All signed up and now I am getting SMS updates from smstextnews.com (link) and some of my other site for free. Quite a cool service, shame it is not used by a lot of people here in the UK!

The Blyk forum has a service announcement stating Blyk will be undergoing routine maintenance on Tuesday, 19 February between 3am and 7am. This may temporarily interrupt SMS messaging during these hours. Blyk apologises for any inconvenience caused.

Hopefully in the morning things shall be fixed, for the whole of today SMS has been delayed or not sending.

Tuesday 19th February 2008No brand messages again today, SMS is fixed and working well. All I received are twitter updates from smstextnews.

I’m pleased Twitter’s working well for you, Ricky

Wednesday 20th February 2008
Nothing received at all today, all services are working normally. However I saw some Blyk reps on campus today, getting people to sign up. They however did not approach me (maybe I am on their most wanted list) or they did not see me as a potential Blyk user. Oh well!

Or perhaps they already knew you were a customer! For all those naysayers who regularly tell me that Blyk is going nowhere (or similar), don’t forget that, for the most part, we in the industry generally hear and see nothing about Blyk as we’re not the target audience. It’s good to hear that the street teams — or campus teams — are out and about signing up new students.

Thursday 21st February 2008
Blyk sent me a message telling me it loves my replies and telling me how I can reply to brand messages. Having A Blyk sim for nearly 4 to 5 months and that I reply to all the messages I can, I felt this was a pointless sms.

Aye. One man’s pointless is another man’s useful. I’d like to see Blyk humanise some of their communications as it’s clear from Ricky’s experience that he feels he is interacting with a brand. I think it’s always much better to interact with a human representative of a brand. So, for example, it’d be fun to see how Ricky and the Blyk audience would react to receiving updates from someone around their age (e.g. ‘Hi, I’m Stephanie, 25 from London and Blyk’s head of customer liaison. We love getting your replies so if you’ve any questions on using Blyk, just let me know.’) I think it’s all too easy in today’s cynical marketing world for customers to get disenfranchised quickly.

Friday 22nd February 2008
Received a message asking if I wanted a clip of Will Farrell’s trailer. I of course replied with a yes. I received a MMS with the clip great stuff, at the end of the message there was a look to see the whole trailer. It had the lovely ^ which meant I could see it for free. However after clicking on the link it tells me I need to top up. Rubbish, Blyk should not use ^ symbol if they want me to pay, and honestly who would pay to watch a trailer I am sure I can go on-line and watch for it free on youtube!

Ah this is a key issue that I think Blyk will need to act on at some point. Free should mean free. I wonder how many opened the MMS but didn’t bother clicking through? If it’s a cost issue on the advertiser’s side, the media buyer needs their head looked at. They should fund the campaign to ensure that every customer can view the trailer free of charge. Silly.

Saturday 23rd February 2008
No messages at all today!

Sunday 24th February 2008
Blyk sent me a message informing it values my responses but makes it clear that responses are free only when I see the ^ symbol. Hmm well it wasn’t free on the trailer I received a few days ago, oh well.

That’s all from me for another week, apologies if it was quite a brief blog this week, just the bare facts not had much free time to play around and test the service.

This is due to uni work and trying to save our university radio station from collapsing (I am the treasurer). So if anyone is reading this who is rich and wants to sponsor a student radio station in Manchester in the UK. Drop Ewan an email, oh and Blyk I still await your response 😉

Ricky

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Thanks for that Ricky, interesting, interesting.