Link: T-Mobile and Vodafone Prove to Lead to Pack on SMS World Cup Delivery.
Two companies at the forefront of this contest are T-Mobile and Vodafone. As England beat Ecuador on Sunday, the two operators delivered their SMS alerts of Beckham’s winning goal within one minute of his free kick strike. The move by T-Mobile and Vodafone proved to be the fastest performance of the whole tournament.
A minute is pretty good if you allow for a few seconds to write the text, confirm it’s ok and then whack it out to the network for delivery. Nice work!
The article goes on to highlight the fact that one of the five operators took 10 minutes to deliver the update… which, when you’re invariably paying for the service, just isn’t good enough.
Despite the fast results delivered by T-Mobile and Vodafone on Sunday, consumers are demanding still more. Argogroup conducted a poll last Friday, randomly selecting 50 mobile phone users and inquiring as to the acceptable SMS delivery time for something like the World Cup. More than 60 percent responded that 30 seconds would be considered acceptable.
This is particularly interesting. Here I am saying ‘I reckon a minute is pretty good’ — I can very well believe this statistic from Argogroup. 30 seconds is quite late isn’t it… if you’re busy working away and can’t watch TV or listen to the radio, you want to know right-away if there’s a goal scored.
I’m never one to resist an MMS-bashing opportunity:
The same consumer group was asked about multimedia messaging service (MMS) and a similar percentage did not know what MMS was.
Tons more interesting points on the article.
(Good marketing for Argogroup too)
Who the hell wanted the prestige, glamour and originality of having a text message sent to thier phone when a goal was scored in the world cup.
If any of you marketing guys at the mobile operators are reading Ewans’s good work in this blog – You are SAD, unoriginal, you have no concept of what the consumer wants and you throw mud at the wall hoping it will stick.
There are SO MANY products & services emanating from the interweb that will drive passionate following from consumers that you do not see. You have no eyes for this game, you have a salary but you lack the drive and passion to deliver what the customer wants.
You are working for a FAT, expensive PIPE, that is all that the MNO’s are. Mobile operators are so consumed with self importance they do not even understand that consumers do not give a damn about thier brand.
The days of 90%+ margins on SMS and ringtones are drawing to a close. Even voice revenues are going to be kicked with excellent VOIP services crushing the market.
The market is changing. Once WiMAX establishes itself, your business model will start to evaporate.
So all of you happy sunflowers working in the sexy, chic marketing departments of the fabulous mobile operators; take two minutes of your precious time to deliberate on what you are doing, what value you are adding to the proposition and before you even think of another product proposition – call some of your customers and ask them what they think of your idea.
Funnily enough mobile operators are in the business of offering mobile communications. When was the last time your mobile operator called you (they know who you are, they gave you the telephone number) and said thank you for being a great customer.
Mobile operators have millions of customers, they have hundreds of employees but they do not have enough creativity to create a community of passionate customers.
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