March 24, 2006
Now Playing On Your Cell Phone
Discovery Channel's I Shouldn't Be Alive profiles people who have survived some pretty unusual (and life-threatening) ordeals, from shipwrecks to snowstorms. It's also relying on an unconventional way to hype the show: cell-phone marketing. Business Week reports.
"On the eve of the second season's debut, Discovery Channel began offering prizes, free ringtones, and weekly trivia questions via short text messages to subscribers of some of the country's biggest mobile-phone companies -- Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel (S), and T-Mobile.
So far, more than 15,000 people have signed up to receive SMS trivia and reminders to watch the show".
... U.S. spending on marketing and advertising over wireless networks may surge to $602.3 million in 2009, from $104.4 million last year, according to consultancy visiongain.
.. "While [mobile marketing] used to be part of companies' online budget, now it's become a separate budget line," he says. "The market has arrived."
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