So much texting, so little interest in mobile marketing

My cell phone woke me up at the crack of dawn this morning. I thought, “Who could be texting me this early?!” Is it an emergency? Does a friend need some help? I anxiously reached over to my nightstand and quickly opened my phone. It was an auto company wanting to give me a 20% discount if I texted back “SAVE.” Talk about a rude introduction to mobile marketing.

According to a research study that was presented last week in New York by Peter Johnson, VP of market intelligence and strategy at the Mobile Marketing Association, “Mobile marketing represents 1.8% of all marketing expenditures in 2009, and while this may seem like a small number, the average mobile marketing budgets are growing by 26% per year…this growth, it should be noted, is happening when marketers are seeing a 7% drop in their average marketing budgets.”

Also recently released, results from the second annual Vlingo Consumer Mobile Messaging Habits Report show that this year, "nearly 60% of mobile phone owners use their phones to text, with 94% of teens the largest user group, and 20-somethings at 87%.”

With these surprising numbers, you would think that teens are a great target and would respond well to mobile marketing. Teens have embraced texting more rapidly than the other demographics and texting has become their ultimate direct response vehicle. However, there is another side to the research which shows that teens do not want to be bothered with SMS ads and they don’t like to use a short code displayed in an advertisement. At the recent YPulse Youth Marketing Mashup in San Francisco last week, Fuse presented their study which found that even though SMS ads were up 30% this year, less than 10% of teens surveyed approved of those messages or wanted to be marketed to via that platform.

So what's a marketer to do? Teens are more likely to respond to contests or freebies such as cool downloads, exclusive content and other items of value. In fact, according to a 2008 survey by the Direct Marketing Association, 19% of teens ages 15 to 17 have responded to a mobile phone offer. So my big question is: if teens are drivers of change in society, can they drive change in mobile advertising as well?

-- Posted by Chelsie Friend, Research Assistant, Hopscotch Consulting

A mishmash of thoughts from the Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup

I just returned from a whirlwind trip to San Francisco where I attended the Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup. Overall I thought the conference was superb. I give a huge amount of credit to Anastasia Goodstein and everyone at Ypulse who helped "shape the discussion about how marketers, media and non-profit organizations connect with youth" (this is their boilerplate mission statement and I love it.)

Rather than get into any detail on specific panels and presentations, I'm just going to give you the quick and dirty sound bytes, buzzwords and quotes that made it into my conference notes:

Anastasia Goodstein, YPulse: "Trends may change but the core needs of teens and youth don't change. All teens want to connect with friends, spend time hanging out, figure out who they are and seek validation/fame."

Josh Shipp, HeyJosh.com: "Teens don't give a crap about your brand. If you are authentic, and figure out a way to make your self distinguishable, then you have the right to communicate. If you don't add value to your target audience, then you should not exist."

Doug Sweeney, Levi's: "Authentically insert your brand into culture and utilize multi-faceted ideas. Content is king."

Bill Carter, Fuse: "Stop wasting your marketing budget. Listen to teens."

Jacqueline Lane, SurveyU: "Awareness + useage + loyalty does not necessarily equal brand advocacy and success. You need to now consider corporate responsibility and ethics as well."

Don Tapscott, author: "If you understand youth, you understand the future."

Kate Connally, AddictingGames.com/ Nickelodeon: "Put your audience first. Build multitasking into game play. Add categories that build into their daily lives."

Lauren Puglia, Undercurrent: "Be experimental. If you screw up, fess up and then move on. Not everything has to be about ROI."

Rebecca McQuigg, The Intelligence Group: "Know your audience. Know where they are. Teens are not twittering. Make sure your marketing strategy is in line with who you’re trying to target."

Paul Yanover, Disney Online: "Create tons of engagement."

Jon Gaskell, Smarty Pig: "This generation doesn't think about money the way we do. They're not depressed about it. Money is purely a means to an end."

Matthew Palmer, Stardoll: "Tween girls don't carry credit cards. Pure ROI can't always be measurable."

Donna Fenn, author: "Teen entrepreneurship is the new lemonade stand."

And then Guy Kawasaki walked in the room and began moderating the final panel of the day. But it was time for me head to the airport...