Friday, July 25, 2008

Facebook: the missing manual

This sounds like an intriguing book, which I intend to review as soon as my copy arrives. It will be part of a series of articles on social networking. If you would like to obtain a copy, here's the place to go: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517694/index.html.
Tim Hillebrand is a Judge on the Panel of Experts for Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine software of the year awards for 2008. Check it out here: www.pockepcmag.com/awards. Your comments, opinions, and gripes are welcome.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Text Message Donations

Text-to-Donate Alive and Well in U.S.

Posted by kim on Jul 18, 2008 in Mobile Marketing, Mobile Music, Mobile Payments | 2 Comments

The Millennial Generation / Generation Y is known for being civic-minded and also for wanting instant gratification. The perfect blend of these two characteristics resulted in $40,000 donated to the Keep a Child Alive charitable organization through text messaging.

During eleven-time Grammy award winner Alicia Keys As I Am concert tour she partnered with the Mobile Giving Foundation to encourage text message donations of $5 from her audience. She took a few minutes to show a film clip from Alicia in Africa: Journey to the Motherland and then asked her fans to text the word ‘ALIVE’ to shortcode 90999. The text automatically sent the donation and showed up on their monthly phone bill.

When 6 to 12% of Alicia Keys concert goers responded with donations in $5 increments, over $40,000 was raised during the tour.

This text to donate system is possible due to the efforts of Mobile Accord, a Denver-based mobile provider. Their tool mGive is the platform that allows micro donations via text with carrier billing.

Truly, this is smart mobile marketing at its finest. The integration of having a real world experience (being at a concert), seeing a media presentation (the film clip) and then asking for the response on mobile is exactly the right formula. The fact that the target market is the generation for whom text messaging is as easy as breathing makes it all that much better.

My hat is tipped to Alicia Keys, Mobile Accord and all the early adopter fans who donated. (The campaign is still live, so if you feel so inclined, you can add your $5 to the cause - just text ‘ALIVE’ to 90999.)