McDonald’s restaurants in the Pacific Northwest will give away ringtones, wallpaper and coupons to wireless handsets during a Web-based promotional campaign, the fast-food chain said.
McDonald’s will use the Web site www.mobilestr33t.com as a focal point for the campaign to offer ringtones from hip-hop artists, classic rock bands, and movie and TV show theme songs. The campaign began last week and runs for a limited time.
“As a leader in the food industry, McDonald’s continues to pave the way for young adults by offering them a variety of choices through mobile communications, which is so much a part of their world,” said Kim Bayer, McDonald’s Northwest regional manager.
The campaign is just the latest marketing initiative that integrates wireless technology. According to new research from Frost & Sullivan, the mobile marketing market is expected to reach $69.3 million by 2007. The market totaled $11.5 million in revenue last year.
According to the report, “An Insight into the United States Mobile Marketing & Short Code SMS Markets,” mobile marketing companies should work toward better coordination and synchronization of rules and regulations along the entire marketing value chain.
“Although marketers reserve short codes from CTIA, they still have to contact each mobile operator and short messaging service aggregator for connectivity,” said Vikrant Gandhi, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan.
In addition, mobile marketing companies need to be more flexible about revenue shares in marketing campaigns.
“The mobile operators bill the campaign-related messages successfully delivered, retain a share, and pass the rest to connection aggregators. They, in turn, keep their share and forward the remaining to the next level of the value chain,” said Gandhi. “The revenue flow may actually vary as in some cases, the brand owners pay the mobile operators for banners and interstitials, while in other instances, the mobile operators pay revenue share to the brand owners for text messaging-based campaigns.”
