A press release from a company called LinkMe Mobile describes one of the latest trends in mobile, directive advertising and promotion. Like many new service offerings, it is the product of a partnership. In this case, the involvement of broadcast and outdoor advertising giant Clear Channel Communications and the worldwide cosmetics brand Coty Prestige caught my attention. Add involvement vocalist (and fragrance creator) Gwen Stefani, and they may have a winner.

The three are cooperating in a promotional campaign that enable participating mobile subscribers to use the device’s camera to snap a picture of a backlit display ad featuring one of Stefani’s Harajuku Lovers fragrance. When they email the image to the LinkMe host, they are rewarded with an electronic coupon, transmitted directly to their phones. The service is available 11 malls across the country selected by Clear Channel. The coupons will be redeemable at the fragrance counter of the Macy’s department store in each mall where the mobile shoppers can receive a free fragrance sample set.

The campaign is slated for four weeks in September and has the potential to reach an expected 12 million mall visitors in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and Miami.

LinkMe Mobile is the non-household name in the pack. It used to be called SnapNow U.S.A and it has invested in technology that enables mobile users to capture spoken words and audio, as well as pictures for upload to the coupon-serving host. There’s a bit of clunkiness to the protocol that’s employed to upload what are essentially media files to a pattern-recognition server. Nonetheless, end-user reaction (and adoption) of this sort of service is unpredictable, and it could be just clunky enough to feel like a game.

If the basic services work as advertised, the service has the makings of a very useful opt-in promotional service.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Recombinant Telephony, mobile speech, mobile self service