Rogier Bikker - Articles

about blyk

Blyk was founded by Antti Ohrling, managing director of one of the leading publishers in Finland and Pekka Ala-Pietilä, former President of Nokia Corporation, in September 2007.¹ Now, about a year later, Blyk has 200.000 subscribers in the United Kingdom and plans to enter The Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Belgium in 2009. ² The strategy of Blyk is based on conversations between brands and consumers. Blyk members receive up to 6 text messages a day from brands that fit their interests in exchange for free minutes.

mobile phones are personal

One of the most interesting remarks that Ahtisaari made during his talk was how we would explain to our children that we had to stand next to a wall to make a phone call. 20 years ago a phone was a collective and fixed object. It was often situated in a room where always other people where around. The mobile phone, in contrast, is a personal device with a social function. To gain deeper understanding in how mobile phones are used we shouldn’t just take this notion of a personal and social device for granted.

How did the mobile phone become so personal? At the end, it’s just a piece of plastic with a screen and a chip inside. The answer can be found at your nightstand. The device is often the last thing we see before going to bed and the first thing when we wake up. Many of us wake up with their mobile phone everyday.³ This creates a kind of intimacy not often seen with other objects; research showed that people would be more likely to return home when they forgot their mobile phone, then if the would forget their wallet.⁴

This personal connection is reflected in the many ways people personalize their mobile phones. All around the world people are pimping their phones with little straps, stickers and blinking LED’s.⁵ The mobile phone truly is the most personal device we have.⁶ Just consider lending out your mobile phone for a day, or a week for that matter. I personally, and with me 63% of all Americans, would not give away his phone with all his contacts, text messages, photo’s, etc for someone else to use.⁷

mobile phones are social

The strong connection people have with their phones creates a great opportunity for brands to reach potential customers in a very personal and direct manner.⁸ But the mobile phone isn’t just a personal device, it’s a social device too. Donald Norman stated in his book Information Appliance Design and in an interview with Time Magazine that “People need social interaction. If you look at technology, the biggest wins have been in communication. Hence the rise of the telephone and the cell phone and systems like SMS and i-mode, which are incredibly horrible to use. No sane person would use a cell phone to type. Yet, nonetheless, in Japan millions of people use i-mode.”.⁹

But the Japanese aren’t the only one using clumsy technology to make use of social functions; all over the world people are using SMS. ¹⁰ Why? Because it’s quick and social. So the mobile phone isn’t only the most personal device we have, it also allows us to do what we found most important; interact socially with others.

the ads of blyk are personal

The target group of Blyk consists of mainstream mobile phones users. While there is much innovation on the front line of mobile phone technology (fast internet, high quality camera’s, location aware services, etc)¹¹, it will still take quite some time before the mainstream will fully embrace these functions. According to Ahtisaari, the most used functions are still texting, calling and the clock. After the clock, texting is the most used function by the target group of Blyk. That’s why Blyk sends out their ads by text messages.

Receiving ads through text messages sounds very obtrusive and unpleasant to me. Brands might be eager to connect in such an intimate way on the most personal digital medium available, but are customers willing to give in?¹² An inbox once full of text messages of your beloved one would become bloated by advertising messages.¹³ Blyk solves this by being very open about what you get and, as Mahtisaari said during his presentation, “if you don’t like it, go somewhere else”. Besides that, Blyk doesn’t send out spam-like messages which we all know from email.

Because members fill in their interests when signing up, brands can send relevant messages. A 20 year old guy would never receive a text message about beauty cosmetics, for example. These individual segmentations can be seen as a response to the earlier discussed personal characteristics associated with mobile phones. One could argue that: your mobile phone is personal, so are the ads.

the ads of blyk are social

Doc Searls, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, famously remarked that “markets are conversations”.¹⁴ Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, responded that “it seems to me that advertising ought to be conversation as well. Only it’s normally a conversation with a bore (or a drunk) at a cocktail party, someone who backs you into a corner, talks incessantly about himself, and laughs too loud at his own jokes.”.¹⁵ Blyk tries to enhance this conversation in the ads that they send to their customers. Messages that include the Blyk logo sign ^, which means ‘insert here’ in the graphic industry, can be responded to. So messages can include questions like ‘Which hairstyle do you have?’ accompanied with 3 images. After which the receiver is expected to send back A, B or C .

The response rates of some campaigns are staggering. For example a campaign for Brylcreem sent out on a Friday evening, at a time when the member may be getting ready to go out asking how he would like to style his hair, received a response rate of 50%.¹⁶

The possibility of replying on a message, and thus creating a conversation, can be seen as a response to the social characteristics of mobile phones. Just like we saw earlier that the individual segmentations are a response to the personal characteristics. But whether the ads are as personal as the messages from a beloved one, and as social as a sober person on a cocktail party, remains to be seen.

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