Free Speech in Mobile Marketing
Posted by Kim on Aug 6, 2008 in Mobile Marketing, Mobile Spam, Rant
EDITORIAL / CONVERSATION STARTER
My recent post here about the walled gardens of mobile carriers and seeing Jared Reitzan’s segment “Boiling Point” in his video series about mobile marketing has got me thinking about the place of free speech and capitalism in mobile marketing. Specifically, I’m thinking about these fundamental freedom concepts as they relate to carrier control over what is sent out on their networks.
As Jared frankly points out in his video, carriers have complete control over all aspects of text message campaigns. They get to approve or disapprove campaigns before they are able to go online. They can shut down campaigns without notice for any reason whatsoever. While I think we all agree that no one benefits if we let mobile messaging SPAM run wild we also need to consider the implications of carriers being allowed to approve or disapprove a campaign based on the content of a campaign.
My take on it is that if a text message campaign follows all the industry best practice guidelines (especially opt in and opt out procedures) and is legal according to all applicable laws it should be allowed. Period. Cell phone carriers should not get to decide anything about whether or not the campaign has merit or is acceptable to their customers. Last fall’s fiasco between Verizon and NARAL should serve as an example of what should not happen again.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
What do you think about the carrier approval process of text message campaigns?
Does it take too long?
Is it a necessary evil to prevent out of control SPAM?
Should the carriers have the ultimate control since it is their infrastructure?
sami lagod | Aug 6, 2008 | Reply
Nice Post! I am linking to tihs one.
bzal | Aug 7, 2008 | Reply
Carriers deciding about the campaigns? That’s a joke. They could refuse some campaigns because of i.e. porn content, but not decide in general what is ok or not.
I agree spamming won’t be a problem when all phone users have a chance to resign from advertising content. That’s all in terms of spamming, point.
Mobile campaigns regulations could go however the other direction. I can imagine a mechanism that let the advertising receiver send back a short message: ‘ok’ or ‘not ok’. If some campaign would ‘achieve’ some limit of ‘not ok’ notifications, then the campaign would be turned off by the carrier. Power to decide would stay then with consumers.
Giff Gfroerer, i2SMS | Aug 8, 2008 | Reply
Kim, the one thought I am always brought back to is this: when a consumer doesn’t like something on their phone, what do they do? They call the customer support line for the carrier. This could be a SPAM SMS, a downloaded application isn’t working right, the downloaded app messed up the OS on their phone, etc.
Carriers have to pay on average $5.50 for each customer support call. This is very expensive to the carriers for matters they are not compensated for.
I see their side, I really do. I only wish they could speed up the approval process for campaigns and short codes. Kim, your side is well articulated here, and I support it. But we also must look at the other side and see the havoc that calls into service centers cause to the carriers and for callers on hold for problems actually related to the carrier.
Kim Dushinski | Aug 8, 2008 | Reply
Giff:
You are right that the consumers call the carriers when they don’t like something or it doesn’t work on their phone. Really, who else *could* they call?
Funny though that when someone comes across something on the Internet that doesn’t work or meet their approval they don’t call their ISP. Or maybe they do…I don’t. Unless my Internet is down, I never call the company that gives me access to the Internet to complain about something that happened ON it.
LeilR | Aug 8, 2008 | Reply
I agree.
If a campaign was conceptualized considering all best practices guidelines and are not violating any existing law, then the message should be delivered to its target recipients.
However, if there are grey areas in the existing rules, then they should start polishing it to avoid unwanted SMS campaigns or messages. Let’s face it, we all hate receiving spam!