Australian liquor chain BWS doesn't quite get mobile yet

Link: Tailored texting targets customers for liquor chain – Technology – smh.com.au.

The Woolworths-owned liquor chain BWS has signed up to a service that allows customers to get the location of the nearest store sent to their handset by a return text message.

The retailer is introducing the service nationally after a trial in Queensland where response rates were enough to convince the 600-shop chain it was a useful tool for customers and potentially an innovative way of targeting clusters of customers with promotions based on prior responses.

Have a read of this.  I applaud their adoption of the mobile medium… however I think I’m right in assuming that the 55 cent per message cost is born by the consumer.  The Sydney Morning Herald piece doesn’t explicitly say. 

Whatever excuse (network operator charges, it’s the only way we could do it with the shortcode, the client doesn’t GET it, we had to make a bit of cash somehow), it’s simply not good enough to make your customers PAY to find out where your nearest store is. At least give them 55 cents off their purchase when they arrive? 

But both Mr Cole and Mr Porter admitted the 55c it costs to send
the initial text could be an impediment to take-up.

Well, duh.

This is equivalent to me walking along the street and seeing a McDonalds sign with a little booth underneath it.  Here’s how it would work:  You then talk to the guy sat in the booth and say ‘where is the McDonalds then?’

‘That’ll be 50p before I can tell you, Mister.’

So I give him 50p.

He then responds saying, ‘It’s round the corner to the left there.  Thanks.’

There is absolutely NOTHING DIFFERENT to what BWS did in Australia.  i wonder what Ashley Porter, MD of e-House, the mobile agency, was thinking when they proposed this to the client.

Is it me, or are some mobile marketing agencies needing their heads looked at? 

Or could the problem be 100% clueless clients who don’t have a hope in hell of understanding, let alone implementing, a decent mobile marketing campaign?  I’m pretty sure its the clients not getting it. 

—-

On this subject, I was mightily impressed a few years ago when one of our clients called up to see if it was possible to get a ‘free’ shortcode for their customers to use:

‘Our customers never pay to call us.  We have freephone, free post .. and we’d like free SMS too.  We’ll foot the charges.’

Alas the best we could do at that point was offer a normal non-premium shortcode (so that messages to the client were only charged at the standard network rate) …. times are a-changing though.