Coca-Cola has taken the plunge. The US soft drinks giant has broadcast its "Coke Side of Life" ad campaign on...

Advertisers, porn film makers and creators of games of chance all swear by the mobile phone. Coca-Cola has taken the plunge. The US soft drinks giant has broadcast its "Coke Side of Life" ad campaign on television, billboards, the Internet.and now on mobile phones.

With the press of a single button, the curves of the famous bottle can appear on the mobile's screen, and mobile users can access ringtones, screen backgrounds and Coke promotions. In fact, as part of a new promotion campaign, mobile users can even enter on their mobile the points they have collected from the brand products and win collectors items.


ScreenTonic is the company behind this first for Coca-Cola in France. As the number one in Europe for mobile phone advertising, this start-up is the first media sale agency devoted exclusively to mobile. It sells advertising space on the mobile operators' portals and manages the campaign. In April this SME, with 35 staff and a turnover of around EUR 6 million, raised EUR 5.5 million from 3i and I-Source Gestion. Its aims: to strengthen its network in Europe and develop its technology. After all, from the simple text message sent only to consenting subscribers, the "mobile ad" has progressed to MMS videos and, now, to text links or banners on mobile web portals with a link to a mobile site. "Our first video campaign dates back to early 2005 for the launch of the Fox film 'Hide and Seek'," recalls Marc-Henri Magdelénat, ScreenTonic's associate director, marking the start of a revolution…


As proof of the growing interest in this new advertising medium, the bank Société Générale, Total, MacDonald's, Adidas, Air France, France Télécom, Apple, L'Oréal or even Peugeot have all included mobile telephony in their communications strategy. Orange is already reporting that it has had 4.5 million single visitors per month to the Orange World Classique portal, while SFR has had 4 million visitors to Vodafone Live.


A new opportunity for revenue
In July TNS Media Intelligence launched the first advertising briefing on mobile phones. It has calculated that EUR 2.4 million gross has been spent by advertisers over the first four months of this year, with the highest amount at EUR 402,000 coming from France Télécom. Compared to the EUR 6.5 billion recorded over the same period for the entire market, this is only a drop in the ocean. But it promises to turn into a flood. Maurice Lévy describes what is happening in stark terms: "Advertising on mobiles marks advertising's French Revolution." The chairman of the Publicis Groupe directory assures us that this is "the most extraordinary" media form ever invented.


In actual fact, the mobile phone is an advertiser's dream. On the one hand, it is very personal (60% of subscribers feel that it is more serious if they lose their phone than their keys or purse/wallet), but on the other, it has mass appeal, with 49.7 million mobile phone owners across the whole of France, and it is present everywhere as consumers are within easy reach of their phones 16 hours a day.


"Provided that it isn't intrusive, you can use your mobile phone to make any thought or wish happen immediately," says Marc-Henri Magdelénat enthusiastically. It can be used to target a message very narrowly and help control the timing. It is better to promote a film on the afternoon it is released or when teenage mobile users are on their way to the cinema. The outdoor advertising company JCDecaux is planning to install chips in its bus shelters, which will send advertising messages to passers-by who have Bluetooth phones. For its part, media communications specialist OMD predicts a bright future for mobile tags. "This involves using the phone to take a photo of a code appearing on a billboard, page of a magazine or television screen, and then the mobile takes the customer directly to the relevant mobile Internet service."


A billion dollars in 2009
Telecom groups are following developments with this phenomenon with interest. Faced with competition from the Internet, they see it as a new opportunity for earning revenue. And why not use a new model. In the United States, Virgin Mobile has been offering since June free talk minutes to subscribers who agree to watch a 30-second ad and then reply to a questionnaire via SMS. Microsoft and PepsiCo have also been tempted by the SugarMama service.


Boosted by rapid developments with colour screens, video and soon, the advent of mobile television, mobile ads are set to make a splash in the future. "Very soon, the most important and only media form that people will carry about with them will be their mobile terminal," predicts Andrew Robertson, President of BBDO Worldwide. In Europe and the United States, the market should pass the one billion-dollar mark from 2009, which is four times today's figure, according to the Visiongain's estimates. "The mobile phone is in the same position today with regard to advertising as the Internet was in
2001," confirms one expert. And already, some experts foresee identical annual growth rates, in other words, in excess of 200%.

Remi Godeau