Des Moines Register
11-11-07
Elbert: Cell phones become status symbol
By DAVID ELBERT
REGISTER BUSINESS EDITOR
If you believe what you see on TV
The right cell phone can make you a better artist, a smarter businessperson or
both.
The right cell service could help you get a cool date or make you a better parent.
It might even keep you from getting whacked by the mob, according to one
commercial.
And don't forget your ring tone. It can make you mysterious, alluring, or any of 15
other adjectives.
Or not.
Watching TV the other night, it occurred to me that cell phones are now the
status symbol. Cell phone ads have replaced car commercials as the chief
repository of our favorite fantasies.
That may have as much to do with the trouble the auto industry is in, as it does
with cell phone technology, but it led me to two questions.
How did this happen?
And, what's next?
To find out, I called Jay Newell, who teaches advertising at Iowa State
University and does research on what he calls "media saturation."
Telecommunications was the third-largest buyer of advertising in 2006 behind the
auto and fashion industries, Newell said, citing the June 27 issue of Advertising
Age. Compared with 2005, he said, auto advertising was down 6 percent, fashion
was up 2 percent and telecommunications was up 10 percent.
If anything, those trends have probably accelerated this year.
So, if you think you're seeing more cell phone commercials, the professor said,
you probably are.
And you're likely to see even more in coming years.
Most of the cell phone commercials you see now are called "borrowed-interest"
ads, Newell said, because they borrow the interest we have in celebrities or
being popular and try to associate it with their product.
I call them fantasy ads, because they create illusions: Buy this phone and you'll
get the hot guy or girl, become the perfect parent. Whatever.
Newell said the cell phone industry has moved away from information-based ads
that showed us how to take pictures or send text messages and moved to
borrowed-interest ads as the industry matured.
"People know how to use a cell phone," he said, so the industry needed a new
hook.
"You grab whatever you can to get people to think about your brand," he said,
which explains the ads I've been seeing on TV.
People use cell phones now in ways we never would have imagined even a few
years ago, Newell said.
For example, he said, more than half the students in one of his classes use them
as alarm clocks.
"Cell phones all get exact time signals," Newell explained. "So, if the power goes
out, like it does in dorms or apartments, you still have an accurate timepiece on
your cell phone."
That's one small change.
"The larger change is that cell phones are being considered by marketers as the
third screen in people's lives, after the television and computer," Newell said.
There's a whole new market opening up in cell phone advertising - not
advertising cell phones, but advertising on cell phones - which is why companies
like Apple, Google and Microsoft are so interested in cell phones, Newell said.
The 2003 federal law that allowed consumers to opt out of telemarketing calls on
their land lines placed cell phone users in a separate category, where the only
way they can receive telemarketing or advertisements is by opting into a service,
Newell said.
That extra wall of protection has resulted in a different type of market for
advertisers wanting to contact cell phone users.
It's a market that's just starting to develop, but it has huge potential.
To get buy-in from cell phone users, marketing companies package their
information as a type of news that consumers can use, he said.
For example, he said, the Iowa State Daily, ISU's student newspaper, has been
experimenting with what Newell called "mobile coupons."
"Students opt in to get discounts over their phones for different bars and
restaurants and bookstores in town," Newell said.
The coupon shows up as a text message. Students take the phone into a store,
show the message to the cashier and claim the discount, he said.
Cell phone users must be persuaded to accept ads on their phones.
"Advertisers get it immediately," Newell said. "They know that if I put a message
onto people's cell phones, that's even better than putting a message on the radio,
because they are going to at least look at it before they erase it."
Europe and Asia are out in front, Newell said.
In the United Kingdom, he said, cell services are experimenting with merging cell
phones with credit cards, so that your credit card charges would show up on your
cell phone bill.
In parts of Asia, manufacturers have built FM radio receivers into cell phones,
Newell said.
The technology for the signal used to make Apple's iPhone work, he added, "is
two to three generations behind what people in Korea have."
Some of that will no doubt be included in the phone Google plans to launch next
year in competition with the iPhone.
Newell said the advances that Apple, Google and others are making "is why cell
phone companies are jockeying so much for your business. They really want you
to sign up with them, because whoever has your cell phone service stands to
make a lot of money when you start using it as a transaction device."
It probably won't be me.
I've never had a fantasy that couldn't be packaged into a car commercial.
In fact, I'm probably the only guy on the block who doesn't have a cell phone,
which means I'll never have to worry about an advertisement ringing me up in the
middle of my back swing.
Business Editor David Elbert can be reached at (515) 284-8533 or
delbert@dmreg.com