EOY Campaign

Hi Roberta,

I once worked on a concept project for a client around ringtones. When we did our background research (before even getting to the campaign concept or implementation phase), we found that the format and delivery requirements were too convoluted for us to proceed. What were the challenges we encountered?

1. Most cell phone users don't know how to get content from their desktop or laptop computer directly onto their cell phone or PDA. A very small subset of cell phone users can do this, but most can't.

2. The alternative to web-delivery of ringtones - delivering ringtones directly to people's cell phones - requires using service providers who have partnered with cell phone companies to deliver the content. Convio doesn't currently have any direct relationships with cell phone service providers.

3. The format requirements for the ringtones themselves varied from device to device and from service provider to service provider.

Basically, at the end of the day we decided that the ways to get a ringtone actually delivered to a constituent were either too complicated (likely to be frustrating to our constituents) or too expensive (contracting with third-party service providers).

This was over a year ago, and it's possible that the ringtone space has changed, but the U.S. continues to lag Europe and other areas in terms of "open" delivery of content to cell phone users. Even for the iPhone, all "installed" content (applications, ringtones, etc.) goes through iTunes and the Apple Store (with the exception of "jail-broken" iPhones, a very small fraction of iPhone users).

-patrick