Raymond Snoddy on media: Rap hit should quiet mobile sceptics

Marketing 18-Oct-06

Until now it has been perfectly reasonable to be sceptical about the future of mobile content. A bit of news, a touch of sport and perhaps some music downloading, but hardly anything to set the world alight.

It all seemed like a case of the big phone companies, which had overpaid
grotesquely for their 3G licences, trying desperately to find something
to do with them.

Experiments and market research were promising, but there was a serious

shortage of hard numbers and large-scale consumer experience; and unless

either screens or tennis balls get considerably larger, coverage of
Wimbledon on mobiles is onto a loser.

However, sceptics are going to have take on board the activities of New
York rapper Chamillionaire and a song called Ridin'.

The story goes like this: Chamillionaire's pluggers at Universal Music
went to Radio 1 to try to get the single played ahead of its release, to
no avail. The record company put the video on mobile operator 3's portal
four weeks before release, and was more than a little surprised by the
results. On the first day, the video was downloaded 5800 times, and
42,000 times in total over the period.

Universal was then able to go back to Radio 1 and other traditional
music outlets with the figures, and the record label had a hit on its
hands.

So, mobile can break acts, and music downloads clearly work, but is that
it? Well, the signs are that people are now dipping into a surprising
range of content on the move and the numbers are starting to come in.
There were 3.6m downloads of World Cup mobile TV and 638,000 of a
made-for-mobile TV football show called Berlin or Bust, which was
broadcast by T-Mobile.

Without much of a song and dance, or even a formal launch, ITV has also
been streaming live content to mobiles since last month. ITV1 and ITV
Play are available on 3 and ITV1 on BT Movio. Jane Marshall, ITV's
commercial development director, told a mobile-content seminar this
month that in its first three weeks, ITV1 exceeded 100,000 viewing
sessions on mobile, the equivalent of 1680 unique users a day. Small
potatoes, maybe, but the number should grow when the service is better
marketed.

So far, each unique user is viewing 2.5 times a day, with an average of
4.5 minutes a session. These viewers prefer free content. There was a
fourfold increase in X-Factor downloads the week after ITV stopped
charging for them.

Moreover, there are signs that viewers are happy to watch ads, as long
as they are not too long, in return for free content.

ITV has yet to include any mobile income in its financial plans, but it
clearly believes significant profits can be generated.

Peter Cowley, managing director of digital media at Endemol UK, argues
that the number of downloads are 'already impressive' - 1m-plus for Big
Brother last year - and that the rise of 3G penetration in Europe is
'spectacular'. Endemol is also encouraged by the reaction to the first
interactive made-for-mobile reality show - Get Close to ... Sugababes.
It comprised a series of daily four-minute episodes, available
exclusively via O2 Active.

If you add in games and user-generated content, one begins to see
something that adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

There are still problems, though. Broadcasters are not convinced that
the mobile operators understand media content. And everyone believes the
operators are trying too hard to control the terms on which content
makes it to their screens. More conversations will have to be had by all
concerned, or holes could be blown in the walled-garden portals of the
phone companies.

For the marketing community, this all adds up to one more thing that it
is not safe to ignore, as mobile content is about to become a mainstream
part of the ever-more complicated communications mix.

30 SECONDS ON ... CHAMILLIONAIRE

- Chamillionaire was born on 28 November 1979 in Houston, Texas. His
real name is Hakeem Seriki.

- The rapper's name is pronounced with a 'k', forming a play on the word
chameleon. Other nicknames include The Mixtape Messiah, King Koopa,
Color Changin' Lizard and The Truth from Texas.

- In 2005, he signed a solo deal with Universal Records. The second
single from his debut album, The Sound Of Revenge, is called Ridin', and
features Krayzie Bone of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.

- Ridin' was number one in the US' Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks.

- Last month the ringtone version of his song Ridin' was the first to be
certified triple-platinum.

- Chamillionaire beat Busta Rhymes and 50 Cent to the award for Best Rap
Video for Ridin' at this year's MTV Video Music Awards.