A chance meeting over barbecue has turned into a $1.2 million contract for WHAMmobile.
While at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’s barbecue cook-off last year, WHAMmobile President and CEO Matt Whitney met Clear Channel Outdoor’s Mike Reed, marketing manager for Houston, and cooked up a deal that is putting Houstonians’ fingers to work via mobile texting features on area billboards.
If all of Clear Channel’s 38 markets sign on, the deal could mean as much as $1.2 million for WHAMmobile over the contract’s two-year period, Whitney says. The Houston-based company is also the exclusive mobile provider for Clear Channel Outdoor and is already involved in six Clear Channel markets.
WHAMmobile uses the text number 555999 on campaigns. Customers can text a certain word to the number and receive messages, coupons and other information. There is also an opt-in database that companies can use to continually make contact with customers.
Jeremy Konko, chief operating officer and founder of qtags, another Houston messaging service, says qtags has done billboard campaigns in the past, but has not found them as effective as other forms of advertising. He warns that texting on billboards could run into some hurdles.
“There is a lot of legislation with regard to not allowing people to text while driving,” he says. “It will become an issue for companies because if someone gets into an accident and it can be traced back that the person was texting a certain advertisement at the time, it could lead to a lawsuit.”
Konko also says certain billboards could be out of reach for customers zooming past at a high speed.
But while WHAMmobile and Clear Channel are ironing out the bugs, two local companies have found success with billboard texting campaigns.
The Incredible Pizza Co. in Conroe has been using the service for a year, and has increased buys to its outdoor and mobile campaigns as a result of customer response, Whitney says. Incredible Pizza is also planning to use the outdoor campaign in its San Antonio market.
Meanwhile, Tampa, Fla.-based Merlin Law Group, which came into the Houston market after Hurricane Ike, is using the texting features to help Houstonians with insurance claims. Whitney says in the first 120 days of the billboard campaign, Merlin had 150 prospects contact the firm for service.
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