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The Telecom Asia’s interview with Antti Öhrling on the Blyk story and evolution.

RELATED ARTICLE: Messaging: the future of mobile advertising

Today’s announcement by Orange, Blyk’s operator partner in the UK, to launch “Orange Shots”, simply demonstrates that Blyk media works, and that Blyk is the best partner for mobile operators looking for new revenue streams and closer relationships with their customers.

“Shots” is powerful mobile advertising service that enables brands to engage and interact directly with targetted segments of Orange UK customer base. Launching with full service commercial offers from 1st of February, “Orange Shots” will initially be available to brands who want to interact with an audience of 100,000 customers from part of Orange’s Pay As You Go “Monkey” customer base. New profiles and customer segments will quickly follow, matching Orange’s ambition to significantly grow this audience.

Blyk has a wealth of media and technological capabilities, which will enable Orange to offer:
• Real time conversation with customers happy to hear from them
• A highly targeted audience base with no wastage
• An opportunity to build an engaging and enduring relationship with customers as they get to know more about their profiles and interests
• High response rates, strong returns on investment and great viral potential

I agree with Marc Overton from Orange UK, that this service will transform mobile advertising as we know it. Everybody wins working with Blyk; consumers, advertisers and operators alike. At Blyk, we have always known the value of relevance, interaction and reach in creating winning mobile media campaigns.

Antti Ohrling
Co-founder, Blyk

Blyk, the mobile messaging media, has been invited to present a keynote at TM Forum in Singapore on Wednesday, January 27.

The topic for Blyk’s presentation is Mobile Advertising. The speaker is Antti Öhrling, co-founder and UK CEO of Blyk. Antti’s keynote topics include:

- The changing consumer behaviour and stiff competition that is dramatically altering telecoms and media landscapes
- New business models that are vital for future profitable growth and strong market leadership
- How MNOs will play an important role in developing Mobile as a mass media
- How Blyk partnership with operators provide companies with the media capability to open additional revenue streams
- How Blyk provides operators with more market share and increase customer loyalty

Media enquiries: Irene Nyberg press@blyk.com

Congratulations to O2 for the promising (O2 More) consumer service launched today.

As Blyk has proven, mobile messaging works and it is a powerful tool for engaging customers, and linking them with brands and information they like. Blyk’s average response rates at 25 % – and often as high as 67 % or even over 90 % – just serve to prove this. Blyk shares its targeting and user experience in the UK, with the added benefit of Orange’s reach. Blyk has partnered with Vodafone in the Netherlands as a consumer facing brand, and will benefit from this operator’s reach and local knowledge.

Operators around the world are asking themselves how to become a media business. Here at Blyk, we have always known the power of mobile messaging as a media. With the right capabilities and experience, operators are the ones who can make it happen.

The mobile messaging media that Blyk has created, provides a channel for operators to run a media whereby they intimately know the user through a profile, they use mobile in its most natural form and they encourage service discovery. This can empower the consumer and provide value to advertisers, comfortable in the knowledge that the content and services they provide are – literally – in the hands of the people who would bring them most value. In short, operators have the potential to transform into media companies that guide that relationship.

In the context of Google having recently purchased AdMob, not only does mobile messaging empower consumers, but it could empower operators in a world where internet and telecoms are converging. For example, based on stats from Adtech, assuming the campaign target is to garner a reaction from 200k consumers, 100 million consumers would need to see the ad online, through banner ads. In stark contrast, when done the Blyk way, mobile messaging only requires that 800k consumers receive the message – 125 times as effective as traditional online marketing.

By focusing on relevance and reach, mobile advertising keeps moving forward.

Yankee Group recently published an analysis of Blyk and the full report is available in pdf form here.

Their key findings are that Blyk model works and that Blyk has succeeded in uniting advertisers and 16-24 year olds through this highly personal medium. The audience was engaged and satisfied and advertisers were engaged and satisfied. In summary: Blyk has proven that mobile is an effective platform for one-to-one customer engagement, particularly when the target audience is well defined and amenable to new and innovative use of wireless technologies.

“Yankee Group Research, Inc. has been trusted for 40 years as a leading source of objective and independent research. Yankee Group maintains rigorous standards and adheres to strict guidelines that safeguard the objectivity and high ethical standards of the Yankee Group brand and research.