Hooters claims SMS callout in TV spots
upped sales by 32 percent

By: Giselle Tsirulnik
October 12, 2009

The Hooters girl in the VOD commercial

Restaurant chain Hooters of Americas use of text-message marketing within its video-on-demand commercial spots resulted in a 32 percent increase in sales during the program.

Television commercials ran with graphics at the bottom of the screen inviting viewers to learn more about the Hooters Mobile Club. By clicking a button on the remote control, viewers were taken to a longer video where a Hooters girl demonstrates how to text the keyword WINGS to short code 36832 and receive Free Boneless Wings by joining the Mobile Club.

Initially, Hooters simply wanted to reach people in a new way that caught[people's]attention, said Cindy Setlock, director of national accounts at State of Text, Denver. "They wanted customer interaction, an offer that would bring people in, and a campaign with repeat potential.

State of Text and Cox Media came together with the idea of combining mobile with video-on-demand, she said. The video-on-demand allowed the customers to watch the video and learn about the Hooters offer on their terms, rewinding or pausing at will.

Mobile made the offer instant, completely trackable and transportable. The combination of the two mediums gave Hooters a powerful and successful campaign.

The mobile call to action

people added to mobile database. State of Text provided tracking consistent with TV day-parts.

State of Text compared the data with the TV schedule to determine the effectiveness of individual programs. Hooters tracked redemption rates at the store. The mobile coupon redemption rates reached 25 percent and the Hooters mobile database achieved hundreds of entrants in minutes.

Throughout the course of the four-week campaign, almost 600 new people were added to the Hooters mobile database. One of the interesting things that we've seen with Hooters is how well its mobile club does, and how much real-time feedback and results benefited Hooters, said Sean McKesson, CEO of State of Text.

We've done cross-media promotion before, from billboards to print ads, but merging video-on-demand with mobile really brought Hooters results that work for them," he said.

Mixing mobile with video-on-demand is a natural continuation of the on-demand structure of both mediums. State of Text and Cox Media will continue developing new VOD programs with the successful results we've seen.


Senior Editor Giselle Tsirulnik covers ad networks, advertising, content, email, media, messaging, legal/privacy, search, social networks, television and video. Reach her at giselle@mobilemarketer.com.

Nielsen: Text Marketing on Rise

President-Elect Barack Obama's "V.P. pick" text message remains the most notable example of short-code marketing in the U.S.

But according to a new report released by Nielsen's Telecom Practice, Americans should expect to see more text-message marketing in the future. Given the immense popularity of texting in the U.S. and abroad, it's not surprising that marketers have ramped up their use of the medium to engage their customers -- where there's an audience, marketers are not far behind.

So far, Nielsen's report notes, marketers have used short-code marketing in a tight but creative range of ways: from simple information messaging, to rewards programming, to couponing, and even direct SMS purchasing.

Coca-Cola's My Coke Rewards program, which had engaged 1.1 million AT&T and Verizon Wireless customers as of Q3 2008, according to Nielsen, is a notable example. Subway, Arby's, Jiffy Lube, Best Buy, Papa John's, Village Inn and other major brands have also provided special offers through text and multimedia messaging.

Short codes are also changing the way Americans engage with traditional media. Participation TV falls into this realm -- with American Idol being the most prominent example of viewers engaging with a TV program over text messaging.

Radio listeners are also increasingly being called to action via text message. In Q2 2008, for example, Nielsen's tracking of short codes showed more than 1 million transactions with "A-L-I-C-E" (or 25423), a short code assigned to the station Alice 97.3 KLLC-FM in San Francisco. Alice listeners are frequently invited to send text messages directly to the station to make requests, win prizes and enter polls.

Adweek is a unit of the Nielsen Co.

Want Responses?
Try SMS-Based Calls to Action

Chicago's Shedd Aquarium Finds Texting Beat Out
Web in Direct-TV Spot

By: Rita Chang

Published: September 21, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- SMS may lack sizzle, but it can deliver the goods if provoking your audience to action is the goal, as Chicago's Shedd Aquarium recently discovered from its summer test campaigns.

To herd visitors to its new Fantasea aquatic show, Shedd Aquarium put a couple of direct-response tactics to the test to see if consumers preferred SMS or web-based calls to action.

At the end of 30-second spots that aired on Chicago's NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox affiliates, the aquarium announced a contest with prizes that included a hotel stay and VIP seats for the Fantasea premiere. The commercials were identical across the networks except for the calls to action: All the ads directed viewers to a website to register for the contest, except one spot, which gave viewers an additional mobile option to enter the contest by sending a text message to a special code.

The SMS call to action generated 325% more entries than the web-based call-to-action, making up 52% of the total entries, though it ran in only 25% of the ads.

To Shedd's assistant marketing director, Jay Geneske, the results show that the "phone is always with you, it's nearby and immediate," even when you're watching TV. Shedd also ran a one-day print campaign in a local paper with a text call-to-action, yielding the highest or near highest number of responses for a single-day print piece, Mr. Geneske said.

"SMS reveals a greater sense of urgency," said Jed Alpert, founder of Mobile Commons, the marketing agency that managed the campaign's SMS piece. "It's more actionable and convenient, and people have a more direct connection with their phones."

Additionally, when people are watching TV, they're more likely to have their cell phones near them than a computer.

Fresh impressions

"The mobile phone gives the consumer the ability to respond to the advertisement in real time, while the impression is still fresh in their heads," said Aaron Watkins, a former mobile-marketing agency executive turned independent consultant.

To get consumers to respond via the web, on the other hand, means they not only have to be interested in the ad but need to recall the website address later if they were not near a computer when the ad ran. The likelihood that they will remember the address drops "exponentially," given the nonstop barrage of messages and media that hit people every day, Mr. Watkins said.

Mobile works best when overlaid with mass media such as TV and radio, because they radiate that much more reach, compared to, say, mobile apps or display banners, Mr. Alpert said.

More than 90% of U.S. handsets are SMS-capable, with the number of text messages starting to outpace voice calls in 2007, according to Nielsen.

For consumers to text in, however, the offer has to be compelling and valuable, whether it's entertainment, information or access to something special. Shedd's campaign worked well because the short code was part of the narrative and script, rather than an afterthought of just slapping a code at the end of the commercial.

Mr. Alpert said it cost Shedd less than $10,000 to trial SMS in its TV campaigns. Given the relatively low outlay, marketers may want to consider SMS trials in their out-of-home and broadcast campaigns if for nothing else than to capture users for their mobile-marketing database. Mr. Alpert said over the hundreds of mobile campaigns his agency has managed, an average 85% of those who opt into a campaign will respond to more requests for information, such as age and ZIP code.