Communication and Marketing in a Mobilized World: Diary Research on Ageneration Txt@

ABSTRACT - These few words attempt to understand why young people send each other text messages. The paper presents a textual analysis of the function, form and flow of text traffic produced and consumed by 105 young people. Over a weeklong period they kept qualitative diaries, dubbed 'text-books’, detailing their incoming and outgoing tally of texts. It is proposed that the themes of efficiency, discretion, crudity, frankness, and novelty collectively conspire to make texting an attractive proposition to young people. The paper concludes by sounding a note of caution to marketers eager to embrace the medium of SMS marketing.

Citation:

Anthony Patterson, Kim Cassidy, and Steve Baron (2003) ,"Communication and Marketing in a Mobilized World: Diary Research on Ageneration Txt@", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 6, eds. Darach Turley and Stephen Brown, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 147-152.

European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 6, 2003      Pages 147-152

COMMUNICATION AND MARKETING IN A MOBILIZED WORLD: DIARY RESEARCH ON "GENERATION TXT"

Anthony Patterson, University of Liverpool, UK

Kim Cassidy, University of Liverpool, UK

Steve Baron, University of Liverpool, UK

ABSTRACT -

These few words attempt to understand why young people send each other text messages. The paper presents a textual analysis of the function, form and flow of text traffic produced and consumed by 105 young people. Over a weeklong period they kept qualitative diaries, dubbed 'text-books’, detailing their incoming and outgoing tally of texts. It is proposed that the themes of efficiency, discretion, crudity, frankness, and novelty collectively conspire to make texting an attractive proposition to young people. The paper concludes by sounding a note of caution to marketers eager to embrace the medium of SMS marketing.

INBOX

Widespread mobile idolatry has spawned an associated obsession: text messaging. From the unfortunate pedestrians who met their end to the stranded adventurers who lives were saved (Ahmed 2002); from students who cheat in exams to employers who dismiss employees (Clark 2001); from a weapon of mass seduction (Benson 2000) to a new health threatBtext message injury (Powell 2002)Bfrom new opportunities for marketers to new tools for consumers (Doyle 2001), text messages are beeping and vibrating their way into our cultural conscience. They are reengineering the way we interact, date, socialise and communicate. In this "mobilized world" (Lindgren et al. 2002) it is virtually impossible to venture anywhereBthe cinema, the supermarket, the gym, the restaurantBwithout hearing the unmistakable beep-beep that signals, "1 message received".

Remarkably, the verb text, meaning to create and send text messages using a mobile phone’s keypad only sprung into existence in the last few years, though it is already so ingrained in our culture that it seems as if it has been around for ages. SMS (Short Message Service) text messaging was first developed in 1991 for GSM (Global System for Mobile Telephony) digital mobile phones. The consumer-led phenomenon that prompts this study transpired in 1999 when mobile providers finally permitted users to send each other messages across different networks. Common in Europe and Asia, but not as yet in America, text message devices have the capacity to handle text using the number keys to type letters. Messages can be up to 160 characters in length, while some people text into three separate messages. This is popular with many users, yet because three messages are sent rather than one, it costs three times as much.

Not that the major mobile providersB02 (formerly Cellnet), T-mobile (formerly One-to-One) Orange and VodafoneBcomplained. The rise and rise of texting (and consequently our mobile phone bills) has rapidly become big business for them. It now accounts for approximately one fifth of their revenues (Giussani 2001). In January 1999, during the first month of the UK, launch 40 million text messages were sent. Since then the ever-escalating monthly total has almost quadrupled and is estimated to now be in the region of 1.5 billion (Arlidge 2002). Worldwide, adoption is no less impressive where one billion text messages are sent every day. Putting this into perspective, this equates to about 40 messages per month for every person on the planet, including those that do not have a mobile phone. According to the Guardian (2001), it took less than three years for text messaging to achieve the market penetration that it took email twenty years to acquire.

It might be intimated from this paper’s marketing slant, and the evident success of text messaging in general, that mighty marketing moguls orchestrated its ascent into the vanguard of culture, but the tools and techniques of marketing were conspicuous by their absence. Texting was not highlighted in market research; nor was it developed in conjunction with new product development; nor did it appear in billboard ads resembling Vodafone’s current offering, When Talking Simply Isn=t PossibleBText, or Orange’s, Touch Someone with a Text; nor was it unleashed via a word of mouth campaign (Wilson 1991) or what fad surfers today call a "viral marketing campaign" (Godin and Gladwell 2002). The surprising truth is that texting was developed almost entirely by accident. Its anonymous architects, while working on the GSM protocol, noticed spare capacity in the system, so they added the texting facility as an afterthought, in case somebody somewhere someday might find it useful (Giussani 2001).

In the beginning, mobile providers, to be certain, while not exactly disgruntled were largely indifferent to the foresight of their engineers. They held little store in the usefulness of this new teletechnology. They did not envisage the realization of Gladwell’s (2001) tipping point thesis, whereby the auspicious alignment of social behaviour, ideas and trends cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire. A the outset they didn=t even charge consumers for the service, calculating that its main utility lay in delivering modest subscriber information, such as free voicemail notification. If they attributed it with any revenue potential, it was as an extension of paging for busy professionals (Calcutt 2001). Minor product innovationsBpredictive text input, the inclusion of dictionaries and the development of an Internet-based SMS capabilityBhave since made the technology slightly more palatable. Nonetheless, the act of texting remains awkward, unless you number among the young textperts who have inculcated the skill so effectively that some can type thirty words a minute (Clark 2001).

While the mobile phone providers were pursuing grander ambitions, pouring billions of pounds into WAP technology (deemed a financial failure) and third-generation technologies (yet to show a return), young people quietly and unexpectedly hijacked the text message medium. They became known as 'generation txt’, christened so by numerous commentators quick to note the parallel between texting and the "thumb culture" (Kushner 2002) of computer games that indoctrinates all Gameboys and Lara Croft girls. Quick also to note their familiarity with other textually mediated forms of communicationBemail, chat-rooms and instant messaging. Speculative figures suggest that at least 77% of them own a mobile phone and regularly participate in the back and forth banter of texting (Mintel 2001).

Unsurprisingly, in the way of all cultural phenomena, texting finds itself central to a number of contentious, contemporary debates. The first, disseminated by newspaper puns, The Joy of Text (Benson 2000), A Little Bit of Textual Chemistry (Puttick 2001) and The Good Txt Guide (Precision Marketing 2001), suggests that young people use texting primarily to connect with members of the opposite sex. A second debate discusses whether texting presents a threat to literacy, whether it depresses language skills and is reducing "our beloved tongue", as Haines (2002: 1) argues, "to a series of abbreviations, acronyms and emotions meaningless to anyone over 25." A third debate implicates texting, alongside email, in the decimation of everyday face-to-face communication. McCromack (2001:xix) outlines the general argument, claiming that people are often tempted to hide behind technologies like texting, so much so that "soon they won’t even feel the need for human contact."

Speculations such as these, however, are mostly of an anecdotal nature. Often they are just opinion pieces that muster little in the way of empirical support. While there are studies of relevance to texting in the areas of language and linguistics (Coates 1986; Johnson and Meinhof 1997), the sociology of communication (Hutchby 2000; Fox 2001), and the emerging realm of cyber communications (Springer 1996; Danet 2001), these studies do not address the nuances that are particular to texting, nor are they mindful of commercial or marketing considerations. This study then, seeks to redress this gap in the literature, by exploring the themes that makes texting such a "killer app" (Downes et al. 1998) among young consumers and in doing so to shed light on the debates in which texting is implicated.

STUDY BACKGROUND

To this end, this exploratory study is dependent on a qualitative methodology frequently employed for explorative purposes in marketing and consumer researchBthe diary method (see Weeks et al. 1987; Hart et al. 1999). The diary method is appropriate for this project since its goal is to entextualise text messages verbatim and to understand these messages within the context of a phenomenological narrative that describes the lived experience of those consumers. The primary research was gathered from 105 undergraduates business studies students located at a UK university. They were requested to keep a weeklong diary detailing all incoming and outgoing text traffic; comment on the emotional reaction invoked; and elaborate on the circumstances of time, place and person. It is acknowledged that the use of the dreaded student sample is a practise increasingly scorned (James and Sonner 2001), but since this age group reside at the epicentre of texting culture this study can hardly be criticised for utilising a resource simply because it is close to hand.

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

"Where r u?" "R u ok?" Within the collated diaries, simple messages such as these are common. Nonetheless, there is also a very mixed bag of messages that pertain, as human communication tends to do, to every subject imaginable. Such is the breadth of the subject scope that categorizing these messages is extremely difficult. Tentatively, therefore, this analysis offers the following general categories into which most text messages can be allocated: romance, forwards, social arrangements, general chat, work and travel. Discussing each of the above categories would be an interesting exercise, but due to space limitations the primary issue under investigation in this paper will be confined to the motivating factors that led young consumers to rapidly assimilate texting into the texture of their lives. A series of themes are repeated in the diaries that help explain why this is the case. Recent interpretive marketing research on consumer value gives some initial handles on these themes. Theoretically, a framework, such as, Holbrook’s (1999) Taxonomy of Consumer Value, could encapsulate these themes, but on examination the lexicon of this nomenclature proved to be too prescriptive and tightly constrained for the purposes of this study. The derived themes of efficiency, discretion, crudity, frankness, and novelty thus fall iteratively from the diaries (see table 1). The following discussion explores each theme.

Efficiency

Texters appear to be particularly attracted by the virtues of efficiency that texting offers. Efficiency, in the context of this paper, explicates how texting can be utilized effectively as a form of communication that affords minimum effort and expense. For pedagogic purposes it is sub-divided into the following themes: value-for-money, convenience, and immediacyBeach of which will be considered in turn.

Value-for-Money

Diarists agree that texting is a "cheap" form of communication. Many of those contracted to mobile phone providers, receive free text message bundles of around 100-200 per month. Others, notably, those who use the pay-as-you-go service are charged for each text message that they send. While the cost of sending a text message varies between mobile phone providers, on average it costs about 12 pence. Compared to the cost of conveying a simple message in a phone call, at peak time, when it costs 50p a minute and the value of texting becomes all too apparent. This also helps explain the strategy employed by many, of texting during on-peak times and phoning off-peak. Analysts sometimes downplay economic attributes like value-for-money in favour of elaborate sociological explanations. Important, though these are, the fact remains that young people do not have huge amounts of disposable income and many text message because it represents good value-for-money relative to other forms of communication.

Convenience

A second corollary of efficiency is captured in the notion of convenience. Diarists enjoy the utility of texting at any time, certain in the knowledge that if the text arrives when the recipient is indisposed, say while asleep, the little flashing envelope icon will remain on display until the message is either opened or erased. Not only can texts be sent at any time, but they can also, excepting signal availability, be sent from any location. This desire to always be accessible is very important to the cohorts in this study. As one diarist wrote: "If I send a text message and don’t get a response right away then I can get quite anxious." The diaries reveal that messages are often sent while in transit, walking somewhere, travelling on a bus, train or car; while out and about in bowling alleys, nightclubs and pubs; and while engaged in multitasking activities such as driving a car, watching TV, talking to friends, and even, mischievously during lectures with the mobile switched to silent. Although, strictly speaking, perhaps undergraduates engaged in the latter activity are not actually multitasking.

Immediacy

Another aspect of efficiency that proved attractive to the diarists is the immediacy of text messaging. Although there are occasional reports of text messages being lost in the electronic ether of digital telecommunication, generally when a text message is sent it is a fairly safe bet that the intended recipient will be able to read it almost instantaneously, providing their mobile is to hand, and it is not a rare bottleneck period (e.g. midnight on Christmas Eve or New Years Eve) when text message traffic is so heavy that it can be significantly delayed. The theme of immediacy is marked among those who like to alert their friends to the fact that they have an interesting item of gossip, but save the details until a later phone call or meeting. For example, a diarist sent the following message to her friend: "Clare has really lost the plot this time. She’s freakin’ us all out!" The text, in effect, acts as a teaser, a foregoing trailer for juicy gossip that will be imparted at a later time. Immediacy is also important to those who like to keep their communicative acts short and sweet. Texting facilitates this by cutting straight to the heart of the matter without the mandatory requirement to pepper conversation with the small talk that usually accompanies voice-to-voice communication. With texting typical conversational 'How’s-your-father?’ pleasantries are rendered redundant. Texting alleviates the 'yadda-yadda-yadda’ of everyday conversation and cuts straight to the point.

Immediacy helps texters avoid the minutiae of a lengthy conversation. Nonetheless, the immediacy of texting does not always seem apparent. Consider this five-text exchange:

2:45 Did you just drive past Oxford road?

4.00 Yes I did an hour ago.

4:30 I was stood outside the phoneshop did you not see me?

4:35 No I didn’t see you, what time were you there?

4:45 I was there at 2:45 when I came out of the gym, nevermind I’ll see you later.

This prolonged and labour-intensive communicative act would surely have been better enacted on the phone. Many diarists admit that texting can be a slow-going, time-consuming activity. For instance, at the end of another five-text exchange one student claimed to be, "frustrated at the way it was dragging on and on, when I had work to be doing. Things to do and people to see" (Male 19). When the exchange did finally drew to a conclusion he felt nothing but relief and determined to avoid the situation from recurring by switching off his mobile.

TABLE 1

CONSUMER THEMES

Discretion

Other forms of mobile communication may share the utility of efficiency, but the following theme, discretion, is one that texting can claim as its very own. Texting by its very nature is discrete, taking place as it often does below desks and underneath the surface of the immediate world. For instance, an observer might understand that a text is being composed, but they do not know what is being communicated or who is being contacted. For an observer the same mystery surrounds messages received. The smile a text provokes is the only hint an onlooker gets as to the text’s content. Hence, a significant attribute of texting is that it can be enacted in public while remain essentially private. Of course, there are extroverts (or cell-yellers is the American term) to whom this attribute would prove an anathema. These people engage in what has been christened 'stage phoning’; a deeply sad activity for deeply sad individuals who publicly perform loud theatrical conversations on their mobiles in the mistaken belief that those who witness their antics will be impressed (Fox 2001).

Discretion is apparent in a host of other ways as well. The brevity of texting permits people to be elusive about their location, the company they keep and the activities they indulge in. It allows them to evade issues they would rather not discuss. One of the diarists explains, "texting is great because I can let my dad know I’m okay without telling him precisely where I am, who I am with or what I am doing" (Female 19). Texting also encourages the telling of barefaced lies since the recipient cannot scrutinize or interrogate a text message in the same way that one can with face-to-face or voice-to-voice communication. One diarist confessed that he escaped a prearranged date by fibbing that he had "been involved in a car accident and was a bit shook-up and didn=t really feel like attending" (Male 20). Though no direct evidence could be found in the diaries, it is also conceivable that texting could be used to conduct clandestine affairs. Ever-present is the danger, however, that a curious or suspicious partner might intercept these messages. Of course, for thrill-seeking consumers who like to live dangerously, who revel in the thought of being caught, perhaps texting’s transgressive undertones are its most winning feature. But hush-hush, don’t tell anyone. Keep it on the q.t.

Crudity

For the technologically challenged, especially those whose formative years predate the "era of technologized interaction" (Hutchby 2001: 192), texting’s poor interface presents grounds for concern, but for the young it is a cause for celebration. They revel in the beguiling crudity of the interface. A diarist comments, "Texting is good because it’s not good. It’s a bit rough and a bit awkward, but that’s why I like it. I can’t really explain it" (Male 19). Perhaps this penchant for the non-slick aesthetic of texting is in keeping with the self-consciously low-production values that are all the rage in music, film and design. The theme of crudity extends to the content of many of the messages. Sexual innuendo, badly drawn pictures of intimate body parts, dirty jokes are all common in the extreme. Texting has become the new graffiti for hormone-laden teenagers who often compose these loaded messages from beneath bed sheets.

Frankness

A widely noted theme that emerges from the diaries is that the sentiments expressed in a text message are sometimes difficult if not impossible to articulate in a face-to-face communicative act. Consider the following examples:

Softly the leaves of memories fall. Slowly I’ll pick and gather them all. Coz 2day, 2moro and till my life is through, I’ll always cherish having a friend like you!! (Female 21)

Yor my fnd till d Da I die, d da I lose u iz d da ill cry. Yor d ():) dat wz sent 2 me & will b n m hart always cos u mean d wrld to me. (Translation: You’re my friend till the day I die, the day I lose you is the day I’ll cry. You’re the angel that was sent to me and will be in my heart always because you mean the world to me. (Female 20)

Were it not for texting, and other text-mediated forms of communication, such honest, open, poetic sentiment might ever remain unarticulated. Texting provides a way, not only for tongue-tied adolescents, but for everyone, to speak without speaking, to spare red-faced blushes or at least contain them to the privacy of ones own company, especially if said sentiments are unreciprocated or outright rejected. Consider this bout of text tennis between two monstrously in love teenagers:

Can’t believe I’m up before you! Did you have a nice sleepy? I did but I have woken up and my throats feeling worse, need some more medicine. Just gonna have a shower and get ready to go. I love you and look forward to hearing from you when you eventually wake up sleepy head! Love from Jade xxx

I just got up 10 minutes ago munchkin, I was just about to text you. Thought I deserved a bit of a lie in today, I’m gonna do an essay later though. You normally feel worse in the morning when you are ill. Why are you getting ready for Uni already, it’s only just gone 9:30? You don’t have to be in for hours? I did have quite a nice sleepy baby thank you. Wish I was asleepy next to my baby though. I love you so much Jade. I wish we could be together all the time. Keep texting when you can. Billy x

Your texts all got clogged up. The last one just came through! I had a shower because I thought it may make me feel a bit better, but I’m back in bed now doing some work, needless to say the shower didn’t help! I wish I was all cosy in my bed at home or in yours, or just near to someone who can look after me! I know you would if we were together. I love you munchkin, Jade xxx

Baby just make sure you have space for 3 texts in your inbox then it shouldn’t get all clogged up. I would properly look after you my Jadie if I was there. That’s what my baby needs to be looked after by someone who cares. I love you so much 4eva xxx. P.S. We’re gonna get married when we are older! xx

Schmaltzy though it may be, texting is fundamental to their relationship. They use it as a means to communicate very powerful emotions. It encourages them to be candid, frank, informal and cutesy: intentions can be declared and invitations offered, all without risk of embarrassment.

Novelty

Diarists also acknowledge the novelty nature of text messaging. As all neophiliac teenagers concur; "you can’t not have a mobile phone; and you can’t not text" (Male 19). The implicit implication, of course, is that people being sheeple, sorry people, cannot help but be swayed into "buying things" for the sake of novelty, and to conform with the ever shifting norms of fashion (Thompson et al 1994). Of course, possessing the product is never really enough for once acquired, the competitive focus turns to mastery of the product. If the evidence of this study is anything to go by, young people can be ridiculously competitive with one another as regards 'important’ issues, such as: how many text messages they send?Band how cool their stored messages are? It is notable too that almost universally diarists claim to receive more messages than they send. 99.9 per cent of those who kept diaries claim to be regular texters sending on average 25 per week, although it could be added that this distribution curve is widely skewed on either side, towards both frequent and infrequent texters. Nonetheless, only one diarist claimed, "Sorry, I just don’t do text messaging", and even he qualified this statement with the concession, "unless it is absolutely necessary" (Male 20).

DISCUSSION

As was hoped, these findings lend some ammunition to adduce some conclusions about the previously identified debates. The first such debate concerns texting’s primary utility to teenagers. According to the newspapers, texting is used overwhelming by teenagers to satisfy their sexual mores and participate in the mandatory matchmaking game calledBHooking Up (Wolfe 2000). It is true that the themes of discretion and frankness can enhance a texter’s love life; nonetheless, texting predominant use lies elsewhere. In this study texting’s main utility is to connect with members of the same rather than the opposite sex. Contrary to media reports, sending a text message is concerned with much more than mere sexual gratification. More often it is about connecting with friends. Inane, frivolous, unnecessary, though it may seem, but often texting is simply about illuminating the life of a friend with a 'nice’ message or alternatively in seeking self-comfort when life goes awry. Many of the diarists use texting to strengthen the solidity of their friendships by sharing the content of a text message with them. It might be forwarded to each of their mobiles and made the focus of conversation around the pub table or wherever the social swarm forms. A groupthink on the text might occur and judgement passed on the absent sender. This might seem a galling prospect for the message writer, but they need never know that such appraisal took place, and at least they don’t have to be there when the verdict is cast. A groupthink can also help formulate an appropriate response to the text in question. Some will even judge a fledgling relationship almost entirely on a person’s grammar and their use or misuse of 'smiley faces’. Several, in the corpus we examined, confess that oftentimes they are happy to let friends type their responses for them, so long as they retain power of veto. Texting thus facilitates friendship in many ways, and it does so, to paraphrase Cicero, by doubling joy and dividing grief.

The second debate concerns the popular mythology that text messaging is detrimental to the future of language, that English spelling is kattastroffik, that children can’t write or speak properly any more, that the meanings of words should not be allowed to vary or change, and that bad grammar is slovenly. The alternative stance to which this paper subscribes is that texting enables a dramatic expansion to take place in the range and variety of language, and is providing unprecedented opportunities for personal creativity. Behold the ingenuity of the diarists messages:

i hUJOH O5 W,I 35V37d 3W d73H Can you crack the code? No?.. Okay. Go back and turn the phone upside down!

The triviata of texting is brimful of wordplay that is by turns inscrutable, outrageously rude or righteously syrupy, but always creative. Undoubtedly it enables a dramatic expansion in the range and variety of language, and provides unprecedented opportunity for personal creativity. Nor is creativity produced solely by the sender for the reader’s role can also be highly creative since the 'gaps’ and 'indeterminacies’ of any given text message can demand truly creative reading. The brevity, for instance, of a text message often means that meaning must be extrapolated, imagined and creatively constructed. Of course, a postmodern analysis that treats cultural artefacts as texts and understands that our relationship with them is contextually grounded, unstable, ambiguous and subject to endless reinterpretation underpins this insight (Brown 1998).

The third debate centring on texting’s capacityBalongside other text mediated forms of communicationBto replace face-to-face communication is also disputed by this paper. The diary data suggests that far from replacing other forms of communication, texting actually complements them. Hence the observed behaviours to: communicate by text during the day when it is too expensive to call; to text from a nightclub where loud music prohibits other forms of communication; to share the content of a text message with friends; to text simply to arrange a convenient time to call or to meet one another. It is doubtful, therefore, whether texting could ever replace other forms of communication. In fact, if anything, it helps develop social and communication skills across all of the communication mediums by allowing communication to occur with more people and more often than was possible before the advent of mobile phones.

An understanding of the criticisms made against texting should be tempered by the knowledge that reactionary voices have always revolted against new forms of textual communication. When the telegraph was introduced more than a century ago there was a predictable outcry that telegraph writers who omitted prepositions and articles would do the same in their written language. Yet people did not forget how to write full, punctuated sentences and the English language did not experience a meltdown. The same will be said of text messaging. Isn=t it true that we endlessly hear "save our children" diatribes: teenagers live on a diet of junkfood and sugar, they are lazy good-for-nothings, they have unprotected sex, they drink too much alcohol, they increasingly take drugs and that that texting will be the ruination of their lives?B and yet each year they manage to get better exam results than the previous year’s cohort.

OUTBOX

This paper identified and explored the themes of efficiency, frankness, discretion, crudity and novelty that collectively conspire to make texting appealing to young people. The diary findings stimulated some discussion on the controversies that encircle texting, and generally, it was concluded, that texting need not be regarded unfavourably. On the contrary, texting can be creative and cool and encourage playfulness with language. Yet there still remains considerable scope for further research. Some of the issues that need to be investigated include: how multimedia messaging will impact consumers? Will it open up the way for yet more experimentation, mixing narrative and visuals? Or will it be ignored? Recent reports suggest that most consumers have no plans to upgrade their mobiles to take advantage of 3G technologies. Will texting’s impending launch on landlines and televisions affect consumers? How are older people using this technology?

It was also noted that capitalising on the texting phenomenon is fast becoming a major marketing priority. Conferences on Mobile Marketing Strategies (2002), the proliferation of web resources (see www.160characters.org) and the burgeoning literature on Mobile Marketing attest to its growing importance (Hiag 2002; Lindgren et al. 2002). Explicitly within this marketing literature, and elsewhere, it is firmly believed that the new communication technologies, such as text messaging, offer unprecedented opportunities for organizations to establish real dialogues between themselves and their customers (Cartellieri et al. 1997; Hoffman and Novak 1996).

Consumers, however, beg to differ. The rising tide of text spam is becoming an increasing irritant to them. This study suggests that consumers are uninterested in reciprocating relationships with marketers via text. Those few diarists that detail receiving text messages from marketers regard it as a form of textpolitation. They report that dealing with marketing text messages is a cold experience. They are not warm. They have no heart. They neither understand, nor care about consumers. Whereas, one-to-one messages between consumers are brimful of emotion, they may be amusing or satirical or irritating or mildly inflammatory, but still they are warm and they keep us communicating with one another about the things that matter most. It is the consumers who own the broadcast rights to this channel and anyone who seeks to gatecrasher this channel will be given the cold shoulder. Marketers would do well to search for the holy grail of marketing communication elsewhere.

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