Continuing with a very interesting study case of Cingular's long success with sponsoring the “American Idol” TV show, today I want to present the huge success Cingular had in the mobile services arena. If you missed the previous parts - just follow the links: first part and second part.
In response to the previous part, Sanford Nowlin of the MySA Blogs wrote :
“Not only has AT&T reaped the benefit from giving customers the ability to vote via SMS message, the blog points out [i.e. Xellular Identity], it's also whipped them into an Idol frenzy with creative offerings like vote reminders and an American Idol trivia game.”
[via MySA Blogs]
Today I want to present how Cingular has reaped the benefit of the popularity of American Idol and whipped fans into heavy consumers of mobile services like mobile IM and mobile content (ringtones, Answer Tones and video clips).
What Cingular is offering?
Mobile IM
Live Idol Chat lets the customers ask each departing idol questions as they leave the show. Each Thursday, customers are invited to join a live text messaging chat with the departing idol. By opting in, they can text the departing idol their questions. Several questions will be selected and asked, and the answers will be sent to all participants. Standard message rates apply to all messages sent and received.
Answer Tones & Ringtones
Since last January, users can download American Idol’s ringtones 
and Answer Tones from a wide selection of content:
- Bad auditions ringtones and Answer tones
- Live Idol Tones - ringtones and Answer tones of select American Idol performances available only 24 hours after they were performed on the live show(!)
- Ringtones and Answer Tones cut directly from actual idol performances on the show
- The best of past idols’ new releases
Cingular Video Library
Users who have a 3G phone have signed up for the $19.99 monthly fee get access to unlimited Cingular American Idol’s video clip library collection of:
- Bad audition video clips - video clips cut directly from actual auditions
- Clips of the Top 12 contestants
All video clips from the current season will expire the night of the season finale.
Media Net
MEdia Net offers contestant bios, show recaps, tune-in information, as well as links to some of our most popular messaging applications, tones, and more, all via mobile web.
And, it leveraging American Idol's popularity is not enough, Cingular also uses a huge incentive to incurage its users to use different mobile services:
Win US$1 Million in a Sweepstake
All users can enter the sweepstake. Once the customer sign up, every text message/ instant message, photo, and video message he\she will send automatically enters him\her in to win a trip to the finale and up to $1,000,000.
Users earn bonus entries for participation in other American Idol activities: 50 bonus entries for joining trivia plus 5 bonus entries for each week you finish all the questions for that week; and 25 bonus points for signing up for Vote Number Reminder.
2 Customers will have the chance to win the US$1 mill. At the finale night. And, each month 25 customers will win a Samsung handset worth $250.
And, read this carefully: according to the Cingular website, each month the customers need to re-sign up for winning the sweepstake, i.e. reaccuring visits to the website and more web traffic.
To summarize, Cingular has done a great job leveraging a very popular TV show in order to promote mobile content as well as new mobile services. It will be very interesting to follow up Cingular's future marketing activities with the next season of American Idol.
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