A letter to Verizon

Today I was reading the feed from one of my hero's and mentors, Seth Godin.  Seth it seems, is frustrated about the idea of selling ad's on mobile phones, not because he has a problem with advertising, but because he, like most of us, wished cellular phone companies (some of the largest advertisers on the planet) would just focus on developing things that their customers "wish for" not what they want to develop to make an extra buck. 

Here are a couple of Seth's hit home points in his theoretical letter to John Harrobin, VP Marketing, Verizon Wireless:

A typical cell phone user spends more than $2,000 a year on telecommunications, and the number is going up. For a product with a marginal cost of zero, this is an astoundingly high figure. Why would you risk your market share and what little customer satisfaction remains by selling off screen space to advertisers?

Sure, some folks with more time than judgment will click on these ads, and sure, your advertisers will smile, but do you really want to alienate millions of users by giving us something we don't need and don't want?

Here are the two questions I hope you'll ask yourself:
a.) what does the money we make from this effort do to the long-term profitability of our relationship with customers and
b.) is this something consumers want? How many calls a day does Verizon get asking for more spam/advertising on their cell phones?

If you want to read the full letter post, you can view it on Seth's blog here.

Damn with the mobile phone carriers...

WBV