NEW YORK—The race to join the mobile marketing playground continued to heat up with separate announcements from Cascada Mobile and Crisp Wireless.
Crisp Wireless said it will team with VML, a Kansas City, Mo.-based marketing technology firm to develop and market mobile advertising offerings for major brands. The companies hope to leverage Crisp’s traction in wireless technology with the marketing experience of VML, which boasts clients including Burger King, AMC Theaters, Colgate-Palmolive and Microsoft Corp.
While partnerships between pure-play wireless companies and advertising firms are nothing new—even in these early days of mobile marketing—the deal does appear to be one of the first such official alliances.
“Our clients are increasingly interested in reaching the mobile consumer, and we have responded with a variety of programs that serve a diverse set of mobile promotional needs,” said Webster Lewin, VML’s supervisor of mobile marketing.
Meanwhile, Cascada Mobile unveiled a mobile marketing and advertising application at the DemoFall ’06 Conference in San Diego. The portal is designed to offer wireless users access to the gamut of branded content in a single application as well as cross-platform marketing efforts for new product launches, for example, or film releases.
“Marketers can now quickly and cost-effectively extend the reach of traditional and online marketing campaigns to include the growing and increasingly important mobile subscriber audience,” said Neil Closner, Cascada’s president. “The content and application itself can be referred across peer networks, and since the portal can be easily updated, it also provides for ongoing and relevant interaction between marketers and consumers.”
