Leveraging Ringback Tones Success - Content Best Practice

The first case study of successful Ringback Tone marketing strategies led by mobile operators will be the example of Cosmote Greece with its successful practice of mobile content offering.

Cosmote is the biggest mobile operator in Greece, having 1st Q 2006 customer base of ~8.8m out of total addressable population of ~45.6m. On January 2005, Cosmote introduced the Greek market a service for personalizing the standard ring-back tone, for the very first time.

Cosmote’s main objective was to offer its subscribers a new powerful and cost-effective way for personalizing their mobile. With Calling Tunes, Cosmote’s subscribers can replace the standard ringing tone with music, jokes, or sound bites that callers can hear while waiting to be answered. This feature is part of Cosmote’s voice music portal called ‘Beat Box 1414’ which includes: Calling Tunes (Cosmote’s commercial name for ringback tones on the Comverse Fun Dial Platform), song dedications, song listening and ringtones. Cosmote also offers true tones, ring tones, music video clips, music wallpapers, music news, music alerts, IFPI top10, artists’ voice messages, music quiz and information about music events.

Cosmote’s main focus was given primarily to youth segment (15-25) that enjoy using value added services. Secondary focus was given to attracting the 25-35 year olds that look for a way to personalize their phone. And, with the right content and the proper marketing campaign, Cosmote believed that ringback tones can attract all the different age groups.

Another major effort was to provide different options for greater personalization. Cosmote realized it should give the tools to make user’s mobile unique so it allows users the ability to set a Calling Tune as default to all users, the ability to select different Calling Tune per user and the ability to select different Calling Tune per time of day.

To accomplish its goals, Cosmote’s efforts were focused on getting the right content to the right people at the right time, by carefully selecting content to appeal the targeted segments. Cosmote’s strategy was to offer exclusive music content related to major events (Eurovision, FIFA World Cup, Mundobasket) and special dates (Valentines Day) only to its subscribers. Also, Cosmote promotes its entire mobile content services offering as a whole; realizing Eurovision fans, for example, would want to see video clips and to set up their ringback tone with their favourite song. This is a great example of leveraging successful content services to promote new ones.

Effective market segmentation, pricing policy (offer high value for money) together with exclusive and relevant music offering, and different options to personalize the service further more, is what made Cosmote’s ‘Beat Box’ a content success story.

And, I have a special treat for my readers! I managed to lay my hands on Cosmote’s Calling Tunes and mobile streaming ads using Cosmote’s exclusive Eurovision content. Enjoy! :)

View Cosmote Live Streaming.mpg (1948K)

View Cosmote Calling Tunes.mpg (1946K)

For the second case study and more insights about the ringback tone market - don't forget to tune in next Tuesday!