A few weeks ago, I received this rather annoying message:

I'm not a gambler - and I've never had a business relationship with Coral. So why are they sending me this tripe? I took to Twitter to find out.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Hey, @Coral - SMS spam is not cool. Ever heard of opt-in consent? pic.x.com/zrtmcuyrkn

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Coral

@Coral

Replying to @edent@edent Hi Terence. We're sorry to hear this wasn't of interest. Opt-out using the info provided and you won't recieve any future messages.

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Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @Coral.@Coral why did you spam me in the first place? I never gave you my number, not have you received permission to use it.

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Coral

@Coral

Replying to @edent@edent Hi Terence. Rest assured your number has been lawfully obtained by us, through a third-party you have consented to.

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Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @Coral.@Coral no, it hasn't. When I submit a Data Protection request, are you going to be able to explain which 3rd party you got it from?

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Coral

@Coral

Replying to @edent@edent Our twitter team can't provide any additional info on this unfortunately. You'll need to speak to Coral customer care on 0800 440011.

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I spoke to customer care who were utterly bemused as to why I'd received this. They promised to look into it.

DBS

A few days later I got a voicemail from Martin Johnson of DBS Data. Run out of a small industrial estate in Chelmsford, DBS Data offers bulk SMS services as well as junk mail and email.

DBS finally got back to me about how my number ended up with them.

Following your recent communication I can confirm that we have removed your details from our systems and, following any pending client campaigns within the next 28 days, your details will not be used again by DBS for any of our clients. Your information was provided to us by the below organisation who you may wish to contact. USM Digital 2, Greswolde House 197b Station Road Knowle Solihull West Midlands B93 0PU Tel: 0156 482 2633 http://www.usmdigital.co.uk/

Right, onwards!

USM Digital

As far as I can tell, USM Digital is a very small business run by Mark Reohorn, Mark was quick to answer the phone, and promised that he'd get back to me that afternoon.

Two days later I received a phone call from "Dana" from USM. You can take a listen to a excerpt:

According to Dana, my number had been gathered by them in August 2007. That's six-and-a-half years ago. I didn't think to ask if they knew I was still using the number. Most people would change numbers several times over that time period.

I've no real way of knowing if I did opt-in or opt-out of sharing my numbers in that glorious summer of old. I'll be generous and say that it is entirely possible that I gave my phone number to what I thought was an insurance company - but I don't think that means the number should be spammed over six years later for unrelated goods.

Back To Basics

It should be incumbent on all of these parties to check the data they're using.

Coral told me they bought the data in good faith from DBS. I assume they said "give us verified numbers of men aged 24-32 who met criteria X, Y, Z."

I imagine that DBS - not having a suitable quantity of data - then went off to another supplier and said "Give us something vaguely suitable - the mugs at Coral will never know the difference."

USM Digital, it would appear, dragged out data from half a decade ago, dusted it off, and then spun it as numbers who had adequately given consent.

And, with that, Coral end up spamming people who never asked to have their numbers shared with a company which helps drug dealers launder money.

SMS marketing can be a powerful tool in the right hands. In this case, Coral comes across as indiscriminate spammers who don't care about the provenance of their marketing data. DBS are a broker who have to rely on dodgy 3rd party suppliers. USM's data is so out of data that it may as well be useless.

Remember, if you receive spam SMS please report them to the Information Commissioner's Office. If you can find who has supplied your number, ringing them up and having a friendly word with them about their spamming practices is very cathartic!

I concluded, by saying

You’re not too stupid to understand how to make effective use of QR codes. The “commandments” are mostly just common sense.

Use QR codes wherever they seem appropriate – but make sure that they’re scannable, work for everyone who scans them, and lead somewhere useful.

Y'see - I don't think people are too thick to use QR codes. Most of the time...

My Isle Of Wight

There's a new campaign to encourage people to visit the Isle of Wight. A laudable campaign to be sure. Take a look at this stunning poster. There's a QR code in the bottom left corner. Depressingly, the site isn't very mobile friendly. But that's not the worst of it. Not by a long shot.

Look Closer

Take a look at the actual code they've used. Try to scan it - I dare you.

Muppets.

This is the story of how I hijacked stole hacked recycled it and, in doing so, prevented Nokia from having a serious PR problem.

E7 Poster

This is advert for the new Nokia E7. It really emphasises the tweeting capabilities of the handset.

Nokia's marketing team have illustrated this by showing off a couple of tweets on the handset. One of which contains a Bit.ly short URL.

Here's the close up... it points to http://bit.ly/CYRWP

Being the curious chap that I am, I thought "Ooooh! I wonder where that'll take me? To some awesome Nokia competition page perhaps?"

So I typed it into my phone. Yup - the idiots in Nokia's marketing team didn't register the bit.ly link!

So, it was a simple matter for me to pop over to bit.ly, create a short URL pointing to this site, then customise it to say CYRWP.

Malicious Use

If I were a scallywag, I'd have pointed the URL to an Android website, or perhaps one of the less-than-stellar E7 reviews.

If I were nasty, I'd have pointed it to a malware page.

If I were a criminal genius (which I am not) I would have pointed it to a page which asked for credit-card number, email addresses, phone numbers, etc of people intetersted in buying / winning the handset.

I'm closer to scallywag than evil mastermind - so I pointed the URL to this blog post. Hopefully this page will serve as a reminder to Nokia's marketing team that you should....

Always check URLs before printing them on an advert!

Bootnote

Two other interesting things to note.

• The #hashtag in the pictured tweet isn't hyperlinked. Tsk
• The URL "CYRWP" is an anagram of "CRY WP". Are the Nokians in floods of tears over the death of Symbian and the coming rise of Windows Phone 7?

Why Almost?

I'm a nit-picker - but here are a few suggestions to make the campaign better.

• Make the code bigger. When dealing with newsprint and its fuzzy images, it's always better to make the QR as large as possible - or as large as your advertising team will allows. Larger images are easier to scan.
• 
• A little more whitespace around the code would improve its readability.
• The text instructions are great - either SMS or type the URL in directly - but the text is fuzzy and indistinct.
• The video is presented in 4:3 aspect ratio.
• 
• I appreciate that you don't want people watching a stuttering 720p video over EDGE - but I feel that making the video widescreen to suit the majority of phones would have made the video more impressive. As it is, 240 x 192 the image looks a little blurred which perhaps isn't the best advert for HD.
• Finally, I noticed the campaign appearing in other papers.
• 
• As far as I can see, it's the same code. It would be a good idea to use a different code in each paper so you can see if, for example, Times readers are more likely to scan than Metro readers.

As I said - very minor complaints. Overall, an impressive use of QR codes from Sky. Well done to those involved.

Into the crowded arena steps the HTC Wildfire.

I'm a huge fan of the HTC hardware - but I often feel that they ignore the customer service side of things. For too long they were silent on when their firmware releases were coming out - leaving VillainROM and Cyanogen to pick up the slack.

Android phones have typically come in two flavours, hyper expensive devices like the Nexus One and cheap-as-chips devices like the LG Apex. (Seriously? US$80 for a phone... wow!)

The Wildfire sits comfortably between the two at a reasonable sub-£200 price to own the phone outright. I'm sure it's free on contract.

Right - watch this video so that I can earn tuppence ha'penny from eBuzzing.

The specs are impressive for such a cheap phone. The Android version is the slightly outdated 2.1 - I'd have expected HTC to stick Android 2.2 (Froyo) on there - especially as 2.3 (Gingerbread) is launching imminently. Hopefully HTC won't be so lackadaisical with its update process for this phone.

You can buy the HTC Wildfire from Amazon and all good phone retailers.

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Well, for those of us in the UK. For the poor sods who find themselves living in the wilderness of ROW (Rest Of World) this is their BBC experience...

BBC With Adverts

The reasons for me seeing this are rather complex and involve VPNs and a co-located BES.

Regardless, what's this advert like? The text is small and indistinct. The purpose of the message is rather vague. There's no allure. Just a static banner. How very 1996. Well, gentle reader, as you know from previous excursions, I am prepared to click where no ordinary mortal would.

Click

www.BarCap.com

Oh - as the kids say - Em Gee. What is this?

For those of you with poor eyesight, Barclays have pointed me straight at the desktop version of their website. There is no mobile friendly site in view. Not even a link to say "On a mobile? Click here."

To compound the error - the site is JavaScript heavy.  Too heavy for the BlackBerry I use to view the site.  You remember BlackBerry? The incredibly popular handset that every successful business-person carries.  You know, the target demographic.

What To Do

• Make your advert interesting.
• Make your site mobile friendly - or at least suitable for your target demographic's handset

Is it really that hard?

Based on the evidence I've accumulated, mobile advertising is subject to a lot of hype and not a lot of professionalism.

Take this example as seen on my BlackBerry 9000.

Flickr iPhone Advert

First off the bat, it gets my phone wrong. It should be using the User Agent to determine which advert to serve.

Well, let's be a good consumer and click on it any way...

What the deuce?!

It has taken me to the Desktop version of the iTunes installation page - despite knowing I'm on a mobile!

What Should Have Happened?

• My phone requests the advert.
• Advertising agency serves up a device specific ad.
• I click on the ad.
• The ad server sees my User Agent
• For iPhone, it should automatically redirect me to the App Store
• For BlackBerry / Android / S60  etc, it should automatically redirect me to the native app store
• For everything else, it should automatically redirect me to http://m.flickr.com/

How Can It Go So Wrong?!

I'm making the assumption that this is an advert by flickr.  It may well be an advert by a third-party who have a (chargeable) app for iPhone.

Even if it is the latter - why are they advertising on BlackBerry?  Or, rather, why is their advertising agency wasting their marketing budget by showing an advert on a device which can't support the content?

Make Sure Your Advert Works

It's not rocket science.  If people can't get to your product, they won't spend money with you.  They'll also get a negative impression of your brand.