Mobile Marketing--Your cell phone has a "special offer" for you

Yesterday I heard a disk (or is it "disc"?) jockey on a local FM radio station say that today, "everyone's" cell phone numbers would be released to telemarketers and that we'd all start getting sales calls at our expense. It didn't sound quite right to me, and as it turns out, it wasn't--it's an urban Internet myth.

According to Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, "?under federal law telemarketers are not allowed to place pre-recorded messages to cell phones and that many states prohibit text messages to cell phones." The one thing that the disc jockey got right was that you can put your cell phone number on the national Do Not Call list to prevent telemarketers from calling you--at least, some telemarketers; I'm getting more and more calls on my home number from organizations that aren't covered by the FTC rules. In my case, they're mostly charities and political organizations, but we're also subject to calls from "companies with which you have an existing business relationship." I'm pretty sure that some of the parties calling me are skirting the rules--probably the ones that show up as "Out of Area" on my Caller ID screen.

But an e-mail pitch I received today concerns me more: A company called MCNE recently released appliedSB, a service that "allows brands the capabilities to communicate directly with their target audience via the customer's cellphone and the mobile internet." For example, the company says, you could attend an automobile race and see a banner telling you to send a text message to a number and receive information on sweepstakes, giveaways, or information on which cars are in first, second, and so on.

This sounds to me like a great use of technology--as long as cell phone owners retain the right to say "No." MCNE Russell Morgan, chief operating officer and co-founder, says that cellular carriers won't allow spamming and will require customers to opt in to get content. "Anybody who doesn't play by [cellular companies'] no-spamming rules will be prevented from sending transactions. Carriers will block them." But those carriers get a piece of every text message; what happens if they decide they're not making enough Revenue Per User (RPU)?

Morgan says an opt-in agreement during an event will generally expire when the event concludes; you won't continue to get offers after the race is over. However, with some offers, your opt-in may be good as long as you let it. You can always unsubscribe to such offers, of course. But that clause in the Do Not Call rules about not covering "companies with which you have an existing business relationship" makes me very suspicious--I can imagine privacy policies on websites and sales slips at retailers including fine print that affirms my consent to be spammed. When my cell phone starts pushing Best Buy coupons on me, I'm going to hit the roof.

Morgan points out that this method of delivery has nothing to do with Bluetooth spamming, wherein you could get a message on your phone when you walk into a store via that short-range technology. Bluetooth spamming, while annoying, doesn't cost you anything because it's not using your carrier's network, and you can turn off discovery mode on your handset to prevent it from happening at all.

But I can't help but think that we little consumers won't be able to avoid "mobile marketing" in one form or another--it's just too golden an opportunity for marketing types to pass up, and consumers simply have too little power these days to prevent it from happening. We're going to get spammed and pitched and "special-offered" to death, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Of course, I could be overreacting; feel free to tell me if you think I'm off my nut.