Less ads and more chatting!

Sunday, 22 october 2017 | Redacción CEU

Have you realized that we almost do not talk to our friends on the phone? Why wasting time and effort calling, when we can quickly contact them with a simple text through our smartphone? Instant messaging is the queen of the daily communications. If our grandparents and parents learn how to send us Whatsapp messages, why would not brands do it? A new digital language is built up, it is the social messaging. The new challenge of marketing focuses on creating a solid channel between companies and users. New consumers do not want advertisements, they want to chat!

How tedious it is sometimes to get in touch with a company customer service! Does the music that sounds when you are on hold also exasperates you when you are waiting to talk to an operator? Have you pressed four different keys to get there but you still do not get a response? What you really want is to talk to someone who speaks your language and not an irritating answering machine. Can you imagine how your experience would change if you just had to send an instant message to be in contact with a firm? You would save a lot of time and effort! That is the challenge that marketers are now considering, the social messaging development.

SMS' were expensive, limited, unidirectional and they did not have acknowledgment of receipt. Social messaging made a grand entrance in the digital world as an opposition to the traditional system of short messages. Its appearance a few years ago offered a solution that compensated all these problems. Now, these platforms users can communicate easily, quickly and cheaply, and, besides, in an immediate and successful way. Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger or WeChat, among others, have been consolidated as the great alternatives to traditional SMS services. They even gain  market share to other social networks.

With the cell phone in the hand

Social messaging now occupies a good part of our digital activity, in particular, the one we do through our phone. For a few years now, when we do not have our cellphones at our fingertips, that makes us feel uncomfortable. The fear of spending time without it has even given name to a new disease, nomophobia –"no-mobile-phone phobia"–. We no longer call our contacts, we rather texting them! The relationship between users and devices is so close that sometimes we do not take the look away from our smartphone screen while having dinner or walking. In addition to causing accidents, this "telephonic idyll" opens up a whole sea of possibilities in the digital marketing world.

Brands have always tried to translate the language of the masses, to integrate it and to be part of it. If companies do not speak our language, nor use our channels, how will they conquer us? The digital transformation has altered our way of communicating; the landline phone is a decorative element of the house, public services are the only ones that write letters, bosses prefer sending "telegrams" than sending emails... we do not even use the computer as much as before! The cell phone has become the best ally in the marketing game and mobile messaging an ace up its sleeve.