Europe : A personalised character, or ‘Mobi’, would convince 16-19 year olds to use videomail services for 3G phones. In some cases, they would proactively move to another operator offering the service.

This is according to recent focus group research from Mobeon Labs Marketing Research [1], a division of Mobeon, the mobile messaging specialist. It discovered that the most successful messaging services are those services that fulfil a specific need, and to which young people can feel emotionally attached. It also identified that the current range of voices heard when accessing voicemails are perceived as unfriendly, robotic, antiquated, characterless and impersonal.

“Young people view their mobile phones as an extension of themselves, therefore operators can build customer loyalty and increase ARPU by personalising both phones and services,” said Birgitta Olson, head of Mobeon Labs. “We demonstrated several different personalised messaging services to our focus groups, and animated characters were the overwhelming favourite.”

As a result of these findings, Mobeon is developing personalised ‘Mobies’ or mobile buddies, using 3D animation, for operators to offer as part of their packages to customers. Each ‘Mobi’ will have approximately 50 different prompts that will make it possible for the end-user to have a personalised character that answers the phone, provides alerts when there are new messages and gives fun, interesting instructions on how to use services like videomail or voicemail.

“Mobies will build a fashionable persona for the operator brands that young people instantly identify with,” continued Olson. “The fact that a majority of the teens in our focus groups suggested spontaneously that they would swap to the operator offering mobile videomail characters, proves how important personalisation is in the mobile market. New targeted services such as Mobies will help build a stronger relationship between operators and young subscribers.”