Beyond the simple phone call

MyThum Interactive Inc. is an example of a Canadian success story on how advertisers across Canada are using mobile phones to connect to their target audiences.

The Toronto-based company, founded to 2002, was one of the first in Canada to use an intercarrier concept to build a direct relationship with consumers through their mobile phone.

For clients that range across a wide variety of sectors from media companies to beer, food, automobiles and retailers, MyThum powers mobile strategies using a comprehensive toolkit that includes text messaging, interactive television, rich content, interactive voice response and promotion through out-of-home digital media.

“While the youth market has been quick to catch on to the use of interactive mobile, There’s been a significant growth with the 35-plus market in the past few months,” says Anthony Kanfer, chief technology officer, MyThum. “We’re also seeing more rich media applications.”

So far, Kanfer says that, while the English-Canadian market is seeing a lot of national programs using mobile, the French market is more into text messaging.

Back in 2002, MyThum was one of the first in North America to run a premium text messaging campaign. It has never looked back, developing numerous and ever more sophisticated programs as technology itself advanced.

Last year, MyThum worked with MuchMusic for a successful program where mobile phone users could interact
with the television.

The company recently renewed a resellers agreement with Edinburgh-based Mobiqa, world leaders in mobile barcode technology. This contract renewal follows a series of high profile mobile marketing successes from MyThum, including Molson Canadian Rocks Revealed, Canada’s first mobile ticketed gigs, and Rogers Wireless Box Office, the world’s first complete end-to-end mobile ticket purchase and delivery service.

Among its other partnerships, MyThum also has an agreement with MuseGlobal of San Francisco, a provider of award-winning content connection platforms worldwide. MyThum can leverage MuseGlobal to build customizable mobile applications for third parties, helping enterprises to efficiently build mobile portals that allow user access to preferred databases on a single, customized mobile platform.

Last November, MyThum Interactive ranked as the 44th Fastest Growing Technology Company in North America on Deloitte’s 2008 Technology Fast 500. And a month later, IDC named MyThum Interactive one of the ‘10 Canadian New Media Companies to Watch’.

Added to that, MyThum has direct technical connections with all the carriers in Canada as well as great relationships with them.

Whether it be sweepstakes, voting, polling, loyalty programs, event solutions, interactive voice response or other of the many solutions offered, MyThum develops them, leveraging content as part of a broad mobile strategy.
“The devil is in the details,” says Kanfer. “The carriers know that we pay attention to every detail and are up to speed on everything technological, whether it be texting or rich media or campaigns using bar codes, or interactive TV. They know we’re taking advantage of whatever is being developed.

“Everyone is still looking for the Year of the Mobile. This is the Decade of the Mobile. It’s hitting mainstream and we’re taking advantage of that!”