Mobile Media Simplified. Accessible. Relevant.

RADIO CAPTURED? CELLEGRAMS MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR LISTENERS TO SHARE TALK RADIO CLIPS OVER THE TELEPHONE
The best moments in radio need not disappear

(July 1st, 2008) – CelleCast announced today that it has extended the shelf life of punditry by allowing it to be easily captured and shared among talk radio listeners. CelleGrams allow listeners of a radio program on CelleCast to easily share memorable utterances by hosts with others. When a profound moment is heard, the listener can bookmark and send that precise program clip right from their phone for someone else to hear.

“Until now, great moments in radio vanish into the ether the moment they are heard,” said Andrew Deal, CelleCast founder and CEO. “We’ve created a very simple way to virally share radio in a way that anyone can do, simply by pressing 3 while listening.”

Sending a CelleGram is done in three easy steps. Press 3, add a number and record a greeting. CelleGrams directly address the two biggest goals of every talk radio host: How to better engage with the audience and how to expand the listener base by word of mouth.

“The addition of CelleGrams enhances our claim that radio can lead in a new media landscape. We believe in the power of radio and are leading in the NAB 2020 initiatives,” said Deal.

CelleCast, Inc. was launched in November 2007 to bring radio and all things audio to any phone, any time, anywhere. CelleCast is building a network of programming focused on top-tier radio programs. Its current partner networks include Premiere Radio Networks, United Stations Radio Networks, Advanced Media and Envision Radio Networks. CelleCast exists to elevate the marketplace of ideas, allowing listeners to do more than just listen, but to build playlists and social networking profiles, send CelleGrams to friends, and talk back to the shows. Comprehensive mobile voice-text-email messaging tools are scheduled to be added to the service later in 2008.

The best way to responsibly understand and share with others what mobile advertising is, read the wikipedia article now.

This post will be just restating the obvious for the new media readers among us, but even then, you have to keep up daily to maintain a clear head about what is relevant vs what is mere intrigue.

The bottom line in case anyone asks you, mobile advertising, the little $600 million step-child to internet advertising altogether, consists of two main things:
1) Little banner on on little screens on phone browsers.
2) Sponsored text messages, or some other way to use text messaging without crossing the line into spam.

Although mobile marketers only talk openly about a steady increase in this existing paradigm, as no one apart from visionary entrepreneurs wants to be pinned to specific predictions, the real gut about the exciting future of mobile advertising lies in emerging disruptive mobile media ideas and innovations. We’ll see quite a few things fail, and a few things rise to redefine the mobile landscape. Of course as an self-promoting entrepreneur myself I believe our audio advertising model will be one of the disruptors.

Take a look at this chart I found from a post last summer…

I bet if we got a focus group of 20 mobile executives together now, most would say this revenue breakdown is already outdated. I would be one of them, and would argue purely from changes in pricing and consumer trends since last year, that the pie will be cut in a whole different way.

Or rather CelleCast in Convergence. Radio Ink Convergence, that is. Thanks to Brida and the Radio Ink team for their thorough, accurate coverage of CelleCast’s unique spin on radio convergence. We always appreciate boosts in getting the word out about what we’re up to in making radio on demand more accessible for listeners and hosts alike. Some highlights from the article:

June 26, 2008: Music on mobile phones is much talked-about these days, especially since the iPhone began becoming the ubiquitous replacement to the ubiquitous iPod. But, along with all that music, Talk radio has a home on the phone as well, by way of CelleCast. And not just mobile phones — it works on landlines too.

CelleCast (say “sell-uh-cast”) lets people get talk programming on demand, over any phone, for free. Founder and CEO Andrew Deal tells Convergence Weekly, “We work with a system that creates maximum accessibility. We want people to be able to get to the content without having to be in a special plan, a special phone — we’re basically a walled-garden-buster to allow radio on demand to be as successful as radio.”

CelleCast’s programming lineup includes United Stations Radio Networks’ Lou Dobbs, Take on the Day’s Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Clear Channel Talk KFI-AM/Los Angeles afternoon hosts John & Ken, and syndicated tech show Into Tomorrow With Dave Graveline.The shows are available segment by segment on the day of broadcast, with a delay of about 20 minutes. There’s also a menu of podcasts and short features.

Tuesday, July 1st marks the big day in which California and Washington drivers will be required by law to use hands free devices while operating a cell phone and driving. We’ve been ramping up for this day, and we’re circling back to remind our readers to be prepared. There a number of ways in which you can become law abiding in this regard.

• Speaker Phone
• Use a bluetooth wireless device.
• Use a “wired” headset. (The kind that plugs into your headset.)
• Install a “car kit” (most expensive)
• Abstinence (don’t use your cell phone while driving)

You can find a variety of affordable options to safely equip you for driving under the new laws, such as this bargain-priced car kit.

As it pertains to radio listening, it could well attrition as those who’ve thus far chosen radio over using cell phone in car, for safety reasons, will now have good reason to jump on the hands free train. Further, listening to cellecasts and other cellphone-based audio media will suddenly be a lot more practical and feasible than ever before. Fourth Speaker has advocated hands free listening all along. This new law just puts necessity in our corner in addition to convenience, which has been there all along.

As for me, I’ll be heading to the Sprint store this week to replace my Bluetooth headset that remains MIA.

Greetings. With the addition of our new art director, Elin McLain, and a new boost from our great visit to NY where new initiatives and partner announcements were warmly welcomed, we are proud to announce our new blog look and newsletter format change.

Instead of daily updates logging our ongoing conversation with the world about the emergence of the fourth speaker (audio media on mobile devices) we have found that a weekly newsletter style email update is much more digestible and relevant to our partners and subscribers. So going forward, if you are signed up here, you will receive this weekly digest and be kept abreast about all the relevant news relating to the future of cell phone radio. We’ll try to avoid just repeating general radio buzz and tech news that is not relevant to things you can take action on, and instead give you specifics on how you can leverage talk radio to reach 440 million phones in a profitable way.

Our newsletter audience is tiered based on access level, so posts relevant to only our content partners will be restricted from access by the general public. Just contact us to have your access level upgraded to get access to posts about new profitable marketing ideas and inside information about how our network is expanding.

We are here to create and to help you profitably navigate the future of talk radio.

Cheers,

Andrew Deal
CEO, CelleCast

This manner of consolidation might streamline ad distribution, or it might create a bottleneck that limits radio’s desperate need to innovate and work in line with the changing landscape of advertising toward the interactive age.

We can only speak as pioneers of a new kind of radio advertising that requires a degree of creative thought from our partners. With creative independence being in short supply these days, my initial reaction to this announcement is that of concern.

After some early announcements at the Talkers Conference and some early successful tests, we are about to make a larger announcement about out newest product feature in the Cellecasting experience — CelleGrams.

CelleGrams allow avid radio listeners to “capture and share the best moments in radio” with their friends.

Try it now by simply pressing 3 while listening to any cellecast, and let us know what you think, as we refine it further before our major announcement.

Once again, Mark Ramsey hits the nail on the head in a post about marketing radio.

Coming up with the perfect tagline won’t make your company magically be received by it’s target audience, Ramsey opines. Rather, it’s about standing for something (a “position”) and making the attractiveness of your product originate from the value of what you stand for, rather than creating a perception based on a clever tagline. If your tagline reflects your corporate direction but the product doesn’t back it up, the biggest marketing budget in the world won’t help.

We’re right in that struggle, from the other side. We have a solid concept: a universally accessible way for anyone with a phone to access premium talk radio on demand, for free. It’s our unique value proposition. And those who have looked into it realize it is both unique and valuable. We’re focused on continually delivering more value for our customers. In the process though, coming up with a concise way to communicate it (a tagline) has been a lively discussion. A discussion for which we’re always open to suggestions.

We agree with Mark Ramsey.

Radio needs to change with consumer trends, not force consumers to use it the same way they always have and tout marginal points of cross-promotional benefits. The NAB’s 2020 initiatives are a forward looking platform, that companies like ours are fully compliant with. But in reality, the NAB’s real stance is a defense of the status quo that is being revealed as not serving the best interests of the industry.

MocoNews reports this conclusion as to why Cliq failed as a music to mobile provider…

“Grierson said the mobile platform failed through no fault of our own. He said, Launching anything Internet-connected on mobile networks can be a problem. Mobile operators can’t unite on the protocol required so that handsets can use the same (internet) connectivity.”

Look for more of these statements to be made over and over again in the next 18 months before some kind of standard arises. The problem is these companies knew about this protocol compatibility challenge from the beginning, but pitching mobile to investors in the last few months has been easy money until this marketplace reality has been understood. The irony is that it hurts companies like ours from the valuation we deserve even though our model is free from this complication, but we’ll keep plugging 100% universality of access until more savvy partners arise out of the ashes of the current wave of mobile deals.