8 Things Santa Claus Does Better than Donald Trump

Anthony Wayne    Cool Stuff, mobile marketing     mobile marketing, santa, tech

The Greatest Businessman of All-Time

North Pole –When you think about the greatest businessman of all-time, who comes to mind?

Ford?  Rockefeller?  Bill Gates?  Donald Trump?  Richard Branson?  Mark Zuckerberg?  Steve Jobs?

Give me a break.

The greatest businessman of all time is, without a doubt, Santa Claus.

8 Things That Santa Claus Does Better than Donald Trump

Think about it.  Santa’s customers return year after year.  He has a factory that churns out toys 24/7 with little overhead.  He has loyal and long tenured employees that work for near minimum wage.  Of course, there aren’t a lot of jobs in this tough global economy, so imagine how hard it is for vertically challenged elves these days.

Santa Claus has a promotions department that secures prime visibility in crowded malls and gets him grand marshal positions in parades all over the world.  He also has a publicity crew that writes songs, poems, and even produces movies and television shows with him as the star.  His stamina is amazing and there are no performance enhancing drugs in his body, unless you count the chocolate chip cookies!

He’s an advertising genius.  Just watch TV in December and see how many commercials he’s on.  I’ve seen him drinking Coca-Cola for years now and am still amazed how he can balance himself on that Norelco razor after all the junk food he eats!

And talk about customer service.  It’s the best in the world!  No waiting on hold to talk to his telemarketers “Ryan” from Sri Lanka.  He knows what you want, often without your even telling him.

The Biggest Mistakes Santa Claus Makes

But, sometimes I think Santa Claus is slipping a bit the past few years.  He hasn’t really embraced html5, social networking, apps, or cloud technology very well.

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No Lamp Shades: Best Mobile Marketing Company Holds Holiday Party

Anthony Wayne    Company News     advanced mobile, Advanced Telecom Services., best mobile marketing company, company picture, mobile marketing company, qr code company

Advanced Telecom Services and Advanced Mobile held its annual holiday party on Saturday night at the St. Davids Golf Club.  The delicious dinner consisted of a choice between salmon and filet mignon.  Bob Bentz and Bret Dunlap provided the annual 2011 wrap up speech and both expressed extreme optimism for the company for the 2012 year.  Frank Butler provided the company with many laughs thanks to his hilarious comedy routine.

Back row L-R: Ken, Wynn, Julie, Jennifer, Margie, Celeste, Patricia, Frank B., Neal, David, Paul H., John, Sarah, Aixa, Scott, Alyssa, Frank M. --- Front L-R: Andrew, Eric, Sonny, Barb, Bret, Bob, Rebecca, Debbie, Paul K. --- Missing: Jeff, Dan, Pete, Ryan, Andy.

The History of the Ringtone Industry

Anthony Wayne    Canada, Cell Phones, mobile marketing     ringtones

Advanced Telecom Services has a storied history in the ringtone industry having developed two of the early ringtone sites in the United States market — MonsterTones and RingingPhone.  These sites and our ringtone businesses were sold to a Canadian company, Zim Corporation, in 2006.

Nevertheless, our early adoption of the ringtone business in 2002 helped lead Advanced Telecom Services to understanding mobile and becoming one of the premiere providers of mobile marketing services today.

EXTRA, EXTRA: Read All About It!

Anthony Wayne    media, mobile marketing     advertising, mobile, mobile marketing, spend

TV gets its fair share of ad dollars. Why not mobile?

Time spent on mobile phones per day increased by 30% in 2011.  That makes total mobile time 1:05 and greater than the 44 minutes per day devoted to the combined use of newspapers and magazines, according to a new eMarkter study.  Last year, both mobile time and print read time was at 50 minutes per day.

Other time spent per day is 2:47 on the internet.  Watching TV increased by 10 minutes to 4:34 per day.  Radio listening dropped by 2 minutes to 1:34 per day.

Total time spent with all media was 11:33 so nearly half of our day and more than half of our waking hours are spent with media.

The interesting thing is that mobile continues to not get its due in terms of advertising dollars invested.  While TV accounts for 42.5% of all media time and a corresponding equal share of the advertising market, mobile claims 10% of the consumer’s time, but only 1% of the advertising spend.

Sure, time is spent on the mobile phone talking so that may be time that counts into the overall numbers, but clearly more and more searches and internet browsing are done on mobiles so it should be doing better than 1%!  After all, nearly any business can do text message marketing at the very least.

Looks like more businesses need a mobile strategy.

Business Report: Mobile Marketing Tactics for 2012

Anthony Wayne    Mobile Apps, mobile marketing, Mobile Web Sites, Text Message Marketing     apps, apps development, mobile websites, QR Codes, sms marketing, text message marketing

Business executives are interested in many aspects of mobile marketing, according to a just released study by AT&T.  The executives showed the most interest (43%) in developing mobile apps.  Mobile bar codes, or QR Codes, also showed great interest among the businesspersons (41%).  Of course, if you are using a QR Code, you had better have it lead to a proper mobile website and 35% have interest in developing a mobile version of their website.  Text message marketing was also of great interest to the business owners.

How To Use a QR Code

Anthony Wayne    QR Codes     how to use, QR Codes, scan

QR Codes have been the darling of the marketing world for the past quarter.  This story from CBS News gives the basics of a QR Code, how to scan a QR Code, and how magazines can use QR Codes.

Online Dating Success Story

Anthony Wayne    Dating     hot Hispanic girl, hot Latina girl, online dating, online dating success, testimonial

Carla, a customer of MatchLink.com, explains how she met her husband Antonio on the online dating site, MatchLink.com. MatchLink.com is an internet dating site that is sponsored by Advanced Telecom Services.  You can become an online dating affiliate provider through our internet dating site.

Sprint Premium SMS Notice

Anthony Wayne    premium sms     chargebacks, premium sms, sprint

This is a notice from Sprint regarding premium SMS services.

Please be informed that effective January 1, 2012 Sprint will begin monitoring MT traffic on short codes that exceed a 20% refund rate. In addition, Sprint will review the first 90 days of MT traffic on new premium short codes that launch on or after December 2, 2011.

For codes with a refund rate above 20% in any given month, Sprint will review MT traffic for the month on which they are reporting. For example, if Sprint is using the January refund rate (which is calculated by taking the Nov/Dec/Jan refunds divided by Oct/Nov/Dec revenue), then they will review January MT traffic.

ATS Adds Shaw Communications Customers for 900 Number Billing

Anthony Wayne    Technology, Telemedia    

Advanced Telecom Services has confirmed that it has reached agreement to expand its 900 number coverage in Canada to include Shaw Communications.  Previously, users of Shaw Communications were not able to be billed for calls to Canada 900 numbers and were therefore blocked from calling 900 numbers on all providers.

“The 900 number industry in Canada remains quite robust,” said Bob Bentz, president of Advanced Telecom Services.  “We continue to expand our coverage and find that international customers especially are getting great results when they bring successful premium rate programs to Canada.”

Shaw Communications has 1.87 fixed line customers in Canada.  900 number provisioning for Shaw Communications customers is expected to be completed in first quarter, 2012.

Advanced Telecom Services has been providing 900 numbers solutions in Canada since 1993 when it was involved in the establishment of the original rules for the then new service.

JC Penney Uses Innovative QR Code Promotion

Anthony Wayne    QR Codes     ats, ATSqrcode.com, JC Penney, QR Codes

J.C. Penney is providing an innovative use of QR Codes for the holiday season.  There is no doubt that QR Codes are everywhere this Christmas season.

In fact, a very similar application was done by Advanced Telecom Services back in 1990. Let’s say the grandkids sent flowers to Grandma. The grandkids would record a message on a 900 number. When Grandma received the flowers, she would call an 800 number to listen to the message from the grandkids.