Cell Phones and Viral Marketing

Dreamworks has created a viral marketing site for the horror film sequel "The Ring 2" (click on England to see how the campaign works).  Here is Adfreak's description of how the viral campaign works:

You enter a friend’s e-mail address and cell-phone number. The site then sends the friend an e-mail, inviting him or her to view the Ring Two trailer online. As the video plays, the friend’s cell phone rings, and a voice on the other end whispers “seven days”—which, if the friend has seen the Ring movies, might just prompt a soiling of the friend’s trousers.

This viral campaign uses the cell phone as central part of the campaign.  Dreamworks is doing this promotion in a variety of countries, but not the US.

This reminds me of the very successful Tide Coldwater Challenge, which asked visitors to the site to send emails to their friends in support of energy saving cold water washing.  IFTF's Future Now has a more complete post on the coldwater challenge, which ended up reaching over 1 million people in the US.

Comments

[Martin]

I think it's an interesting idea combining the two mediums together.

What I don't like of this techniques it's about giving out a friends mobil number. It's a question of trust, who can guarantees that the number is being used only for that purpouse ?
Lately I've been seeing this more and more often.
Where is the limit of advertising and giving out personal information ?

[Steve]

Matin: You make an important point. Viral campaigns are designed to bypass spam filters and get the receiver to read the message because it comes from a friend.

I've followed a number of these campaigns and I've been surprised by the lack of negative feedback over these tactics. I thought there would be complaints over privacy, and complaints about friends giving out email addresses. This has yet to happen.

So far most of these campaigns have been fun or included giveaways. My guess is most people simply don't give the privacy implications much thought.

[Courtney Gidts]

I've managed to save up roughly $41678 in my bank account, but I'm not sure if I should buy a house or not. Do you think the market is stable or do you think that home prices will decrease by a lot?