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Tony Hallett's After These Messages: Nokia, Vodafone and MMS touching our lives
"It's what the ad men - and any young men - would call the 'Hold on, I'm in here' moment."

By Tony Hallett

Published: Friday 04 April 2003

Why will we increasingly associate some of the biggest names in business and communications with naff storylines? Well they have to promote consumer services such as MMS somehow, says Tony Hallett...

There is a lot of pressure on mobile phone companies to get us using MMS. MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service but is also marketed as picture messaging, photo messaging, media messaging and more besides, depending on who's selling it. If only there had been as much pressure on the operators to make it work seamlessly.

But here's some good news. Over the past week we've had confirmation that UK networks will increasingly accept MMS messages from each other. Interoperability is key, as has been proved in other countries. Until now, it's been like the dark years of SMS - and we know texting only took off when anyone could text anyone else, regardless of their network.

So with the playing field now open, what are the major players showing us? Apart from the mixed media message about what MMS stands for from operators (O2's strap - "Invent your own language" - is apt), we have some polished TV ads supposedly showing us real-world user scenarios. (There are radio ads for this most visual of telecoms media but let's not go there.)

A Nokia commercial for its 7650 camera phone has been running for some time now. Two things are striking about it. First, and most worryingly, is the moment when a trio of office geeks corner a female co-worker in a photo-copying room. They block the door and start to take off their shirts. She looks worried. But no, they're not about to assault her, silly. They merely have 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' daubed across their combined flabby bellies. As their colleague captures the moment with her phone, they sheepishly walk off, she smiles.

But, worrying storyline aside, perhaps the major point comes later on when the birthday girl emails the photo to another co-worker. This of course could have been a time to show another 7650 but oh no, the ad shows the message coming through to a notebook PC on a desktop. Nokia, you see, is making it clear phone-to-PC email is possible.

What they are also doing, of course, is allowing for those consumers who walk back into Carphone Warehouse asking: "What do you mean I can't send a photo message to my wife because she's on T-Mobile?"

That particular Nokia offering stands out from most MMS-related ads because it takes the office as its setting. A large proportion - including the latest, international effort from the Finnish giant for its 3650 (young couple go from fairground to unplanned marital engagement because of one forwarded photo message) - concentrate on relationships.

This is understandable. The personal, private side of MMS will appeal to the mass market. Business applications will be thin on the ground, at least for a while.

So we get various Vodafone Live! vignettes - the besotted boyfriend on a commuter train with the picture plus sound message from his girlfriend or the teenager who walks a girl home to her Fulham flat, awkwardly heads off to the bus stop, only to get a change-of-heart photo message of a mug of coffee. It's what the ad men - and any young men - would call the "Hold on, I'm in here" moment. I like it more than seeing David Beckham or Michael Schumacher's smiling mug.

The point to all this is that with the money sunk into 3G and '3G-like' services such as MMS, video mailing and so on, we're going to see a lot more saccharine ads such as these. We may know the mobile operators around the world for providing crucial voice connectivity, simple data access and sometimes other business services but the public face we'll see most often will be different. It'll be Beckham being MMS'd a photo of little Brooklyn on his first day at school. Mark my words.