Wireless Wants its MTV

There are reasons why you can download ringtones from Papa Roach and Eminem, but not Benny Goodman and his Orchestra: The wireless industry loves the youth market. And why not? After all, teens and twenty-somethings are far more likely to get rid of their landline phones, use value-added, revenue-generating features and place a huge premium on the color, shape and size of the handsets they buy.

That's why Motorola, the world's No. 2 handset maker, is looking for help to hawk its wares from the undisputed juggernaut of youth culture — MTV. The two companies announced a comprehensive three-year, $75 million global marketing pact in March. Under the terms of the deal, MTV and Motorola will hold joint promotional events, preloaded MTV content will be available in Motorola handsets, and Motorola phones will be prominently featured in MTV programming.

“What we're trying to do is liken our brand with the MTV brand to be relevant to the youth audience, which is a key market we're going after,” said Alberto Moriando, director of global entertainment solutions for Motorola.

According to David Morrison, president of Philadelphia-based youth marketing consultancy Twentysomething, the idea of partnering with MTV is a “phenomenal” one. The youth market, he said, shops for cell phones mainly on price, so the more value-adds that can be squeezed into a low-end handset, the better. And by partnering with MTV, Motorola can give its handsets a value-add that's extremely potent in the youth market: coolness.

Morrison nevertheless cautioned that Motorola has to be careful if it's going to make the partnership work. If the company's marketing efforts seem too direct and too obvious, then many viewers will see through the promos, and the effect will be lost.

However, “if it's really deeply embedded, you run the risk of it not making an impact on the market,” Morrison said. “How well are they going to walk the line in making a message without compromising the entertainment?”

Motorola may have other issues to deal with. A few weeks after announcing the Motorola deal, MTV divulged that it had inked a similar marketing pact with mobile virtual network operator Virgin Mobile. While Virgin Mobile and Motorola don't compete directly, it stands to reason that another wireless company teaming with MTV could dilute the power of both partnerships.

The key to making each of the deals work is differentiating the content and target audiences of both companies so that Virgin and Motorola don't cannibalize each other, Morrison said. “How many times are you hitting the same person, and are you hitting them with the same message and the same content?” he asked. “If MTV is doing its job correctly, the content itself should be markedly different.”

Markedly different content from the network that airs the same 10 music videos over and over every day? We'll see about that.