Online meeting service Lavalife has clicked with Citytv’s Speakers Corner, sponsoring the show’s on-screen SMS text messaging component. The program invites viewers with cellphones to send messages during the show, with texts appearing in near real-time. Lavalife’s sponsorship, newly launched on April 9 for four weeks, sees the brand’s call-to-action embedded within a return path message when viewers submit a text during Speakers Corner.
‘It works because most of the messages coming in are about relationships or to send shout-outs to loved ones or people looking for each other. It’s a unique opportunity as they have a mobile product,’ says CHUM’s manager of interactive business development, Richard Kanee. He adds: ‘We have seen response rates on text message offerings as high as 10% and more [when people respond to offers embedded in a return path message.]’ As the current mobile sponsor, Lavalife’s logo appears five times in the flow of messages throughout the program. With up to 200 texts (and growing) received during the half-hour show, CHUM Interactive plans to add more SMS to other programs in the future.
