Brand expansion
What if your brand is not a small business or a service brand? Here are a couple of ideas on possible "use cases" for brands.
Temporary event. Any short-run promotion could benefit from a shared Siri short code, especially movies. A movie-branded geo-caching scavenger hunt could employ Siri. "Siri, tell National Treasure that I have found clue 3 and the secret message is 'Drink more Ovaltine.'" To which the brand could respond with the next clue. You could even have Siri respond to inquiries like, "Siri, give me a hint to find clue three." If the participant completes the scavenger hunt, the movie company would send a text message with a link that launches the Fandango app and provides a free ticket to the movie.
Augment an existing digital campaign. Siri could augment most existing multimedia efforts of social connection. For example, "Siri, tell Coca-Cola that I want to send a coke to the machine in NYC that says 'Happiness from Sean X.'" Wouldn't this be a nice integration with the "Buy the World a Coke" campaign?
National campaign with local delivery of product. "Siri, tell Chevy to inform me if there are promotions for the Chevy Volt in my area." Such a request would trigger the local dealer network to contact you. Or, "Siri, tell FTD to send flowers to my girlfriend with the message 'I love you.'" How does FTD know who my girlfriend is? Well, that can either be set at the FTD site tied to your phone number, or FTD could text you back for her name and address. But what about which flowers to send her? Easy: FTD merely chooses three bouquets with links in the SMS based on keywords "girlfriend" and "love."
Consumer goods. "Siri, tell Tide to send me its best discount coupon."
All of this could be accomplished with SMS short codes through Siri. Granted, for some, you'd need a way to interpret the request. But this is not rocket science. It is possible today.
The key here is two-way interaction where the SMS short codes used by Siri help engage the consumer further. Each and every time the consumer interacts, that person is saying your brand name, out loud. And if you've ever wondered how brands get cemented in our squishy grey-matter, that is it. Siri can take ephemeral online brands and imbue them with personality -- personality with an almost tangible quality that is so essential to brand recall and, hence, purchase behavior.
