Don't be surprised if your mobile phone will beep more often with more marketing offers.

Cellular companies like the Ayala-owned Globe Telecom, together with other companies, are recognizing that they could leverage on the country's approximately eight million mobile subscribers to deliver marketing messages.

Globe president Gerry Ablaza said the company is encouraged by the warm public response generated by its recent marketing tie-up with McDonalds Phils. The two companies recently partnered for a marketing campaign in line with the food chain's anniversary. Globe subscribers were randomly sent a text message that they could claim one free regular order of French fries just by showing the text message to any McDonald's outlet.

Mr. Ablaza was one of the guests yesterday in the panel discussion on the Filipino wireless lifestyle as part of the symposium organized by the Philippine Wireless Application Users Group at the Shangri-La Hotel in Makati City, central Metropolitan Manila. Although he did not specify figures, Mr. Ablaza said McDonalds generated 12 times more responses in the "digital coupon" marketing approach that previous physical coupons. He said McDonalds also generated additional orders from the Globe subscribers that claimed their free fries.

Mr. Ablaza hinted at the possibility of extending the same kind of marketing partnerships with other companies. He clarified, however, that subscribers are given a choice to "opt-out" from the service in case they do not wish to receive such kind of messages. In the case of the McDonald's campaign, however, Mr. Ablaza said subscribers barely used this feature.

"One of the bigger challenges in the industry is to make sure that this technology is not abused," Mr. Ablaza stressed.

Meanwhile, Elmar M. Gomez, chief operating officer of wireless application provider MobileArts, Inc., said the propensity of Filipinos to communicate will always be the key driver to growth in the local wireless market. Mr. Gomez has founded a local company that allows mobile subscribers to access and send e-mail via text messaging technology. Around 390,000 subscribers are now using the service, Mr. Gomez said.

Comparing the Philippine market from the Japanese market, which has 26.2 million mobile subscribers on NTT DoCoMo, alone, Mr. Gomez said Filipinos generally use wireless applications to communicate while he observed that the Japanese tend to be more inclined to use applications to "entertain themselves."

Gerard Elviña, acting PhilWAPP coordinator, also said during the panel discussion that Filipinos have matured in how they use text messaging since the technology was introduced in the country in the late 90s. He noted that the cell phone was a potent communication tool during the "EDSA II" revolution that toppled former president Joseph E. Estrada last January. Cell phones were also used to transmit election returns through WAP during the last national polls, he said.


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