Mobile Marketing Association announces initiative to grow urban content market

By Colin Gibbs
RCRWirelessNews.com
(March 29, 2007) The Mobile Marketing Association announced an effort to boost the mobile urban content market—and to help entrepreneurs looking to provide the stuff.

The MMA unveiled a special-interest group charged with “creating networking, education and policy opportunities” among content owners, carriers and technology developers. The committee hopes to identify the technological and business needs of the urban content community as well as serving as a bridge between network operators and the rest of the content value chain.

Christopher Jones, senior product marketing manager for Boost Mobile L.L.C., will spearhead the initiative along with Real Hip Hop CEO John Huffman IV. Membership in the Urban Special Interest Group will be open to all MMA members.

Urban entrepreneurs “are going to get all the information they’re going to need,” Huffman said at a press conference during CTIA Wireless 2007 outlining the group’s agenda. “From which business segment they should be in to how to get the capital. That’s the No. 1 focus for us.”

The move follows the launch of a “Women in Wireless” initiative announced by the MMA earlier this week. Vidiator CEO Connie Wong and MMA Executive Director Laura Marriott co-chair that committee.

Huffman and Jones hope to help connect content providers with Hispanic and African-American subscribers, who represent some of the hungriest consumers of wireless data. A year-old study from Telephia found that while the two demographic groups account for 21 percent of all U.S. mobile users, they represent 42 percent of wireless TV subscribers. A report from Compete Inc. determined that Hispanic shoppers are more likely to look for music-enabled phones online than other shoppers, and that Hispanics are more likely to pay for downloadable content.

“When you’re talking about the urban content market, when you’re talking about the Hispanic market, those are not the long tail,” said Cyriac Roeding, executive vice president of CBS Mobile and chair of the MMA’s North American board of directors. “Those are large groups. In fact, they are vastly overrepresented” among consumers of mobile content.

Real Hip Hop is a VeriSign Inc.-based online storefront that offers urban entertainment news as well as a forum for music fans. Huffman said he’s working to raise awareness of the initiative and let entrepreneurs know that help is available.

“I’m very passionate about this, and I’m glad we’re getting the opportunity,” Huffman told reporters. “We need your help to get the word out.”


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