New service links mobiles with Websites

Red Message, a service linking companies’ Websites to mobile phones, is to launch in the UK and Sweden this week in the first stage of a global roll-out.

The service allows consumers to request text messages be sent to their mobiles from companies whose products or services they are interested in. On receipt of a message, the consumer can call back to the sender by pressing a button on their phone.

The messages are sent through the Short Message Service (SMS) that mobile users already use to send text messages.

Red Message will launch a service from February to allow transactions to be carried out digitally on the phone rather than companies having to handle consumer enquiries through a call centre.

Red Message is targeting employment, real estate, e-commerce, music, books, travel, sport, financial services and community sites in an effort to get them to sign up. In the UK, Reed Recruitment and sports Website Scrum.com have already done so.

Red Message says it will not be bound by SMS and will adopt e-mail services as the mass-market embraces the technology.

Red Message was formed by executives from Scandinavia’s largest mobile operator Telia.

Telephony and digital media consultant and marketing director Steven Yurisich says: “We live in a world which is moving away from PCs to mobile communications, and Red Message addresses this.”

Yurisich will appoint an advertising agency in the UK and Germany in January, and an agency in each country as the service rolls out across the rest of Scandinavia, France, Italy and the US next year.

In March, a campaign worth up to £1m will accompany the launch of the service.