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Skype Marketing on the Street (First-Time Ever?)

November 17, 2005 07:44 PM

Topics: Business | Europe | Skype杂志

by Lee Dryburgh.

I took some pictures of the Skype marketing team in action near Torrington Place, London.

One of their flyers reads "Death to the don't-make -me-open-it phone bill", "...you can say goodbye to phone bills that would scare a small island nation".

Another piece of marketing literature they were handing out included marketing for the 6000 UK WiFi hotspots from The Cloud. This was interesting for me because it was what I would term co-branded. For those interested, a photo of the offer is here.

I can not help but wonder if Skype somehow plan to tackle Google in the access market by partnering up with ever more WiFi providers. Such a competition between two huge providers of free telephony combined with WiFi access could make very interesting play.

Here are their future dates (two days in each location) that the Skype marketing team will be visiting:

  • Hertfordshire 17th Nov
  • UCE Birmingham 21st Nov
  • Derby 23rd Nov
  • Nottingham Trent 25th Nov
  • Leeds Metropolitan 29th Nov

  • Manchester Metropolitan 1st Dec
  • Liverpool John Moores 5th Dec
  • Liverpool 7th Dec
  • Central Lancashire 7th Dec
  • Northumbria Newcastle 13th Dec
  • Newcastle Upon Tyne 15th Dec

Somehow seeing "Skype people" on the streets was somehow good and somehow something of a concern. On one hand it was amazing to watch demographic sectors (primarily old ladies) that I believe would not even try Skype if you informed them taking the free packages away with a degree of excitement at the prospect of free calls.

But on the other hand it made Skype feel somehow like a cheap call provider such as OneTel. I just hope that instead it is being used to spread the word, get people on board using what they understand (simple telephone calls) and at the same time kick in more exciting services and business propositions to the end user.

If a picture can speak a thousand words, take a look at the picture of the phone booth outside the building that housed the Skype marketing lot. In all the years I have watched the booths, I have only saw one person use the Internet booth. I guess it was yet another telco mistake to roll such booths out across the UK.

Lee Dryburgh is a hands-on telco engineer who also dreams about the future of telephony as part of a doctorate at the University College London. He looks for others' thoughts on the future of telephony at MyDoctorate.com.

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Posted by: MN at November 17, 2005 10:56 PM

Skype were at the central railway station in Stockholm, Sweden the 9:th Novemeber, also here together with the Cloud (I think they got hotspots Europe-wide).
I got myself a simple headset (I'll give it away to a non-skyper) and 2 hours of Wifi-access.

Posted by: julian.bond [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 18, 2005 12:06 AM

re those internet phone booths. At the height of the WiFi hype cycle we spent some time trying to convince some interested parties that every one of them should have been a wifi hotspot. In fact the cost of kit has come down so much now that it's entirely feasible to add a Wifi/adsl box to every phone booth, not just the Internet ones.

Posted by: harpal Uppal at December 4, 2005 9:17 AM

we at rfxstudents.co.uk have just launched the Uk's largest student discount service with over 1000 retailers . We have just started our marketing campaigns at many Uk universities . . . we have also noticed the skype teams about and there exists possibilities for us both to save mony and better get the message accross to the uk student market . . .
you may contact me on 078558 19002
thanks

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