MyThum Interactive builds relationships between marketers and mobile audiences using technology, but it would be a mistake to characterize the Toronto-based MyThum as a tech company, says Michael Carter, president and CEO.

Michael Carter

Founded in 2002, MyThum has been bootstrapped from day one, acquiring its clients and operating partners via relationship building. “We get accused of doing it the Canadian way,” says Carter. “We never went out and raised a bunch of venture capital dollars. We tried to respond to our customer’s demands and grow organically.”

Along the way, MyThum has introduced a number of firsts in the Canadian mobile media space. In 2003, MyThum was part of the first cross-carrier premium SMS initiative in North America. In 2004, MyThum introduced the first integrated television solution (live text-to-screen) for Rogers Sportsnet, and the first mCommerce initiative in Canada. And in 2006, MyThum provided the solution that powered the first live event ticketed using scannable bar codes to a mobile device.

At a basic level, MyThum takes products and services that marketers want to mobilize, injects creativity, and delivers those products or services to subscribers. MyThum’s range of mobile solutions include: SMS, interactive television, downloadable content, mobile coupons, interactive voice response (IVR) and mobile commerce solutions. MyThum offers both content creation and a delivery platform.

“We’re a hybrid,” says Carter. “We don’t sell platforms and applications, we sell solutions. At the front end there’s an agency element to what we do, generating creative ideas for clients,” he says. “At the mid-stream there are service delivery, integration and execution components to what we do. And on the back end, there is some hardcore technology that we bring to bear in order to make things happen.”

Part of MyThum’s challenge is coping with the fog surrounding license rights, particularly in the Canadian market.

“It tends to be on the side of our broadcasters,” says Carter. “A lot of the shows here are bought in American shops. The question is: have they negotiated the rights to deliver the show [over] mobile applications?”

User generated content

MyThum helps content cross a technology threshold.

“It’s people picking up their mobile and sending a message,” Carter says.” We haven’t had the intelligence to know what the intent of that message was, or what the transactional value or business rules of that message may [have been].”

But end users don’t want to know about mobile applications and gateway protocols, they just want to watch a video. So how does MyThum make the whole handling and exchange process invisible to mobile users?

“There is the intelligence on our platform to be able to route a message, But there’s also the intelligence to know what to do with that message,” says Carter. “Does it trigger a billing event, is it a polling application we need to gather or expose in real-time? Or do we need to hold on to a permission that we’ve been given to communicate again in the future?”

In 2005, MyThum created a solution for Global TV’s airing of the Grammys that targeted young adults. Viewers were encouraged to text the word GRAMMY, which automatically enrolled them for a chance to win a trip to the live show. When they entered the contest, viewers were sent a thank you message and asked to vote for the Best New Artist. MyThum’s solution helped Global reach out to a key demographic, generate ancillary revenue and build a database of viewers willing to engage media through their mobile.

The solution seems elegantly simple. But the truth is that even a simple text message may have to manoveur through several different platforms and gateways to reach its destination. “When the carriers hand a message off to us, they don’t have a clue what we do with it,” says Carter. “All the intelligence happens on our end.”

Which can create a problem. Because, to the end user, everything looks like it happens on their end, right over their wireless carrier’s network. So guess who gets the calls if there’s a problem.

“There is a sensitivity among wireless carriers towards making sure the applications on their network are approved,” says Carter. “Otherwise, they’re going to end up wearing out their customer service department.”

Unlike others in the mobile media space, Carter thinks his customers are likely to stick with the hosted solutions that have proven popular with early adopters.

“Even in Europe – where adoption is way ahead – companies are leaving the hosting outside, because it’s not their business,” Carter says. “They can leverage our platform and spread costs across more customers . . . It just makes good economic sense to keep the business separate.”

In the same way it makes sense for clients to host their mobile applications with MyThum, it makes sense for MyThum to safeguard the user data they capture on behalf of clients.

“Anybody that’s ever interacted with any of our mobile applications, I’ve got that mobile phone number,” says Carter. “But the carriers have really done a good job establishing a code of conduct for what you can and can’t use that information for.

“If we ever did anything to violate that trust, the carriers would drop our link in a heart beat,” he says.

“We have a vested interest in everyone – end users and carriers – having trust in mobile technology.”

A changing mobile marketplace

Traditional market IQ is that the target mobile end user is about 12 to 25-years-old. That belief has driven a lot of the early applications for mobile media, such as OMNI’s introduction of integrated messaging to some of its weeknight programming of shows like Elimidate. The shows viewers can text live-to-screen with comments and engage in interactive chat.

But Carter says MyThum’s experience is that mobile user demographics are spreading.

“We have a lot of success in the cartoon space, which wasn’t what we once thought of as a target demographic,” says Carter. “But like a lot of companies, we’re seeing the whole youth demographic as a big driver of business now.”

MyThum’s interest in the youth market is acute enough to drive it participation in Understanding Youth, a conference that that helps marketers connect with tweens, teens and young adults.

Charity begins at Phone

But the end game is not all about profit, the company has been at the front of the mobilization of fundraising activities for non-profits like the Children’s Miracle Network.

“If you look at markets around the world, mobile is one of the dominant platforms for fundraising,” says Carter. “It’s continuous, it’s easy and you catch people at the point of emotion. You could see a banner for Sick Kids Hospital and text message the word SICK and a pledge amount, and it’ll appear on your regular wireless bill.”

“The carriers haven’t opened that up yet in Canada,” Carter says. “It’s frustrating because it would be such a beautiful use of mobile.”

In May 2007, MyThum was named the Company of the Year at the Canadian New Media Awards, recognizing its work in mobilizing business strategies for Canadian Idol, Hockey Night in Canada and MuchMusic, among others.

“When I set out five years again it was to found a media company,” says Carter. “This award kind of validates what we’ve always thought: that mobile is a communication channel first, and people are seeing media as an element in driving the market behind that technology.”