Will dot TEL Change the Landscape of Marketing?

The new dot TEL domain has been occupying a lot of my thoughts recently.

On my commute this morning, I was stopped at the lights behind a small truck with advertising signage on its back doors. The sign gave the name of the company, their tag line and a local number to call. This got me to thinking whether such signage would survive the new dot TEL world after it officially launches next March.

I counted another 96 easily noticeable signs and advertisements in the remaining fifteen minutes of my drive. Most of these were vehicle signs for small and large companies, but others were at bus stops, on bus sidings or on billboards. For the most part they contain a logo, message and a telephone number, web site address or both.

I believe that .TEL will create a change in advertising and marketing, but I think it will be more pervasive than dramatic. After all, trade vehicle signage has been popular since before the automobile and the image of the horse drawn wagon with the medicine show sidings is a familiar one.

The change will be more in keeping with the addition of a telephone number or web site address as the underlying technologies became popular.

In a post dot TEL world, I believe the dot TEL address will replace the telephone number and the web address. This change won’t be limited to mobile or roadside billboards, but will be extend to any form of advertising that contains contact information.

The driving force behind the change won’t be the technology itself. It will come from you and me, and will stem mainly from our laziness.

As consumers, we like ease. If it’s one less step in a process, one more barrier removed or one more advantage, we’re happier consumers. We’re also one step closer to a purchasing decision.

Dot TEL offers this small advantage. It’s going to make things just a little bit easier. As a result my actions might be just a bit different. And from a marketing perspective, that might just be enough to warrant change.

A telephone number has discrete utility. There’s only one thing I can really do with it. The same is largely true of a web address. With a telephone number or web address I have one thing to store or one thing to remember and when I use it, I get one result.

With a dot TEL however, I still have one thing to store or remember, but I can do a multitude of things I can do with it.

A dot TEL gives me the telephone number and the web address but can additionally give me a list of direct phone numbers to connect me to the department of my choice, e-mail addresses, fax numbers, physical and mailing addresses and even the geo location to view it on a map or get directions.

Given the choice, I’d rather have a single piece of information to store but multiple things it can do for me. And because of this I think the advertising landscape will change.

Anywhere that contact information is currently displayed we’ll see the growing use of the dot TEL address, whether it be in print, television, radio, computer screen or the side of a delivery truck.

In the short term, this may not mean a lot to marketers, but dot TEL is a flexible technology and that gives scope to innovation. Early software applications are already experimenting with combining the built in GPS functionality of the telephone with the geo-location capabilities of dot TEL. It’s a little spooky, but the application uses individual .TEL’s to tell you how far away your friends are.

My friend Lisa Wills was speculating that a similar application could offer a subscription service that allows a shop or coffee shop to ‘call out’ with specials when you’re passing.

A simpler opportunity might be to use the .TEL’s privacy option to display special offers or discounts, but only to members that have signed up using the “friending” system.

When a new technology emerges that has application to nearly every consumer on the planet, it’s going to attract the attention of marketing professionals. If it’s also one that is explicitly about communication and inherently flexible, it has the potential to change an industry.