Derek: Well, my name is Derek Johnson with tatango.com.
Today, I'm gonna be walking you through an RCS Business Messaging demo from ITV.
And this was shot at Mobile World Congress 2018 by the GSMA.
If you wanna watch the original video, we'll link to it in the description below.
So let's get started.
Greg: Hi, my name is Greg Hoy.
I'm the director of Product Management for RCS messaging at OpenMarket.
OpenMarket has been working with Vodafone and with IDD to put together a few live demos.
Derek: Okay.
Let me stop him real quick because I wanna kind of set the stage for what's going on
here.
This is a demo on a android device.
Now, big android device, but it's an android device because RCS Business Messaging only
works on android devices.
Now, the other kind of device, especially here in the United States, is an iOS device
or what people like to call an Apple iPhone.
RCS Business Messaging currently doesn't work on an iPhone.
So all the demos that you're going to see for RCS business messaging are on an android.
And what we're seeing here on the left-hand side is essentially an RCS business message
and he's gonna be walking through it, but this actually is taking place within your
normal messaging app.
So this is the same messaging app that you text your wife or you text, you know, your
father or your friend.
This would be...You would just open up a new message and text a brand.
So no apps to download, no websites to go to.
This is all happening within the app, the messaging app, the default messaging app that
you always use every single day, anyway.
Greg: This particular demo here is related to live television voting for different programs
that ITV runs.
This one is, "I'm a Celebrity.
Get Me Out of Here!"
Derek: Okay.
So what he's looking at currently is an RCS rich card, that's a component or a feature
of RCS Business Messaging.
Essentially, what a rich card is, is it combines some media type, so let's say, an image, a
GIF or video with content which would be texts usually or links or buttons or quick replies.
And it's all combined into one.
So as you're looking at this message right now, there's an image component, there's,
you know, text, part of it is bold, and then they have kind of a subtext below that, but
it's all part of one message.
Greg: During the show each week, they run live TV voting, so viewers can help determine
which celebrity is going to go through very poor experience like having snakes crawl over
them or...
Derek: As you can see here, it's actually one whole message.
So this isn't being split out like MMS or SMS would, where there would be the image
and then there would be another message for the text.
This is all coming in as kind of one packet of information.
So you have the image, the text, which also has bold, which you cannot do in an SMS message
and then it has kind of subtext and then below there has a quick reply which you can actually
click on, but it's all part of one, kind of, messaging package.
Greg: The fear they have, they have to go through it or deal with it.
So in this case, users...
Derek: Okay, he did something really cool here, which I think there's a lot of confusion
in our industry as to what is actually happening.
So this is kind of like a link, when you click "Start voting," it's similar to a link on
a website, but what it's actually doing, it's called a quick reply, an RCS quick reply.
It's essentially creating a new message and that's what you can see in the bottom right-hand
corner there where it says, "Start voting."
It's creating a new message really quickly and then it's sending it off really quickly
without even you needing to click "Send."
And then what's happening is the brand, in this case ITV, is then processing that message
that you, kind of, just sent in and then sending something back.
Greg: Just get a message that allows them to start voting.
They get to go through the different...
Derek: Okay, what he's doing here, he's sent in the message, ITV then has sent back an
RCS business message.
And this, I think is one of the coolest features.
This is an RCS carousel.
And what he's doing right now is he's swiping left on his phone and he's essentially going
through little RCS cards.
Remember how we talked about RCS rich cards.
This is multiple RCS rich cards all within the same kind of field of vision there, so
he's just swiping through.
Each card could be a video, text, and then there's information below.
And then also they can have links below.
They can have these quick replies as you can see below in terms of the Vanessa and Jack
example.
Greg: ...celebrities they can vote for.
I like Vanessa, so I'll give her a few votes.
Derek: Okay.
What he's done here is he clicked "Vanessa."
And this is not a mobile website, this is RCS Business Messaging.
It essentially is a quick reply which sends off the message "Vote Vanessa" to ITV, and
then he's getting this message back, which is another RCS message, so, "Thanks!
Your vote for Vanessa has been entered.
You have four votes left."
Now, what's interesting about this message, and it's very apparent here, is it's a different
color and this is actually done by design.
The brand, so ITV, gets to select what color they want their messages to be, which is a
cool part of RCS Business Messaging where you don't have that option with SMS or MMS
Greg: Viewers get five votes for each show.
So, after I give Vanessa a few votes, I'll go and I'll give a couple of votes on behalf
of my wife.
Derek: So again, he's swiping through right now on his little phone.
Greg: Here we've gotten to the end of the number of votes that I can do, that's five.
So ITV uses this live voting mechanism to really engage their viewers.
They have voting over several different mediums, but in the past, they've used SMS as one of
the primary ways for voting to happen.
Derek: And as you can see here, what's interesting about RCS Messaging is it's all one experience
all within the same messaging app, which is pretty cool because, as you can see above
you have the rich carousels.
So you're selecting it, then you're voting, then you get a confirmation message.
This is essentially kind of having a app-like experience but without downloading the app
and it's all within one message, which is pretty, pretty cool.
Greg: Adding RCS allows viewers to really get to know who they're voting for.
Derek: One thing I forgot to mention is I talked about the color of the message, so
it's, kind of, like an orange color and they've selected that, ITV.
What's really cool too is, look on the left of that message there.
You'll see that there's an icon for ITV.
So if you were sending an SMS or MMS and you're interacting with a brand, is most likely just
gonna be a default, kind of, looks like a little person's head there, but it's default.
It is not, you know, associated with the brand, has no color.
This is really cool because the brand gets to really customize the entire message to
make sure it's on point with their brand.
So colors and then logos, it really is kind of moving more towards like an app-like experience,
right within the messaging channel.
Greg: They don't have to remember what keyword to enter.
They can just tap the buttons and get through it really quickly.
And then where the SMS sponsors may get just to mention, in RCS they get imagery and links
off to their websites for inclusion and other things.
And it really worked well for ITV.
Derek: So great example of how a brand is using RCS Business Messaging.
This is ITV.
This is more of kind of engagement where a lot of brands are using, like, chatbots more
for, like, customer support or they're using more mass-messaging for retail, restaurants,
things of that nature.
This one's great because it's more of like a contest or polling, real high engagement,
which, you know, most of the time you would have to click to a mobile website or you'd
have to download the app to do this kind of thing, especially when you're talking about
voting or polling for multiple different options.
So, really great use case by ITV on how they're going to use business RCS messaging.
Again, this was shot at Mobile World Congress, 2018 by the GSMA.
If you wanna watch the actual original video, you can click below in the description, we'll
link to it there.
Again, my name is Derek Johnson with tatango.com, and that was an RCS Business Messaging demo
from Mobile World Congress 2018.