Last night, as a tropical storm barrelled toward the gulf coast and a string of dangerous thunderstorms pounded the midwest, many people around the country experienced for the first time the benefits of weather related mobile marketing.
At the 2008 CTIA Wireless show, executives from The Weather Channel spoke of their upcoming mobile initiatives, including the capability of reaching more people who may be in harm’s way.
Well, last night certainly provided the “perfect storm” for one such mobile experiment.
While hunkered down outside of Chicago as tornado warnings abounded, not only was I one of the many Weather Channel mobile suscribers inundated with alerts and messages, I was also able to communicate through mobile channels with friends and family in neighboring counties and share the communications I was receiving. Although the situation wasn’t life threatening (although we didn’t know this at first), it is easy to see how it could be. And when you’re separated from loved ones out of the loop, it’s just as important for yourself as it is for them to be plugged in at all times to the status of the storm clouds forming above.
Still shaken from the severity of last night’s storms, I am thankful at least for the opportunity to experience how the Weather Channel’s mobile real time data and radar information were immensely accurate. Without question, they illustrated how such a service can be life saving under certain precarious circumstances.
