Times 7am offer short-changed by odd marketing short-code?

If you've been on the tube in London recently, you'll probably have noticed a big marketing push by The Times going on at the moment. One of the components is an opportunity to get the paper delivered to your door before 7am if you live within the M25 area.

One thing I noticed about the campaign - they have an easy to remember URL for the offer: timesonline.co.uk/7am. There is also a SMS shortcode, which asks you to send the message 'Times1'. I found that odd. If it couldn't just be 'Times' which is simpler to remember, why wouldn't you pick 'Times7' to make it consistent with the 7am offer and the URL? Especially as across a crowded tube carriage 1 and 7 are the two digits you are most likely to confuse?

Posted by Martin Belam, October 22, 2009    
Read the latest posts about: Media, Newspapers, The Times
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