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Canadian Idol winner Brian Melo should probably send a thank-you card to Michael Carter, president of MyThum Interactive Inc., in Toronto.
While Mr. Melo and his rival contenders were belting out songs on the country's most popular TV show, hundreds of thousands of viewers were registering their votes for the next Canadian Idol winner via text messages on their mobile phones.
This entertaining application of text messaging - also known as short message service, or SMS - was made possible by MyThum, a five-year-old business whose technology and services allow companies to connect with target audiences via their mobile phones.
"The beauty of connecting through mobile is that companies can engage their audiences no matter where they are and what they're doing," explains Mr. Carter.
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"Most people have their cellphones on them all the time, so if they're if watching TV or reading a magazine and they see an invitation that says they can use their mobile phone to enter a contest or to enter a vote, they don't have to move - they can respond to that call to action right where they're sitting."
Canadians certainly love to let their thumbs do the walking and talking. They send more than 26.5 million text messages a day, according to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association. And by the end of last year, wireless phone subscribers in Canada had reached 18.5 million - equivalent to about 55 per cent of the country's population.
Although Canadian consumers usually have the option to respond to a contest or ad invitation by other means, such as by mail or Internet, they prefer to use their mobile phones, even if it means having to pay to send a text message, says Mr. Carter.
"A perfect illustration of that is the Deal or No Deal contest we did where audiences could enter online for free or use their mobile phones at a cost of a dollar a message," he says, referring to the TV game show hosted by Canadian comic Howie Mandel. "Two out of three entries came through on a mobile phone."
For MyThum Interactive, the text messaging craze has translated into a lot of business. Over the past five years, it has experienced revenue growth of close to 14,000 per cent, as measured by the 2007 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 ranking.
MyThum, which now employs 35 people, makes money two ways: through a share of the fees people pay when they send a text message, or by being paid directly by its clients.
Chris Chapman is national leader of business development, technology industry at Deloitte Canada, part of Deloitte & Touche LLP, which provides accounting and financial consulting services. He says MyThum's business performance in the past five years has been exceptional - and surprising.
"I was intrigued to find a company like MyThum performing at such a level in an industry that didn't really exist five years ago," he says. "We just haven't yet seen new-media solutions get to the adoption rate that we've seen in companies like MyThum.
"In fact, until we looked at MyThum, we wouldn't have believed that you could find such a fast-growing company from the text messaging/mobile platform industry."
So what makes MyThum such a star in its universe?
Mr. Chapman points to the company's focused approach in developing a market. While Mr. Carter's competitors were busy courting the big brands and their advertising agencies, he went straight to the media and entertainment companies and sold them on the idea of letting their audiences "chat back" through text messaging.
This approach required more "heavy lifting," says Mr. Carter. Agency and big-brand work tends to involve short-term projects, while media contracts usually require building a technology and service infrastructure thatz will be an ongoing part of a TV or radio program, he explains.
"So in that respect, yes, our decision to go after media entertainment made it more challenging for us to go to market," Mr. Carter says. "But we were looking for long-term projects."
In its first year, MyThum landed contracts with Kiss 98.5, a radio station owned by Entercom Radio of Buffalo; Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc.; and Rogers Media Inc.'s Sportsnet. On May 24, 2003, when Kiss 98.5 held a "Battle of the Bands" competition, Canadians were for the first time able to cast their votes for the winning songs via SMS.
It didn't take long for MyThum's client list to grow to include other media companies such as CanWest Global Communications Corp., the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., and Corus Entertainment Inc. Big non-media brands, such as Molson Coors Canada Inc. and Nike Inc., soon joined the roster as well.
As its revenues and client list grew, MyThum continued to improve its technology and introduce new applications. In 2003, it was the first in North America to launch a "text-to-screen" application that lets audiences broadcast their opinions on television via text messaging.
Last year, Molson used MyThum technology to issue concert "tickets" by SMS. Ticket recipients get a bar code on their mobile phones, which are then scanned when they get to the theatre. "I believe that was the first live event in North America that did ticketing by mobile phone," says Mr. Carter.
While technology has allowed MyThum to offer its clients new and exciting ways to connect with their markets, Mr. Carter says much of the company's success can be attributed to something a bit more old-fashioned: good customer service.
"We take a very people-centric approach to servicing our customers," says Mr. Carter. "Because I really believe that technology is only one part of our business and we need to provide a good balance between technology and service delivery."
