by Branimir Parashkevov

Everybody likes to see/experience ads, which are not very annoying and still very easy to remember. It’s even better when they are requesting a certain level of interaction that gives us, as targeted people, the feeling of participation or even collaboration. Such innovative ideas are the main target of The International Advertising Festival.

The 55th International Advertising Festival has passed recently and it pronounced this year’s winners of the prestigeous golden lion statuette. The Media Grand Prix award went to Forsman & Bodenfors Gothenburg for their innovative and interactive MMS campaign, created for AMF’s pension plan.

AMF Sweden let consumer take a picture of himself and send it to AMF through MMS. Then, the sender was returned an MMS with a picture of himself, but 30 years older. As a result, the consumer is more attracted to adopting a pension plan. This was a brand building exercise for AMF resulting in 300.000 uses(Sweden has 9,1 million inhabitants) within the month of the campaign, while the target was 50.000. Isn’t this a really successful campaign?

by Branimir Parashkevov

Hi everyone! Excuse me for being two days late with this post. Here I am with another case study on Mobile Marketing. Today I am going to introduce you the case of SoCal (South California) McDonald’s that were reaching their customers through text messages.

In the second quarter of 2005 SoCal McDonald’s launched a new one-month-long promotion targeted mainly in young adults. They allowed their customers to send a text message “McFlurry” to 73260 and automatically receive a redeemable coupon for a free “McFlurry” dessert. Also, the user was able to get the coupon from http://www.mobilestr33t.com/ and present it again in one of the participating stores from the chain.

The idea was invented by the McDonald’s Operators’ Association of Southern California (more than 600 franchised and company-owned stores in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties) and Gamut Industries LLC (a San Francisco mobile marketing company).

“This promotion is yet another example of how McDonald’s is reaching out to the youth market in a way that is meaningful to them,” said Clayton Paschen, III, president of the McDonald’s Operators’ Association of Southern California (MOASC), in a statement.

As the promotion targeted people in the age-range of 14 to 26, David Moranville, managing director, Gamut Industries, said that the goal was to “create a compelling way to connect with the younger demographic and make McDonald’s a relevant brand in [consumers] lives”. “McDonald’s recognizes that this is a unique target audience. The old tried and true method to communicate with them just doesn’t work anymore.”

The promotion phase of the service was connected with wild posting (sticking posters on different places) in high school, skate parks, and retail areas as well as billboards and buses presenting the text part of the campaign.

“The mobile coupon, as well as the free wallpaper and ringtones, pose great incentives for consumers”, Moranville said. “You get immediate gratification,” he said. “There’s no mail. You just click.”

One more goody from this promotion was that if you download your coupon from http://www.mobilestr33t.com/ you’re allowed to download free wallpapers of famous singers and bands as DJ Nelson, Green Day, Linkin Park and many others.

This case seems similar to the one of Dunkin Donuts, but you can see here one difference - it’s the targeting options and practices. This shows us that mobile services in combination with web-content are a sure way for winning customer’s interest in our services, as soon as we prepare well and have the ideas. Still, every target group is possible and the promotion practices are unlimited!

by Branimir Parashkevov

Hello, hello. Welcome this week for another issue of the History of Marketing postings. Today I am going to introduce another interesting idea that was implemented in Australia. The Edge 96.ONE is Sydney’s leading hip hop and R&B station. It is an RnB radio that has a lot of new artists presented at the radio air. The radio staff wanted to develop a user-friendly interactive SMS service, allowing the listeners to request the name of the song that is on air and the performing artist by just sending a short message by their phone. This allowed them to reduce the phone call that they were receiving and added one more way for connection with their customers. Back at the radio there was constant work on the update process - the database with songs and artists has to be always up-to-date. Each time a new song is played, the DJ is announcing: “To find out what is playing, just SMS SONG to 1975 7777 and we’ll SMS ya back the name of the song and artist!” Finally, for only 55c the sender receives the requested information. Did you get new ideas? As this article shows, no matter how simple an idea is, if implemented at the right place it can help you achieve a lot. So be creative, risk but be realistic, too.

by Branimir Parashkevov

As of today we will start a new weekly topic. It’s called “History of Mobile Marketing” and here we will present successful SMS-based campaigns from the first written SMS till now. Some of them are not so creative, and some of them are a real work of a genius but all have contributed greatly to the ones that ordered them. They can help you create your winning idea and take you to the top…who knows? Today’s case will be about Dunkin Donuts. In 2002 Dunkin Donuts, Italy started an SMS campaign that was based on interaction with their customers and aimed at increase of the revenue of 7 of their retail stores and finding new local employees. They wanted something different that will attract people’s attention as they were new to the market in Italy where Sweet & Co was already the local ruler there. The results were stunning - 9% increase in sales for Dunkin Donuts and a lot of interested customers. But what have they done? The promotion was a combination of print, outdoor, and broadcast advertisements which allowed the customer to participate by entering five-digit short codes into their Web-enabled mobile phones. After sending it, a coupon for purchase of a donut was sent back to the customer. But the good things continue - if you use the coupon at any Roman store of Dunkin Donuts you’re automatically entered into a drawing to win a free Piaggio scooter. “Young people between 18 and 30 are the largest users of SMS in Italy, and are also a target market for Dunkin’ Donuts,” says Michael Correletti, international business manager for Dunkin’ Donut’s worldwide franchise network. “This was an opportunity to communicate directly to our core customers.” The success of the campaign is undisputed. The overall sales also increased with 20% even during the first week. Many of the customers have heard about the SMS-coupons by radio-ads or by some of the many promotional leaflets and posters. The combination of print, outdoor, or broadcast advertising proved to be working again. GianLuigi Contin, Dunkin Donuts franchisee, says, “We are directly reaching our targets with a message they can understand. Cellular coupons are not cute promotions, rather they are serious marketing tools that not only extend the brand but are also directed towards the people we want to reach.” As a conclusion, SMS, if used in an ethical way as in the case above, is one of the best ways to get to your prospective customers without being annoying and still offering them a glimpse in your offers, while allowing interaction. So what are you waiting for? (the creator of the Dunkin Donuts SMs-campaign was AdreAct)

by Chilldor
At Mobile Marketing Forum last November NIKE’s year 2006 was noted as especially successful in the field of mobile marketing. In addition to that some outstanding examples of mobile marketing campaigns were pointed out. From their Top 10 I would mention a few:

Nike’s ID campaign where by-passers could via mobile phones design sneakers displayed on an electronic billboard and win brand new Nike sneakers. In the videos shown by Eric Wheeler (Ogilvy) and Gene Keenan (Isobar International) some people totally lost it, to put it mildly, when they saw on the big screen footwear designed by themselves. Besides the fact that Nike gave out 3000 pairs of sneakers during this campaign, the project was made especially exciting by giving people the chance to participate in it first hand.

“True Beauty” campaign by Dove - in the same way as Nike, Dove put up a picture of an elderly woman on an electronic billboard and by-passers could vote per SMS “wrinkled” or “beautiful”. The image on the billboard kept changing according to what kind of messages were sent.

Pontiac G6 promotion campaign, where people who spotted G6 on the street, had to take a picture of it with their mobiles and send it as an MMS in order to participate in the drawing of 1 million dollars.

The promotion of the movie “Snakes on a Plane” - the campaign participants could themselves design a phone call from Samuel L. Jackson and forward it to their friends. The receivers of the call thought that the call was from their friend but, when answering it, it turned out to be Jackson. The campaign was unbelievably successful in creating a positive “fuss” around the movie. More than 4 million calls were made during the campaign.
But in order to set up a phenomenally successful mobile campaign, you only need a bit of imagination!

by Kristjan Otsmann

The chief of Aspiro, Johan Lenander, predicted at the Nordic Mobile Media conference that in the coming years the most interesting mobile services will be those of music and social networks and mobile marketing.

In mobile music people will start downloading more and more complete songs, instead of tunes - 2 to 5 songs a month on average. More than half of them belong to Top 10.

Mobile marketing promises to grow fast as well. We are not talking merely about the growth of text message advertisements, but much more than that. For example, the growth of professional advice services can be foreseen, which will advise on how to spend your free time, inform you about the news and analyse them. The proportion of mobile market research will also increase, as well as the interaction with clients via mobile phones.

The third fast-growing field is social networks. Lenander described it using the example of a digital living-room, where the computer and the mobile phone are just different doors of the room. “Today it is computer-centered, but in the future it will be mobile-centered,” he said, adding that people using those networks will be ready to pay for those services. Well, the success of rate.ee also proves that.

by Marino Bresciani

Here’s a cool marketing idea from Nike: bespoke shoes based on your own mobile phone snaps.

This is a part of a mobile campaign called PhotoID. Buyers can take a cameraphone snap of “brightly coloured subjects, such as street graffiti or clothing”, MMS it off to Nike and get a message back showing a pair of Nike’s 1985 Dunk high-top customised using the colours in the photo. Anyone who’s really taken with their shoes can then buy the customised footwear.

You can see a video of the service in action over at The Guardian. If you want to give it a go, you need to MMS your picture and the word “DUNK” to the following numbers: Denmark: 1231, Finland: 17163, France: 31000, Germany: 99666, Spain: 5222, Sweden: 72445, Norway: 2201, UK: 88247, Italy: 3464646402.

by Lauri Kinkar

When J. Paul Peter and Jerry C. Olson construct in their book Consumer Behaviour & Marketing Strategy a so-called wheel of consumer analysis, they differentiate between two kinds of consumer reactions to advertisements: the cognitive one, which is based on rational thinking, and affective, which is based on emotional state of mind. Hence, each marketing message directed at a group of people should have a corresponding focus.

In marketing there have been plenty of more or less scientific studies which look closely at how different target groups react to advertisements. A more recent scientific one which connects to the theory by Peter and Olson was published by the university of Washington.

Relying on their study the authors claim that in case of those people who are rather sceptical about commercials and all kinds of marketing communication (thinking that it’s all a lie and manipulation anyway), a message directed at emotions works better. The reason for that is the active reaction that is created by the emotional undertone and therefore does not go unnoticed.

In the field of mobile advertisements which often work with a surgical precision it is a common belief that only highly informative messages serve their purpose. Now it seems that we should not forget the emotional side and why not just wish your customers a happy birthday once in a while.

by Marino Bresciani

I am start getting more and more surprised about how the big companies are gathering interest in the bluetooth marketing. In Paris, for example, you can easily find “interactive” advertising box that ask customers to activate the bluetooth on their mobile phones, in order to send them some interesting content: maps of the city, discount coupons, etc etc.

The following is instead a more subtle promotion: to promote popular reality show Big Brother 2008 on Channel TEN in Australia, advertising agency Marketforce in Perth came up with a unique bluetooth SMS campaign that really caught people by surprise. The ads embodied the “Big Brother is watching” slogan, which is the essence of the show. The campaign installed Blue-tooth transmitters in over 20 high-traffic bus shelters around town. The transmitters automatically sent two anonymous messages to any bluetooth enabled phones in the area.

The first message was tailored specifically for the local location, with something along the lines of:

I’m watching u. Ur at the (customized current location)

The second message is received 30-40 seconds later with the big reveal, saying:

Big Brother is back. 7 PM weeknights on TEN

Hopefully people won’t get mad at them.

by Marino Bresciani

This is an idea that came out from Volkswagen, and it is somehow an extension of their policy about polling about all the usual customs of the people. For example, Volkswagen knows that 73% of the people want to take the tiny soap and shampoo from hotel rooms. They also know that 60% of ice cream buyers prefer cones over cups.

On an apparent quest to learn everything, Volkswagen’s launched SMS polls on a big screen on Times Square. In this picture, for example, you can see how VW asks for people preferences inflight.

Results are generally announced one day after, which is a nice invitation for the people to return to the store soon in order to see the results…