Innovative mobile advertising campaign from Japan

It’s weekend time and, as usual, I started digging into the RSS feeds I’ve subscribed to. And I came across this news which I thought was very cool.

Tohato, a snacks company in Japan, has done a phenomenal job in interactive mobile advertising. Tohato has come up with a mobile advertising campaign based on its two popular brands of spicy snacks namely Habanero and Satan Jorquia.

The idea is simple. All you need to do is, buy a pack of snack, scan the 2D barcode printed on the pack, and enter the game via your mobile phone. First, you’ll be asked to pick your favorite brand between Habanero and Satan Jorquia. Each brand has its own ‘evil army’ and whoever chooses that brand becomes a part of that army. There will be a ‘World’s Worst War’ in which both these armies will fight against each other.

You can also move up the ranks in the army by recruiting your friends to join your army. In turn, they could recruit their other friends to join the army. As more and more people join through you, you’ll be promoted. There are twenty battlefields in which these armies will fight against each other and after every fight, details like how many died, how many were promoted, which battlefield was captured by whom, and other things will be delivered to you via your mobile phone.

The response for this campaign has been great so far, as the game is highly engaging. The ad agency in Japan which created this mobile advertising campaign has already got several awards worldwide for the best mobile campaign.

Japan once again has proved that it’s miles ahead of other countries when it comes to mobile advertising. If you notice, using QR codes in mobile advertising campaigns has paid off big time and it has made their job every so easy. I for one, as a mobile user, find the idea of scanning the barcode easier than say sending a text message to get more details on a particular product. I really hope that mobile advertisers in the U.S. and Europe take note of this and use QR codes in their mobile advertising campaigns.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones, Mobile Games.

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Blyk’s mobile advertising campaigns get great response

When I talk about mobile advertising being effective and all that jazz, I just mean one thing. That is the response rate. There are advertisements on TV, newspapers, magazines, radio, and the internet, but none of them has been as effective as ads on mobile phones. And to think that mobile advertising is still in its nascent stage!!!

Take for example, Blyk. Now, Blyk is a well-known name for regular readers of this blog, as I’ve talked about it quite a few times. Recently, Blyk reached the landmark of 100,000 subscribers in the U.K. in just six months after its start. Let’s take a look at some numbers here.

The average response rate of mobile advertising campaigns from Blyk is a whopping 29%. It is miles ahead of others in this aspect. Especially, for some ad campaigns, the response rate is just unbelievable. Some time back, Blyk did a promotional campaign for Nick Hornby’s novel Slam which was released by Penguin Books. The response rate was an astounding 69%. Can you even think of getting this kind of a response from newspaper ads or even online ads?

This is simply why I keep saying that when done well, a mobile advertising campaign could bring in phenomenal results. What say you?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones, Blyk.

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Coca Cola and Hindustan Unilever launch mobile advertising campaigns

Two of the major FMCG brands, Hindustan Unilever and Coca Cola, have recently launched mobile advertising campaigns in India.

Mobile advertising in India is becoming popular of late and we’ve already seen some evidences of clever mobile advertising campaigns from film personalities in India. Now, it’s the turn of big brands to get into mobile marketing seriously.

While Coca Cola has launched a mobile advertising campaign for its fizzy drink Sprite, Hindustan Unilever has launched one for its ice-cream brand Cornetto. Among other things, you need to understand the ‘timing’ of these campaigns. This is the summer season in India and believe me, it’s h-o-t. In fact, it’s so hot that more than 50% of annual soft drink sales happen during this season. So, what better way to boost it further than by launching a mobile advertising campaign? Clever stuff, I should say.

Coincidentally, both these companies have sought the services of Oxigen, a value-added service provider for mobile phones. If this turns out to be a success, we can see more and more companies getting into mobile advertising in the coming days.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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Tesco Mobile’s mobile advertising campaign gets good response

Retail giant Tesco recently stated that it might consider taking its mobile advertising campaign to the next level soon, thanks to the positive response from its customers. The mobile division of Tesco, Tesco Mobile, has been running a trial WAP advertising portal since May 2007 and its growth has been impressive. Month after month, the portal grew enormously and last December, the portal had 30,000 unique visitors, which is very impressive. So, based on these results, Tesco Mobile has decided to embrace mobile advertising big time.

The click through rate (CTR) of the banner ads served at the portal was around 3% to 7%, which is again very impressive. The portal had a strong female user base which accounted for most of the clicks on the ads served. Most of these women are married and are responsible for household budget. So, naturally, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) such as toiletries, kitchen accessories, and cleaning products were the most preferred ones among the ads served.

This again has proved the fact that when served with the right ads in the right manner, people are willing to give mobile ads on their phone a try. The only thing that matters is – relevancy.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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Debunking the myths about mobile advertising

Alright; I’m back in my pavilion. I was just reading some articles on mobile marketing and this one caught my attention. The author has written something about eMarketer’s Mobile Advertising Report. The report focused on the impact of mobile advertising in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) market and its possible implications in the US market.

Now, the article says that by subsidizing mobile data plans by advertising, mobile advertisers are trying to turn mobile phones into TV sets. I wonder how on earth he came up with this correlation. Even I feel bored to say this again, but then…

Mobile advertising has something called ‘opt-in’ facility. You have to opt in for a mobile advertising campaign to get ads in your mobile phone. In other words, you have the choice to keep your phone away from ads. Do you have such options in TV? Advertisements in TV, whether you like them or not, will always be there and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. So, please don’t compare TV to mobile phones.

Some of you must have heard about Sugar Mama from Virgin Mobile, which gives you free talk time for watching mobile ads. Now, the author even mocks this by coming up with this gem.

“I’m sure you’re ad creative is impressive, but I’d venture to guess that they went there to get free air cell phone minutes, not view ads.”

Oh yeah? People don’t watch TV to view ads either, you know?. They watch sitcoms and movies, in which they are served with ads, which they cannot escape from. The point is - It doesn’t matter. People are open to mobile ads as long as they gain something from them.

At last, he comes up with something about Americans getting tricked by mobile advertisers.

“You may have tricked us with TV commercials and OLAs, but we typically don’t fall for the same tricks twice (except for George W).”

Really?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, Rant.

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