Unilever to Offer Mobile Coupons to its Customers

In an attempt to test the waters in the field of mobile phone marketing, Unilever has announced that it will offer mobile coupons to its customers. This is a trial run and will go on for four weeks.

The company has stated that the trial run will start this Sunday and will go on for another four weeks. It will be conducted at a ShopRite store in Hillsborough, New Jersey. The company plans to give discount coupons for some of its most famous brands like Dove soap, Lipton tea, Breyers ice cream, and Hellmann’s mayonnaise.

To get these discount coupons, you need to check out the website samplesaint.com and download the coupons to your mobile phone. To redeem these coupons, you can give your phone to the cashier at the store. He will scan the barcode on your phone’s screen, redeem the coupon, and delete the coupon from your phone. To make use of this offer, you need to have an internet enabled phone. This technology has been developed by a Chicago based mobile technology company named Samplesaint.

Marc Shaw of Unilever said that mobile marketing is the Holy Grail that everyone has been trying to figure out. He also said that it is important for businesses to find out what catches the attention of their customers exactly.

Regular readers of this blog know what I feel about mobile coupons. So, this does not come as a surprise to me at all. In fact, if anything, I would say that Unilever is a little late in entering the mobile phone marketing field. But, as they say, better late than never. Depending on the result of this test run, the company might decide to take mobile phone marketing seriously. So, I’ll keep an eye on this test run and keep you guys posted. Watch this space for more details.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

7 comments.

Expert from MMA Discusses the Future of Mobile Marketing

Chasing The Storm has a good interview of Rohit Dadwal from MMA (Mobile Marketing Association). To my surprise, most of the things Rohit mentioned in the interview are things that I am already familiar with. In fact, anyone who has been following the mobile marketing industry closely could easily relate to what Rohit says in his interview. Some of the most important points he made include

1. SMS (short messaging service) marketing or text message marketing will continue to grow steadily in 2009.

2. Bad economy will make businesses and brands think twice before spending their money on traditional advertising. So, they are more likely to spend their advertising dollars only in mediums like mobile phone marketing that guarantee quantifiable returns and successes.

3. Mobile social networking will continue to grow steadily.

4. Mobile search marketing will become big.

5. Location based services will be a huge success and it will continue to play a major role in mobile marketing.

6. Mobile coupons and mobile alerts will become a lot more popular with people.

7. In the next five years, a lot of brands around the world will have a strong mobile presence. In fact, it will become so common that it will be unusual for a big brand to not have a strong mobile presence.

8. Mobile marketing is meant for businesses of all sizes. No matter how small or how big a business empire you have, all you need is the ability to reach the end users. So, businesses can benefit from mobile marketing irrespective of their size and popularity.

As you can see, none of the points made above is new. If you have been following the industry closely, you can see that it is growing steadily and moving in a direction exactly as predicted by experts a few years back. If it continues to grow the same way, it will be a multibillion dollar industry just as predicted. Don’t you think?

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

6 comments.

Mobile TV ads could be the next big thing in mobile marketing?

A few days back I came across an interview of the president of a famous market research firm in the U.S. He made some interesting points about the emerging trends in the industry of mobile phone advertising and marketing.

So far, advertising through text messaging has been the most sought-after form of marketing in mobile phones. It could soon change and advertising via mobile TV could be the most prominent form of advertising in the coming days. The reason is very simple. Any show on TV, by definition, is supported by ads and we watch ads day in and day out on TV. In fact, we’ve got used to ads on TV so much that we even look forward to our favorite ads on TV. Some of the ads are so well made that viewers actually look forward to catching those ads during the break. I for one can vouch for this fact as I’m a sucker for Nike ads. Watching a Nike ad is like watching a 30 second movie. So much of style and so much of effort gets put into the ad that viewing it on TV becomes an experience in itself. Since ads on TV don’t put the viewers off, ads on mobile TV could have a similar impact on them.

Just imagine, you are watching your favorite show via mobile TV and you get a couple of ads during the ad break. Does that sound atypical to you? No way. Ad breaks during a program has been the norm for such a long time that we don’t seem to mind watching a few ads during the break at any time. Also, if the ad break is going to be a short one, people don’t really get a chance to skip the channel during the break as they might miss the continuity of the show they are watching. This makes it perfect for the marketers as they stand a fair chance to reach out to a lot of people through mobile TV ads than through text messaging or banner ads.

If explored, this could be a huge opportunity for mobile marketers and might have a very good reach among customers. But the only obstacle is that there are not a lot of people who have handsets that support facilities like mobile TV. So, if the technology becomes affordable, we can soon find a lot of handsets in the market that support facilities like mobile TV and it might soon become the most successful and sought-after medium for mobile phone advertising.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, Mobile TV.

2 comments.