Ford’s innovative mobile marketing campaign in India

Okay folks, let me ask you a question.

You’re a billion dollar automobile company, you’ve just released a new, peppy edition of your car which appeals mostly to youngsters, and you want to grab the attention of young car enthusiasts all over the country. What do you do?

Simple. You do mobile marketing.

Ford did the exact same thing in India when it released its new Ford Ikon Music Edition car called the iKool. Ford used the services of MindShare, a mobile marketing company, to come up with a creative mobile marketing campaign for iKool. MindShare contacted Nokia and made an agreement to advertise on Airtel Live!, the WAP site of India’s leading mobile operator, Airtel. Airtel is part of Nokia Media Network and it readily agreed to this arrangement.

MindShare created an innovative, content rich WAP site for Ford iKool. Mobile users around the country were served with banner ads through Airtel Live!. Those who clicked on the banner ads were taken to the iKool WAP site where they had the chance to download mobile games, wallpapers, ringtones, and many more.

The response rate for this mobile marketing campaign was a terrific 8.58%. Especially, two content pages – “Services For You” and “News & Sports” – saw a phenomenal click through rate of 14%, which is unseen before.

Ford has actually set an important precedent, as far as I’m concerned. I still remember, when Ford came up with its new model called Fiesta in India about a year and a half back, it mostly relied on TV ads and newspaper and magazine coverage. Now, just within a couple of years, things have changed so much that it went straight to a mobile marketing company to get the job done. And the result was there for everyone to see, right?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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Download free mobile games from freemobilegames.mobi

Just a couple of days back we saw a report from Screen Digest which said that mobile video games will become hugely popular in a few years from now and over 60 million games will be downloaded every year. Now, we have another company which lets you do exactly the same – download video games to your mobile phone free of cost.

Freemobilegames.mobi is a site which allows you to download ad funded mobile games for free. It’s basically a simple procedure. You go to the site, select the kind of handset that you have, look at the categories of games for that particular handset, select one, and download it to your mobile phone.

Now, though these games are supported by advertisements, you’ll have to pay a small charge to download and play the game, if you don’t have unlimited data plan. If you have unlimited data plan, then the games are absolutely free for you. The advertisements will be shown before the start of the game and after the finish of the game.

I think the site’s future depends on the value they provide for users. If the games are varied and interesting enough for uses, the site can expect quite a handful of downloads regularly. That aside, I think the domain name is one heck of a name. I’ve already blogged about dot mobi domains becoming very popular and ‘costly’ and this domain name is simply the best you can get for a site that offers free mobile video games. Don’t you agree?

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

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Free mobile web games from AOL

Seems like ad funded mobile games are the fad of the season. AOL has planned to offer free, ad funded mobile games for its customers. A US firm named Cellufun will offer its games through AOL’s mobile portal. These are not the usual Java games that you usually get, but mobile web games.

You can enjoy some popular games like Space Wars, Ice Fishing, and most importantly Call of the Pharaoh, which won the award for the best mobile game in Mobile World Congress last month. Adverts will be placed within the games and this will be done by Third Screen Media, the mobile advertising subsidiary of AOL. Cellufun has already got five million unique players a month accessing its games, which is a significant feat.

The main news, however, is not that. There is a game called The Mobile Ring, which is basically a boxing game with a twist. The twist is, it’s politically themed. So, you can actually fulfill your fantasy of beating the hell out of Hillary Clinton or Obama. Actually, a lot of people have that fantasy I guess. Apparently the game has been played a whopping two million times in just four months.

So, what are you waiting for? Go here and kick some ass.

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

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