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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A look at India – the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world

India has been the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world for quite some time now. There are already 250 million mobile phone users in India and the number gets increased by 6 million every month, thanks to new users. There are a few reasons behind this impressive growth.

1. Indian economy is on a roll and has had an impressive growth over the past few years. This has increased the purchasing power of the people significantly, especially that of the middle class people. As a result, the 30 million middle class people in India are the target customer segment for mobile companies now.

2. The price range of mobile phones is quite big. You can get low-end mobile phones in the $20 - $30 price range and at the same time you can get high-end mobile phones in the $600 - $800 price range. So, whether you belong to the super rich category, middle class, or lower middle class category, you can get a mobile phone which fits into your budget.

3. There are several major mobile operators in India and there is intense competition in the market. Almost all of them have slashed their call charges, text message charges, and offer a lot of value added services. What this means to the user is, not only can he get a handset at an affordable rate, but he can also afford to keep his phone charges within his budget every month. This has led to more and more people buying mobile phones.

Recent reports predict that India will have a whopping 500 million mobile users by 2010. This is the reason why mobile advertising is considered the next big thing in the Indian market.

Though mobile advertising by third party advertisers is yet to become popular, several mobile operators are already doing it successfully. Notable players like Bharti Airtel, BSNL, Tata Indicom, Reliance, and Vodafone regularly send text messages to their users regarding latest offers, new plans, and other issues.

That said, a few big players have already tried their hands on mobile advertising through third party advertisers and have had a good response. Recently, Hindustan Lever and Coca Cola launched mobile advertising campaigns promoting their products and have had good response rate so far. Since Indians are very active in using features like text message, MMS, and mobile internet, mobile advertisers have tons of choices to come up with personalized mobile advertising campaigns.

All in all, India will be a market to watch out for in the next few years as far as mobile advertising is concerned.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

1 comment.

Get ready for mobile coupons

A recent survey from Juniper Research says that mobile coupons will become very popular in a few years and retailers would send around 3 billion mobile coupons by 2011.

Mobile coupons, in my opinion, are a brilliant way for a retailer to connect to his customers directly. It is way more effective than the coupons you find in newspapers and magazines. Most people, including yours truly, often forget to make use of the coupon clips within the required timescale. I, for one, collect various coupons from newspapers and magazines but hardly make use of them because most of the times I forget to take them when I go shopping. With mobile coupons, there is no such problem. You get a coupon in your text message and all you have to do is show it to the retailer/shop owner the next time you shop for something. Since we always have our mobile phone with us, it becomes easier.

QR codes can be a good idea, but then you can’t expect everyone to have a mobile phone with camera facility to scan the ads. But still, it’s a very good technology that can be used effectively.

We’ve already seen some examples where mobile coupon campaigns have been quite successful and I think it will continue to be so. Like I’ve always said, the most important thing is to provide value to people. If you do so, you’ll always find takers.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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AT&T to support QR code based advertising

I’ve talked about the impact QR codes can have on mobile advertising already in this blog. Now, it seems Americans will have an opportunity to try it out. AT&T recently decided to support one such technology developed by Mobot, a Massachusetts based company.

With this technology, you can use your mobile phone camera to scan a barcode, logo, or picture and get something cool in return. It might be a discount coupon, some cool stuff to download, or a gift voucher. It is also said that depending on the response that AT&T gets, Verizon and T-Mobile might also follow suit.

Google is also very excited about this technology as it might help Google set its foot in print advertising. Google plans to place print ads with barcodes that can be scanned by mobile phone cameras. Google analytics tools will take note of things like how many people scanned the ad and what type of ads got noticed so that you, as a mobile advertiser, can get an idea of how well your ad campaign has performed.

I think this could be a terrific idea if executed well. As a mobile user, I’d always find it easier to scan an ad with my mobile camera and get the info I want as opposed to responding to a text message. What do you guys say?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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Google - story so far and the road ahead

Google is one of those things that most of us just can’t live without. At least, I know I can’t. It has become so indispensable in our lives that we find ourselves searching for something in Google every day. With everyone and their mother using Google as their default search engine, the popularity it enjoys is immense. It’s also the reason why Microsoft and Yahoo pale in comparison. So, when Google announced that it will focus on mobile phone market, a lot of people were surprised. I, for one, was surely surprised. I mean, why would a company which enjoys almost a monopoly in online search think of going into mobile phones? But apparently, Google knew what it was doing.

For long, Google has been enjoying the number one spot in online search. Yahoo and Microsoft were the contenders but ‘so close, yet so far’ was their case. But Google was wary of its competitors, especially Microsoft. Given Microsoft’s reputation to buy companies, a deal with Yahoo was almost on the cards. Steve Ballmer apparently told Yahoo board that together, they can be a great threat to the dominancy of Google and topple it easily. But the deal has not happened and Google, as of now, is still the number one. But for how long was the question. In order to sustain its position in the market, Google had to prove that it was not a ‘one product’ company. The solution came in the form of mobile web.

Why mobile web? It’s simple arithmetic. There are more than 3 billion mobile phones in the world. In just about a couple of years from now, there will be 4 billion mobile users in the world. In other words, there will be three mobile phones for every PC in this world. And to add to this, mobile camera, MMS, mobile internet, mobile video, mobile audio, and GPS – features which were considered luxury once – have become so common these days that we see these features in almost every other phone. What this means to advertisers around the world is that they have a new channel for advertising – the mobile phone.

Mobile advertising, as they say, is the next big thing and there’s billions to be made in the industry which is still in its nascent stage. We hardly go out without our mobile phones. We attend every call and read every text message we get. So, an advertisement in a mobile phone is sure to get noticed. Especially, if you can send targeted ads to people, it will have a bigger impact than traditional advertising. Add this to the fact that Google specializes in targeted advertising. The answer is simple – Google planned to enter the mobile advertising territory big time.

Out came Google Android. A platform which can probably make Google as big a name in the mobile web as it is in online search. But Google knows that this will not be a smooth ride. It will have to struggle considerably to cope with Yahoo, iPhones, Windows Live Mobiles, Blackberries, and more. But competition is something that brings the best out of everyone. Let’s just hope that this competition brings the best out of every big player out there in the market and ultimately benefits us – the end users.

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

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