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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Using QR codes in mobile advertising

We’ve already seen that the usage of QR codes in mobile advertising has been very popular in countries like Japan and Korea. Now, it has transcended yet another boundary and gone to Singapore.

Singapore Press Holdings has introduced this technology called ZapCodes in Singapore. With this, mobile phone users will be able to get more information on a product or service simply by scanning the ZapCode in an advertisement through their mobile phone camera. The ZapCode software, when installed in your mobile phone, will scan the ZapCode, decipher the message, and send more information to you via a WAP site. The WAP site will have more information on the product or service mentioned in the advertisement. The WAP site might have pictures, gift vouchers, discount coupons, or videos.

This technology, as I’ve always said, is way easier than the usual text message stuff that we are used to. Just imagine, which one is easier? Taking a snap of an ad with your mobile camera and getting the info in a jiffy via a WAP site or typing a code and sending it as a text message to a number and waiting for the info to come in another text message?

This technology could be particularly a huge success in the U.S., if implemented properly. According to statistics, more than 60% of mobile phones in the U.S. have in-built cameras and this makes a huge market for QR code based mobile advertising.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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