Goals:
Reinforce brand loyalty by engaging Stolichnaya enthusiasts. Generate awareness of new products and promotions using cross-mobile media. Leverage SMS and PDA to connect with qualified consumers at key lifestyle moments
Solution:
Zingy launched the "Stoli Insider" SMS program, with a Zingy-hosted opt-in on Stoli.com and via the shortcode STOLI. The nearly year-long program offered consumers new product updates like the launch of AStoli Blueberi, timely alerts such as July 4th party recipes and raised awareness of promotions like the "Create your own signature cocktail" contest.
Zingy launched the "Genuine Russian Vodka" brand campaign by incorporating Stoli as exclusive sponsor of the Vindigo City Guide on PDAs for the month of July. Stoli 'owned' the PDA city guide, with no other brand appearing, and used this format to reach 21+ influential lifestyle enthusiasts at point of purchase. The sponsorship served as a key point-of-sale brand reminder, while also promoting the SMS program. Email and calendar opt-ins further engaged consumers by enabling them to sign up for exclusive brand info.
Results:
The "Stoli Insider" SMS program has generated a higher than expected number of opt-ins. Another clear indicator of success is the extremely low opt-out rate throughout the 9 month program. Consumers found value in being a brand "Insider" and want to continue to receive text messages from Stoli.
The Vindigo City Guide sponsorship generated strong interest in the Stoli brand, with tap-through rates as high as 1.60% and consistently high email opt-in rates, which generated valuable leads.
According to Adam Rosen, Senior Brand Manager, Stolichnaya Vodka, at Pernod Ricard USA, "Mobile presents for us the unique opportunity to effectively reach our consumers at appropriate times, which is key. This was our first mobile initiative and, as a brand that's about being genuine and authentic, it was critical to partner with a company with a lot of integrity and insight. Zingy delivered a successful program; they made it easy and turnkey, guiding us throughout the process."
Source: Mobile Marketing Association
Read full study here
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Mobile Content: Keeping a Wireless Industry Growth Engine On Track
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, with consumer-facing content driving the growth of non-voice wireless services. When CTIA took over the management of the Wireless Data Forum in 1998, the expectation of the wireless community was that enterprise applications would drive market adoption of data products and services. Even the name of the organization was IT oriented.
Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the development of the enterprise market: ringtones… along with a cascade of other non-productivity, consumer-oriented… stuff. Stuff that could no longer be stuffily called “wireless data,” but acquired the more user-friendly term of “mobile content.”
Today, non-voice services are the fastest growing segment of the wireless industry, comprising 13.5% of total ARPU as of December 2006, according to the latest figures from CTIA’s semi-annual wireless industry survey, or $15.2 billion in dollar terms, up 77% from the year earlier. Of that total amount, CTIA estimates that “mobile content” (including downloadable and streaming content, as well as information services) accounts for approximately two-thirds, with messaging services making up the remainder. By any and all measures, mobile content is making a substantial and growing contribution to wireless service providers’ bottom lines.
But at times it seems as if mobile content is succeeding in spite of the industry’s efforts, not because of them. Many of the problems associated with market adoption of mobile content are related to the limitations associated with the platform itself: a device with limited screen space, operating in an often harsh environment and expected to perform as if it were on a desk in a living room connected to a fat pipe. Other issues seem self-inflicted: When a representative of one of the first major carriers to roll out ringtones bragged of the service, a group of us handed him a phone and told him to download one from his Web site. Thirty-one clicks later, having not yet succeeded, he gave up. Things have improved significantly since then, but a number of issues still remain.
One of the issues that has plagued content providers from the beginning has been the discoverability of mobile content. In the beginning especially, content providers that were not at the top of the carrier decks were often doomed to product oblivion, no matter how good the content. The fact of the matter is that not being at the top of the deck means that content is buried just too deep for a normal consumer (someone who must find something in four or five clicks, maximum) to locate it. In order to address that problem, and unlock the potential of mobile content to add to their bottom lines, the carriers (begrudgingly in some cases) came to realize that they would have to allow more distribution channels than just their decks and Web sites. In the last year and a half, carriers have been providing billing-on-behalf-of services to an ever-growing universe of content providers who assume responsibility for marketing and delivering the content to subscribers. Among carriers, the willingness to facilitate these providers has been based on the belief that a rising tide will lift all boats, albeit with a healthy concern that their customer-service departments would be on the hook for providers that failed to live up to their claims, from delivering the right content type and to living up to the terms of service.
Not long after significantly increasing the number of third-party content providers that it would bill-on-behalf-of, a representative of one of the major carriers who had responsibility for developing their consumer products approached CTIA with a problem. While he was convinced of the value of allowing third-party providers onto his network, he was concerned that the actions of some of them could potentially set the industry back to the time when content was available only via the carrier deck (or for purchase via credit card… and we all know how unsuccessful that approach is in getting the consumer to complete the transaction). He was getting complaints from subscribers about getting content that was not ordered, was ordered and not delivered, that was charged for when it was supposed to be free, etc. In response to customer complaints, the carrier was simply refunding the subscriber, often after paying the content provider, resulting in a substantial leak of revenues. Not to mention that he had been called into the offices of several states’ attorneys general who were contemplating class-action lawsuits against his company (thank goodness Elliott Spitzer got a new job). His complaints were echoed by his counterpart at another major carrier who was going much more slowly in allowing third parties on their network, but who had grown so frustrated he told me he was about to “pull the plug on the whole thing.”
To be sure, the industry has developed best practices around much of this content, which mostly comprises premium-priced, short code-based subscription services, and the industry is doing its best to educate content providers and consumers about those best practices. However, the competitive pressures among providers to get their content noticed is growing unabated, and a number of providers are turning to anonymous affinity marketing groups, who are incented only to get click-throughs, and so are sometimes less concerned about the problems caused by failing to follow the industry guidelines.
To help the industry address this problem, CTIA has launched an Off Portal Content Monitoring initiative, and has hired the telecommunications research firm Telephia to help implement the program. Since January, Telephia has been testing each of the applications registered in the Common Short Code registry for adherence to the industry best-practices guidelines. The results have been mixed. While most programs are in some form of violation of the guidelines, many of the violations are technical in nature and say as much about detailed nature of the guidelines as they do about the overall compliance of the industry. (For example, applications that drop the dollar sign from the message stating the terms of the service are in technical violation, even when they meet the rest of the requirement for clearly stating service terms.) Some of the violations, however, are egregious and are of the type sure to generate calls to carrier customer-service departments, a significant cost to the carrier (e.g. not stopping the service despite repeated attempts to get the service stopped).
At this point in time, we are just starting to report our findings to the carriers, and they are beginning to assess how best to deal with the results. As we get out the word to the providers of the importance of adhering to the guidelines, and present them with evidence of where they are not in compliance, we expect better and better performance, which should lead to more opportunity for them with the carriers. This is a distribution channel of enormous potential for the carriers and of enormous importance for the content providers. But for it to be successful, all members of the value chain are going to have to meet their responsibilities and adhere to the industry’s voluntary code of best practices. If not, the industry will put itself in the position of having legislators and regulators, not to mention state attorneys general, impose responsibility on us.
Source: RCR News
Read article here
Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the development of the enterprise market: ringtones… along with a cascade of other non-productivity, consumer-oriented… stuff. Stuff that could no longer be stuffily called “wireless data,” but acquired the more user-friendly term of “mobile content.”
Today, non-voice services are the fastest growing segment of the wireless industry, comprising 13.5% of total ARPU as of December 2006, according to the latest figures from CTIA’s semi-annual wireless industry survey, or $15.2 billion in dollar terms, up 77% from the year earlier. Of that total amount, CTIA estimates that “mobile content” (including downloadable and streaming content, as well as information services) accounts for approximately two-thirds, with messaging services making up the remainder. By any and all measures, mobile content is making a substantial and growing contribution to wireless service providers’ bottom lines.
But at times it seems as if mobile content is succeeding in spite of the industry’s efforts, not because of them. Many of the problems associated with market adoption of mobile content are related to the limitations associated with the platform itself: a device with limited screen space, operating in an often harsh environment and expected to perform as if it were on a desk in a living room connected to a fat pipe. Other issues seem self-inflicted: When a representative of one of the first major carriers to roll out ringtones bragged of the service, a group of us handed him a phone and told him to download one from his Web site. Thirty-one clicks later, having not yet succeeded, he gave up. Things have improved significantly since then, but a number of issues still remain.
One of the issues that has plagued content providers from the beginning has been the discoverability of mobile content. In the beginning especially, content providers that were not at the top of the carrier decks were often doomed to product oblivion, no matter how good the content. The fact of the matter is that not being at the top of the deck means that content is buried just too deep for a normal consumer (someone who must find something in four or five clicks, maximum) to locate it. In order to address that problem, and unlock the potential of mobile content to add to their bottom lines, the carriers (begrudgingly in some cases) came to realize that they would have to allow more distribution channels than just their decks and Web sites. In the last year and a half, carriers have been providing billing-on-behalf-of services to an ever-growing universe of content providers who assume responsibility for marketing and delivering the content to subscribers. Among carriers, the willingness to facilitate these providers has been based on the belief that a rising tide will lift all boats, albeit with a healthy concern that their customer-service departments would be on the hook for providers that failed to live up to their claims, from delivering the right content type and to living up to the terms of service.
Not long after significantly increasing the number of third-party content providers that it would bill-on-behalf-of, a representative of one of the major carriers who had responsibility for developing their consumer products approached CTIA with a problem. While he was convinced of the value of allowing third-party providers onto his network, he was concerned that the actions of some of them could potentially set the industry back to the time when content was available only via the carrier deck (or for purchase via credit card… and we all know how unsuccessful that approach is in getting the consumer to complete the transaction). He was getting complaints from subscribers about getting content that was not ordered, was ordered and not delivered, that was charged for when it was supposed to be free, etc. In response to customer complaints, the carrier was simply refunding the subscriber, often after paying the content provider, resulting in a substantial leak of revenues. Not to mention that he had been called into the offices of several states’ attorneys general who were contemplating class-action lawsuits against his company (thank goodness Elliott Spitzer got a new job). His complaints were echoed by his counterpart at another major carrier who was going much more slowly in allowing third parties on their network, but who had grown so frustrated he told me he was about to “pull the plug on the whole thing.”
To be sure, the industry has developed best practices around much of this content, which mostly comprises premium-priced, short code-based subscription services, and the industry is doing its best to educate content providers and consumers about those best practices. However, the competitive pressures among providers to get their content noticed is growing unabated, and a number of providers are turning to anonymous affinity marketing groups, who are incented only to get click-throughs, and so are sometimes less concerned about the problems caused by failing to follow the industry guidelines.
To help the industry address this problem, CTIA has launched an Off Portal Content Monitoring initiative, and has hired the telecommunications research firm Telephia to help implement the program. Since January, Telephia has been testing each of the applications registered in the Common Short Code registry for adherence to the industry best-practices guidelines. The results have been mixed. While most programs are in some form of violation of the guidelines, many of the violations are technical in nature and say as much about detailed nature of the guidelines as they do about the overall compliance of the industry. (For example, applications that drop the dollar sign from the message stating the terms of the service are in technical violation, even when they meet the rest of the requirement for clearly stating service terms.) Some of the violations, however, are egregious and are of the type sure to generate calls to carrier customer-service departments, a significant cost to the carrier (e.g. not stopping the service despite repeated attempts to get the service stopped).
At this point in time, we are just starting to report our findings to the carriers, and they are beginning to assess how best to deal with the results. As we get out the word to the providers of the importance of adhering to the guidelines, and present them with evidence of where they are not in compliance, we expect better and better performance, which should lead to more opportunity for them with the carriers. This is a distribution channel of enormous potential for the carriers and of enormous importance for the content providers. But for it to be successful, all members of the value chain are going to have to meet their responsibilities and adhere to the industry’s voluntary code of best practices. If not, the industry will put itself in the position of having legislators and regulators, not to mention state attorneys general, impose responsibility on us.
Source: RCR News
Read article here
Monday, June 18, 2007
Case Study - Dove
Objective:
Dove wanted to introduce an interactive mobile element to their traditional marketing effort when they launched the "Campaign for Real Beauty."
Overview:
In Fall 2004, OgilvyOne teamed with Mobile 365 to offer the first-ever outdoor mobile marketing campaign in the U.S. to promote the Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty." Dove wanted to extend their traditional marketing mix to include an interactive mobile element, while encouraging consumers to think about what "real beauty" means to them.
Mobile 365 provided two short codes (across all major U.S. carriers) to enable consumers to participate in the campaign by voting on individual graphics on mobile billboards being driven throughout New York City and Los Angeles.
Mobile 365 tabulated and transmitted live bicoastal voting results to a large stationary billboard (with an LED display) located in Times Square in New York City. After casting his or her vote for a particular image, a participant received an acknowledgement on his/her mobile phone. The message provided real-time voting results, and encouraged the participant to visit the campaign Website to engage in discussion groups on the topic of real beauty.
The live voting results billboard is the first fully-interactive billboard in Times Square, and the campaign was the first-ever outdoor mobile marketing event in the U.S. The OgilvyOne campaign extended Dove's traditional marketing mix to include an interactive mobile element, enabling the brand to easily interact with mobile subscribers at the consumer's choice.
We believe that "invitational mobile marketing" is the next wave for brands to reach target audiences. With this mobile messaging component; we have been able to add a real-time, interactive element to the Campaign for Real Beauty. - Gary Towning, Senior Partner, OgilvyOne.
Results:
The "Campaign for Real Beauty" garnered extensive media coverage for the Times Square and Los Angeles billboards and the accompanying interactive mobile element.
Source: Mobile Marketing Association
Read study here
Dove wanted to introduce an interactive mobile element to their traditional marketing effort when they launched the "Campaign for Real Beauty."
Overview:
In Fall 2004, OgilvyOne teamed with Mobile 365 to offer the first-ever outdoor mobile marketing campaign in the U.S. to promote the Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty." Dove wanted to extend their traditional marketing mix to include an interactive mobile element, while encouraging consumers to think about what "real beauty" means to them.
Mobile 365 provided two short codes (across all major U.S. carriers) to enable consumers to participate in the campaign by voting on individual graphics on mobile billboards being driven throughout New York City and Los Angeles.
Mobile 365 tabulated and transmitted live bicoastal voting results to a large stationary billboard (with an LED display) located in Times Square in New York City. After casting his or her vote for a particular image, a participant received an acknowledgement on his/her mobile phone. The message provided real-time voting results, and encouraged the participant to visit the campaign Website to engage in discussion groups on the topic of real beauty.
The live voting results billboard is the first fully-interactive billboard in Times Square, and the campaign was the first-ever outdoor mobile marketing event in the U.S. The OgilvyOne campaign extended Dove's traditional marketing mix to include an interactive mobile element, enabling the brand to easily interact with mobile subscribers at the consumer's choice.
We believe that "invitational mobile marketing" is the next wave for brands to reach target audiences. With this mobile messaging component; we have been able to add a real-time, interactive element to the Campaign for Real Beauty. - Gary Towning, Senior Partner, OgilvyOne.
Results:
The "Campaign for Real Beauty" garnered extensive media coverage for the Times Square and Los Angeles billboards and the accompanying interactive mobile element.
Source: Mobile Marketing Association
Read study here
It's Getting Easier to Access E-Mail on your Phone
Consumers' obsession with sending and receiving e-mail is quickly migrating onto mobile phones.
Numerous companies are making it easier for anyone to send and receive e-mail on their cell phones without splurging on a high-end device or a premium data plan. While the services are generally less sophisticated than the wireless e-mail services offered by BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd., Microsoft Corp. and other wireless e-mail providers, they are starting to appeal to those who use e-mail more for fun than business.
Consilient Technologies Corp. has begun selling mobile software that allows users to send and receive mail from multiple personal e-mail accounts on some 400 different cell phones. The software communicates with the Consilient server, which is checking a user's e-mail account for them. When it receives notice that users have received mail at their personal account, it pulls the messages and delivers them to the user's phone.
Emoze Ltd., owned by Emblaze Ltd., launched an e-mail service that will configure a user's phone to receive mail it routes from personal and work e-mail accounts. The software, which can be downloaded to most cell phones, is currently free and will deliver e-mails to the inbox built in on the device, eliminating the need for users to open a separate application every time they want to check e-mail.
Teleflip Inc. is taking a different approach with its flipMail service, which allows cell-phone users to read and reply to e-mails they receive from users they have in their address book. The service reformats users' e-mails so they can be sent over the operator's text-messaging channel but show up on the device resembling regular mail. FlipMail is now free but will soon begin to include advertisements in addition to offering a premium version for a few dollars a month.
The services are starting to catch on among users interested in staying on top of their e-mail on the go. While checking his e-mail via Teleflip on his phone, Paul Brown, a 34-year-old software engineer, received a message from a friend telling him that NBA playoff tickets had just gone on sale. He called to purchase some instantly.
"It's nice to get your e-mails right when they come up," says Brown, of Austin, Texas. He says he doesn't want to pay for an additional data plan since he is usually near his computer.
Others have begun using them in lieu of higher-priced services geared toward professionals. Paul Adams, a 35-year-old manager for a rock band who lives in New York City, recently bought a BlackJack smart phone from AT&T but chose not to pay for the wireless e-mail service that would have cost him an additional $60 a month. Instead he uses Consilient for $60 a year along with a data plan that's about $30 a month. He says the service stalls every few months or so and forces him to reboot, but he doesn't mind the glitch.
"That probably doesn't happen with a BlackBerry," says Adams. "But I don't care."
Leading Web-mail companies are also improving the mobile mail experience. Yahoo Inc. has been expanding the availability of its Yahoo Go mobile service that allows users to receive Yahoo mail in real time on their phones instead of logging into a mobile Web site. Late last year, Google Inc. launched a mobile Gmail application that is faster and easier to use than logging into its mobile Web site, and it says it might develop technology that would tell users they have received mail without having to refresh their inbox.
The new services are aiming for a piece of the mobile e-mail market that is dominated by corporate users. But that is forecast to change as handsets improve, the price of data plans drops and younger consumers rely on their phones as multipurpose communications hubs. The number of U.S. consumers who access personal e-mail accounts on a mobile device is forecast to rise 55 percent to 17.4 million in 2007, up from 11.2 million in 2006, according to Strategy Analytics Inc., a market-research firm.
"There is some latent demand on the part of consumers to get e-mail on their phones," says Charles Golvin, principal analyst at Forrester Research, whose surveys show that only 11 percent of adults with cell phones use mobile e-mail. "There is room for more players."
Source: Orlando Sentinel
Numerous companies are making it easier for anyone to send and receive e-mail on their cell phones without splurging on a high-end device or a premium data plan. While the services are generally less sophisticated than the wireless e-mail services offered by BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd., Microsoft Corp. and other wireless e-mail providers, they are starting to appeal to those who use e-mail more for fun than business.
Consilient Technologies Corp. has begun selling mobile software that allows users to send and receive mail from multiple personal e-mail accounts on some 400 different cell phones. The software communicates with the Consilient server, which is checking a user's e-mail account for them. When it receives notice that users have received mail at their personal account, it pulls the messages and delivers them to the user's phone.
Emoze Ltd., owned by Emblaze Ltd., launched an e-mail service that will configure a user's phone to receive mail it routes from personal and work e-mail accounts. The software, which can be downloaded to most cell phones, is currently free and will deliver e-mails to the inbox built in on the device, eliminating the need for users to open a separate application every time they want to check e-mail.
Teleflip Inc. is taking a different approach with its flipMail service, which allows cell-phone users to read and reply to e-mails they receive from users they have in their address book. The service reformats users' e-mails so they can be sent over the operator's text-messaging channel but show up on the device resembling regular mail. FlipMail is now free but will soon begin to include advertisements in addition to offering a premium version for a few dollars a month.
The services are starting to catch on among users interested in staying on top of their e-mail on the go. While checking his e-mail via Teleflip on his phone, Paul Brown, a 34-year-old software engineer, received a message from a friend telling him that NBA playoff tickets had just gone on sale. He called to purchase some instantly.
"It's nice to get your e-mails right when they come up," says Brown, of Austin, Texas. He says he doesn't want to pay for an additional data plan since he is usually near his computer.
Others have begun using them in lieu of higher-priced services geared toward professionals. Paul Adams, a 35-year-old manager for a rock band who lives in New York City, recently bought a BlackJack smart phone from AT&T but chose not to pay for the wireless e-mail service that would have cost him an additional $60 a month. Instead he uses Consilient for $60 a year along with a data plan that's about $30 a month. He says the service stalls every few months or so and forces him to reboot, but he doesn't mind the glitch.
"That probably doesn't happen with a BlackBerry," says Adams. "But I don't care."
Leading Web-mail companies are also improving the mobile mail experience. Yahoo Inc. has been expanding the availability of its Yahoo Go mobile service that allows users to receive Yahoo mail in real time on their phones instead of logging into a mobile Web site. Late last year, Google Inc. launched a mobile Gmail application that is faster and easier to use than logging into its mobile Web site, and it says it might develop technology that would tell users they have received mail without having to refresh their inbox.
The new services are aiming for a piece of the mobile e-mail market that is dominated by corporate users. But that is forecast to change as handsets improve, the price of data plans drops and younger consumers rely on their phones as multipurpose communications hubs. The number of U.S. consumers who access personal e-mail accounts on a mobile device is forecast to rise 55 percent to 17.4 million in 2007, up from 11.2 million in 2006, according to Strategy Analytics Inc., a market-research firm.
"There is some latent demand on the part of consumers to get e-mail on their phones," says Charles Golvin, principal analyst at Forrester Research, whose surveys show that only 11 percent of adults with cell phones use mobile e-mail. "There is room for more players."
Source: Orlando Sentinel
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