The Best Of The Best

Last Tuesday saw the culmination of the 2010 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards, as almost 200 executives from brands, agencies and network operators gathered at London’s Vinopolis for the Awards Ceremony. There were 11 awards handed out on the night. Here’s a rundown of who won what...

Most Effective Mobile Couponing or Barcode Campaign
Winner: Fancharge - Go Go Lions Baseball Campaign
This was a true 360-degree campaign for the Seibu Lions, a Japanese major-league pro baseball team, run in conjunction with a local radio station, and executed using the Fancharge mobile marketing and fan engagement platform.

The campaign had a number of objectives, from collecting data on the make-up of the fans, to encouraging more female and family attendance, and driving increased purchase of tickets and merchandise via mobile.
Three weeks before the game, Lions fans received a call-to-action via radio, TV, print, the web and mobile, to send a mobile trigger and register personal details.

Pre-registered users then received personalized branded mobile home pages and were entered in timed drawings for loaded mobile QR code passes. Winners’ phones were scanned at the venue on game day to claim free tickets, branded goods, mobile content, discounts, and entry into a jumbo-screen mobile competition for signed team merchandise, also claimed via QR code scanning. The venue featured mobile QR scanning stations, and roaming staff with portable NFC/RFID devices, delivering coupons to users’ phones. Activity was monitored in real-time on-site for the client. Campaign featured celebrity talent in campaign media, in venue, and on phone.

The campaign generated 8,000 mobile responses from fans, more than 1,000 of whom arrived early with their QR codes and were scanned to collect campaign gifts. 80 per cent of registered fans redeemed mobile promotions for food/beverage and merchandise, and 20 per cent responded to offers on next-event tickets. The game was a sell-out, and exit interviews showed 90 per cent of the participants understood the event was a campaign between the Lions and the local radio station, while 80 per cent of participants wanted to repeat the experience. 

Finalists:
O2 Media – ‘Photobox’ Campaign
ScreenTicket – Sprite ‘Sell Your Mother’ Campaign

Most Effective Bluetooth Marketing Campaign
Winner: BlisMobile – Unilever Cornetto ‘Enigma’ Campaign
BlisMobile’s Bluetooth campaign for Unilever’s Cornetto Enigma brand was aimed at 16 - 24 year olds, and was centred around the idea of: ‘It’s what inside that counts’. This was to reflect the new, improved Cornetto cone, which features ice cream and toppings throughout the whole cone.

The campaign included a dating competition which offered an ‘Average Jo’ the chance to win a date with a ‘Heat Hunk’ or a ‘High Street Honey’ to see if it truly is what’s inside that counts. Through a call to action on giant Transvision screens at Manchester Piccadilly, and London Waterloo and Victoria Stations, and on the London and Southampton bus networks, consumers were offered the chance to download a series of videos of interviews with ‘Heat Hunks’ and ‘High Street Honeys’. BlisMobile set a guarantee of 100,000 unique interactions over the campaign period: 12 July – 21 August 2010, with each download charged at £0.20.

This out of home media, for which Unilever was not charged, was worth £100,000, and delivered a total reach of 12m people over the campaign period. The creative showed the Hunks and Honeys, and explained how commuters could download the videos.

BlisMobile understood that there would be two types of commuters: business and leisure. To cater for both, new videos were issued every Monday morning to cater for the business commuter, while content was changed every Thursday evening to cater for weekend leisure commuters. 

The attention to detail paid off. The campaign generated 119,991 downloads, in excess of the guaranteed 100,000. The additional 20,000 downloads were not charged for, and the download rate was 10.3 per cent. A great example of a Bluetooth campaign with a clear strategy, well executed, that delivered excellent results.

Finalist:
Incentivated -  Estee Lauder DKNY ‘Candy Apples’ Launch

Most Effective mCommerce Solution
Winner: Ericsson IPX/LINK Mobility - Skåne Transport SMS Bus Tickets
Following a number of robberies on buses in the Skåne region of Sweden, the regional transport authority, Skåne Travel, was looking for alternatives to using cash to buy bus tickets, both to increase the safety of its bus drivers, and to improve customer service.

Working with Ericsson IPX, LINK Mobility designed and built a ticketing solution for Skåne Travel, which not only lets travellers buy tickets on their mobile, but also view the latest travel information and bus timetables on their handset.  

The system uses a small Java app. When a passenger buys a ticket, a premium SMS is sent to Ericsson IPX. After checking the customer has sufficient credit on their mobile account, the price of the ticket is charged to their mobile account and a ticket is sent to the app on their mobile. The ticket is colour-coded, both to reduce fraud, and to help the drivers verify the tickets quickly. 

The service has proved extremely popular with customers as it is easy to use and means they no longer need to carry change for the bus. Around 18,000 mobile tickets are now sold each month. Bus loading times are reduced, as drivers only need to check tickets, rather than selling them. And Drivers no longer need to carry cash, as the app is the only way of buying ‘spot’ tickets on the bus, though customer can still buy prepaid cards, monthly season passes and paper tickets in advance of boarding the bus.

Highly Commended: Bango – Bango In-app Billing

Finalists:
Ericsson IPX/Selecta - MobiVending Vending Machine SMS Purchase
Mobile Interactive Group – m.marksandspencer.com
Portaltech L.K.Bennett Mobile Site

Touchnote – Touchnote Postcards

Most Effective Location-based Service/Campaign
Winner: NAVTEQ Media Solutions - McDonalds LocationPoint Campaign
McDonald’s Finland launched a location-targeted mobile ad campaign on NAVTEQ’s  LocationPoint Advertising platform. The campaign targeted consumers within a certain distance of a McDonald’s restaurant with an ad offering them a McDonald’s cheeseburger for €1. Consumers who clicked on the ads saw the details of the promotion, and could receive driving or walking directions to the nearest store location.

The campaign delivered a 7 per cent clickthrough rate, and of those who clicked through, 39 per cent selected the click-to-navigate option, which offered drive-to or walk-to navigation to the nearest McDonald’s outlet, using Nokia’s Ovi Maps navigation.

This is a solid performance in a fast-emerging market sector, and proves mobile advertising’s ability to catch consumers “in the moment” and drive retail footfall.

Finalists:
KEO Digital – Landshare iPhone App
Placecast – Placecast ShopAlerts
Yodel Digital - woZZon Android App

Most Effective Mobile Operator Opt-in Subscriber Database Campaign
Winner: Turkcell - Rabarba ClearMen ‘Cool Sport’ Campaign
This campaign ran during the 2010 World Cup. Clear Cool Sport, an anti-dandruff shampoo for men, was seeking to be one of the top-of-mind brands during the tournament. The aim of the campaign was to add a local touch to the global Clear Cool Sport commercials which starred soccer superstar, Cristiano Ronaldo.

The brand knew that soccer fans would be following the games and news online as well as on TV, so it created an online campaign that tapped into Turkcell’s opted-in subscriber database. 

The hero of the campaign, Arda, had to overcome a series of obstacles to get to a game in which Ronaldo was playing. In one level of the game, the character lost his way and called visitors to the campaign site on their own mobile phone. Picking up their phones, visitors gave him directions on their mobile, and using voice recognition technology, their instructions were translated into actions within the web game.

With thousands of people playing the game at the same time, it was vital that the mobile-web integration worked faultlessly, and it did. This innovative use of mobile created a huge buzz in the national press and in online blogs & forums on the net. It was effective too, with sales of the shampoo showing a 60 per cent year-on-year increase.   

Finalists:
Indosat i-klan
Orange Shots/Optimium ‘Leap Year’ Campaign
Velti – AVEA ‘World of Advantages’

Most Effective Sales Promotion/Direct Response Campaign
Winner: Upstream Systems - MTN 2010 FIFA World Cup Campaign, West Africa
This was a set of three parallel mobile marketing promotions for MTN in Nigeria, Ghana and Benin, run at zero cost to the operator, on a revenue-share basis. The core objective behind the trio of promotions was to leverage the inevitable excitement across all of Africa generated by the World Cup, which was being hosted in S. Africa for the first time in its history.

Across these three W. African countries, MTN subscribers could send a text message to a shortcode and enter draws to win great prizes, including a big cash giveaway every day in Nigeria; a Hyundai i10 car every day in Ghana; and a Sony LCD TV every day and Hyundai cars every month in Benin. The campaigns ran for approximately 90 days in each market.

Upstream devised and ran each campaign end to end, from selecting the prizes to managing incoming and outgoing SMS on its proprietary MCS (Marketing Communication Suite) platform,. The investment needed for these campaigns was also taken on by Upstream.

The campaign was limited to mobile, and specifically SMS, reflecting Upstream’s grasp of the realities of W. Africa - specifically the high penetration of SMS-capable mobile devices, and low levels of ownership of smartphones, PDAs or fixed devices.
In Ghana, almost 10 per cent of active subscribers to MTN Ghana participated in the promotion, playing an average of almost 20 times each.  The campaign delivered an ROI of 333 per cent.

In Benin, over 11 per cent of active subscribers to MTN Benin participated in the promotion, playing, on average, more than 26 times. The campaign ROI in Benin was 647 per cent. And in Nigeria, 3 per cent of active subscribers to MTN Nigeria participated in the promotion, playing an average of almost 20 times. ROI for the Nigeria campaign was 175 per cent.

With figures like these, Upstream made a compelling case for victory.

Highly Commended: Sponge/OpenMarket Coca-Cola ‘Gimme Credit’ Campaign

Finalists:
Fancharge - Go Go Lions Baseball Campaign
Sponge - Zavvi.com Customer Acquisition Campaign
Incentivated – Jaguar XJ Launch
Upstream Systems - Vodafone 90 Mercedes C-Class ‘One Every Day!’ Campaign

Most Effective Mobile Application – b2b
Winner: NXP iPhone App
With its iPhone app, semiconductor maker NXP wanted to take the pain out of finding semiconductors for design engineers who spend up to three days each month online, trying to find the right components for their designs.

NXP wanted to boost loyalty by helping these engineers to do their job more quickly and effectively by giving them access to product specifications, plus the ability to place an order, wherever they happened to find themselves.

The app puts 10,000 NXP semiconductor products, literally, in the palm of engineers’ hands. Users can search NXP products; access detailed product specifications and share them via social media; order products; find sales offices and distributors; and access technical support.

The app launched on iTunes in July, and was downloaded more than 2,000 times in the first two months. In the same time period, downloads of datasheets increased by 1,200 per cent, while the app also drove a significant boost in traffic to the NXP website. 

Highly Commended: Propeller Mobile – Congrex Conference App

Finalists:
Crafted Media - Anyspacedirect
Grapple – Beehive Business Call Management
Huddle – Huddle for Mobile
NXP Semiconductors - NXP
SPB – SPB Mobile Shell

Most Effective Mobile Application – b2c
Winner: TouchType - SwiftKey
SwiftKey is, quite simply, one of the most innovative and useful apps we have ever seen. It’s an Android app that uses TouchType's patent-pending Fluency language prediction engine to learn a user's writing style and complete words and sentences for them, making touchscreen typing easier and quicker. The developers have analysed over 50bn words in nine major languages to build the models that drive the prediction engine.

The technology understands the relationship between words, and can accurately predict about a third of words before a user taps a key, with 80 per cent of words predicted with two or fewer key taps. The effect this has on text entry speed is remarkable, since typically, you only have to tap one or two characters, then select one of the three words SwiftKey suggests.  Better still, if there’s a phrase you use regularly in text messages or emails, perhaps a weekly text to check someone’s availability for something, it will remember the phrase and spell it out one word at a time as you go.

The free, beta version of the app was downloaded 100,000 times in its first three days on Android Market while the paid version topped the platform's paid apps chart for seven days straight when it launched in September.  iPhone users must be wondering when they’ll get a look in.

Highly Commended: Shazam - Shazam

Finalists:
Accumulate - Flexion Wrapper
iSpeech – Drive Safe.ly
Moneysupermarket.com Vouchers
Portaltech – Stripeylines

Most Effective Mobile Site 
Winner: Mobile Interactive Group – m.marksandspencer.com
The retail sector is just beginning to get its head around mobile and one firm is leading the charge. Marks & Spencer has perhaps not always been considered a trailblazer – it didn’t start accepting credit cards until 2001 – but in the mobile space, things are somewhat different.

The M&S mobile site, created by Usablenet, with the user interface and customer experience elements provided by Mobile Interactive Group, launched in May 2010. It includes a product search, storefinder, and a full product range for Women’s, Men’s, Kids Clothing, Home and Furniture, Technology and more – around 24,000 products in total.

The site is great to look at and easy to use, enabling users to get to what they want with a minimum number of clicks. Customers can also access the same account details on both the mobile and the PC, enabling users to complete a transaction on mobile that may have started on a PC, or vice versa.

And when you look at the numbers, things get even better. In the first four months after launch, the site attracted 1.2m unique visitors, who between them, generated over 10m page views. During that period, there were more than 13,000 orders place on the site, ranging from clothes to TVs, with the largest order placed via a mobile totalling £3,280, for two sofas.

The M&S mobile site creates a compelling argument for retailers to go mobile and reap the benefits.

Finalists:
The Guardian – m.guardian.co.uk
Flirtomatic

Most Effective Mobile CRM/Enterprise Messaging Campaign
Winner: Incentivated - M&S Mobile CRM Campaign
In the spring of 2009, Marks & Spencer (M&S) handed Incentivated a brief to create and execute a CRM campaign to grow its mobile database size from nothing to 210,000 in the space of a year.
The campaign reached out principally to loyalty programme customers and non-loyalty
customers who had signed up for text alerts, with offers, deals, promotions and news about M&S. This enabled M&S to engage with customers through the mobile channel directly and use it to complement existing direct mail and email contact strategies.

Campaign activity included text-and-win competitions, event reminders for instore loyalty events, and internal education so that M&S employees understood the campaign objectives. Different message types were tested, and all results tracked.

By August 2010, the campaign has far exceeded its target, having recruited 700,000 opted-in customers to the database. It has also created a robust new measurable channel for the loyalty team to add into their marketing plan, and has also been shown to trigger an increase in in-store purchase, as measured by basket spend, for those receiving the mobile messages as opposed to those who do not.

Highly Commended: Velti - Argos ‘Text & Take Home’ Service

Finalists:
Dynmark – Carphone Warehouse ‘Fab Phonecall’ Competition
Txtlocal  - Constructaquote.com
Txtlocal - Papa John’s ‘Offer of the Month’

Most Effective Mobile Advertising Campaign 
Winner: Sky Sports/Procter & Gamble - ‘Pringoooals’
Earlier this year, Procter & Gamble was looking for a new and innovative medium to engage users throughout May and June, with an expressed focus on the 2010 World Cup. Sky Media designed, built and hosted a dedicated ‘Pringoooals Soundboard’ iPhone app to engage soccer fans and complement existing Pringoooals campaigns.

The app enabled users to express the excitement, frustration and euphoria of following their team whilst watching the games. It had multiple sounds and functionality, which created a carnival atmosphere. Sounds ranged from Air-Horn, Applause and Trumpets to licensed clips of the famous “They Think it’s all over” commentary from the 1966 World Cup final.  Shaking the phone made the app shout: “Goooooooal!”, the idea being that when someone jumped up to celebrate a goal, the phone would intuitively know what to sound to play. Finally a ‘Red Card; element was included, so the user could signal their disdain at the referee (or their friends) turning the iPhone screen completely Red and chanting “Off, Off” at the recipient.

Every time a sound was activated, a screen was launched that displayed both the sound icon and one of Pringles Range of Flavours with Peter Crouch Promotion..
The entire campaign was advertised exclusively on Sky’s World Cup Score Centre and Sky Sports News iPhone apps, driving all users directly into iTunes to instantaneously download the free app. The results of the campaign are commercially sensitive, but were released to the judges, who deemed this to be an incredibly powerful and effective campaign, and a worthy winner.

Finalists:
AdMob/Fetch Media - Lovestruck.com
Out There Media – Samsung Galaxy S Launch
Auto Trader Mobile – ‘Now That’s The Cat’s Pyjamas’ Campaign
Pontomobi – Dove Sampling Machine
Yodel Digital – Jobsite