especial MAR08-1.indd

Special Report:
interactive Marketing
T
ext By Phone, Web or Photo Booth: live
event participants like the interactivity.
Texting or Web-based promotions associated with live events can create plenty of fun
and excitement—particularly with the young,
techno-savvy set. The campaigns allow marketers to capture e-mail addresses and other
personal information they can then use for
future marketing.
The messaging can be
used as a means of entry to a
sweepstakes, an opportunity
to become part of a show or to
deliver branded wallpaper or
ringtones.
in this report, Promo provides a status report on how
marketers like A&e and AT&T—
and even a Buddhist peace
organization—are capitalizing
on these promotions.
COnTEnTS:
TexT By Phone, WeB or PhoTo BooTh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
MoBile CouPons noT JusT for The Kids: sTudy . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Air forCe TArgeTs reCruiTs WiTh MoBile MArKeTing . . . . . . .7
Interactive Marketing
Text By Phone, Web
or Photo Booth
Live event participants like the interactivity
By the Promo Staff
in the middle of Manhattan’s Times
Square, a small island sandwiched
between Broadway and Seventh Avenue
houses a U.S. military recruitment station. On March 20 it will be neighbored
by a mini oasis—complete with a working waterfall, a fountain and a large
globe—erected on behalf of the ShinnyoEn Foundation, a Buddhist organization
dedicated to promoting world peace.
The Web-driven, one-day event,
dubbed Six Billion Paths to Peace,
will invite people all over the world to
send messages that will appear on the
Reuters display screen hovering above
the island.
“The idea of the event is to demonstrate there can be peace and tranquility
in the middle of madness,”
explains Scott Troxel,
director of entertainment,
GMR Marketing, which
conceived and is executing
the event for Shinnyo-En.
Texting and Web-based
communications promotions associated with live
events, like the one about
to take place for ShinnyoEn, enable brands to create
some fun and excitement—
particularly for the soughtafter cell phone set. It also
allows marketers to capture
e-mail addresses and other
personal information they
Visitors to a live event featuring “Mindfreak” host Criss
Angel could text him messages that appeared on nearby
Reuters and NASDAQ screens.
can then use for future marketing. The methods can be
used as a means of entry to a
sweepstakes, an opportunity
to become part of a show or to
deliver branded wallpaper or
ringtones.
Logistics for the messag-
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continued from page 2
ing portion of the Shinnyo-En event is
being handled by GMR sister agency
Mango Mobile, also part of the Omnicom family. The system currently
anticipates being able to handle English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese.
“We’ll have to get translations done,”
notes Theresa Page, Mango’s executive
vice president, business development.
“We’re hoping for Arabic and Hebrew
too. We’re looking for a program that
can handle them. Needing to accommodate so many languages required
that the project needed a special URL,
which will serve as a hub from which
the messages will be sent.”
While this campaign will avoid the
complications of different mobile telephone standards, Mango has plenty
of experience running those types of
handset-driven promotions utilizing
short codes and keywords.
For example, last June it executed a
texting component for another Times
Square event, this time promoting a TV
show on A&E, “Mindfreak,” whose host
Criss Angel is widely regarded as a contemporary Houdini known for deathdefying feats.
Angel was cemented into a box hanging from a crane for five days, during
which fans viewing in person or watching
could send him messages that appeared
on the Reuters and NASDAQ screens.
Fans viewing in person or watching
the stunt from the Web texted 4,219
messages to the jumbotron from 773
unique users over the five days. The
CMS (content management system)
report tracked the messages daily, and
was able to determine the texters’ carriers and from what state.
Just over a third of the participants
used Verizon Wireless, while a quarter
had Cingular/AT&T-enabled cellphones
and 13% were Sprint users and 8% came
through other networks. New York State
residents accounted for 163 of the 773
users, with the geographically dispersed
texters hailing from 45 states.
“A lot of people thought they were
communicating directly with Criss
Angel,” Page says. Although Angel had
no way of reading what fans were writing, one fan in Time Square texted Angel
asking him to blow a kiss to her, and two
minutes later it appeared he did.
“She was convinced that he could tell it
was her. He was just waving and blowing
kisses to everyone,” Page says, who realized from the fan encounter how involved
consumers like to be when participating
in live sports and music events.
“Concerts are usually tie-ins with
whoever the sponsor is,” she explains.
Mango Mobile managed last summer
AT&T used posters to get college
students to invite the Dave Matthews
Bands to play at their school through
text messaging.
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phone-less texting for the Beyonce tour,
which was sponsored by Samsung.
At the concert arenas, Samsung set
up booths where fans had their photos taken, and delivered a message to
Beyonce, but not on the big screen above
the stage (the singer had other ideas for
that space).
Instead, the messages appeared
on two Samsung high-definition TVs
within the concourse, and people could
later download their concert photos as
wallpaper to their home computer or
cellphone.
Technically, it wasn’t easy to set
up because the system was provisioned to accommodate 500 different
continued from page 3
Texting figured prominently in
the Warped heavy metal tour this
past summer.
handsets and 24 or 25 different
picture sizes.
“It became a souvenir,” Page
notes, adding that more than
6,000 photos were processed.
Many more fans would have probably done so but they wanted to
get back to their seats for the concert, she adds.
Dialing in
AT&T played host to a two-night
Dave Matthews Band concert at
the U.S. Military Academy in West
Point, NY, last fall. The concert
was the grand prize in a national
contest, dubbed the World’s Loudest Pep Rally, which prompted
National Collegiate Athletic Association university students to
invite the band to play at their
school by sending creative invitations via AT&T text messaging and
online. The school that sent the
most messages won the concert,
which was open to West Point students, alumni and fans of the U.S. Military Academy.
AT&T chose the band for its passionate
fan base and because it resonates well with
the college crowd, says Tom Hughes, director of sponsorships and events for AT&T
Operations, Inc.
Before the concert began, attendees
sent text messages and photos to a giant
AT&T-branded screen. Messages ranged
from birthday greetings to “I love you
Dave.” More than 2,600 items were sent
during the on-campus event Nov. 14 and
15 at Eisenhower Hall.
“The more we can get our customers and fans to engage in the technology
using their wireless phones, the better we
are as a company,” Hughes says.
AT&T also offered exclusive downloadable Dave Matthews Band ringtones
to concertgoers. Nearly 2,000 fans bought
the ringtones.
The firm used the free concert to generate brand awareness and target new
customers. While the promotion wasn’t
designed as a direct selling vehicle, AT&T
runs fun events to keep its brand relevant
among younger audiences and offer
incentives, such as exclusive ringtones, to
facilitate a future sale.
“Anything we do is put through the
filter of: How does this advance our
brand and how does this help the business units accomplish their objectives,”
Hughes says.
At the event, AT&T also gave out free
posters branded with AT&T World’s
Loudest Pep Rally and set up key customers in a VIP lounge area with free food
and drink and good seats.
THE BIG IDEA
The idea originated when AT&T began
planning for its sponsorship of the college football season. The company and
The Marketing Arm looked at what
other factors drive the 18-to 24-year-old
market: Music and social technology.
“It seemed like a natural fit to put
these together and create the World’s
Loudest Pep Rally promotion,” says
Jenna Kampfschulte, promotions director for The Marketing Arm which works
on the AT&T business.
Mobile marketing at concerts particularly work because it lets fans feel they are
part of the event she says.
“When you send something to someone’s phone, it gives you a chance to con-
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tinue to market to that person,”
Kampfschulte adds. “It gives marketers a chance to reach people on
a one-to-one level.”
Another benefit is the convenience factor. People want to
be in the know and get exclusive
content while at an event. And
mobile marketing is measurable.
Companies can track the number of people interacting with the
brand or tactics.
And there’s a market. There
are more than 254 million
mobile subscribers in the U.S.,
according to CTIA, the wireless
association. Mobile phone sales
to U.S. consumers reached 146
million units or $11.5 billion
during 2007 alone.
But event mobile marketing
isn’t always easy. For one, people may
be reluctant to start to communicate
with marketers, even if it means getting a freebie.
“We’re challenged with coming up
with a reason for them to start a dialogue with us,” admits Hughes. “Would
offering a free screensaver, ringtone
download or the opportunity to win a
prize be enough?”
Companies also have to find what
themes or topics resonate with their
target audience, or people will turn off
the brands.
“You just have to find what is meaningful to that target,” Kampfschulte says.
“It has to be relevant, and it has to be simple. The more complex, the less participation there may be.”
Is AT&T planning a revival of the
promotion? Hughes says yes, adding that
it’s a successful platform, but is keeping
mum about future details.
But no matter the promotion, Hughes
predicts a bright future for mobile.
“As technology becomes more pervasive
and folks become more comfortable using
wireless devices, participation in these programs will only increase,” he says.
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Interactive Marketing
Mobile Coupons
Not Just for the
Kids: Study
By the Promo Staff
A recent study by The Nielsen Group found that consumers around the globe place their greatest trust in recommendations from friends. About 78% said they would believe
their social network about a product or service, compared
to about 55% faith in TV ads and 49% trust in either brand
sponsorships or marketers’ e-mail messages (even when those
weren’t spam.)
It looks as if advertising may be going
through a crisis of trust. Viral marketing may be able to help.
Jim Calhoun, founder and
CEO of viral marketing agency
PopularMedia, points out that
we’re all becoming more selective
about our media consumption
and filtering out messages we
feel are irrelevant, whether these
come in print, on TV, in stores or
online via ads or e-mail.
But if someone we know and
admire or value forwards a message to us, that respect can break
through those filters. We’re connected to the sender; we know and
trust their taste. That’s the virtue of
peer-to-peer marketing.
Sephora, the perfume and makeup retailer, selling both online and
in their own stores: A luxury brand
known for doing no discounting and
very little promotion. The company
had a house list of past customers who had opted in to receive email, but wanted to add both more names and greater texture to
that list. It wanted to figure out who the important names were
not just from their lifetime buying, but because of their influence among other prospects.
To accomplish those goals, the Sephora In Girl program was
created by PopularMedia, an effort that rolled out in late 2006
and ran through the first half of this year.
Membership in the panel was
designed to convey status as a fashionforward trendsetter; members also
received a Sephora In Girl T-shirt. The
key was that recipients of the e-mail
needed to get votes from their circle
of friends; they were also encouraged
to nominate others from among their
personal social networks.
E-mail to selected names on
the house list contained a link to a
landing page, which explained the
application procedure. That was followed by a “very hard” registration
and a 15-question survey about the
applicant’s fashion personality and
beauty product preferences, Calhoun says.
Applicants were given a dediCellfire coupons such as this offer
from Hardee’s are showing more
traction among the over-34 age
group.
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Users who come to brands through
viral messages transmitted by social
networks are 300% to 500% more likely to
engage with those brands than those reached
by other forms of marketing.
continued from page 5
cated bookmarkable page where they
could keep track of the number of nominations they had received for the In Girl
panel. Just as importantly, tools on that
page let them send e-mail through their
own address books to the friends of their
choice, asking for their nominations, and
monitoring their responses. A separate
list let users send out invitations to people
they thought would also be good Sephora
In Girl candidates, again with a view of
who had acted on the invitation.
“Finesse, not firepower, is what’s
required here,” Calhoun says. “You don’t
need to tell everybody—just the right
people. People do an exceptional job of
picking the people whom they know are
going to be into this type of thing.”
Getting users to do that sorting for
you is important because this kind of
viral appeal depends entirely on voluntary engagement. People interacting with
your message aren’t focused on making
a purchase but on learning something or
having some fun.
“They’re entertaining themselves,”
Calhoun says. “They’re at a point in
their day when they’ve got five minutes
to spare and looking for some quick
enjoyment. If that enjoyment comes
wrapped in your brand, you’ll create a
much stronger emotional contact with
that person.”
Making it easy for the in-house members to e-mail their friends from their
personal addresses also put the power of
social bonding to work, both in sending
the messages and in getting them opened
and acted upon. Forwarding a viral
message can be an easy, risk-free way to
strengthen a social relationship—conveying that you’re thinking about someone without having to risk social capital
by creating an original expression.
The results of the campaign suggest that it not only enabled Sephora to
expand its opt-in house list, but also to
understand better who the real influentials were among its existing database.
According to Calhoun, those influentials
each delivered between 40 and 180 leads
who then went on to register for the In
Girl program themselves.
Of those invited to take part by a
friend, 82% completed the registration
and the fashion trend questionnaire.
That compares to only a 40% opt-in
rate among people who learned about
the In Girl panel from the Sephora Web
site, through an in-store purchase or in a
standard, non-viral e-mail broadcast—
none of which required participants to
go through the extensive registration that
the In Girl campaign did.
Calhoun adds that users who come to
brands through viral messages transmitted by social networks are 300% to 500%
more likely to engage with those brands
than those reached by other forms of marketing. For example, about 15% of the
prospects reached through viral programs
click through and convert into buyers right
in that session—a ratio that beats the average conversion rate for search marketing.
“That goes back to how good people
are at figuring out who to share programs
like Sephora In Girl with, who will get
delight from it,” he says. “People these
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days are filtering what they engage with
based on the recommendations of those
they know, and this trend is only going to
gather speed as the Facebook/MySpace
generation grows up.”
Calhoun highlights some challenges
for companies trying to harness the
power of peer-to-peer marketing:
•Get engaging fast. You’ve got a very small
window—a few seconds in an e-mail, a few
frames in a viral video—in which to connect emotionally with the recipient and
convey how you plan to entertain them.
•Sharing is caring, not shilling. “Users
do a kind of mental math with viral messages,” he says. “They want to do things
that will improve their status with the
people they’re connected to and will avoid
putting that status at risk.” The harder the
sell you insert into a would-be viral message, the more social capital you’re asking
someone to risk in forwarding it. Many
may just decide it’s not worth the risk.
•Breadth versus bread. For this reason, it often comes down to a tension
between distribution of a message and
monetization of the marketing effort.
The wider you want your campaign to
disseminate, the less aggressive you can
usually be about making that traffic
convert to a profit.
•Good viral marketing only looks easy.
The famous “Elf Yourself ” campaign
from OfficeMax last holiday season was
actually the 19th creative execution by
the company’s agency. “You won’t get
it right the first time,” Calhoun says.
“That’s why you test, monitor, optimize
and then re-test.”
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Interactive Marketing
flying high
Air Force targets recruits with mobile marketing
By Amy Johannes
When the U.S. Air Force searched for a way to promote
its high-tech image to target new recruits, it looked no further
than mobile marketing.
It tapped GSD&M Idea City to help with its ongoing Do
Something Amazing Tour, a high-tech interactive experience
crisscrossing the country that teaches people about the Air
Force and assists with recruiting efforts.
The goals: To drive traffic to recruiters and the events.
“We all have mobile phones,” says Travis Scoggins, account
supervisor at GSD&M Idea City. “We thought, ‘Is there an
opportunity for the Air Force?’”
So, the agency ran a test adding new mobile components last
April to the tour. For one, it created
an electronic footprint around
the site using Bluetooth transmitters to target users with a text
message inviting them to participate. On-site signage promotes
the videos and other content
available on the phones.
Those without Bluetooth
equipment aren’t left out. Visitors to the movie theater trailer
can also download Air Force
games using text messaging or
quick response codes. In one
example, people can play the
“Refueling Game” to learn about
becoming a boom operator, who
provides in-flight fueling services to aircrafts.
“We wanted to give visitors something they could walk
away with” other than a T-shirt,”
Scoggins says.
People can also send a text
message to download Air Force
ringtones (SONG to USAF1) or to find a recruiter by texting
LEARN to USAF1. What’s more, videos of an F-16 air strike or
F-16 firing missiles can also be downloaded to phones.
“It’s an immediate call to action,” Scoggins says. “It gives
people an immediate communication piece with the brand.”
As an added benefit, the brand built in the costs of cell phone
charges and fees to avoid charges to participants, Scoggins says.
It set aside a six-figure budget for the expense.
“We wanted to make it easy for people,” he adds. “We didn’t
want to have people feel like they are getting a ton of charges.”
The addition of a mobile component appears to be paying off. Since the test launched in April, the Air Force has had
46,500 WAP site visits, the mini
Web site for cell phones, and
nearly 18,000 Bluetooth interactions, Scoggins says.
The tour visits 150 to 200
locations a year, including small
town fairs, concerts and high
schools to Supercross and NASCAR events. Stops next month
include the Thunder in the Valley
Air Show in Columbus, GA, and
the Miami Dade Country Fair in
Miami, FL. In April, the tour will
stop at International Hot Rod
Association events in San Antonio, TX, and Charlotte, NC.
The mobile marketing
component is expected to run
through September.
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The Air Force targets Bluetooth users with special
content at its Do Something
Amazing Tour, where some
74% of people responded and
33% opted in to receive a free
ringtone.
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