Marketing News South Africa

Tour de France campaign shows maturity of MMS

Nashua Mobile has teamed up with Liberty Life to bring exclusive multimedia messaging services (MMS) photo footage and audio quotes from Robbie Hunter at the 2006 Tour de France directly to the cellphones of South African cycling enthusiasts. Says Doug Mattheus, marketing director at Nashua Mobile: "This promotion is all about demonstrating the maturity and viability of MMS as a marketing and communications medium."

Adds Mattheus, "The potential commercial applications for MMS are vast, especially in the fields of content provision and marketing. A higher penetration of MMS-capable phones in South Africa as well increasing EDGE, 3G and HSDPA network coverage across the country means that the market is finally ready for MMS. We expect adoption among businesses and consumers to ramp up steeply in the months ahead."

The first campaign of its kind to be offered to the South African sporting community, the promotion falls under the umbrella of the 'Winners choose winners' campaign, which has called on some of South Africa's best-known sporting icons to illustrate the benefits of the cellular technologies Nashua Mobile offers.

The SMS and MMS messages are distributed through the Nashua Multi-protocol Gateway (MPG), a commercial messaging hub that supports the transmission and reception of Cell C, MTN and Vodacom SMS messages, as well as faxes and emails. Some of South Africa's largest companies already use the MPG to communicate with their customers.

Concludes Mattheus, "Many companies are already enjoying significant benefits from the use of SMS text messages to communicate with their customers, and MMS extends the potential of cellular messaging by adding video, images and sound to the mix."

Liberty Life is the official broadcast sponsor of the Tour de France in South Africa.

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