Marketing an unknown product in a time of fear

Instead, launching POCit (www.pocit.co.za), the new mobile payment system that slashes payment costs to 30c instead of a minimum of R3.50 by EFT, R12 from a teller or R5 from an ATM, is proving the most thrilling challenge of my career. And the lessons learned from marketing an unknown product in a time of fear are well worth sharing.

Different

After working in consumer research for a major FMCG company and then in marketing for one of the world's top brewers, I knew things would be different when I joined Tradebridge - POCit's parent company - and received a code of conduct letter. It read: “Rule # 1: Use your good judgment in all situations, in line with the POCit values and in the best interest of the company and your fellow employees. Rule# 2: There will be no additional rules”.

Now that is employee empowerment.

I work with a team of super intelligent engineers, but not a day goes by without a good laugh and something great being achieved. When you walk through the POCit and Tradebridge offices, you feel the energy - bright orange walls, cartoons and paintings, pool and foosball tables in the coffee area and the constant buzz of the cappuccino machine. People are passionate about what they do; sometimes you can smell the brains burning with all the innovative thinking that goes on.

Everyone who joins POCit has to read The PayPal Wars - PayPal started out like us, squatting in someone's office and look at them now.

Possibly the biggest advance

Mobile payments are possibly the biggest advance in money use ever. Mobile payments offer cheaper and more extensive payment options and open the possibility of the currently unbanked gaining access to financial systems.

In 2006 alone, 150 million migrants worldwide sent US$300 billion to their families in developing countries through more than 1.5 billion financial transactions, most of which bypassed banks according to the United Nations. Millions of people in South Africa move money informally through local and cross-border taxi drivers. Mobile payments will give those people new respect, security and a way to cut costs.

The market potential is huge. The United Nations International Telecommunication Union says Africa had 65 million new mobile telephone subscribers in 2007. Cellphone penetration rose from one in 50 people in 2000 to a third of all Africans today.

Although mobile banking is widely used in Asia and in the US, Bank of America alone has 21 million clients who use cellphone payments; POCit is still hard for many South Africans to envision. POCit is a cellphone-based personal payments system that is bank- and network independent. POCit is not meant to replace your bank; it complements it and gives a simple, convenient and secure payment solution.

In Phase One of its launch, POCit will be used by those who have cheque and credit cards. In SA. there are more than 6.5 million credit cards in circulation and last year consumers spent R10.84 billion on them, according to the SA Payment Association - far more than the R6.87 billion withdrawn from ATMs in 2007. By January 2009, POCit will have the capacity to pay merchants too and its reach will have spread beyond credit card users.

Key tools

We cannot rely on traditional above the line advertising because the field is so new. Experiential marketing and word of mouth are our key tools.

Some say, why should I trust you? But we've asked all the cellphone networks - and POCit is not limited to any of them - who all say there has not been a single case of fraud involving cellphone banking or payments and they don't believe it is possible. So it's the safest way to bank (unless you divulge your PIN).

We have seeded the brand into targeted communities. The first pilot was among 150 staff of our biggest sister company, Healthbridge. We ran internal marketing campaigns and incentives for them to sign up to POCit and as they became familiar with the brand, they started to sign up their family and friends. We got great feedback from them on how the application could be improved, so that by the time we went “live” we had a “killer app”.

We will soon activate the 3000 people who work on the Dimension Data Campus (POCit's home).

Biggest challenge

The biggest challenge with POCit is that it is an intangible - as opposed to washing powder, beer or a soft drink - it plays more in the service industry as opposed to FMCG.

The lesson - especially for us and the nature of our product is to consistently live by one of our values - simplicity. We're inspired by Google and the Apple iPod: on the surface both are sheer simplicity, but behind the scenes they involve complicated technology made magnificent by a simple user interface.

To those involved in marketing a greenfield product I'd advise:

• Know your consumer and what you want to achieve
  
• Understand that consumers often interpret messages differently to what you intend
  
• Encourage experimentation and frank appraisal of your product - even by people as scary as journalists
  
• Work closely with your development team and ensure that you speak the same language
  
• Keep it simple

Use the product all the time, tell your friends, have fun with it.