Mobitainment wins Global Mobile Marketing Award for Surf Pick a Box campaign

The MMA received hundreds of submissions from companies across the globe. Winners are selected by the MMA Awards Selection Committee that's comprised of global industry leaders from wireless carriers, technology and content providers, agencies, and industry publications.

Candice Goodman, co-founder of Mobitainment, is a proud South African commenting "These awards recognize companies and their campaigns for spearheading the adoption of the mobile channel for marketing purposes. We are so proud to have put together a mobile campaign for Unilever with Proudly South African technology, and it was recognised with the MMA's highest honours. We were especially proud to receive the award in the Direct Response category, being awarded to the company that best demonstrates how the use of mobile marketing directly impacted sales, conversions, trials, or purchase intent among their target audience, as it met the exact objectives of the Surf Pick a Box campaign.

Direct Response for Surf

According to Ethne Whitley, spokesperson for Unilever Surf, the brand engaged its advertising and mobile agencies (The Hardy Boys and Mobitainment) to create a campaign with the objective of raising awareness of the new brand and getting consumers to try the product in order to drive sales and increase market share.

"We decided on the Surf Pick-a-Box TV Show, which was based on the old, proven Pick a Box mechanic," says Whitley. "It was aired on SABC1 during the ad break for one of the most popular local soap operas, Generations.

"Mobitainment set up an entry mechanism over mobile that was the most affordable for the consumer to express interest in being a contestant on the TV Show. The participant could send a free Please Call Me, which triggered off an Automated Voice Message call-back to ask the participant questions to pre-qualify him or her as a customer and prospective contestant.

"The mobile phone was used as a tool to engage with customers in a fun, entertaining way, elicit a measurable response from them and motivate them to purchase the product. It is seen as an important channel for communicating with consumers and the database created from the respondents will be used to contact them in the future with relevant information and competitions or promotions. The mobile phone truly became the remote control to the customer through TV, increased the awareness of the new brand and encouraged consumers to try the new product," she concludes.

The free entry mechanism for this competition created high entry volumes averaging at 8 300 per day and peaking at over 12 000 daily entries for the two-month duration of the campaign. The fact that the participant got a call back from none other than the South African celebrity and host of the TV Show, Dingaan Mokebe, created a lot of excitement around the campaign, the TV show and of course the brand. It made people feel important and special. Critical to the campaign was the ability to reach the participants and speak to them in their mother tongue vernacular language.

According to Goodman "This campaign was an astounding success because it used new mobile technology like Please Call Me's and Automated Voice Messaging to reach a huge portion of the exact target market, got them to purchase the product, made them feel special and important through the celebrity marketing, and received market research in exchange, all at no cost to the participant!"

This MMA award makes two in a row for us at Mobitainment, as we were part of the Livemobile Football team that were the co-winners in the MMA Awards 2009, the first African company to win an award since the inception of the MMA global awards."

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the premier global non-profit trade association representing all players in the mobile marketing value chain. With more than 700 member companies, the MMA is an action-oriented organization with global focus, regional actions and local relevance. The MMA's primary focus is to establish mobile as an indispensible part of the marketing mix. The MMA works to promote, educate, measure, guide and protect the mobile marketing industry worldwide.