CMO teams up with Planet Oi'

6 Sep 2010

PALO ALTO, US: The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council recently announced a partnership with Planet Oi', an innovator in mobile social media marketing, to explore where and how companies can embrace mobile relationship marketing (MRM) platforms to improve customer insight, interaction, loyalty, repeat purchase and word-of-mouth advocacy.

The partnership is part of a wider CMO Council mobility initiative that will include new global thought leadership and dialogues with senior marketers seeking to better understand and exploit the mobile channel, which today reaches nearly 5 billion consumers worldwide. The CMO Council will run targeted MRM pilot programs using the Planet Oi' platform in cooperation with leading consumer packaged goods brands, loyalty & rewards operators, and other consumer-facing organisations.

Mobile marketing is a powerful medium

"Mobile marketing, while still in its early stages, represents a powerful and rapidly evolving medium of customer engagement," said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. "The mobile phone is now the single most pervasive channel of communications and targeted market interaction in the world. Users are rapidly migrating to smarter devices and new mobile social applications that offer even greater opportunities for building and sustaining customer relationships. Our partnership with Planet Oi' offers the CMO Council and leading brands a tremendous opportunity to demonstrate and benchmark the power of Mobile Relationship Marketing in both developed and emerging markets."

Planet Oi' (www.planetoi.net) offers the industry's first mobile relationship marketing platform that combines rich social media tools for consumers with loyalty & rewards, market research, and coupon and promotions delivery capabilities. Planet Oi' taps into some of the most exciting trends in mobile lifestyle, loyalty and consumer marketing to create an environment that instantly engages and gratifies customers and dramatically improves the economics and effectiveness of loyalty and mobile marketing.

A robust platform

"We're excited about teaming with the CMO Council as part of its global initiative to advance the state-of-the art in mobile marketing," said Rory Stear, executive chairman of MobileWave Group plc, owner of Planet. "We believe Planet Oi' offers marketers the most robust and fully realised platform for mobilising consumer loyalty, promotions, research and word of mouth in order to optimise customer relationships and positively influence behaviour. We look forward to teaming with progressive brands that understand the opportunities now offered by mobile social marketing."

Marketers interested in participating in the MRM pilot program should contact Bryan DeRose at the CMO Council via phone (650.433.4144) or email (gro.licnuocomc@esoredb).

In addition to pilot programs utilising Planet Oi', the CMO Council is undertaking a broad initiative called Engage At Every Stage: Using MRM to Put More Interaction in the Hands of the Customer. The new thought leadership and best practices program will study how MRM is being embraced across multiple industries to ensure continuous customer touch and interaction, sustained support and service, closer and more dependent relationships, as well as greater insight and behavioral tracking.

Planet Oi', which supports nearly 600 different mobile phone models, provides consumers with a rich mobile social networking environment that incorporates instant messaging, microblogging, media and file storage and sharing, search, polls and other fun features. Also integrated into this lightweight application is Oi Rewards, a points-based rewards system that supports brand loyalty programs, a polling and survey response system for market research, and a coupon center, where consumers can access promotional deals, discounts, and special offers from brand participants.

Rewards system self-managed by users

The Planet Oi' rewards system is self-managed by users and can incorporate a wide range of digital rewards accessible directly by a mobile phone, including airtime, music, wallpaper and more, as well as offline prizes and rewards. Oi' Rewards points provide instant gratification to consumers for valued behaviours to prompt program sign-up, self-profiling, repeat purchase, trial, increased usage, feedback, advocacy and referral.

Planet Oi' and its Oi' Rewards system has been tested with tens of thousands of active users and numerous consumer products and service brands and is now ready to engage with leading US and global brands, CRM and loyalty program operators, service providers, subscription-based businesses, communities and media organisations.

Mobile Relationship Marketing and Planet Oi's mobile social marketing platform intersect with some the most powerful trends and developments in mobility, loyalty and marketing, including:

Pervasive and persistent nature of the mobile phone: Approximately 5 billion mobile phone users worldwide
Rapid adoption of mobile social networking: forecast by eMarketer to grow to 800 million users by 2012.
Broad demographic reach of mobile social networking: 55% of US mobile social users are women; 70% are between the ages of 25 and 54.
Critical need to give loyalty a lift: study by the CMO Council and Catalina Marketing found 52% of highly loyalty consumers of leading CPG brands either reduced loyalty or completely defected from the brand in 2008.
Rapid acceptance of digital coupons: Online coupon site are one of fastest growing segments on the Internet with visits to coupon sites growing by 32% in just one month, to 35.6 million visits in November of 2009, according to ComScore.

About the CMO Council

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council's 5500 members control more than US$200 billion (about R1440 billion) in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include over 12 000 global executives across 100 countries in multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The Council's strategic interest groups include the Coalition to Leverage and Optimise Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE), Marketing Supply Chain Institute, Customer Experience Board, LoyaltyLeaders.org, Online Marketing Performance Institute, and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME). www.cmocouncil.org

About Planet Oi'

Planet Oi' is owned and operated by MobileWave PLC, a global leader in mobile relationship marketing (MRM) solutions for consumer brands, network marketing and loyalty coalitions, subscriber communities, and affinity groups. The Planet Oi' platform integrates a vibrant mobile social media environment with a robust purchase incentive and loyalty rewards delivery and management system. Planet Oi' enables marketers to create engaging loyalty experiences, drive trial and purchase frequency, encourage valued behaviours, gain meaningful insight, and further advocacy and referral. Planet Oi' gives consumers a fun, easy and gratifying mobile social environment for staying connected with friends, deals, discounts, rewards and offers from their favourite brands.