Mobile Advertising – Fair & Lovely

Reliance Communications mobile ad campaign – Fair & Lovely Scholarship programme 2007 has been adjudged winner by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Annual Global Awards jury at a glittering ceremony held in Los Angeles in November 2007.

Fair & Lovely is a leading and one of the best-selling skin care brands of Hindustan Unilever Limited, had launched an ad campaign of ‘Fair and Lovely scholarships for women,’ using short code (51234) and instant voice from mid-August to mid- September, 2007. Reliance Communication executed a pan-India ad campaign on Reliance mobile phone network. Fair & Lovely Scholarship programme 2007 mobile advertisement was powered by clickable banner ads in various languages. These banners were linked to a micro-site where interested candidates were asked to provide their choice of course, annual family income, etc.

Reliance Communication also created a special Fair & Lovely Scholarship Zone on ‘R World’ to promote the campaign and generated around 50,000 leads in which 60% came from tier II and III cities and 40% from urban cities. The Fair & Lovely Scholarship programme 2007 campaign got great response from the semi urban and rural India, which also break the myth that the mobile advertising can only be targeted to the urbane India.

The innovative mobile ad campaign has been voted as the Best Use of Mobile Marketing in the Direct Response Category of the awards. This is also the first time in the world that a scholarship programme has been advertised on a mobile platform. The other nominations were, Affle Limited & Aviva (India) Pvt. Ltd. for Aviva – Cost of Postponement; MindShare Interaction India for Mobile Test Saves Time and Lives in India; Mobile Dreams Factory for Renault Twingo; SendMe Inc., MobiTV, Fathom Online for Discovery Channel Discovery Channel’s Shark Week and Vibes Media for Dumped were nominated for the

Mobile Advertising Case – Indian Association for Promotion of Adoption and Child Welfare

Indian Association for Promotion of Adoption and Child Welfare (IAPA)

Successful messaging doesn’t always need a big media budget. What it really needs is a media channel that compliments a powerful creative idea. Indian Association for Promotion of Adoption and Child Welfare to launch a campaign on child adoption used a MMS campaign. The campaign uses the viral nature of MMS (video message on mobile) to spread awareness about abandoned infants who need a caring home.

The Indian Association of Adoption and Child Welfare campaign was titled “The hottest MMS ever – If you don’t like it, pass it on.”

In the 25-second video Indian Association of Adoption and Child Welfare tried to create awareness about abandoned infants and convince people for their adoption. This campaign was a huge success. The promoters were reconnected in three days from all parts of the nation with the same message. The discussion forums also generated a very good response. In fact, the first week witnessed all of 1,210 downloads and clips were traced to eight other servers.

Mobile Advertising

The business of encouraging people to buy products and services using the mobile channel as the medium to deliver the advertisement message
                                                                                               — Internet Message Access Protocol

Mobile advertising is an innovative and a customer-centric approach to reach promising customers. It includes advertising in the form of Short Message Service (SMS), mobile alerts, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), mobile games and videos. Mobile advertising can be divided into two main categories: Mobile Push Advertising and Mobile Pull Advertising. Mobile Push Advertising, can be in form of solicited or unsolicited advertising News alerts, job alerts and cricket score alerts are a few examples in this category. Mobile Pull Advertising, on the other hand, is defined as advertising when users request for the services from the service-provider for instance daily horoscope.

Mobile advertising is the latest buzz in the field of advertising, since it is a cost-effective way to promote and inform the target customers. With the advent of new media, mobile advertising has become one of the most demanding and integral part of marketing mix.

Benefits of Mobile Advertising
Mobile advertising is cost-effective and offers flexibility to inform target group as and when required. In the case of mobile advertising the advertising message can be personalized with respect to Target Audience. The mobile advertising is interactive in nature and advertiser gets feedback immediately. Though mobile advertising offers flexibility to contact target group as and when required. It also gives option of permission-based advertising, which is also governed by telecom rules and regulations. The mobile advertising is still not brand creator but it is more helpful in brand recall and brand interactivity. The benefits of mobile advertising include: flexibility of content, speed of reach.

Limitations of Mobile Advertising
Mobile advertising has limited message content. It is mostly driven by key words and target audiences in most of the cases take mobile advertisements casually. Moreover it still has very limited reach as compared to other conventional tools of advertising. The visual display is not as impressive as TV advertising. Though the advertiser has more control on the mobile advertising but still cant calculate ROI of advertising more accurately. Most importantly, mobile advertising is often criticized for intrusion of target audience privacy.

Guidelines for Mobile Advertising
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has published guidelines for mobile advertising. These guidelines are designed specifically for the Asia-Pacific region to encourage the use of mobiles for advertising-related purposes as well as its acceptance by marketers and consumers.

As of now it is not in practice. There are companies, and advertisers violating the defined guidelines but we are moving in the direction where the advertising world will take it seriously.

Conclusion
Mobile Advertising is at infant stage of the life cycle. The share of advertising spend on mobile advertising is minimal but when advertising spend is seen from the lenses of life cycle it is a good start.

Mobile Advertisement to touch INR 500 crore in 5 years

Reliance Communications, is pioneer of mobile advertising in the country, has effectively offered mobile advertising solutions for more than 20 clients over the past four years. In my understanding, the mobile advertising, started with LG during World Cup Cricket in 2003. Reliance Communications has also handled Cadbury’s, Coke, Maruti, Hyundai, ICICI, Kotak and HDFC. The mobile advertising in India is at nascent stage it is roughly INR 40 crore industry but advertisers in India are looking to cash in on the mobile advertising as potential tool of advertising. Experts predicts that advertising spend on this medium is expected to jump more than ten to twelve-folds to touch a size of INR 500 crore in next five years.

Mobile advertising can attract advertising spends from integration with below-the-line budgets, retail budgets and the digital budget. The bottleneck, however, is the unreasonable cost of Internet on mobile and also disproportionate sharing of revenue between telecom service providers and advertisers. The mobile advertising is demanding even playing field from internet and mobile providers. The operators, at present, are acting as a gatekeeper and commands control over the revenue distribution. Currently mobile advertising revenue is split at 70:30 ratio between operators and the companies, which gives very little scope for the growth of the mobile advertisers. Moreover, the operators have to stop acting as gatekeepers to the Internet and allow consumers to access content and services on the Internet easily and cheaply, using their mobile devices.

The mobile advertising market which is currently valued at INR 40 crore can grow more than nearly twelve times provided the telecom companies offer open Internet access at low rates along with standardization of regulations.

Reference: http://www.business-standard.com, Mobile ads to touch Rs 500 cr in 5 yrs: Experts, June 22, 2008.

Mobile Phone – The Fourth Screen

Birth of Fourth Screen
2007, Barcelona, Spain hosted the 3GSM World Congress. It marked the entry of the Indian film industry into the GSM communication arena. At this event, Indian film industry showcased its first film specially created for mobile phone users across the world. No wonder the 3GSM World Congress also witnessed the birth of Fourth Screen (the Silver Screen, TV, PC, and now Mobile screen) in India. This move is expected to have a huge impact not only on the Indian mobile phone market but also on the media industry. The emergence of the Fourth Screen can be seen as the first step towards Indian film industry‘s foray into the mobile entertainment market. It also marked the emergence of the mobile phone from merely a communication device to becoming a major source of entertainment.

First Movie on Fourth Screen
The movie showcased at the 3GSM World Congress was Dus Kahaniyaan. It is one of innovative story telling initiative which was tailored for mobile devices. Dus Kahaniyaan was produced by one of the leading Bollywood producers Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay Gupta’s entry in the mobile entertainment market was supported by GSMA, Roamware Inc., and Hungama Mobile. MVAS company, Roamware helped producers of Dus Kahaniyaan. in integrating the film content into the mobile phone through its ‘Media Call’ technology. Hungama helped in publishing the mobile phone content. The mobile VAS providers – Roamware, and Hungama Mobile saw tremendous potential in Bollywood movies. They believed that formatting the content for the mobile audience would increase the reach of the movie. The features like simplicity of delivery ease of use, and accessibility provides the fourth screen edge over others.

The fourth screen has also hit serials. This is the age of Internet and mobile serials, Rajshri Media, India’s leading Web and Mobile Studio, has launched Akbar Birbal remixed. The Akbar Birbal remixed is 3 minute a piece 90 episode series. The Akbar Birbal remixed, set in the by-lanes of Bhendi Bazar in Mumbai. (Read report on http://chaturvedibraj.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/akbar-birbal-remixed-a-new-beginning/)

MVAS to play critical role in development of Fourth Screen
The MVAS market in India is fragmented and each player have unique value offering. These MVAS providers can join hands and develop a pool which jointly offers complete entertainment package. In the case of Dus Kahaniyaan two different MVAS players – Hungama Mobile had experience in content publishing and Roamware had global reach, collaborated to develop the offerings.

Handset Manufacturers role in development of Fourth Screen
While mobile entertainment companies have been developing interesting content for the mobile phone users, mobile handset companies have tried to come out with the latest technologies that support such offerings. In late 2007, Nokia entered into an agreement with leading Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan for making movie clips, ring tones, wallpapers for his film, Om Shanti Om.

Conclusion
Mobile entertainment is poised to drive not only mobile entertainment industry in a big way but also attracting advertisers who are also viewing it as an attractive new media channel.