To know more about telecom war in Saudi Arabia, see http://advertiser-in-arabia.blogspot.com/2009/09/competition-centric-strategy-mobily-stc.html
2020 update.
This time STC hijacked a full identity from an American IT company to develop its new strategic move to digitizing age.
Worried it was losing touch with the next generation of computer users, and losing sales to rival brands like Apple and Sony that were seen as ‘cooler’ amongst its target demographic, HP partnered with MTV to create Engine Room. The remit: to engage with young people across the world, challenging them to demonstrate their own creative skills and the capabilities of the HP computer.
Research carried out by the computer manufacturer showed that HP’s target audience saw the brand as being less progressive than both Apple and Sony with only 36% agreeing HP was innovative vs. 68% for Apple and 52% for Sony. Since 2006, HP’s partnership with MTV has sought to rectify this trend.
Engine Room provided 16 talented digital artists, representing Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America, the opportunity to compete on HP’s newest technology, battling it out for $400,000 USD, a load of HP gear and programming control of MTV’s screen in Times Square. The progress of the 16 was broadcast by MTV through a short-form series airing around the world on TV and online.
Who is after Mobily ( one of Saudi Arabia mobile and internet service provider)? Is this spoof is user generated or rivalry sponsored?
Either ways, it is poor production to demarket a great brand.
Zain Ramadan Ads revealed a religious tie up with Sheikh Moshari AlAfassi and song of Ramadan, in three languages Arabic, English and French to communicate virtue of the holy month.
SMAA is run by reformed social media addicts who all had the courage to stand up and admit to their problem. Will you stop poking people you haven't seen since college, and join us
Vodafone wanted to put across the idea that a mobile phone is more than just a functional device, that it contains a world of intimate details about the owner’s life. Its solution was to commission the world’s first truly-interactive soap opera.
Who Killed Summer 09 follows six beautiful young things through a summer of love – and death – around Europe’s top music festivals. Professionally written, the series is formed of 20 short (3 to 4 minute) episodes screened over a two month period. Six additional pieces of footage – or B-rolls – accompany each episode and provide a backdrop to the group’s adventures.
The B-rolls sometimes feature members of the group or can be footage of one of the real-life music acts at the festivals. The advantage of the latter is that those short music videos are then seeded onto Vodafone’s own music site, as well as websites such as You Tube, and provide an alternative route into the drama for viewers.
Fans of the series are able to watch episodes and B-rolls online and on their mobiles as well as read blogs written by each of the six characters and the production team. A Vodafone application gives users constant updates, telling them when an event has taken place or new footage has been added online.
Brands love telling consumers their products are lifesavers, but rarely does the claim hold as much water as when Aircel’s Mumbia billboard rescued stranded citizens during India’s monsoon season.
The weather can turn very quickly in India during monsoon season, often with fatal effects. Flash floods have claimed the lives of many in the past. It was this knowledge that prompted Aircel to attach a life-raft to its billboard, with the instructions: in case of an emergency, pull rope.
On July 15th, flash flooding, as expected, occurred. The Milan Subway beneath Aircel’s billboard became virtually impassable. Six lucky Mumbians, taking advantage of Aircel’s foresight, cut the rope and rowed themselves to safety aboard Aircel’s branded dinghy.
The innovative idea gained major press coverage in India; Aircel was crediting with achieving where the government failed. It now plans to extend the billboard scheme to Delhi and KolKata as well.
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A case in point is a brand experience where real and virtual worlds intersect, called The Grid. A mobile social network that allows users to chat with friends, locate them on a map and share media, The Grid is a first for the African continent. Part Facebook, part Flickr, and a dash of Twitter combined with a GPS-type navigation system, The Grid allows customers to share their lives in a mobile location-based matrix with all of their friends. The application is all about socializing on the go. If users want to have a cup of coffee with a friend, all they need do is log into The Grid to see which friends are nearby and tag the location of a nearby coffee shop. Then they send a coffee invitation with directions to tempt their mate to pop on over. If the coffee drinking duo wants more friends to join them, they can log in again and type up a blog, message or record a quick video and invite everyone who’s free and happens to be nearby. Because The Grid displays the user’s approximate position on a street map, everyone can easily see where friends are and what they are doing where. Users from any network can join in because the independent and network-neutral application was developed to showcase innovative new technologies to all South Africans. “There are several areas where users get significant value when interacting with The Grid,” says Vincent Maher, portfolio manager for social media at Vodacom. “The service enables low-cost and real-time conversations, as well as an opportunity to meet new people and interact with them via mobile phones. Then users can create the mobile equivalent of a blog by combining multimedia elements and maps to show where the content was created. The Grid is a highly social environment, and what we are seeing is that people love to share their experiences and contribute to creating a social map of their experiences across all walks of life in South Africa.” The Grid is offered as a free or value-added service to users, who only pay for the data usage from their mobile phone to access the service. “Right now people are using The Grid to meet and interact with friends and new people, and to share their experiences through photos and stories about the things they do in their day-to-day lives. The service is busy most of the day, but usage peaks in the evenings when people are home from work and relaxing,” Maher says. The winner of the New Telecommunications Service at the Comms MEA Awards—held to recognize outstanding performance in the Middle East and African telecommunications sector—The Grid’s branding plays a significant role in promoting the larger Vodacom brand as a technological mover and shaker. Not only does it underscore innovation as a key brand value, but it does so in a way that is completely experiential. What’s more, it is changing the way marketing is delivered by offering a new paradigm for brand messaging. “The Grid demonstrates how the physical and digital can be meshed to create a more compelling and relevant marketing message,” Maher says. “By tying location to the delivery of messages it means small businesses finally have a viable digital platform to advertise on, and this means that bigger brands can leverage multiple locations simultaneously to interact with their customers in an interesting, innovative way. There are a lot of very interesting ways that brands can leverage The Grid to integrate digital and mobile campaigns with the physical world. The revenue model has been developed in such a way that deeper integration can be done to encourage users to go to specific places as part of a promotion. Another element of the model is the ability to deliver location-targeted advertising, which makes the content of the ads more relevant. At the heart of The Grid is the digital marketing “holy grail”—the viral effect. “Usage is driven partly by viral growth as users invite their friends to join and partly by innovative media integrations,” Maher says. The more friends users have on The Grid, the more they can get out of the service and the more they can do with it. “The stickiness is directly connected to how many friends a user has and the quality of conversations. The ability to meet new people without revealing your mobile number is also very appealing and, as users become more advanced, they start to use the features like the street maps and content uploads,” he says. To launch the new service, Vodacom commissioned the world’s first geo-tagged documentary for mobile phones, which centered on the issue of youth culture in South Africa’s biggest urban township, Soweto. Called Mobikasi (literally translated this meansmobile township), the mobile documentary utilizes The Grid’s location-based service capabilities to tag real-life physical locations and link them to relevant content in the movie. When users look at the film, they can explore Sowetan youth culture on their mobile phones from anywhere in South Africa through The Grid’s map interface, or by physically touring the famous township and watching documentary clips on their phones at the locations where they were shot. Mobikasi features people, music, fashion, social issues and places of interest and is unique in that it is not linear in nature. Rather, Mobikasi splits the content up into 25 one-minute inserts, and each is geo-tagged to the location where it was shot. This means that viewers can now explore Soweto’s vibrant youth culture by virtually “traveling” through a mobile street map of the township and stopping off at points of interest to enjoy the short video clips about each destination. The mobile documentary has proved so successful that a second season of Mobikasi is on its way and will take place in other townships around South Africa. In short, The Grid is a smart social networking solution with a branding strategy and message that targets a continent where mobile connections are more pervasive than television, the radio or the Internet. |
A new television commercial featuring dozens of ordinary South Africans dancing to Beyonce’s hit, ‘Single Ladies’, is an extension of Vodacom’s drive to illustrate that the internet is ‘maklik’.
Radio Shack launched yesterday a new marketing initiative to position itself as The Shack. “Our friends,” they claim “call us the Shack.” With friends like that, who needs enemies?
“Trust is a critical attribute of any successful retailer, and the reality is that most people trust friends, not corporations. When a brand becomes a friend, it often gets a nickname — take FedEx or Coke, for example. Our customers, associates and even the investor community have long referred to RadioShack as ‘The Shack,’ so we decided to embrace that fact and share it with the world,” said Lee Applbaum, RadioShack’s chief marketing officer.
As far as I understand, the Radio Shack name and logo will NOT be replaced with this new name or “logo.” It’s simply part of a campaign to help seed this new persona, created by Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners. Which is good news, because The Shack is extremely ridiculous — even more so than The Hut— and does nothing but dig Radio Shack into a bigger hole of un-coolness. The effort is in no way aided by the unimaginative graphics and “logo” that have accompanied the launch. The type is boringly simple, even annoying in its lackluster execution. And, seriously, giant laptops to create buzz in the two cities (New York and San Francisco) where there are more people with their head buried in an iPhone per capita than anywhere else? Oh, and yes, they are plain lame. Giant pumpkins on ice sound more appealing.
Radio Shack needs a major overhaul and it should take advantage of the idiosyncratic products they carry that you can hardly find anywhere else, a sort of geek thrift store. The Shack campaign is insipid at best and harmful to the brand at worst.
Giant laptop in the making. Image source.
Launch at Times Square in New York. Photos by Flickr user Brechtbug
