Case Study - House of Blues

Challenge
In response to the emergence of mobile technology as a mass-market medium, in late 2005, House of Blues in partnership with Motorola, became interested in offering new and existing customers novel types of interactive campaigns as a means to incentivize and reward its youth demographic. Soapbox Mobile fulfilled the company's needs with a complete, full-service mobile solution using the Soapbox Anywhere platform to power interactive mobile campaigns including triggered and personalized SMS-based quizzes, contests, and alerts. These mobile campaigns were aimed at drawing attention to upcoming music events specific to each of House of Blues' nationwide locations.

Mobile Solution

• Enhance Image: Cutting edge of new media adoption
• Leverage Mobile: Usage for target demographic
• Build Database: Mobile subscribers for follow-up campaigns
• Promotions of promote bands, mobile ticket sales

House of Blues has built a nationwide presence as a trendy venue for music, food and nightlife. Customers recognize House of Blues as the premier branded entertainment venue, attracting a wide variety of demographic audience segments with locations across America's hippest cities. Its target demographic is young professionals.

House of Blues, presently using the Web for consumer interactivity in addition to other more traditional means of marketing, decided to leverage the mobile channel to deepen ints relationship with its existing and new customers. Recognizing mobile as a personal, one-to-one mass market medium that is 'always on', House of Blues tapped Soapbox Mobile to create it mobile campaigns. The Soapbox Anywhere platform provided personalized mobile interaction in addition to a valuable database of mobile users. The House of Blues mobile trivia campaign placed a 'call-to-action' across in-house TV screens and person-to-person street team interaction by means of unique short codes assigned to House of Blues venues across the U.S. The Soapbox Mobile solution empowered House of Blues to track and report, in real-time, the effectiveness of its mobile campaigns for each of its nationwide locations.

Mobile Campaign: Key Features

• Location-based campaign tracking and reporting
• Interactive, 2-way SMS trivia campaign
• Mobile coupon codes: redeem prizes
• Cross-carrier: House of Blues SMS campaign's work across all carriers and handsets in North America

In addition to building an interactive mobile trivia campaign, Soapbox Mobile also established an managed relationships with network operators in North America and the operator's terms for multiple, unique vanity (custom) short codes for each House of Blues location. As a result House of Blues customers can now engage in opt-in mobile contests regardless of their carrier.

Results

• Build mobile database for future use in promotion and sales
• Unrivaled distribution in leveraging mobile channel and customer reach
• Enhanced image as vanguard of new media and digital entertainment
• Precision ability to track, monitor and report marketing effectiveness in real-time

Soapbox Mobile helped House of Blues enhance its loyal customer base by extending and diversifying its marketing program to include the mobile channel. Owing to the valuable database of mobile users House of Blues has been able collect through the Soapbox Anywhere platform, the company now has an indispensable asset in targeting an audience for its future mobile initiatives. House of Blues has been able to create a stronger relationship with its customers, enhance the visibility of its brand, and has also delivered value to its mobile partner, Motorola.

Source: Mobile Marketing Association

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Welcome to the iFuture of Mobile Marketing

Greetings from the past! I'm writing this column on June 26, about a week in advance of you reading it. Normally, I wouldn't point this out. However, we're on the cusp of the next pop-culture technology revolution.

By the time you read this, you'll likely be recovering from your (or an annoying friend's) iPhone hangover, as I'm sure every major media outlet has inundated you with iPhone launch minutiae: from early adopters standing in line, pending riots (let's hope not), eBay auction mania, and possible scarcity issues. Or you may still be rejoicing over the winnings you realized. Regardless of the outcome, let's remember this was an important weekend. Our industry has a lot riding on the so-called "Jesus" (or maybe "Moses") phone.

Sometimes it takes pop culture to kick-start an emerging industry or media category. It seems like only a few years ago when Eiger Labs launched the MPMan F10 portable music player as the industry's first digital music player in 1998. When it was first announced, it appealed to a small community of digital enthusiasts. It wasn't until the fall of 2001 when Apple introduced the first iPod as the ultimate conclusion of Apple's "rip, mix, burn" digital music strategy. Apple carefully led American consumers through the new digital music ecosystem, ending with the iPod's powerful crescendo. Before this, only a handful of people understood what an MP3 player was. Now, you wouldn't be caught dead with a CD (unless you burned it yourself), and Apple is the number three music retailer in the United States. Go figure.

At the end of the day, the one thing we can rely on the iPhone to do is to wake up American mobile consumers and get them to realize what their phones can do. Hopefully, this awareness will finally transform the mobile platform into a true media channel. While writing this, I asked my friend Greg Clayman, general manager of mobile media at MTV Networks, what he hopes the iPhone will do for the millions of mobile phone users in the United States.

"It will teach people what a mobile phone can do -- from the oversized touch screen to the music and video player integration to the Web browser," Clayman told me. "The iPhone isn't the first phone to have these features, but it's certainly the most exciting presentation of them. I expect its release will lead to any number of people reexamining their current phones and discovering that they, too, can do many of these things as well. MTV is the largest provider of mobile video content in the world, so we're thrilled about all the general mobile media excitement that this launch is generating. And we're working ever-closer with our brand partners to help them engage consumers in this space."

So now that the iPhone has launched, what should we expect? There are two categories of customers you should think about: the haves and the have-nots.

The Haves

Who they are: The haves are a lucky bunch. They've shelled out about $500 to $600 dollars for the iPhone and basically committed themselves to AT&T and Apple for the next two years for approximately $1,974.76 (not including taxes). The haves will be power users who will wrap their iPhones around their lives. They'll take and share photos and use optimized Web sites and consumer content. They'll exhaust this phone for the next few weeks and show everyone what they have.

What they want: The haves want access and content. Whether they admit it or not, they want to show off their new toy.

What you can do: Why not take advantage of this Trojan horse? Provide these users with branded content. If they think it's relevant, they'll use it on the iPhone. Consider optimizing your Web site and Web services for the iPhone. Syndicate your podcasts via iTunes. Develop Web applications for these users. Ride the wave. And if you don't know how, find developers who can help you by attending the various development conferences that are popping up across the country.

The Have-nots

Who they are: The have-nots aren't as lucky. Some wanted an iPhone and couldn't get it. Others, like John Dvorak, feel the iPhone isn't up to snuff. They want to wait for the next version or for the price to come down. Some are locked into agreements with rival carriers, others are content with what they have.

What they want: They know they don't have an iPhone, but they'd like the next best thing. The have-nots will look at what they currently own and want to get the most out of it. They may secretly envy iPhone features and try to emulate them: "You know, my phone can play music."

What you can do: The one thing the iPhone will do for everyone is finally convince them you can do more on your phone than talk and text. There's never been a better time to launch new mobile services. Have you considered optimizing your site for mobile Web readers? Have you explored sponsorship of mobile content offerings? Launched a smart SMS (define) campaign that supports an in-market program with mobile reminders?

Like it or not, the iPhone is a good thing. Personally, I'm disappointed by the lack of exchange support, a tactile keyboard, and a 3G connection. However, I'm willing to trade all of that for the possibility that the mobile marketplace will heat up with innovation and consumer interest.

Source: Chad Stoller, ClickZ

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Advertising Formats as the Key to Audience Response

MoMac's research, conducted by independent research agency Tickbox, clearly emphasises the need for mobile advertising to match specific audience requirements. Results from different demographics indicate that responsiveness to different kinds of advertising changes according to
age and gender, giving brands and marketers valuable guidelines around
which to design their mobile advertising campaigns.

MoMac's GoSell platform has been developed to help publishers easily integrate and manage the inclusion of mobile banners and sponsored content within editorial and branded environments and will be available as part of MoMac's integrated mobile publishing platform, GoMedia.

The Mobile Advertising Attitudes Report surveyed a cross section of 1,400 UK mobile phone users during May 2007.

Advertising Formats

Despite the fact that mobile advertising is in its infancy, the report reveals that as many as 13% of 16-24s have already responded to or clicked-on a mobile advert. Given the limited inventory currently available for mobile advertising, and the relative rarity of mobile users being served mobile ads, the figures show the potential for a significant future take-up - if the communication is delivered in the right way.

When it comes to mobile advertising formats, MoMac's research shows clear differences in the preferences of men and women and the different demographic groups. When on mobile sites, text based advertising links are the most popular (56%) with a clear female bias of 60% compared to just 47% of men. Picture or banner-based advertising was the second most popular option, favoured by 29% overall and just under one in three 25-34 year olds. Interestingly, video based advertising has a strong male bias with 22% of men compared to just 12% of women stating they would be most likely to respond to a video advert. Video formats were also more popular with younger mobile users selected by 23% of 16-24s but only 12% of the over 55s.

Payment Models

The research results also indicate that content providers will need to consider a number of payment models to appeal to the diverse groups of mobile users in the UK looking for content. The ad-funded model could become dominant with younger mobile users, with 47% of 16 to 24s preferring to access content for free in exchange for viewing advertising. Only 32% of this group opted for a pay-as-you-download (PAYD) model and only 3.9% stated they would want to pay for content via a subscription. In contrast the PAYD method is more popular with older mobile users, with 55% of those aged 45 and older opting to pay for content on demand, and also appeals more to women, with 54% choosing PAYD compared to 41% of men who are more open to advertising.

Sham Careem, MD of MoMac UK, omments: "The research shows that brands and media companies must think carefully about who their primary targets are before they decide how to deliver both their content and advertising campaigns. Different demographics will respond better to different methods of advertising and the key to a successful campaign will be ensuring that the format matches the target audience."

Source: Turk.Internet

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Case Study - HBO for Entourage

Objective: HBO wanted to raise awareness of the second season of the orginal series "Entourage," by promoting the show's popular catchphrase, "Let's Hug It Out Bitch" (LHIOB).

Solution: HBO's media agency, OMD, contacted Kikucall to craft a campaign to drive traffic to the LHIOB website, and drive consumers to download Entourage-branded mobile content.

In order to achieve the client's goal, Kikucall designed a campaign to promote a series of exclusive "Let's Hug It Out Bitch" ringtones available exclusively at www.LHIOB.com.

• Kikucall developed an online ringtone interface that was integrated into the www.LHIOB.com website.
• The interface collected consumer mobile phone information, and sent free LHIOB ringtones directly to consumer mobile phones.
• Kikucall also sent a text message blast to a targeted list of 50,000 opt-in consumers in New York and Los Angeles. The messages contained a link to a Kikucall-developed WAP site where consumers could download the free LHIOB ringtones.

Results: In the six months following the launch of the campaign, consumers listened to more than 180,600 LHIOB ringtones via the Kikucall web interface, and more than 19,600 LHIOB website visitors requested to download a ringtone. To deliver the ringtone to consumers, Kikucall sent a text message with a WAP link to download the ringtone to consumer mobile phones. More than 15,500 consumers successfully downloaded the LHIOB ringtones from the Kikucall-designed WAP site.

Source: Mobile Marketing Association

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