Fun and frolics at the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards 2011

I’ve been a regular columnist for Mobile Marketing Magazine for some time now and have been a judge for their awards both this year and last year. Even better though, this year, I got to present the awards alongside David Murphy at Delfina. This was a great honour for me, made even better as I knew so many of the entrants and winners personally. So here’s my blog post rounding up the occasion. If you have time to read through to the end, you’ll see the list of winners and finalists and also some information about why they won and videos where there are videos available. These make for good case study examples in many sectors and in many countries. They’re not limited to the UK. Special thanks to David Murphy and John Owen for including me in the proceedings. And thank you to the sponsors, Upstream, Propel and OpenMarket for supporting such a great initiative.

I’ve only just spotted that the video from the event is up now which I’ve included here.

The photos are also up on flickr and you can see the set below

And of course, last but not least, details of all the winners
Winners include: The Guardian; Sainsbury’s (Groupe Aeroplan); BSkyB; Pepsico (Rabarba); Auto Trader; New Look (MIG); TripAdvisor; British Airways (Incentivated); Debenhams; Chiltern Railways (Masabi); Disasters Emergency Committee (OpenMarket); Txtlocal; Sony Columbia Music (Fetch Media); Buongiorno; Mippin; Rippll; Flexion.

Most Effective Mobile Site

Winner: The Guardian for The Guardian Mobile Site
Summary: Developing the mobile site is part of The Guardian’s Open Strategy. Its core purpose is to increase the reach of the brand. The aim is to deliver text and image content in a fast, fresh site that will appeal to readers on any handset in any country.
Results: Since launch in March 2009, m.guardian.co.uk has grown into the UK’s number one mobile content service for the digital newspaper industry, achieving over 7 million unique browsers and page views of more than 36 million per month. It accounts for around 12 per cent of The Guardian's total digital traffic and has seen a 233 per cent increase year on year. m.guardian.co.uk has also seen strong growth in its global audience, particularly from the US (2.12m unique browsers) and Canada, Ireland, Australia and India. Combining targeted mobile ad solutions with rich-media formats has allowed The Guardian to grow advertising revenues by more than 80 per cent year on year.
Finalists:
bemoko/Macmillan Cancer Support for Macmillan Mobile Site
Found/Autoglass for Smashing the Glass Repair Market on Mobile
Incentivated/Centaur for Marketing Week Live!
New Look/MIG for New Look’s Mobile Commerce Site
Somo/Audi for Audi Mobile Site

Most Effective Mobile Sales Promotion/Direct Response Campaign

Winner: Pepsico/Rabarba for Pepsi Content in a Bottle
Summary: Unique codes were found under the lids of Pepsi bottles. Consumers who texted the unique codes under the Pepsi can lids won: a) one month free Premier League Live Football subscription from Turkcell including live goal videos, breaking news and information about their favourite teams of choice; b) one month free Ring Back Tone (RBT) subscription from Turkcell, so when people called them they would hear one of five different tracks instead of the usual ringtone; c) each participant also won 12 hours of free airtime from Turkcell.
Results: During the four-month period, 3 million people participated in the campaign up to four times each on average; totalling up to 11.5 million participations. At the end of this campaign, Pepsi reached its highest market share in the last eight years.

Highly commended: Found/Autoglass for Smashing the Glass Repair Market on Mobile
Finalists:
OpenMarket for Disasters Emergency Committee East Africa Drought Appeal
Pharos Mobile for Burger King Monopoly Madness
Saudi Telecom Company/Upstream for 100 BMW X5 *100 Days
Turkcell/Aerodeon/Shell Turcas for Shell FuelSave Fuels

Most Effective mCommerce Solution

Winner: New Look/MIG for New Look’s Mobile Commerce Site
Summary: New Look launched its fully transactional mobile website in April 2011. The HTML5 and CSS3-based site was designed and built by Mobile Interactive Group (MIG) and integrates into New Look’s back-end systems. Key features include fast one-click checkout for registered users; engaging zoom functionality; easy to browse products in one, two or three column formats; seamless viewing with accordion navigation to reduce page refreshes and single consumer shopping basket between the website and mobile site. Two sites were built – one for high-end devices and one for low-end devices. The redirect automatically detects the user’s device and serves the best mobile experience for that specific device.
Results: In three months the mobile site delivered 24 per cent increase in mobile visits, 60 per cent increase in orders and 45 per cent increase in revenue. • See this video demo
Finalists:
Pizza Express/2ergo for Pizza Express iPhone App
Usablenet/JD Sports for JD Sports Fashion Mobile

Most Effective Mobile Advertising Campaign

Winner: Fetch Media and Sony Columbia Music for the launch of Calvin Harris & Kelis single Bounce.
Summary: The only promotion for the new Calvin Harris single was via mobile advertising. The campaign objective was to drive engagement and purchase of the new single so moving it up the charts and encouraging more radio play, thus making it the summer anthem of 2011. The media targeted was Shazam, Ministry of Sound and MTV. A rich-media HTML5 ad campaign was specially built for MTV, using a ball bouncing in the banner, once visitors tapped on the ball, they were exposed to a full screen expandable ad inviting them to watch the video and buy the single.
Results: The campaign received more than 8 million impressions within 10 days. 30 per cent of the people who clicked through the ad watched the video or clicked to iTunes. The single went straight into BBC Radio 1’s A List and charted at number 2 in its first week in the iTunes chart.

Finalists:
Found/Autoglass for Smashing the Glass Repair Market on Mobile
NAVTEQ Media Solutions/Peugeot for Peugeot Hyper-local Advertising Campaign
Nokia/Pring for Nokia Eidi on Pring
Vogue Turkey/Rabara for Vogue Turkey’s 1st Year Anniversary Campaign
Warner Bros/Millennial Media/Odyssey Mobile Interaction for Green Lantern

Most Effective Mobile CRM/Enterprise Messaging Campaign

Winner: Incentivated and British Airways for British Airways SMS Customer Service Messaging
Summary: BA’s text service, available for UK- and US-registered mobile phones, allows passengers to get up-to-the-minute flight information for yesterday, today and the next 14 days, direct to their mobile, using the dedicated shortcodes. Messaging services include the following notifications: disruption to service; online check in open; lost baggage warning; standby notifications for staff; maintenance messages for staff; flight information services for people meeting a passenger.
Highly commended: Ericsson IPX/Velti for A&N Mobile CRM
Finalists:
MePlease for MePlease SmartLinks
Nokia/JWT/Bemoko for Nokia Source

Most Effective Mobile Ticketing Solution

Winner: Masabi/Chiltern Railways for Ticket Machine in Your Pocket
Summary: In May 2011, Chiltern Railways was the first rail operator to go live with the full barcode ticket system provided by transport-ticketing specialist Masabi and ticketing services provider Atos. Rail passengers with smartphones or feature phones can buy and receive rail tickets through one transaction for any rail journey in the UK. Barcodes can be securely validated on the train using the guard's portable ticketing machine. Unlike most commercial booking services, the Chiltern Railways application does not charge a booking fee and is free to download. To get the application passengers just need to text “Chiltern” to 88600 or search the relevant app stores.

Finalists:
Movement/Virgin Media for mTicketing at V Festival: Our Garden
Safaricom M-Pesa/Redsky for Safaricom M-Pesa Ticketing

Most Effective Mobile Charity Campaign/Solution

Winner: OpenMarket for the Disasters Emergency Committee East Africa Drought
Summary: More than 10 million people in East Africa have been left in need of food, water and emergency healthcare because of one of the worst droughts in 60 years. Working with the Disasters Emergencies Committee (DEC), OpenMarket supported the UK appeal by enabling SMS donations via its mobile payments and campaign management platform, CMX2. TV and print media ad campaigns encouraged people to donate £5 (US $7.83) directly to the appeal by texting ‘HELP’, ‘CRISIS’, ‘AID’, ‘DONATE’, ‘HELP’, ‘SUPPORT’ or ‘AFRICA’ keywords to 70000.
Results: More than £1,200,000 (US $1,878,798) has been raised via SMS donations since DEC launched the Appeal in June 2011. This is 500 per cent more than DEC had raised from text donating in the past. The campaign also allowed donors to opt-in to Gift Aid, meaning that individuals can increase their donation by 25 per cent if they opt in to the HMRC Gift Aid scheme – 60 per cent of donors subsequently opted in.
Highly commended: M&S/Oxfam/Profero for the One-day Wardrobe Clear out
Finalists:
Bemoko/Macmillan Cancer Support for Macmillan Mobile Site
DIDMO/Salvation Army/GetJar for Salvation Army Daily Cup Social Justice
National Geographic/Velti for The Last Lions
Safaricom M-Pesa/Redsky for Kenyans for Kenya

Most Effective Mobile Application – b2b

Winner: Auto Trader for Dealer Portal iPhone App
Summary: The Dealer Portal Mobile app allows dealers to manage their advertising any time, any where on their iPhone. Dealers can take photos of their stock on their iPhone, view their forecourt and edit adverts, all on the move. A ‘Profit Indicator’ helps dealers calculate the margin they’d make, with a suggested price. This is based on real-time, accurate, market-based information and helps to reduce the risk associated with purchase and increase the likelihood of making a profit. To ensure that enough dealers had iPhones, Autotrader ran a promotion which gave away a free iPhone to dealers who purchased a particular mobile advertising product bundle. 1,250 dealers took up the iPhone offer.
Results: 1,788 dealers have logged onto the app since launch, representing about 19 per cent of the online Dealer Portal users. 66 per cent of app users return each month; 40 per cent of app users uploaded an advert in August 2011.

Finalists:
Egencia for Egencia Mobile iPhone App
Global Bay for iPad Retail App
O2 Media/Golden Gekko for O2 Media App
IDG Global Solutions/OMG/HP for IDG/HP ROI Resource Centres
Safaricom M-Pesa/Redsky for M-Pesa Buy Goods

Most Effective Mobile Couponing or Barcode Campaign

Winner: Groupe Aeroplan for Sainsbury’s Mobile App
Summary: The Sainsbury’s mobile app (for iOS, Android and Nokia) launched in August 2010 provides collectors of Nectar loyalty points with their points balance and exclusive offers. It consistently generates significantly higher response rates than other Sainsbury’s direct marketing channels. Sainsbury’s and FMCG suppliers provide the offers that are displayed on both the Sainsbury’s and Nectar apps for four weeks. The offers can be targeted by gender and category (i.e. targeting customers that mostly shop in certain aisles e.g. pet, baby, alcohol, and integrates with the Sainsbury’s Feed Your Family for £50 campaign via a meal planner for recipe inspiration. Shoppers can also purchase general merchandise through the app and will be able to buy food soon.
Finalists:
Incentivated for M&S Mobile Loyalty Program
ScanBuy for Taco Bell – Unlock the Box

Most Effective Mobile Application – b2c

Winner: Debenhams for Debenhams iPhone, Nokia and Android App
Summary: Launched in October 2010, the app offers the full Debenhams range for sale with delivery to the customer’s door or collect from store. They can view multiple product images with zoom capability and tailor searches using the ‘narrow the selection’ button were they can filter by type, brand, colour, price, and size. This was the first app on the UK high street to include a barcode scanner that acts like a virtual shopping assistant. The app also allows Debenhams to push location-based offers to customers that are near the stores.
Results: The app paid for itself within three weeks of launch. In the first 6 months the app had been downloaded 500,000 times and delivered over £1.5 million (US $2.35 million) in sales.

Finalists:
AKQA/Random House for Nigella Quick Collection iPhone App
Future Platforms/Orange for Official Glastonbury App
Grapple for Premier Inn Mobile
Pizza Express/2ergo for Pizza Express iPhone App
Poynt for The Poynt App

Most Effective Location-based Service/Campaign

Winner: Rippll for Rippll GeoWave
Summary: Rippll GeoWave is a technology platform for running location-based mobile advertising campaigns. Rippll provides simple-to-use ad serving tags to publishers and ad networks turning regular ad campaigns into location-based ad campaigns. Rippll GeoWave allows ads to be served in specific regions, such as near the advertiser’s store and allows for different advertising messages to be served in different locations. Map-based reporting shows where the ads are working best so publishers and advertisers can optimize campaigns. Rippll works with ad networks 4th Screen Advertising, YOC and StrikeAd to place tags in mobile publishers such as The Guardian, EBuddy and The Sun. Rippll has run location-based campaigns for TGI Fridays, McDonalds, IKEA, HMV, Dove and eBay among others.
Highly commended: Grapple for Fable III Kingmaker
Finalists:
Found/Autoglass for Smashing the Glass Repair Market on Mobile
Mazda/Joule/Mindshare for Mazda MX5 Facebook Deals
NAVTEQ Media Solutions/Peugeot for Peugeot Hyper-local Advertising Campaign
NAVTEQ Media Solutions/Spur Restaurants/Wand for Spur Restaurants Location-Aware Mobile Ads

Most Effective Tablet Application

Winner: BSkyB for Sky News for iPad
Summary: Sky News for iPad is an app built around live events and breaking news displayed chronologically on a timeline that is updated as the news day unfolds. Technology developed by Sky lets users rewind live video to the start – even if the app was not active when the event commenced. Each story is supported by a number of modules that deliver editorial depth and context. Modules include interactive stills, image galleries and graphs, as well as bespoke HTML content created on a daily basis.

Highly commended: DK/AKQA for The Human Body App
Finalists:
Auto Trader for Auto Trader iPad App
Financial Times/Assanka for FT Web App
Somo/Audi for Audi UK’s Guide to Le Mans 2011
Tigerspike/Telegraph Media Group for TMG iPad App

Most Effective Mobile Advertising Platform or Network

Winner: Txtlocal for Txtlocal Control Panel
Summary: 75,000 use the Web-based Txtlocal control panel to send in excess of 25 million text messages every month. Txtlocal allows business to text thousands of people within minutes from as little as UK £0.025. (US $0.038) Txtlocal also enables companies to set up a shortcode to solicit opt-ins to text campaigns or build a mobile Website for recipients of messages to click through to further information.
Results: Using Txtlocal, The English National Opera could advertise last-minute ticket deals and minimise revenue lost from empty seats. Two ENO campaigns delivered £8,000 ($12,530) gross profit from a £500 ($783) spend on text credits. Papa John’s Pizza increased sales 31.7 per cent during a three-day text campaign promoting a discounted price offer. Subway used Txtlocal to inform its customers of special-offer meal-deal promotions generating a response rate of 24 per cent. Domino’s Pizza received 10-12 per cent redemptions from a text campaign delivering £10,000 ($15,661) of sales from a £350 ($548) investment.


Luigi uses Txtlocal to increase customers from Txtlocal Limited on Vimeo.
Finalists:
Adfonic for Adfonic
Blismobile for Blis App Zone
madvertise for madvertise Mobile Advertising Marketplace
Placecast for ShopAlerts by Placecast
Smaato for Smaato Open Mobile Advertising Platform (SOMA)

Most Effective Campaign from a Mobile Operator

Winner: Buongiorno for Recharge and Win
Summary: Recharge and Win is a fully managed revenue stimulation and loyalty program that rewards prepay customers each time they top up. After topping up the customer receives a code allowing them to enter a WAP competition/game to win a reward/prize such as free SMS/Minutes, physical prizes or a paint-ball experience. Buongiorno Recharge and Win customers include Optus Australia, O2 UK, Proximus Belgium, O2 Germany Telecom New Zealand and TIM Italy.
Results: Recharge and Win helps operators increase the monthly spend of participants by 9 per cent and reduce churn among participants by 25 per cent.

Highly Commended: Saudi Telecom Company/Upstream for Win 100 BMW X5 in 100 Days
Finalists:
BigTime/MTN Zambia for Mega Millions Promotion
Future Platforms/Orange for Official Glastonbury App
Orange Romania/Velti for A New Day, a New Life

Most Effective Mobile Travel and Tourism Solution

Winner: TripAdvisor for the TripAdvisor App
Summary: TripAdvisor is a free travel app for iPhone, iPad, Android, Nokia, Windows, Palm available in 123 countries in 20 languages. The app includes a “Near Me Now” function, so travellers can determine what hotels, restaurants and attractions are nearby and a search engine to find cheap flights. The iPhone and iPad 2 version includes “Live View”, an augmented reality feature that allows travellers to view TripAdvisor’s 50 million traveller reviews and opinions of hotels, restaurants and attractions superimposed over what they see through the camera of their mobile device.
Highly commended: Crafted Media and Colchester Zoo for Colchester Zoo Mobile App
Finalists:
Incentivated/British Airways for British Airways SMS Customer Service Messaging
RedFish Media for MGM Luxor Las Vegas Mobile Alerts

Most Effective Mobile Payment Solution

Winner: Flexion for Flexion Wrapper
Summary: Flexion’s wrapper technology creates a small amount of code that is ‘wrapped’ around mobile content such as games or apps, enabling a range of additional services, such as in-app billing, DRM, content discovery and on-device retailing. Content owners can create customized pricing options and promotional models, such as free trials, rentals, bundles and discount and loyalty schemes. The wrapper technology increases conversion rates for apps, by allowing people to try before they buy.
Results: Four million wrapped products are activated every month. Flexion has reached a total of 40 million customers. Consumers have spent a total of UK £27 million (US $42.34) globally on the Flexion platform in the last three years.

Finalists:
Bango for Bango Payment
Flexion for Flexion Wrapper
Payment One for Anyphone
Safaricom/M-Pesa for M-Pesa Buy Goods
Txtnation for JunglePay

Most Effective Mobile Publishing Solution

Winner: Mippin for Mippin App Factory
Summary:
The Mippin App Factory allows anyone to build an app in just 5 minutes. App Pack prices start at UK £10 (US $15.68) – that includes a Web app for iPhone and Android app, a java launcher and mobile website. Native apps cost £500-£2,000 ($784-$3136).
Results: Over 40,000 apps have been built on App Factory implementations in the last 18 months. The most successful of these are OK! Magazine app (downloaded 475,000 times) and the Daily Star app (downloaded 300,000 times).

Using the App Factory to develop a web app for an RSS from WAC Apps on Vimeo.
Finalists:
Rippll for Appsplash
Vodafone/AMVG for vRead
Wapple for Canvas, Architect and Exhibit
Woodwing Tablet Publishing Solution

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• 2010 Winners include (brand/agency): M&S (MIG); McDonalds (NAVTEQ); Unilever Cornetto (BlisMobile); Procter & Gamble (Sky Sports); Skåne (Ericsson IPX, LINK Mobility); ClearMen (Turkcell, Rabarba); MTN (Upstream); SwiftKey (TouchType); M&S (Incentivated); Lions Baseball (Fancharge); NXP SemiConductors… Full details and video case studies here.