And the winners are....

The magazine supplement for this year's #emmas (Effective Mobile Marketing Awards) award winners dropped into my inbox today from David Murphy at Mobile Marketing Magazine. The awards were last month so some of you will already be familiar with the winners but in case you missed it, it's worth a look.

What struck me most about the range of winners and campaigns is that mobile marketing has grown up - mainstream brands doing large-scale, innovative campaigns. I guess it's about time, 15 years on, that this is happening.

So if you're after some inspiration about what's possible with mobile marketing, then take a look at this year's winners and check out their work.

Voice marketing is part of the mobile marketing mix too

When talking about mobile marketing these days, the assumption is that it's all about mobile data and that the format of that data is mobile internet and sms. Let's not forget that the mobile phone was primarily designed so that we could *talk* to each other wherever we are and whenever we want to. Voice communications are still important and voices do matter. So it's great to see companies taking this seriously and using voice effectively as part of their marketing efforts. And I've stumbled across a couple of examples just today to share with you.

First off, you can jump start your kid's morning routine with a Hannah Montana (TM) wake-up call! This is a new(ish) campaign from Walmart and Disney. The idea is quite a simple one... you subscribe to the service and you can organise a pre-recorded surprise telephone call from Hannah Montana to brighten up your sprog's day. It's good to see good, old-fashioned voice at work. I haven't tried it myself, and let's face it, I'm a tad old to be a Hannah Montana fan but even I know she's incredibly popular so I imagine this campaign should fly too. The FAQs are very clear that it's a free service and no email addresses will be used for marketing purposes. Very refreshing.

Nearer home in the UK, the teams at Spinvox and Moblog have joined forces to launch the 'We Love Your Accent' competition and voice blog. This is your chance to tell the world what accent you like and why and in doing so, you're in with a chance to win a fancy schmancy new Nokia phone, a year's free subscription to both Spinvox and Moblog and 250 shiny new personalised moo cards. So have your say and tell the world what your favourite accent is and why.

If you have other examples of marketing campaigns where voice is the key element, then please add a comment below and share what you know.

Monday's mobile marketing tidbits

Blyk's delaying its launch until October. No bad thing as July and August are quiet times in retail. IMHO, Blyk should be launching in September to get the school, college and university kids signed up as they go back for the Autumn term, and that starts early September for schools and Sixth Form Colleges. Come October, we'll already be into half-term and well into silly season for Christmas which may be too late to launch something. I wonder if Blyk realises what an enormous task they've taken on? And I wonder if they've managed to sort out data charges so they can offer their customers a proper mobile content and media experience via wap or mobile internet?

Borders is extending their mobile marketing effort to provide sample chapters to customers' phones for free to promote new book titles. Details are currently a bit sketchy. I'm interested to see how this works in practice. The best example I've seen of this in the past was a poster campaign I saw at a railway station promoting a new thriller, Mr Clarinet. You texted in a keyword to a shortcode and by return, got back a link to a wapsite where you could read a synopsis of the book, part of the first chapter, find out more about the author and also click to buy the book. Perfect for whiling away 10 or 20 minutes while you are waiting for a train.

Three UK has launched 3next.mobi which is a user generated catalogue of stuff to do on your phone. A very nice idea where you can add applications and services that you like and add them in with your review of the service. It's free to join and not restricted to Three customers although it's designed specifically for Three's X-Series customers. Worth a look as an example of how to market content services. http://www.3next.mobi

And finally, Admob has now served more than 4 billion wap adverts, the last billion being published in the last 35 days. Way to go!

Cracking offers from Roadchef

A couple of weeks back I wrote about Roadchef and its mobile marketing efforts with a text-based loyalty scheme. Well, I've joined up and have received a couple of messages since I signed up and here they are:

Reply path: 447786201349 | Received 4/7/07 at 14:59
Roadchef: Have a FREE KitKat 4 finger (std or dark). Quote code 5798206 to Retail Store cashier at till. Valid to 17/07/2007. Reply STOP for no more offers.

Reply path: 447786201349 | Received 22/06/07 11:00
Roadchef: Have a FREE 500ml Coke or Diet Coke on us. Quote code 8666734 to Retail Store cashier when paying. Valid to 05/07/2007. Reply STOP for no more offers.

Do offers like these really work when the value of the freebie is so small? I wonder how many customers are really going to make the effort to quote the offer code (why couldn't it have been KIT01 for example?) at all for the sake of saving 50p on a bar of chocolate. Is this really 'loyalty'?

Looking at the positive, they do have a reply path and you are able to unsubscribe from getting more offers which is a good thing.

However, judging by Roadchef's website, it looks to me like marketing isn't necessarily their thing - not least, as they're not even promoting the SMS loyalty campaign on the website. In fact, there isn't even a news section. So they seem to be new to this consumer marketing lark and are taking baby steps. But unless they really go for it, I can't see the scheme working and they'll be giving up before they've even begun.

Any loyalty scheme afficionados out there want to add their 2p?

Samsung and Die Hard 4.0 team up for mobile action

I don't have a Samsung phone these days so I've no idea what the substance of the content is here as I have a Nokia (Dear Mr Samsung, please feel free to send me a lovely shiny new Samsung phone if you feel so inclined...), but the joint campaign for Samsung and Die Hard 4.0 looks pretty good and works in three parts...

1. Get free Die Hard 4.0 related content for your phone (text in DH to 62945 to get the link - but only if you have a Samsung phone - don't bother if you don't have a Samsung phone as they won't let you in to the wapsite).

2. Buy the official Die Hard mobile game

3. Enter the Die Hard Quiz for a chance to win blockbusting prizes

As it's all Samsung phone specific, I can't test it for you. And you'd have to be the die-hardest Die Hard fan to upgrade your phone to a Samsung on the back of this campaign. But for customer retention, I think it works. And there's nothing wrong with a bit of customer retention. There should be more of it!

If there are any readers out there who've tried out this campaign or have more information about it, then please do let us know if the content was any good and if it worked for you.

Moblogging as mobile marketing is taking off

I've been playing around with moblogging as part of the mobile marketing mix for sometime now - not least with a campaign I ran for Sony Ericsson a year or two ago (BeepMarketing - my company - did the mobile bits and pieces with ijack managing the website). And I see it as an important way of connecting people and an effective marketing mechanic and this is reflected in the success of sites such as flickr and myspace and fab services such as shozu which confirm the rise in appeal and usage of so-called user-generated content.

Well my friends at Moblog UK, are really going for this moblogging thing and doing it really rather well. They not only have a live community of mobloggers (that's folks who take pictures and send them to the site via their phone - with shozu integration now - yay!) but they've also found imaginative ways of tapping into that community for advertisers without hurting the brand equity and following they have acquired to date. Typically, they've done campaigns for bands and artists such as Maximo Park, Goldfrapp and Girls Aloud. But they have also run successful competitions and promotions for Sony Ericsson and Ravel and have just launched an awareness campaign for Action Aid's Extreme Cuppa initiative.

As if that's not enough, there's a new moblog competition to celebrate the launch of the new Michel Gondry film, The Science of Sleep. You can win a signed movie poster and 2 tickets for a special Valentine's screening of the film, with tickets going to 10 runners-up. All you have to do is send in your video clip or still picture that captures one of your dreams. The best ones win.