From our perspective, it is not just illegal but serious wastage of money and brand worth. Opting out of an ad should be as easy as changing the channel/ shutting the TV. Creativity and value for consumers should dictate user’s interest in watching an ad or marketing message.
Did we say users turn on Bluetooth because we focus on delivering them value?
“Sangeetha mobiles” is a leading mobile phone retailer based out of Bangalore, India. They partnered with TELiBrahma to increase walk-ins to their outlets in Bangalore during their annual sale.
The objective was to communicate multiple offers in the promotion to the right customers and to overcome the disbelief in promotions in a competitive market.
The campaign strategy is to target right customers at the right time and deliver relevant content to them, which is possible only with BluFi. And to make the communication relevant to their present location.
We segmented customers based on their phones as lower end, mid segment and high end handsets and we delivered relevant communication to them by delivering offers that matched their mobile profile.
“For mid segment handsets we delivered offers on Memory cards to upgrade their mobile memory!”
During the campaign our existing BluFi network in shopping malls, youth hangouts, restaurants, commercial streets etc were used for the promotions. The retailer has multiple outlets in Bangalore and in the BluFi locations near the outlet we delivered the promotional message to customers and prompted them to walk-in to the outlet by providing the address of the nearest outlet.
“Users in Bangalore Forum mall received a relevant offer along with a message to walk-in to the ‘Sangeetha’ outlet at 2nd floor for more offers and surprises.”
Needless to say, this thoughtful campaign enticed users and made them believe that this offer is like exclusively designed for them! Following are some of the statistics that proves BluFi is an effective medium for brand communications!
50000+users were engaged to the promotions through 20+ hangout locations around Bangalore!
Footfalls of users with Bluetooth turned on in different retail locations increased from 20% to 150%during the campaign
Over 4000 users visited the store after they received offer details via BluFi!
Staggering 45% increase in footfall with Bluetooth turned on across the locations!
For detailed case study of this campaign, Click here.
Whether you like or not, every day we all get SMS Advertisements.
And of course, we do not have much control over this menace, except a blanket blocking.
Now, in India, a company has come up with a revenue sharing model. They share their advertisement revenue with us!
If you register your mobile number with them, you will get money for each SMS you receive.
Please do not forget to refer your friends too, once you are enrolled.
It will enhance your earnings via referral bonuses.
To know more log on to --------------------------------------”
This Friday morning I received the above e-mail. Funny part in the mail is that the advertisers clearly accept that they would be sending us messages whether we are for or against receiving these SMS’s. They are bribing us to receive their messages. I expect these mobile marketing firms to be a little more sensitive. This just shows that they have lost all sense of morality and just somehow want to push in their messages.
What probably they arguments are based on is that paying to consumers would be cheaper and better than investing in R&D, creative guys and working hours with agencies to come up with a good and effective ad campaign that best suits the brand etc.
They had sent this particular mail to me on my official email id which goes on to prove that they have not got their targeting right in the first place. I am sure that many of us with rather prefer to pay for not receiving spam on our mobiles and rather receive some useful stuff.
One could be interested on some mobile marketing promotions for maybe a day only. But once we opt for a promotion, things become difficult. When we wish to opt out of these SMS alerts no one knows how to stop these alerts. There is no clarity in their websites as well. Even if we found a way to opt out, we need to remember the shortcode and reply them to stop sending messages for which we need to pay a premium for the SMS!
What we need is a platform where we can choose what we want and come out of it with minimal effort. Something like we receive messages when we like by simply turning our bluetooth on and can keep them away by turning it off.
Isn't mobile marketing something that cheers up the customers rather than pushing messages on us?
“Michael Jackson is no more with us”. The news that made millions of fans across the globe spend their night sleepless!
We at Telibrahma also share the same grief as the rest of his fans. After all he was an Icon who proved that talent knew no boundaries and innovation is what matters to make a difference!
Most of our employees are huge fans of MJ and we decided to pay a tribute to the king of pop, and more importantly, tribute to a real hero who inspired millions of kids to dream big!
Within 30 mins of the news in 26th June, we decided to provide fans memories of MJ that can reside on their mobile phone!
We have worked on an animated content that provided the achievements of MJ, and took fans back to golden days of POP! This is completely a NON-COMMERCIAL activity from Telibrahma, where we just wanted to pass the memories of one of the best music personality of the century!
We have delivered the content in all our BluFi zones (Bluetooth enabled locations) across India like McDonalds, Barista, shopping malls, youth hangouts, restaurants, corporate locations etc...
The challenge was that there were no communication to the users about the content due to virtually zero turn around time! But we believed in the oldest form of communication to spread the word out – “Word of mouth”!
We did this as a gesture of goodwill for his fans and to pay homage to a real hero. But what turned out was a result we didn’t even imagine! We have connected to over 40,000 unique fans in just two and a half days! Total number of Virals involved among peers was not accounted!
We believed that if the content is good, relevant and makes sense, users will spread the word out. And we have seen that many users were sending sms to their friends about the activity! And they have asked their friends to turn on their mobile bluetooth to receive special MJ content!
This activity proved the basics of mobile marketing: “Provide content that’s relevant and do that in an interesting way!” And more than that we have to ACT not REACT to achieve results in mobile marketing!
And our employees at TELiBrahma made it a “MJ-ONLY-DAY”! Who ever listening to music were playing ONLY Michael Jackson songs for the entire day!
Thank you MJ, for entertaining, inspiring and at last taught us few things!
Tamilnadu (a state in southern India) easily ranks as one of the craziest movie following market in India. Added to this, there will be atleast one movie that’s hitting theaters every month. Unless the movie has big start value, it’s hard to pull the crowd to the theaters to make them experience the movie. Film producers find it’s difficult to differentiate their film from the rest in traditional marketing methods!
To create a differentiation and a different offering for the movie crazy young fans, producers of Mutthirai an action packed romantic movie, wanted to try out a new mode of advertising in contrary to the conventional form of promoting movies and to break away from the clutter.
ASA productions partnered with TeliBrahma Convergent communications, India’s leading mobile solutions company based out of Bangalore. TeliBrahma possesses BluFi, its proprietary product, where marketers can engage with users over mobile with TeliBrahma’s 1000+ Blufi zones like Mc Donald’s, Barista, Café Coffee day, Shopping malls, Commercial streets and ability to convert any location on to an instant Bluetooth zone!
The objective is to reach out to people movie crazy fans in Chennai and to provide them a better experience about the movie on their mobile! Hence the campaign was carried out in popular hangout locations like Baristas and Shopperstop in Chennai for duration of 3 weeks.
Users in the locations were educated about the promotions and prompted to turn their mobile Bluetooth to know more about the movie. Multiple mobile wallpapers of the movie were delivered to the users mobile along with the audio tracks from the movie. Users who wanted the complete song track were diverted to the WAP site of UTV, digital partners of ASA production and there they were able to download the full song directly on to their mobile. This was the first time ever in the Tamil industry that an innovative mobile solution is used for a movie promotion! And for the users who were used to conventional promos, this happened to be a new experience and it was reflected in number of downloads! We have connected to over 4000+ movie fans in the campaign period who got excited and downloaded the mobile wall papers and audio capsule of the movie. In a nutshell all fans went back with a piece of the movie which triggered a reason to watch the movie in the big screen! “Today, one cannot just do TV commercials and press ads to make sure a buzz for a film is created. To get the target audience of Mutthirai involved with the movie, we needed an interactive promotion. Doing Bluetooth publicity and providing wallpapers, ring tones with TeliBrahma not only helped us to create awareness about Mutthirai but also promote other paid downloads!. We wanted to leverage on the hit music of Mutthirai that became a good talking point for the movie and downloads were good way to trigger it” said Urmi Thakur, Marketing Executive of ASA productions.
When Kropex, dealers for General Motors in Bangalore, India decided to try out Bluetooth based marketing for the LPG variant of Chevrolet Spark they didn’t expect 10500+ downloads in just 2 days activity in a shopping mall!
Kropex partnered with Telibrahma Convergent communications, India’s leading mobile solutions company based out of Bangalore.
TELiBrahma possesses BluFi, its proprietary product, where marketers can engage with users over mobile with TELiBrahma’s 1000+ BluFi zones like Mc Donalds, Barista, Café Coffeeday, Shopping malls, Commercial streets etc...
Chevrolet Spark was one of the early adopters of “PRODCASTER”, an innovation from TELiBrahma Convergent Communications where a product can communicate to its consumers directly!
“This demonstrates how TELiBrahma can enhance the effectiveness of traditional marketing campaigns. Display and mall activation are a proven property and our media ensures higher level of engagement, excitements, measurements and more importantly, results” explains, Suresh Narasimha, CEO of TELiBrahma Convergent Communications.
In the campaign what turned to be a buzz builder among the weekend crowd in the famous FORUM mall in Bangalore, existing BluFi infrastructure in the mall was converted in to a “Chevy Zone”. Cars which were exhibited in the mall were enabled with the Bluetooth transmitters.
Users in the mall could download wallpapers, car details, specifications in animated format, details of the dealer etc! Users in other parts of the mall received a communication about the car prompting them to check out the car in the exhibition area.
There was a great excitement about the activity since users never experienced some thing like this before and they started to spread the word among their peer groups. There were around 10500 downloads for the content against the average 1000-2000 downloads in the same location on a normal weekend.
Despite the negative media publicity for General Motors in recent times, users showed interest towards the promotion and have enquired for more details about Chevy Spark from the representatives in “Chevy Stall”, and expressed their trust with the Indian arm of General Motors!
For detailed case study of the campaign, Click here.
• To create brand connect with the target audience during the Indian Premier League 2009
• To communicate the message that Kingfisher is a Goodtimes partner of 5 teams
• Target age group: 18 to 30 years
The Campaign:
• The campaign was carried out in two phases. First there was a photo upload contest and then a Kingfisher contest
• As Kingfisher was part of 5 teams as their GOODTIMES partner, we asked users to upload their Goodtimes photo from their mobile
• In the second phase we carried out a Kingfisher contest wherein people received a contest form with questions regarding their local team and Kingfisher. E.g. ‘Who is the goodtimes partner of Mumbai Indians?’
• At the end of the activity, lucky winners were selected and presented with Kingfisher team merchandise
Challenges
• Kingfisher is associated with Beer and hence we could not promote the brand directly
• To break the myth that users won’t be receptive to mobile engagement ideas like photo upload, contests over mobile were initiated
Results
• More than 2 lakh downloads in 5 cities
• Around 814 photos were uploaded and 1036 responses on the contest within a fortnight.
Campaign Success
• The campaign saw the viral element at its best as there was more call to actions and the target audience has once again reiterated the fact that members responding to brand advertisements are high when it comes to mobile advertising.
Bluetooth SIG Adds Speed, Bandwidth via 802.11 with Version 3.0 of the Global Wireless Standard
From its annual All Hands Meeting in Tokyo last week, the Bluetooth SIG formally adopted Bluetooth Core Specification Version 3.0 High Speed (HS), or Bluetooth 3.0. This latest iteration of the popular short-range wireless technology fulfills the consumers’ need for speed while providing the same wireless Bluetooth experience – faster. The biggest improvement for the new standard is speed, which jumps from a top transfer rate of 3 Mbps found in the current Bluetooth standard to 24 Mbps in 3.0, according to the Bluetooth SIG.
So what exactly is Bluetooth 3.0?
Bluetooth 3.0 is the new version of the Bluetooth standard and reportedly is 160 times faster than the earlier version Bluetooth 2.1 with file transfer rates at 480 Megabit per second in close proximity and 100 megabits per second at 10 meters.
The drastical improvement in the throughput is achieved by using 802.11 technology, not technically Wi-Fi but reportedly the advancement in the standard allows the Bluetooth wireless frequency to piggyback on the Wi-Fi, allowing Bluetooth over Wi-Fi.
This is actually implemented by using two compatible Bluetooth modules that coordinate a switch to 802.11 to move bulk files and once the file transfer is complete, the device coordinate a switch back to the slower and backwards compatible 3 Mbps rate.
What are we going to see?
The blazing fast data speed of the improved standard can be used for a slew of applications including Video streaming from camcorders to TV sets and Computers, Computers and TV’s to Mobile phones, Wireless streaming of presentation from laptops to projectors and many more.
Apart from the streaming between consumer devices Mobile social networking and Bluetooth based mobile advertising is going to shape up to the next level. With throughputs comparable to Wi-Fi these business can do some really awesome stuff with Bluetooth 3.0.
Applications
With the availability of Bluetooth version 3.0 HS, consumers can expect to move large data files of videos, music and photos between their own devices and the trusted devices of others, without the need for cables and wires.
Some applications consumers will experience include:
Now we can transfer an entire music album or an entire DVD from your PC to your phone in seconds via Bluetooth
Bulk downloads photos to a printer or PC
Send heavy video files from camera or phone to computer or television in seconds
A virtual music store can be crated over a Bluetooth network and consumers can purchase music albums in seconds!
With greater speed and reach, a real-time game in a digital screen between the users spread across different geographies over a Bluetooth network is highly possible! (A user in a Mall in Bangalore can play real-time game with a user in a mall in Mumbai, which is live on a digital screen!)
TELiBrahma convergent communications, a leading mobile solutions player, based out of Bangalore, India with more than 1000+ Bluetooth zones with our proprietary technology BluFi, will adapt Bluetooth 3.0 in near future! We will keep you posted!
For information about how BluFi is used in mobile marketing in bringing brands to life on to the palms of consumers, please visit www.blufimedia.com
TELiBrahma is a leading mobile solutions company based out of Bangalore, India. With a suite of patent pending products, Telibrahma powers solutions like Bluetooth based Mobile Advertising, augmented reality, mobile marketing solutions, mobile Enterprise Solutions and location based social networking on Mobile.
