With 519 mobile mar­ket­ing cam­paign case stud­ies to review, the Mobile Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (MMA) is one of the best resources for senior mar­keters who want to be vis­i­ble and per­sua­sive in the moments that real­ly mat­ter. For exam­ple, two award-win­ning case stud­ies from Hin­dus­tan Unilever and Sony Elec­tron­ics mas­ter­ful­ly demon­strate the impor­tance of a strong cus­tomer-cen­tric focus, an inno­v­a­tive mobile strat­e­gy, as well as flaw­less cam­paign exe­cu­tion to gen­er­ate mea­sur­able results.

Hindustan Unilever’s Kan Khajura Tesan Campaign

Overview

• Objec­tives: With con­sumers in key regions of rur­al India lack­ing access to tele­vi­sion and unin­ter­rupt­ed elec­tric­i­ty, Hin­dus­tan Unilever need­ed to get cre­ative to earn more share of voice.
• Strat­e­gy: Unilever launched a mobile enter­tain­ment chan­nel acces­si­ble through a toll-free num­ber that offered music, movie news, and ads for select prod­ucts.
• Results: In just six months, the radio chan­nel gained more than 8 mil­lion sub­scribers and increased key brands’ aware­ness met­rics in mar­ket.

Case Study Details

Hin­dus­tan Unilever want­ed to reach the rur­al audi­ence in the regions of Bihar and Jhark­hand. With a com­bined pop­u­la­tion of more than 137 mil­lion, these areas were key tar­gets to increase share of voice for select Unilever brands. The chal­lenge would be infra­struc­ture; Unilever want­ed to reach an audi­ence that is plagued by dai­ly pow­er dis­rup­tions in a land­scape where tra­di­tion­al media only reach­es 20 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion.

Unilever real­ized that 86 per­cent of its tar­get com­mu­ni­ty pop­u­la­tion owned a mobile phone – near­ly 300 per­cent the num­ber who owned a tele­vi­sion. Mobile phones in Hin­dus­tan Unilever’s tar­get regions served as the population’s main source of music and enter­tain­ment. The prac­tice of pre­serv­ing talk time on mobile was also impor­tant to this mar­ket.

Unilever decid­ed to cre­ate its own media chan­nel for mobile. Trans­lat­ed as “the Ear­worm Chan­nel,” Kan Kha­ju­ra Tesan (KKT) was launched as a dial-in mobile radio chan­nel offer­ing free on-demand enter­tain­ment. The chan­nel offered jokes, music, and the lat­est Bol­ly­wood con­tent all inter­spersed with radio adver­tise­ments for Unilever’s mass con­sumer brands.

Mobile reach was stronger than television’s in the tar­get mar­ket, so the cam­paign focused on mobile.

Unilever’s new mobile enter­tain­ment chan­nel was designed to inte­grate some of the company’s biggest brands into con­sumers’ lives. To launch the media-first enter­tain­ment por­tal in India, Unilever brought mobile oper­a­tors and con­tent providers togeth­er. The KKT chan­nel was pilot­ed in Bihar, the heart of the rur­al belt, with the intent to grow and spread to more rur­al areas.

To intro­duce the KKT sta­tion, Unilever invit­ed local audi­ences to give its hot­line num­ber a missed call based on the com­mon local prac­tice of dial­ing and hang­ing up to pre­serve talk time. When a user made the missed call to the toll-free

Unilever cre­at­ed the largest media chan­nel in its tar­get regions, all for just $0.04 (U.S.) per con­tact. With­in six months of the KKT launch, Unilever amassed more than 8 mil­lion sub­scribers. As of March 2014, the chan­nel had 12 mil­lion sub­scribers and had served more than 103 mil­lion ad impres­sions. The con­sumer base is grow­ing at an aver­age of 35,000 per day, and the project even­tu­al­ly aims to reach 20 mil­lion house­holds (equiv­a­lent to 50 mil­lion mobile num­bers).

KKT’s con­tent has been a hit, with a total usage of 125 mil­lion min­utes as of March 2014. Adver­tise­ments for Unilever’s three tar­get­ed brands have been heard more than 20 mil­lion times, lead­ing to the fol­low­ing gains in spon­ta­neous aware­ness:

• Pond’s White Beau­ty gained 56 per­cent.
• Close Up gained 39 per­cent.
• Wheel gained 20 per­cent.

Case Study: Sony Electronics’ 4K Ultra HD TV Launch

Overview

• Objec­tives: Build aware­ness, then edu­cate and ener­gize con­sumers.
• Strat­e­gy: Know­ing that an over­whelm­ing num­ber of con­sumers first search Ama­zon before pur­chas­ing an elec­tron­ics prod­uct, Sony tapped user reviews and inte­grat­ed them into its dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing. A cross-screen exe­cu­tion explained the new Sony 4K Ultra TV prod­uct to con­sumers to spark desire and pur­chase intent.
• Results: More than 40 mil­lion unique shop­pers reached.

Case Study Details

To launch its new 4K Ultra High Def­i­n­i­tion TV, Sony’s strate­gic objec­tives were to:

• Build aware­ness and desire for the new, pre­mi­um prod­uct line
• Edu­cate con­sumers about 4K and Sony’s 4K tech­nol­o­gy
• Ener­gize con­sumers to talk about Sony 4K TVs

On aver­age, elec­tron­ics shop­pers read 11 reviews before mak­ing pur­chas­es. Not all reviews are equal – 84 per­cent of elec­tron­ics shop­pers trust con­sumer reviews on Amazon.com the most (more than pro­fes­sion­al reviews). Thir­ty per­cent of online buy­ers start­ed research­ing their last online pur­chase on Ama­zon ver­sus 13 per­cent that start­ed via search engines.

Mar­keters con­ven­tion­al­ly have only used ecom­merce as a sales chan­nel. Based on what the above insights revealed, the brand’s ecom­merce approach was rede­fined. It was used to launch 4K TVs where elec­tron­ic shop­pers’ jour­neys start by cre­at­ing an expe­ri­ence to spark desire and inspire prod­uct advo­cates.

The tar­get audi­ence was afflu­ent con­sumer elec­tron­ics shop­pers nation­wide.

Sony’s visu­al­ly stun­ning cre­ative was adapt­ed to pro­vide Ama­zon cus­tomers an immer­sive show­room-like expe­ri­ence with the Sony 4K TV’s cin­e­mat­ic clar­i­ty and sound. Ama­zon acti­vat­ed the expe­ri­ence through Kin­dle Fire, mobile expand­able rich media, first-ever cus­tom video spot­light takeovers of Amazon.com’s home­page, and an Amazon.com 4K edu­ca­tion­al sec­tion fea­tur­ing Sony place­ments only.

The cross-screen exe­cu­tion explained the nev­er-before-seen prod­uct, spark­ing desire and pur­chase intent. The brand believed that if cus­tomers pur­chased a Sony 4K TV, they might vol­un­tar­i­ly write reviews that also explained it, per­pet­u­at­ing desire in oth­er elec­tron­ics shop­pers, who trust Ama­zon cus­tomer reviews the most. When the pre­dic­tion proved true, the brand used cus­tomer review ads, which inte­grat­ed cus­tomer reviews direct­ly into its ad units across Amazon’s mobile, tablet, and desk­top chan­nels.

Sony was the first to launch 4K Ultra High Def­i­n­i­tion TV, which pro­vides four times the res­o­lu­tion of reg­u­lar HD.

The Sony 4K TV cam­paign achieved its aware­ness goal, reach­ing more than 40 mil­lion unique shop­pers. Also, it effec­tive­ly edu­cat­ed shop­pers, cre­at­ed advo­cates, and drove desire. Cus­tomers were:

• 310 per­cent more like­ly to research Sony 4K TVs on Amazon.com.
• 260 per­cent more like­ly to add Sony 4K TVs to their Ama­zon wish lists.
• 240 per­cent more like­ly to add Sony 4K TVs to their Ama­zon shop­ping carts.

What are some of your favorite inspir­ing exam­ples of con­sumer-cen­tric mobile mar­ket­ing done right?