Case Study One:

Red Cross

Goal – was to raise as much money as possible for those affected by the devastation in Haiti.

In a recent campaign the Red Cross was able to raise $5,000,000 for Haiti. This was done by making use of text messaging. It is estimated that there are 270 million people in the United States alone that own a cell phone!

The fund raising drive was set up in a simple way. All people had to do to help out was text “Haiti” to 90999 and a $10 donation was automatically made. It was simple but very effective and nobody had to go out of their way to make a donation.

To date this has been the most effective SMS campaign done by any charitable organization. Even though the concept was simple the Red Cross needed help to put their campaign into place.

Getting a five digit short code like ‘Haiti’ is not cheap, some of these numbers can cost up to $12,000! They then needed to put an effective marketing campaign into place. Luckily for the Red Cross they had the backing of Michelle Obama and the NFL.

It is known that text messages get opened by the majority of people and this is the one component that makes SMS campaigns so successful. You know that your message will be opened and read.

The reason why this campaign worked so well was due to the nature of the text message. People had seen the devastation in Haiti and when asked responded by helping. The message was simply a way to donate money, there was no writing a cheque or going to a local bank. It was all done via people’s cell phones. Quick and easy!

Plus the majority of cell phone users are younger and held current jobs. People from all walks of life were made aware of the severity of the situation. Reaching so many people from diverse backgrounds found those that had the money to donate.

Case Study Two

Barack Obama Campaign

Goal – to identify new voters and persuadable voters

It is well known that most elections are won by fewer than 10 percentage points. So the name of the game is to develop a way to find that 5 to 10 percent of people that can help you swing the vote. This is exactly what President Obama did in his last campaign.

The smartest thing about using a text messaging campaign was that Obama was connecting with the young people of the country. Many of whom had not yet even registered to vote.

The SMS campaign was used in various ways:

• To remind people to get registered to vote, people were asked to provide their zip codes

• State by State reminders for people with details of their cut off dates

• Reminded voters that they can mail in their ballots

• Invited people to local campaign events

• Sent reminders to vote on Election Day

The results of this campaign were that most people who registered to receive election announcements were under 40. This is the age group which is harder to reach but by using a tool which they already owned information could be delivered on a regular basis.

Potential voters were not inundated with unwanted phone calls at all hours of the day or night. SMS messages can be sent at any time and read at the user’s convenience.

What this means for the future is that SMS could prove to be a very powerful political tool. The only downside to this is the cost of sending messages to possibly millions of people regularly.

Case Study Three

British Airways Mobile App Campaign

Goal – to promote their Executive Club mobile application

British Airways recently wanted to promote their Executive Club mobile app. This app allowed members to manage their account and reservations, plus access real time flight information all from their mobile devices.

The mobile campaign was to target members of the Loyalty Club and get them to download this application. The results of this campaign was that 250,000 downloads of this app were done by members.

British Airways decided to run a mobile email campaign to reach their members. For this type of campaign to be successful the email had to be optimized. This was done by using an email template that suited the user’s most common device. But it had to be viewable if opened through another method.

Research showed BA that travellers prefer to receive offers and information via emails over any other delivery method. The mobile email allowed users to access their inbox no matter where they were travelling on any given day.

When registering for the Loyalty Club members stated which devices they most commonly used Blackberry, Iphones, Android phones and PC’s. This way the marketing team knew they had to deliver content that was viewable on a small screen.

The email was targeted and to the point. Someone with an iphone would receive information about a new app that would allow them to scan their tickets versus printing them out. It showed examples of what the app could do.

• Find arrival and departure times

• Check flight status

• Perform Check ins

• Find travel news from British Airways

The features would vary depending upon the device it was being viewed on. With a target of 125,000 downloads this campaign more than doubled the expectations of British Airways.

Case Study Four

PepsiCo

Goal: to help streamline busy the lives of busy females by offering them a mobile app.

Pepsi first came out with their mobile app to help promote their Propel brand of sports drink. This has now been streamlined into a shopping app that is directly aimed at the busy woman aged 25 to 49. This person is generally a busy mom who has to go to work and run errands throughout the day. She is also health conscious and concerned about what her and her family eat and drink.

The mobile app is based on the Google Maps system and allows the user to enter all their daily chores and tasks. This includes going to the grocery store, the gym, picking up the kids from school and going to after school activities.

The mobile app works on your iphone and suggests the easiest route to get to your next appointment. What the app does is to notify the young woman of new stores and products that might be in the area. At the same time it is showing her how the Propel brand of drinks can fit into her busy schedule.

To market this effectively Pepsi combined forces with local businesses in six major categories.

• Travel

• Well being

• Food

• Home

• Shopping

• Organize

Pepsi is helping woman organize and cope with their busy lives. While this app is being helpful the underlying message from Pepsi is that Propel can help make your life more manageable.

For the future Pepsi is looking into using bar code advertising as well as additional mobile marketing to enhance their branding and reach more customers.

Case Study Five

General Motors – Chevy

Goal: to build awareness for their two new vehicles the Chevy Volt and the Chevy Cruze.

Recently Chevy was the sponsor for the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. Their problem was that neither of the two new cars were available at this show. Both of these cars were being used as the test bed for mobile marketing.

Chevy hooked up with a geo based firm called Gowalla and decided to test how people would interact with different brands.

As people arrived at the Austin airport, they had to be Gowalla users, they received a message from Chevy welcoming them to the area. Chevy randomly chose users to receive a free ride in a Chevy vehicle.

Chevy also set up walking tours of Austin and users who checked in at certain points could get a reward. The reward would be given to them at the festival. This way the user had a reason to visit Chevy once inside the festival.

Outside the festival Chevy parked Corvettes and Camaros which people could take for a test drive. As the festival hosted events around Austin this provided people with a method of getting to each location.

Chevy set up the Chevy Volt Recharge lounge which allowed people to recharge their personal devices. This was an easy way for users to recharge their laptops, cell phones and iPods.

In addition Chevy had pre production models of both the Chevy Cruze and Volt. They applied QR codes on the outside of both cars. When scanned the code took the user to a website that showed the features and benefits of the new cars.

In all there were 15 codes that could be scanned. Each one highlighted different features. One bar code would reveal the life remaining in the battery of the Volt. This QR marketing program allowed interested users to opt in to receive further information on these cars. This way Chevy wasn’t bombarding them with marketing advertisements.

The results of this campaign were that 40 people completed the walking tour and 75 prizes were redeemed at the festival. Chevy had the second highest number of check-ins at the show at 730.

Chevy used this whole experience as a learning case. When visitors realized that Chevy wasn’t out to sell them cars but to educate them their response and interaction rates increased.

They found that by having models of cars that wouldn’t be available for another six months they generated a huge amount of buzz. The Chevy Cruze and Volt had 13,000 tweets that mentioned them in a period of nine days.

For the future Chevy plans to commit 30% of its budget to mobile marketing along with using more social marketing.