The Idea
Tomorrow, some people in the US are going to get a text reminding them that The Incredible Hulk opens Friday and they may want to book some tickets. Through Movie Tickets, Universal have been promoting their summer blockbusters using a technology from Aptera (the deal appears to have been done by Ignited).
When customers called in to get ticket for Iron Man, this triggered an ad for The Incredible Hulk, a film that would more than likely appeal to the fans of the Iron Man superhero movie. The trigger was the mention of the film, not tied into any automated button pressing. They were asked if they wanted a reminder text the day before the film opens; if they accepted they got a text message confirming this with a link to mobile content about the film. For those on landlines, they were asked if they wanted a call, as they can configure the ads to play different messages depending on what they are calling from.
This was a small-scale pilot for the technology. They had 30000 hearing the ad, half of them from mobile phones. 3% agreed to the reminder and received the additional content. Given the average click-through rate of an online ad, that’s a pretty good return rate, although the company has seen click throughs of 6-8%.
What I think about it
Mobile marketing has not been the easiest thing to get off the ground, for some of the reasons that social network advertising has problems. The channel is being used to communicate to people, friends and advertising getting in the way is often unwelcome. This is one method though that does seem to be relevant, with highly targeted ads to audiences that should be interested in the product. Offering a reminder is a good prompt to get people to the movie, although there is an argument that with blockbusters and their blitz of marketing you don’t necessarily need the reminder if you are a fan of the genre. What looks like it is more interesting is the ability to promote additional content - especially if they can share it. This would give the customers something to show for listening to the ad and accepting the connection.
The Pitch
From Blanc & Otus Public Relations, these are the PR people for Apptera, the technology company. Usually, I ignore most tech pitches even if they’re interesting to me personally but they are rarely relevant to the blog, but this one worked for me. The initial email was personalised, friendly and useful. When I sent them some follow up questions about numbers and process, there was a quick response containing the relevant information plus a press release explaining the tech process. An interesting blip in the communication was a follow up email about a week later containing almost the same details from a different person; I can only imagine that because I’d not written about them, I’d not got the email. They could have spiced it up more with maybe the audio and a link to the mobile stuff, but overall a B.
Tags: apptera, ignited, incredible hulk. iron manShare This
