Volkswagen uses an iPhone app to generate over $4 million in car sales
Volkswagen, with the help of AKQA, decided to create a car game, but rather than go through the risk and cost of building one from scratch they decided to reskin a already established racer on the market. So they took the popular racing game called Real Racing (retailing at $4.99) and created a sponsored version of the game, calling it “Real Racing GTI”, then gave it away for free.
As you can imagine the game features the Golf GTI as the selectable car and features VW branding throughtout.
The clever bit is that users were invited to use the iPhones GPS functionality to locate their nearest dealer. This data enabled AKQA to directly trace purchases of the GTI Mark VI directly back to the app.
On top of all that, VW added incentive by challenging players with the reward of winning one of 6 real Golf GTIs
And onto the numbers...
175 cars sold to registered players of the application, 50% of those sales to new customers.
The car retailed for $23,000, making at least $4 million in revenue.
Clickz.com makes a very valid point in that those are only the sales directly linked with the application. Once you look at the huge amount of ratings the app received (50,000) as well as it hitting number one in the download charts, the brand awareness must have also been sky high.
A great example of how mobile marketing, when done right, just has no match...
Mobile Adver-Gaming Helps PUMA Connect With Consumers During Shanghai F1 Race
PUMA, one of the world’s leading sporting footwear company, launched a major mobile campaign recently to coincide with the Formula One race that took place in Shanghai. It was a comprehensive campaign that included a mobile internet site, adver-gaming, coupons, banners, and search.
The PUMA campaign was put together by Phonevalley (part of Publicis) and Zenith China. The objective of the campaign was to increase brand awareness in China by introducing PUMA’s brand and culture in a fun, original way to the Chinese market.
The link with FormulaOne was a natural for Puma, which has a long history in the world of motorsports, and even has a special line of “Scuderia Ferrari” shoes.
The “F-Wan” Game
The main focus of the campaign was a mobile game called “F-Wan”, which sounds like “F1″ and means “Play” in Chinese. It is a car racing game (no surprise!) which consumers could download from the Puma mobile internet site. The game showed 4 cars racing along a special “Puma” shaped race course.
To make the campaign even more attractive and interactive, Puma set up a number of ways for players to earn prizes. For example, players could submit their race scores to PUMA by SMS and thereby receive points. And, in order to increase the viral aspects of the campaign, points were also given to players that forwarded the game to their friends.
The top 3 players each week were awarded PUMA F1 merchandise like shoes, bag and hats. Players could also get wall papers and mobile “themes” based on the race game to let them personalize their phones.
Promoting the Game
To drive traffic to the mobile site and the mobile game download, the media plan covered all available mobile channels in the chinese market.
Banners and text links were displayed on the top three Chinese mobile portals: QQ, 3g.cn and Kong.net
SMS short-codes were integrated in all PUMA out-of-home and print ads. When a used sent ‘PUMA F Wan’ to the campaign short code, they received a clickable SMS with a link to the PUMA mobile Internet site
WAP push (clickable SMS) were be sent to PUMA members
SMS mobile search: mobile users who search for any sport related information are sent an SMS which includes a direct link to the PUMA mobile Internet site
Bringing business to the stores
Another objective of the campaign was of course to drive business for PUMA. There are 350 PUMA stores in China, and in order to bring traffic to the stores, PUMA sent an MMS coupon to each person that downloaded the mobile driving game. The coupon was redeemable for a mobile phone accessory in the store.
Las Vegas' McCarran Airport is putting the boarding process on your phones.
BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Whatever your views on airport security, you probably want it to be speedier. And Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport thinks it has a solution: Check in on your mobile phone.
Since last February McCarran has made mobile boarding available to passengers flying on Northwest, Delta, Continental, American and others. Mobile boarding is also available at 30 other airports in the U.S. including Memphis International Airport and New York-La Guardia.
At McCarran the check-in process is started when you uses your phone to pull up the airport's universal check-in Web page. From there you select the airline's icon and complete the secure check-in process. And, just like printing a boarding pass from home, you get a barcode tied to your reservation, but with one advantage: There's no paper. All you have to do is just carry your phone with you.
At the baggage area you wave the barcode under a scanner, drop your bags and move on. At security you wave your phone again and the security agent instantly pulls up your flight information. Finally, you scan the barcode one more time just before boarding the plane.
Sounds quick, efficient and stress-free, right? Well airport and airlines love the idea, too. For airlines, it means savings on infrastructure like kiosks, which cost $10,000 to $15,000 a piece. For airports, offloading the check-in process means decreased congestion, better throughput, and less new construction.
The idea is a slightly modified version of a universal check-in program called ''Speed Check'' that McCarran already has running. McCarran IT chief Samuel Ingalls says the airport has deployed a handful of kiosks across Las Vegas that allow passengers to remotely access the check-in process of multiple airlines. To date, the kiosks have issued 33 million boarding passes.
''That put us on the road to putting the process in the hands of the customer,'' says Ingalls. ''Mobility is really the next step.''
This push comes thanks to a change in the way airlines think about customer needs. Previously, says Ingalls, airports thought their premium customers wanted to keep the velvet ropes and face-to-face customer service model. As it turns out, the executive types just got jealous of the regular customers and their speedy kiosks.
Increased mobility could also change the way we think about airports, says Ingalls. Take, for example, popular nomenclature. ''You still see or hear it referred to as the ticket counter,'' he says. ''When was the last time you went out to the airport to buy a ticket?''
So whether the ticket counter will soon be known as the bag drop area is yet to be seen. Previous attempts at improving airport security like Clear Lanes have been grounded.
Of course, increasing the speed of check-ins does little to address the frustrations of shoe removal and little plastic bottles. But the idea of mobile boarding is certainly an interesting one, and better yet, it's already in development.
Chicago's Shedd Aquarium Finds Texting Beat Out Web in Direct-TV Spot
SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- SMS may lack sizzle, but it can deliver the goods if provoking your audience to action is the goal, as Chicago's Shedd Aquarium recently discovered from its summer test campaigns.
To herd visitors to its new Fantasea aquatic show, Shedd Aquarium put a couple of direct-response tactics to the test to see if consumers preferred SMS or web-based calls to action.
At the end of 30-second spots that aired on Chicago's NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox affiliates, the aquarium announced a contest with prizes that included a hotel stay and VIP seats for the Fantasea premiere. The commercials were identical across the networks except for the calls to action: All the ads directed viewers to a website to register for the contest, except one spot, which gave viewers an additional mobile option to enter the contest by sending a text message to a special code.
The SMS call to action generated 325% more entries than the web-based call-to-action, making up 52% of the total entries, though it ran in only 25% of the ads.
To Shedd's assistant marketing director, Jay Geneske, the results show that the "phone is always with you, it's nearby and immediate," even when you're watching TV. Shedd also ran a one-day print campaign in a local paper with a text call-to-action, yielding the highest or near highest number of responses for a single-day print piece, Mr. Geneske said.
"SMS reveals a greater sense of urgency," said Jed Alpert, founder of Mobile Commons, the marketing agency that managed the campaign's SMS piece. "It's more actionable and convenient, and people have a more direct connection with their phones."
Additionally, when people are watching TV, they're more likely to have their cellphones near them than a computer.
Fresh impressions
"The mobile phone gives the consumer the ability to respond to the advertisement in real time, while the impression is still fresh in their heads," said Aaron Watkins, a former mobile-marketing agency executive turned independent consultant.
To get consumers to respond via the web, on the other hand, means they not only have to be interested in the ad but need to recall the website address later if they were not near a computer when the ad ran. The likelihood that they will remember the address drops "exponentially," given the nonstop barrage of messages and media that hit people every day, Mr. Watkins said.
Mobile works best when overlaid with mass media such as TV and radio, because they radiate that much more reach, compared to, say, mobile apps or display banners, Mr. Alpert said.
More than 90% of U.S. handsets are SMS-capable, with the number of text messages starting to outpace voice calls in 2007, according to Nielsen.
For consumers to text in, however, the offer has to be compelling and valuable, whether it's entertainment, information or access to something special. Shedd's campaign worked well because the short code was part of the narrative and script, rather than an afterthought of just slapping a code at the end of the commercial.
Mr. Alpert said it cost Shedd less than $10,000 to trial SMS in its TV campaigns. Given the relatively low outlay, marketers may want to consider SMS trials in their out-of-home and broadcast campaigns if for nothing else than to capture users for their mobile-marketing database. Mr. Alpert said over the hundreds of mobile campaigns his agency has managed, an average 85% of those who opt into a campaign will respond to more requests for information, such as age and ZIP code
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Credo Mobile
A company that creates fun allowing people project messages onto walls from their mobile This video can be viewed HERE
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The link with FormulaOne was a natural for Puma, which has a long history in the world of motorsports, and even has a special line of “Scuderia Ferrari” shoes.
