Dublin-based mobile software firm Púca has entered into a strategic content partnership with a London-based, Emmy-nominated animation company to enable large brands to roll out multimedia-based marketing campaigns.
The deal with London-based VooDooDog enables marketers to run multimedia-based campaigns encompassing sound, animation, 3D games, video and mobile internet site development.
The deal will see a new business division of Púca, called Púca Studios, target companies that are looking for new and exciting ways to communicate with their customers via their mobile phones.
VooDooDog was commissioned by HBO Films to create the multi award-winning animated title sequence for the Golden Globe winning feature film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, directed by Stephen Hopkins and starring Geoffrey Rush and Charlize Theron.
Púca managing director Eamon Hession (pictured) said the development offers brands the ability to create richer and more impactful content, and can make mobile campaigns and services more attractive and interactive than ones that are solely SMS based.
“Marketing is changing and advertisers are moving away from traditional one-way broadcasts,” Hession explained.
“Advertising on mobile phones is less about ‘push’ and more about ‘pull’. Consequently, if companies want to engage the very savvy and demanding consumer of today, they must offer a slick, entertaining and interactive customer experience,” said Hession.
A key driver for these new services, he explained, is the ability of new 3G network services to enhance communications through voice and non-voice data, such as high-speed downloads, exchanging email, mobile TV, internet browsing and video telephony.
The 3G market, Hession said, is consistently growing and this means that it will become easier for companies to leverage the mobile as an effective marketing tool to communicate and develop brand experience.
The majority of new mobile phones are capable of displaying rich content, multimedia messages, browsing the internet, video calling and viewing mobile TV. Within the Irish market for example, 90pc of mobiles are Wap-enabled, 76pc have colour screens and 68pc are picture messaging enabled. The mobile content market is also continuing to grow rapidly and is expected to be worth €7.6bn worldwide in 2006, according to LogicaCMG.
By John Kennedy
