Irish mobile marketing software player Púca Technologies has been enlisted by snack food player Robt Roberts KP Foods and music vendor CD Wow to power up a promotion campaign involving a prize fund of more than €8m.
The campaign is running on packs of Skips, Meanies and Rancheros until December 2005. Customers simply text a unique on-pack code and keyword to a short code supplied to receive an instant prize. CD Wow is offering a prize fund valued at €8m including free CDs and €2 and €5 money-off vouchers. Every text will win a minimum of €2.
The programme was conceived by Robt Roberts agency, Direction@JWT. It is currently running in-store on 4.4 million packs of Meanies, Skips and Rancheros and expects to elicit 100,000 responses by the end of the year.
Púca won the contract to provide the mobile connectivity and management platform on which the promotion will run against stiff competition. The service includes managing the gateway to all mobile operators in Ireland, hosting and managing mobile shortcodes and enabling keyword activated instant replies to all messages. The Púca platform provides an online reporting facility, which delivers instant access to real-time respondent marketing data.
Ruth Leonard, business development manager at Púca, commented: “This is another example of the increasing variety of applications of mobile technology in the marketing mix. Its real marketing impact comes from its ability to let people know what they have won immediately. The prize value is sent directly to the mobile phone and there is no waiting for a middle-man to physically send out prizes at the end of the campaign.”
Marcus Prestage, the Robt Roberts’ account manager at Direction@JWT said Púca was chosen because of a proven track record in efficient and innovative use of the SMS platform.
Prestage said: “It has proven that there are many more uses for SMS than are currently being exploited. Mobile technology allows the sales promotion industry to be more interactive than it has ever been, which means that there are many more ways to contact potential customers.”
By John Kennedy
