Samsung Goes Viral With Brickfish Campaign

SAMSUNG IS PROMOTING ITS MX10 flash memory camcorder with Your "Baby Love," a new user-generated content (UGC) campaign featuring Pussycat Dolls' lead singer Nicole Scherzinger. The promo invites users to film themselves doing a rendition of Scherzinger's single "Baby Love" and upload it for a chance to win prizes like the MX10, a 40-inch LCD HDTV or $500 cash. San Diego-based Brickfish is the viral marketing agency at the helm of the campaign, which runs until February 4.

The MX10 was featured in Scherzinger's video for "Baby Love," which debuted in late 2007, and Samsung turned to UGC as a natural way to extend the buzz. "Being featured in Nicole Scherzinger's video for 'Baby Love' was great. and we are excited to integrate music lovers into the experience," said Reid Sullivan, vice president of marketing for Samsung Electronics America. "UGC is a great tool to help us engage with consumers at a new level." Anyone can view and vote on the entries via the campaign microsite. Brickfish's UGC platform helps to facilitate viral adoption by allowing visitors to post comments and share their entries via email and IMs, as well as distribution across sites like Facebook, MySpace and Xanga.

According to Nichole Goodyear, founder and vice president of operations at Brickfish, the agency's proprietary platform has an analytics engine that tracks the movement of each piece of content. "As the content is shared across different networks, it sends the data back and it gets aggregated into campaign summary reports," said Goodyear. She added that the tool also provides detailed analysis of just how viral a campaign really is, complete with geographic and demographic data on user participation.

Link to MediaPost Article

Marketing Catches Up with Mobile

Ads are going where consumers go.

”Mobile messaging was profitable long before it became sexy for marketing purposes,” says John du Pre Gauntt, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report Mobile Message Marketing. “The ubiquity, ease of use and low-cost of mobile messaging caused it to rocket in usage wherever it was introduced—even in the bastion of voice traffic, the US.”

Various research studies show that users give a thumbs-up to messaging. In fact, it’s among the top reasons for buying a mobile handset.

”After voice calls, messaging typically ranks second or third in the order of user desires,” says Mr. Gauntt. “Most important to marketers, messaging, especially short messaging services (SMS), is now part and parcel of youth culture everywhere.”

In terms of general use, SMS ranks with voice as one of the standard mobile services. In Europe, Forrester Research reported that nearly 100% of mobile users ages 12 to 24 sent SMS messages on a daily basis while a little more than one-half (55%) used its more robust cousin, multimedia messaging services (MMS).

”Now, SMS and other mobile messaging flavors such as MMS, mobile instant message (MIM) and mobile e-mail are in the midst of a make-over by marketers,” says Mr. Gauntt.

eMarketer projects that the global market for ad-supported mobile messaging will rise from $1.5 billion in 2006 to $12 billion by 2011.

”As the speed and sophistication with which marketers integrate other mediums such as outdoor, radio, television and the Web with SMS call to action, an ad-supported model for mobile messaging charges cannot be far off,” says Mr. Gauntt.

Amid the excitement over mobile messaging, however, there remains a sticking point regarding who should pay the network delivery charge, especially as it applies to communication between a mobile subscriber and a marketer.

”Interactive content experiences such as television voting or polling have seen success with consumers paying the freight for the network,” says Mr. Gauntt. “But it defies logic for mobile marketing to achieve its promised growth with the consumer consistently picking up the tab for various types of interactive sessions with brands or content properties.”

Link to eMarketer Article

Radio Groups Partner with HipCricket for Mobile Campaigns

Radio groups representing 43 stations across most U.S. markets have partnered with HipCricket to offer mobile marketing programs to advertisers.

The deal gives each radio station its own short code that allows it to run text programs, and to build clubs and opt-in audiences, while at the same time collecting data on its listeners, writes ClickZ. The code is managed by HipCricket, which claims an average 40 percent response rate on its campaigns.

Participating radio groups include Hubbard Radio, Triad Broadcasting Company, Perry Broadcasting, Press Communications, Sandusky Radio Seattle and South Central Radio Group.
Verizon Wireless, McDonald's, Burger King and Gamestop have all used HipCricket to run mobile text campaigns

Link to Media Buyer Planner Article