Pepsi integrates mobile into existing campaign
October 13, 2008
Win tickets to three hockey events
Pepsi has launched a mobile initiative as part of a bigger campaign with the National Hockey League.
The campaign gives consumers the opportunity to score a trip for four to the three biggest NHL events of the year, plus $500 in spending money. Mobile banners asking consumers to find out how to enter are now running in The Hockey News' BlackBerry application powered by Polar Mobile.
"Advertising on The Hockey News Mobile was a perfect fit for Pepsi, given the nature of the campaign," said Gaurav Jain, vice president of business development at Polar Mobile, Toronto, Canada.
"The users can click on the ad to get a promotional email that fully describes the contest and allows them to register online," he said.
After launching just about three week ago, The Hockey News for BlackBerry has already surpassed more than 10,000 downloads.
With a history of more than 60 years, The Hockey News is North America's No.1 selling hockey publication with 2 million-plus readers.
Hockey fans receive The Hockey News' latest stories, blogs, features and columns, including close-ups of their favorite stars and teams, opinions and analysis, team-by-team coverage and full-color action shots, directly on their BlackBerry smartphone.
The Pepsi campaign is targeting hockey lovers.
Contest winners will get free tickets to the 2009 NHL Winter Classic, 2009 NHL ALL-Star Game and the 2009 Stanley Cup Final.
On Nov.3, one entry will be randomly drawn from among all eligible entries received during the contest period.
The banners have been running within the application for just four days and already have gotten 100,000 impressions and 1,000 click-throughs.
"We customized the campaign for mobile and Polar did the creative and worked with the agency to create the banners," Mr. Jain said. "We will be tracking the campaign for Pepsi.
"We suggested three different creatives because our experience has taught us that campaigns with a variety of banners tend to get better click-through rates," he said.
The idea is when a user clicks on the banner, he or she is rerouted to page that asks whether the person wants an email explaining the details of the contest.
Users do not have to type in their email. The application already knows it so users can just click to get the email sent.
The email is send immediately and the user can act on it right away.
"Part of the reason this campaign is doing so well is because when users click they are not taken away from the application," Mr. Jain said. "this makes them feel more comfortable clicking on the ads."