Footwear and apparel giant adidas wanted to drive footfall to a new flagship adidas Originals store in Cairo, so the brand ran a mobile advertising campaign targeting early-adopters.

To achieve its objectives, adidas was among the first brands to run campaigns on wireless carrier Mobinil?s new permission-based marketing program Mobinil Ads, which is powered by Alcatel-Lucent. Leveraging interactive dialogue, early-adopters of Mobinil Ads were invited to learn more about adidas Originals, and those who replied instantly received a follow-up picture message encouraging them to visit the new Cairo store and claim a limited-edition adidas Originals gift.

?We?re quite excited, because we are working together with Mobinil, the first mobile operator in Egypt with nearly 30 million subscribers, to launch this permission- and preference-based platform to enable true conversations between brands and consumers,? said Hani Ramzi, global director of business development at Alcatel-Lucent, Paris. ?Especially in these markets where spam is the general rule, it is quite a disruptive service that we?re bringing to market.

?Today we are at 200,000 subscribers in less than 30 days of invitations, which is a very exciting ramp-up,? he said. ?During soft launch, we?re also engaging with some exciting brands such as adidas and Nokia that have run campaigns over this inventory with exciting response rates.

?Specifically, the average response rate for the adidas campaign is 35 percent, and it peaked at 55 percent.?

Mobinil claims to be the leading carrier and mobile service operator in Egypt with more than 27 million subscribers.

Alcatel-Lucent provides voice, data and video communication services and products to enterprises, service providers, governments and strategic industries such as defense, energy, healthcare and transportation worldwide.

A specialist in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 15.2 billion in 2009.

Adidas taps Mobinil, Mobinil taps Alcatel-Lucent
The adidas campaign was sent midday on a Wednesday to encourage recipients to visit the store over the weekend.

Messages were sent only to members who explicitly shared that they have an interest in fashion or sports when registering for Mobinil Ads.

Mobinil issued the following text message to subscribers:

?Welcome to the street, where originality lives and athletes, musicians, skaters and more come together to show their style. Do you want an invitation? 1=Yes.?

Replying to Mobinil Ads is always free.

The following is an example of an adidas call-to-action issued to opted-in consumers:

?Celebrate your originality and visit the adidas store at Citystars, phase 2, 4th floor, store #4085.

?Hurry up and claim one of our limited-quantity adidas Originals gifts upon presenting this message to our store staff.

?Alternatively, go online to adidas.com/originals.?

With a 35 percent response rate, it was clear that adidas was connecting with a receptive, highly targeted audience delivering increased ROI, according to Alcatel-Lucent?35 percent of recipients requested an invite to the new adidas Originals Cairo store.

The campaign was well-received by both men and women, as well as by both Arabic and English speakers, per Mobinil.

Females were 23 percent more responsive than their male counterparts.

Predictably, younger people were most responsive to the message. Consumers ages 15-24 were on average 98 percent more responsive than consumers ages 30-plus.

Bugra Hatipoglu, marketing manager at adidas Egypt, said that the response was way beyond the brand?s expectations and that he is very excited about the potential of this new form of advertising.

Mobinil, Alcatel-Lucent enable conversations between consumers, brands
Based on Alcatel-Lucent?s Optism mobile marketing platform, the interactive mobile advertising service invites Mobinil?s nearly 30 million customers to opt-in to receive ads and offers from their favorite brands.

By sharing their interests with Mobinil, customers can receive promotions, discounts, content and exclusive opportunities.  

During an initial soft launch including major and international brands more than 200,000 subscribers opted-in and used the service.

Advertiser partners at launch included adidas and Nokia, which both have experienced higher response rates in comparison to other digital media.

Optism is the permission-based mobile marketing service from Alcatel-Lucent designed to bridge the gap between carriers and advertisers.

Optism enables carriers to create permission- and preference-based mobile inventory providing advertisers with access to willing and targeted audiences.

Building upon successes in Europe with Orange Austria, Alcatel-Lucent is now forging relationships with carriers in strategic emerging markets, including Egypt, with more to follow.

?Optism is simple, lean and mean?the user gets a text message inviting him to opt in to a service through which he will get relevant ads noting his preferences and demographics,? Mr. Ramzi said. ?It is amazing to see that people are joining based on the promise of getting relevant ads?we?re seeing good opt-in rates through text messaging.

?Down the road, Mobinil will be inviting users through other channels?promotion on their Web site, fliers and scratch cards,? he said. ?Campaigns are a mix of text dialog and multimedia dialog to let brands truly interact with consumers, and while adidas is just using still images and text for now, it can include rich media and video as well.

?The technical piece is only a very small part of the game?we?re engaging with media agencies and brands directly, literally bringing the ecosystem together?this is key for us.?

Final Take