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Unilever?s Wish-Bone campaign increases brand awareness 122pc

Unilever?s Wish-Bone salad dressing recently ran a mobile advertising campaign that resulted in lifts with both purchase intent and brand awareness.

Wish-Bone is one of the first brands to leverage a new type of mobile ad from Solve Media that lets consumers type a keyword directly into an ad unit in exchange for content. The campaign ran from May to June.

?This was a brand campaign for Wish-Bone Italian dressing,? said Ari Jacoby, CEO of Solve Media, New York.

?The goal was to impart the message [and] drive recall that the product is zesty, sassy and tasty,? he said.

?Another important key performance indicator was around driving purchase intent. The campaign was very successful for both KPIs.?

Mobile wish
Wish-Bone leveraged the mobile ad to promote its line of Italian salad dressings with full-page ads and creative that showed off three common adjectives that the brand wanted consumers to associate their product with ? zesty, tangy and tasty.

Consumers were then given an option to type in a keyword ? such as zesty ? to unlock additional content from the consumer-packaged-goods brand.

The company highlights research from comScore to point to the campaign?s effectiveness. According to comScore, the average mobile advertising campaign results in a 48 percent lift in brand awareness compared to the 122 percent gain in the Wish-Bone campaign.

Additionally, Wish-Bone?s campaign increased purchase intent by 87 percent. ComScore claims that the norm is for mobile ads to increase purchase intent by 23 percent.

The ads were placed in mobile sites and apps from publishers including Meredith Corp., Bauer and Songza. The majority of placements were with in-app units, per Solve Media.

In the Songza case, consumers who typed in the keyword also received one day?s worth of free music.

Songza is also offering consumers up to a three-day free trial with other ads that are running within the app as an incentive to get consumers to download and use the app.

?This particular Mobile Type-In campaign placed a significant emphasis on effectiveness and measurability, combined with an elegant user experience, guaranteeing performance and brand lift,? Mr. Jacoby said.

Added value
There is a trend with marketers moving towards mobile campaigns that offer consumers an incentive ? such as free music or in-app content ? in exchange for interacting with content.

As marketers continue to look outside the box for new ways to interact with mobile users while they are engaged with apps, there is an opportunity to make mobile ads more contextual and akin to consumers' actual mobile behaviors.

However, the shift is also fragmenting the mobile advertising space with a plethora of different rewards-based mobile ad units popping up for marketers to choose from.

In this case, what makes the Wish-Bone campaign unique is asking consumers to type in a keyword that is directly associated with a brand to increase softer metrics such as brand recall and awareness.

?Solve Media's mobile ad platform focuses on effectiveness and measurability,? Mr. Jacoby said.

?Campaigns are run on a cost per engagement basis, guaranteeing that marketers and agencies only pay for guaranteed cognition ? not impressions,? he said.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York