CATEOGORY: Mobile Marketing
FIRST PLACE: Yamaha Watercraft
AGENCY: Textopoly
CLIENT: Yamaha
Yamaha’s Watercraft division, which sells boats, wave runners and other products to adults of all ages, wanted to expand its mobile offerings with a multi-layered mobile campaign and in-depth WAP site providing news and other product information. To incent people to opt-in and provide their mobile numbers, Yamaha offered them a chance to win sweepstakes prizes.
With people of all ages texting today, “We felt that mobile would be a good way to reach a wide audience,” said Andrew Cullen, marketing communications manager at Yamaha. Textopoly conducted a survey last year and asked people who had purchased Yamaha’s boats and wave runners if they had a smartphone; last year 40% did. With those numbers only headed upward, Yamaha felt now was the best time to build up their database of mobile numbers and start making the medium a priority.
In 2009, Yamaha eliminated its broadcast and much of its above-the-line spending and moved its budget into digital, mobile and below-the-line media.
All told, Yamaha acquired 6,000 phone numbers over the course of 10 weeks. The Watercraft division closed out the quarter as the leader in company sales and outdid market share for previous years. To keep the momentum going, retail sales reps are now being trained in asking new customers for their mobile numbers. —Lynn Russo Whylly
“We looked at the cost reductions but it was more about how we could add value to our marketing efforts for a lower cost,” Cullen said.
One attraction to mobile was the ability to target by area code.
“That was huge for us, but also the fact that we could communicate instantly with a person who has that device with them at all times,” he added. “As people engage with their phones more, we want to be a part of that engaging experience.”
Textopoly launched a mobile site for Yamaha and moved all of the company’s content over to mobile by August when the new product season began. Then, from Oct. 14 to Dec. 16, they ran the SMS sweepstakes campaign. Contestants texted in the words BOAT or WAVE to the respective sweepstakes they wanted to enter. There was one for each product line.
The promotion offered a prize valued between $200 and $400 weekly, including wakeboards, tubes and water toys, with a Box Cruiser Wave Runner as the grand prize.
“This gave us a chance to promote that we had a mobile service and gave people an incentive to sign up for it,” Cullen said.
Feedback and social interaction capabilities via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were built into Yamaha’s mobile WAP site.
“We used social to bring together so many other aspects of marketing we had going on,” explained Cullen, noting that, “It’s not mobile just for the sake of doing mobile, but mobile as part of a larger initiative.”
“One of the huge factors of why this campaign was so successful for Yamaha was because it integrated mobile from the planning phase into all their media,” Kang Ha, Textopoly’s business development manager for the Yamaha campaign, said. Also, “Adding a widget to their Facebook fan page did a really good job of integrating mobile to the entire marketing mix.”
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