Client: Mobitainment’s

Mobitainment continues to set the benchmark for mobile marketing in Africa. The leading mobile agency was again recognised for brilliance in mobile innovation, this time at the sixth annual AfricaCom Awards in Cape Town where it walked away with the award for Best Mobile Marketing Campaign for Excella Cooking Oils & Mayonnaise.

Africa’s largest communications conference and exhibition, the AfricaCom Awards celebrate Africa’s most innovative triumphs in the digital market.

Mobitainment’s success was announced shortly after the 2013 Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) EMEA forum in London during which cutting-edge learnings, insights and inspiration around mobile technology are shared. The forum’s Africa Pavilion, set up by Silverstone CSI, showcased over 100 different video case studies of mobile marketing in Africa. A market-leading case study, the Excella campaign was used as one such example of best practice for mobile marketing in Africa.

Managing Director for Mobitainment and Chair of the MMA South Africa, Candice Goodman led the discussion around “smart marketing without a smart phone”, using the campaign to demonstrate ground breaking ways to make use of technologies on the path to purchase, while developing loyalty in commoditised markets.

Goodman’s valuable insights made for some interesting conversations in the Twitterverse, with forum attendees re-tweeting comments such as “Emerging markets need a new moniker: mobile-first markets”. All in all, the MD’s presentation was a significant success, providing marketers across the continent with a preview of how Africans are going to change the face of technology.

So what exactly did the campaign behind all the buzz entail?

The Excella’nt Competition was a mobile campaign put together by Mobitainment for client Wilmar Continental for their Excella Cooking Oils & mayonnaise brands which set out to create awareness, drive specific product attributes, display versatility and of course invite people to enter the campaign competition.

The aim of the campaign was to increase sales amongst the lower income consumers. In order to do this, Mobitainment first worked on establishing a conversation between the target audience and characters which it had created for the campaign. This was done using print, radio, leaflets and activations.

The competition itself was based on a barcode entry mechanism, allowing participants to enter using a free messaging service. What’s more, they were able to continue the conversation in a language of their choice without having to own a mobile internet data connection to do so.

Receiving over 154 000 entries in just three months, the campaign was hugely successful in providing Excella with a substantial database of consumers willing and eager to engage with the brand. Using these entries, Mobitainment was not only able to determine the geographic breakdown of participants, but to measure the most popular products by segment as well as the cost per lead per channel.

The success of the campaign can largely be attributed to Mobitainment’s ability to translate technology into marketing results, in-depth understanding of the South African audience and how mobile marketing can be used most effectively to reach the mass market. While technology trends in Africa differ significantly from those in First World countries, there is a need for smarter marketing solutions developed by Africans for Africans. As Goodman concludes, “Some people believe technology will change Africa. We believe Africa will change technology.”