Unilever activates “Bloomberg Terminal for marketers” live at Mobile World Congress
FMCG giant first to deploy Brandtone’s game-changing automated marketing tool
Dublin, 24 February 2014: Today at Mobile World Congress, Unilever’s Luis Di-Como, Rahul Welde and other senior marketing executives from the company will activate Konnect, Brandtone’s first automated mobile marketing platform, capable of sending targeted messages to millions of consumers.
This revolutionary new tool means global brands, including Unilever, Mondelēz and SAB Miller, can now engage directly with mobile phone users in the world’s fastest growing markets. Through the platform, marketers have access to a vast permissioned database, allowing them to identify a target audience, create a relevant brand promotion offer and issue a call to action all from their laptop, or mobile device.
The Unilever delegation will be activating the tool at 3pm at the Brandtone stand (7F79, Hall 7) in the Enterprise Ireland pavillion, using a message targeting consumers taking part in a campaign for Unilever’s Sunlight soap brand in India.
In this way, Konnect transforms the marketing process for brand managers, condensing months of planning and agency support into one application. Companies can now build and promote their brands in emerging markets through real-time interaction with consumers with just a few intuitive clicks.
The platform builds on the consumer database Brandtone has built through its work for global brands in the world’s ten fastest growing markets. This database is unique because every consumer has explicitly given the permission to be contacted in the course of purchasing a product and profiling themselves. Every interaction benefits both the brand and the consumer, underpinned by meaningful value exchange.
Luis Di-Como, Senior Vice president Media, Unilever said: “Mobility is transforming the way in which we build brands. And to ensure Unilever is prepared to meet this transformation, we have developed a marketing strategy called Crafting Brands for Life in a Connected World. This means Putting People First; Building Brand Love; and Unlocking the Magic. We believe that mobile is the connective tissue that holds this strategy together. In this way, mobile marketing is a great platform for building sustainable relationships, allowing us to create the proper context in which to interact with people in a personalized and addressable way.”
Rahul Welde, Vice President Media, Unilever, said: “We are delighted to be the first users of Konnect and to be launching in India. We are also eagerly expanding the Brandtone partnership into China and Indonesia which will further fuel our engagement with consumers.
“We see Konnect as the marketing equivalent of the Bloomberg terminal – providing real-time insights and a way of managing campaigns as they happen. We can now identify, engage and reward individuals who use our products exactly at a time when it represents the most value for them.”
With competition to attract consumers in fast growth markets increasing, mobile offers the only universal way of engaging with them. Brandtone’s model makes campaigns accessible to all mobile users, regardless of handset or network, an important factor when over 90% of handsets in these markets are basic feature phones.
Donald Fitzmaurice, Founder and CEO, Brandtone, said: “As developing and emerging markets mature, brands need to find ways to build direct relationships with consumers there – and that means two-way, real-time dialogue.
“Konnect does this, by empowering brands to engage with our database of permissioned consumers in the world’s fastest growing markets – where 45% of the world’s GDP will be by 2020. Now they can respond instantly to minute changes in campaign activity, with an immediate impact on ROI.
“It is so exciting to visit clients and to see the Konnect on large screens providing ‘live coverage’ of campaigns as they unfold.”
Konnect is the only platform that allows marketers to use everything from SMS on basic phones to rich media on smartphones to contact consumers. It also supports a vast range of rewards relevant to the brand and the consumer and can include anything from rich digital content to mobile airtime.
This incentivised approach produces response rates of ten times the industry average and drives revenue and volume for mobile operators within developing markets – adding value across the mobile ecosystem.
A link to the trial demo is available on request.
On Monday 24th February, Konnect will be officially ‘switched-on’ by Unilever at 3pm CET – please do let us know if this is something you might be interested in attending or if you would like to arrange an interview. Photographs will also be available upon request following the launch.
There will be a live demo of Konnect available on the stand throughout the show.
About Brandtone
Brandtone is a micro-multinational company headquartered in Dublin that delivers mobile marketing campaigns for global brands in the developing and emerging markets. The company’s campaigns are based on a principle of ‘sustainable engagement’: ensuring long-lasting relationships with campaign participants by ensuring that the consumer opts in, controls the interaction and receives tangible benefits and rewards.
Since its inception in 2010, Brandtone has grown from one market into twelve, delivering high-impact campaigns for global brands including Unilever, PepsiCo, Kellogg’s and Mondelēz (view case studies).
As a result of these campaigns, Brandtone has built up a permissioned database of millions of profiled consumers in developing and emerging markets, using Big Data analytics to inform campaigns, cross-sell products and build an in-depth understanding of each market.
In the past year the company has won five awards at the Marketing Week Engage, Smarties, Meffys and the Irish Mobile Marketing Awards.
For further information please visit: http://www.brandtone.com
Brandtone can be found on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/Brandtone
