about.blyk.com

By Shaun Gregory, UK CEO, Blyk

The effects of the economic downturn are widespread. Companies have either already cut their marketing budgets or have a cut planned for 2008. According to a global study by Forrester research, marketing budgets are expected to be cut by 3% on average this year. But, it’s not all gloom. This opens up a window of opportunity for smart advertisers. Why? Well, it gives them the opportunity to assess their approach.

The first step when facing marketing cuts is to initiate a shift from mass advertising to targeted advertising. Channels that once delivered mass audiences are suffering from audience fragmentation, while digital convergence is providing more integrated platforms for communication on a one-to-one level. Consumer choice now determines what messages are seen and when.

The second step is to open up a direct dialogue between the brand and the consumer via innovative marketing channels. The only personalised media channel that allows this is the mobile phone. And, since the mobile phone is an indispensable part of people’s lives, mobile advertising offers a viable and unique channel in reaching consumers in an economic downturn.

Contrary to the stigma among advertisers and marketers that push strategies used with mobile advertising are interruptive and ineffective; 71% of young people admitted that they would like to receive advertising messages on their mobile phones that were targeted to their particular interests. At Blyk, where ad formats based on the most dominant communications pattern among 16-24 year olds – messaging – we believe that push strategies, used as an initial conversation point, are an effective way of opening a dialogue between brands and consumers.

Finally, the third phase is about getting creative minds going. Why not create interesting new campaigns tailored for mobile advertising? It’s about engagement, it’s about relevance. A brand will send a text message, users respond and then the brand sends an answer back. Blyk members – who are fully authenticated upon joining Blyk - react well to this level of engagement, offering high response rates. For example, Penguin’s campaign to promote Nick Hornby’s new novel saw 7 out of 10 members engage with the publisher in dialogue.

And when ROI is even more crucial during a credit crunch, being able to achieve significantly higher response rates than other channels is critical. Blyk has run over 900 mobile advertising campaigns for brands such as EMI, Boots, Penguin, Brylcreem, L’Oreal and NatWest, with industry leading response rates.

Mobile advertising, when executed correctly, is not advertising in its traditional sense; instead it effectively provides useful and relevant information, and a personal mode of communication. When it works – and Blyk does – mobile communication helps protect and build brands by opening dialogue with consumers.

The world of mobile is all about dialogue, relevance and openness. When it is treated as such with a targeted campaign, it can help combat any budget challenge.

By Antti Öhrling

I’ve been in San Francisco the past few days giving a keynote entitled “Freeing Mobile” at the YPulse Mashup 2008 – organised by YPulse, an authority on youth media. I was privileged to share the stage with representatives from other youth brands including Walt Disney Records and MTV. Overall, it was a very interesting and lively 2-day event with around 400 participants.

There was a focus on the US (naturally), but discussions also touched on some international trends. During my talk, I was able to give a basic overview of the Blyk proposition – 16-24 year olds want free communication in exchange for relevant and interactive mobile advertising.

It was interesting for me because the audience saw Blyk as something completely new with outstanding results (e.g. response rates) and many are wondering why this hasn’t yet taken off in the US. In fact, Blyk recently hit the mainstream radar in the US with CNBC’s recent broadcast of the “Cell Phone Quid Pro Quo” which gave an in-depth look of Blyk and mobile advertising.

Some key discussion topics from YPulse include:

• Difficult to reach: Marketers are still looking for the “killer application” or entry point by which to effectively communicate and reach the youth audience. The major challenge for marketers is do identify this entry point whilst recognising that young people have become more difficult to reach due to rapidly changing, savvy media habits and wavering preferences (e.g. be it social networks or brands / products).

• Lack of understanding: Marketers have a lack of understanding when it comes to young people and are struggling to effectively reach them. Media fragmentation and rise of the digital age have been key factors contributing to this phenomenon.

• iPhone mania: iPhone mania was unbelievably strong amongst the participants at the conference. I see this currently as a very US-centric phenomenon. The capabilities and some statistics of the phone are impressive, but the lack of viewpoints – e.g. concerning limitations in the distribution, price of usage and proprietary technology – are obvious. But it is growing and will be interesting to see the progress.

• Hip-Hop music in marketing: Obviously again a more US centric issue, but there was interesting discussion about the usability of the music genre for marketing purposes along with the limitations and risks involved. There was an impressive line of experts on this panel including rapper MC Hammer.

• Europe is ahead of the curve: Europe is strong in youth related issues and it was agreed that many trends are created overseas.

My overall take? Relevancy and engagement matter to the youth audience and mobile is the perfect media for relevant and interactive communication. Incentivise young people to interact with brands directly by giving them what they want – in Blyk’s case, that’s free communication, “money-can’t-buy” offers and messages from brands they like. That’s the marketer’s point of entry (and long-term relationship) with the youth audience.

All-in-all, a very positive experience. A special thanks to the YPulse organisers for a great event!

I look forward to reading your comments.

Amsterdam/Helsinki, 30 June 2008 – Blyk, the new mobile network for 16 to 24 year olds funded by advertising, is a step closer to launch in the Netherlands. Eric Kip (44), currently Planning Director EMEA at MediaCom, will be the Managing Director of this new company.

Blyk links young people to brands they like and gives them free minutes and text messages every month - upfront and without a contract. For brands, Blyk is an innovative media channel providing direct access to 16-24 year olds who have opted-in to the service and have provided in-depth profiles on themselves so that brands can deliver them relevant communication.

From September 2008, Eric Kip will lead this company in the Netherlands. His view on this new challenge: “Blyk is a great concept for which I have a big passion. With this new communication channel companies can perfectly reach and contact a target group that is usually hard to reach. At the same time we are offering a unique mobile communication concept to young people. I am very excited to start with Blyk and introduce the company to the Dutch youth and advertisers.”

Currently, Eric Kip is Planning Director EMEA at MediaCom, where he is responsible for revenue growth and the quality of planning output of the European network. In the past he was CEO of media agency Initiative Group Netherlands, he worked as Marketing Director at Coca-Cola and held several Marketing positions at Danone and Sara Lee.

Blyk’s co-founder Pekka Ala-Pietilä about the Dutch CEO: “Eric Kip has more than 20 years of experience in marketing. He has worked with many youth brands and has an excellent network with advertisers. We are convinced that with Eric on board, Blyk will succeed in becoming the new Dutch communication channel for young people.

Blyk was launched in September 2007 in the United Kingdom, where the milestone of 100,000 members was reached in April this year. Additional details on Blyk’s launch in the Netherlands will be announced in the coming months.

PRESS RELEASE FROM CANNES INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING FESTIVAL

June 18, 2008

Global communications network, Leo Burnett Worldwide and Contagious magazine today challenged marketers and their agencies to put people at the heart of their work, rather than brands or the category, at their “Wildfire” seminar.

Suggesting how this year’s seminar differed from years previous, the presenters dubbed the session ‘Creativity, with a Human Touch’. Tom Bernardin, CEO and Chairman of Leo Burnett Worldwide said, “Everything that matters in the advertising business begins and ends with two things: People and Behaviour. Wildfire brands understand this better than any, and as a result thrive within today’s ‘People Era’ – an era when marketers have to be more human in their behaviour, insight and voice than ever before.”

PEOPLE CENTRIC

Fundamental to 2008’s Wildfire seminar was a new appreciation of the most important link in the chain that connects product with idea, and campaign with brand — people — as well as tips on just how to truly interact with those people.

‘This year, we wanted to showcase brands that boast what Leo Burnett calls a truly ‘Humankind’ of attitude to their audience, brands that are actually doing something to deserve a place in people’s lives. In a sense, brands that are about Acts, not just Ads,’ added Bernardin.

ADVERTISING, THAT’S NOT ADVERTISING

Paul Kemp-Robertson, Editorial Director of Contagious magazine dared the audience to let go and be proud of creating work that’s NOT advertising, ‘Because if you do, it might just be the best advertising you ever create,” he said. Continuing with this ‘Acts not Ads’ theme, the audience were advised to think in terms of producing work that’s:

# So well targeted and informative that it feels more like a dialogue or relationship.

# Such a useful service or application that it becomes effortlessly embedded into people’s daily lives.

# Content that is so entertaining that the brand stands on an equal footing with TV shows, newspapers or favourite websites.

“This is what Leo Burnett calls true Humankind territory,” concluded Kemp-Robertson.

WILDFIRE BRANDS WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS

Highlighting the key components of a people-focused Wildfire Brand, Kemp-Robertson and Burnett USA ECD, Reed Collins, treated delegates to a round-up of some of the best-practice examples currently out there. These included:

# Canon, Australia: establishing the brand’s creative credentials by providing a ‘little box of inspiration’ to get photographers out and about, snapping away

# Miles, the Nike+ widget: a cute application acting as a personal trainer and integrated RSS reader, extending the Nike+ experience for its dedicated community

# Coca-Cola, China: a fully interactive, state-of-the-art 15 m high digital Coke bottle to which user-generated content and SMS messages can be instantly uploaded and broadcast live from the bottle

# Samsung: smart placement of branded mobile phone charging stations at airports throughout the world, so travellers need never be incommunicado

# Blyk, UK: a UK mobile phone service proving wildly popular with its 16-24 year old target audience, who agree to receive promotions and marketing messages in exchange for free calls and texts

I’ve just spent two days in Brussels at the FT Business of Mobile Conference where I gave a talk on mobile marketing and heard some interesting views on where the industry is heading.

Here are my key take-outs and lessons in mobile marketing:

Listening to your customers
It may seem like an obvious thing to say but having spent two days immersed in the industry the thing that struck me the most was that people are spending too much time trying to monetize existing services and not enough time listening to what customers want and then developing services which meet their needs.

Mobile Internet is accelerating fast
Geraldine Wilson, Yahoo! Europe predicted that by 2016, more users will access the internet from their mobile devices than the fixed PC. Geraldine observed that there are approximately a billion PCs and three billion mobiles and said take up will be more rapid in emerging markets, where people do not have PCs, and mobile is the only way that they can access the internet. It’s also worth having a look at Opera’s new report on how social networks are dominating mobile internet.

Mobile advertising is all about relevance and engagement
Those who continue to use ‘frequency, reach, eyeballs and CPM’ to measure mobile advertising will not succeed. People, especially the young, want dialogue and relevance.

Understanding the ‘third screen’
Stephen Pritchard, the conference Chair, urged companies to recognise mobile as a channel in its own right rather than an extension of the internet. Mobile is communication, not a content channel – TV and Radio are content channels. Free communication and access to relevant information is of the utmost important to mobile users – particularly for young adults. The key with communicating successfully via mobile is to be rich in relevance, engagement and user experience.

Mobile marketing can build brands
There is more to mobile marketing than free coupons encouraging direct response. We are finding that ad campaigns on Blyk can be used to support brand building generate market insight and strengthen consumer relationships. Marketers need to start measuring changes in ‘attitudes’ as well as ‘click-throughs’.

Penguin embraces mobile
Genevieve Shore, Global Digital Director, Penguin Group gave some great insight as to how ‘old media’ like books can thrive in a digital world and use in a highly targeted and effective way. You can read more about how Penguin worked with Blyk to promote Nick Hornby’s Slam.

Advertising is good
There’s a misconception within the industry that mobile users tolerate annoying ads in return for free calls. We’ve found the opposite to be true. Blyk shunned the typical mobile-operator model of simply adding as many subscribers as possible and concentrated on accumulating a deep knowledge of our member base. As a result, response rates average 29% and our members want to engage with brands they like and see advertising as valuable information

Make the most of the mobile medium
Build your campaign around the unique attributes of mobile: ubiquity, immediacy of response, 100% opt-in and personal engagement.

Call for common sense regulation
Sir Alistair Graham, Chairman, PhonepayPlus, took an admirable stance on regulation and called for more dialogue, transparency and championed the use of language that consumers can easily understand. I’m sure the folks at Campaign for Plain English would approve.

I look forward to comments and word of other highlights from anyone that attended the conference. I gave an interview to BnetTV who were covering the show so look out for that when it goes live on Friday 23rd May.

Below are the first in a series of Blyk cases studies to become available on our site. These cases demonstrate how Blyk has been used successfully and effectively by a variety of advertisers across a range of sectors.

Before reading the cases, it’s important to understand that Blyk brings two major shifts in mobile advertising (and actually in advertising altogether) - Blyk enables ‘relevancy’ and it enables ‘dialogue’.

I’ll start with the relevancy part - Unlike other media channels out there, Blyk can enable relevant communication because it knows it’s members. A process that starts when you join and you tell Blyk about your interests. The more you interact with communications on Blyk, the more Blyk learns about you and the better and more relevant it gets. So, advertising is not something to be ‘just tolerated’ but rather it becomes useful information. Blyk hopes to take the word ‘spam’ out of the vocabulary as related to mobile advertising.

In terms of dialogue, brands have long expressed the challenge of ‘engaging’ with the youth audience, so Blyk put ‘interactivity and dialogue’ at the core of it’s offering. As you’ll see from the cases, brands engage Blyk members in question/response type interactions. A conversation so to speak. Based on the answer a member gives, he/she will get further messages. For advertisers all responses and interactions by members are tracked, giving great accountability to the campaign. The interactions are also logged against the members’ profiles so that future communications from that advertiser can be even more relevant. Six months of campaigns on Blyk demonstrate that this type of simple, familiar type of interaction leads to tremendous response rates - 29% on average.

Blyk also demonstrates great value on a cost per response basis.

So what you get is high levels engagement coupled with value for money.

- Highest response in most cost effective way – average 29%
- Efficiency through relevant targeting
- High levels of engagement with an audience predisposed to receiving brand messages

(click text link to access case study pdfs)

	One of the best known high street pharmacists in the UK
	Styling products targeted to young males
	A UK government organization that offers advice support and guidance for young people
	One of UK’s leading sports retailers
	A leading range of hair styling products
	One of UK’s best known high street banks
	Book publisher and retailer worldwide
	Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is an independent UK charity
	Leading satelite broadcaster in the UK providing coverage of sports, movies and entertainment and news.
	Specialist in student, budget and independent travel

Look forward to your feedback and keep your eye on this blog for new cases from Blyk in the near future.