Awards Preview – Affiliate and Augmented Reality Campaigns

With the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards Ceremony taking place in London in four weeks’ time, on 28 November, we are previewing the finalists in each category day-by-day between now and then.

Yesterday, we looked at the finalists in the Most Effective Mobile Advertising Platform/Network category. Today, we look at the contenders in two categories: Most Effective Mobile Affiliate Campaign/Solution, and Most Effective Mobile Augmented Reality Campaign/Solution.

 

Most Effective Mobile Affiliate Campaign/Solution

 

Affiliate Window – Making Mobile Count

Making Mobile Count is Affiliate Window’s attempt to ensure that affiliates are rewarded for sales they drive through mobile devices. In July 2012, the company published data revealing £2m in untracked commissions throughout 2012. The company’s challenge was to compel existing advertisers to add tracking.

To solve the problem, Affiliate Window’s technical team put in a redirect containing an iframe hiding advertiser pages when a mobile consumer clicks on a publisher deep link. When the hidden page in the iframe loads, it drops the cookie and ensures the user remains on desktop. Then once the page loads (and the cookie is set) the consumer is redirected to the original deep link that the consumer clicked. The consumer remains on the desktop site even if the deep link didn’t support the stop_mobi parameter. The campaign is ongoing, but has been a huge success, enabling sales through mobile to be tracked, and affiliates duly rewarded for their contribution. 

 

Mac Presents – Rolling Stones App Sponsored by Citi

In November 2012, The Rolling Stones Official fan app was launched in line with the band’s 50th Anniversary tour. The app allows fans anywhere in the world to connect with each other and the band members themselves, preview tracks for free, listen to and buy any song from The Rolling Stones catalogue on iTunes, buy merchandise, view photos and exclusive video, check out tour dates and check-in to tell the world ‘I was there!’ Citi branding and a link click-through to Citiprivatepass.com are integrated into the home page. 

Citi also leveraged the sponsorship with a custom VIP lounge at each show; special photo booths where fans were encouraged to take pictures and post them to social media with the hashtag #StonesVIP; and a voting feature where concertgoers could vote for the song they wanted the Stones to play. 

As of July 2013, the app had over15m page views to date, and over 2m songs had been listened to in the app. 

 

Tradedoubler’s Mobile Affiliate Solution

There are three key planks to Tradedoubler’s mobile affiliate platform. The first is technology: the company has invested heavily in technology, including its App Solution, launched in 2012, that allows clients to track downloads and in-app transactions through a bespoke SDK; and a Passbook solution, launched in beta with four clients in August 2013. 

The second is tracking and reporting: the company says it is committed to ensuring affiliate traffic is tracked and commissions awarded and reported on. The company is aiming to have all its advertisers tracking through mobile devices by the end of the year. The company has also developed bespoke mobile reporting for its clients to break down their sales by device, in real-time.  

The third aspect is education and knowledge sharing. TradeDoubler’s Mobile Team provides consultancy and training to clients to enable them to tap into the company’s expertise in developing mobile affiliate programme. The company also runs education and networking events to advance the mobile affiliate art. 

 

TradeDoubler – Omni-Channel Affiliate Programme for The Body Shop

Mobile is at the heart of The Body Shop’s affiliate activity, acting as a bridge between online and in-store activity, and driving significant sales growth. For 2012/13, The Body Shop provided Tradedoubler with four main objectives for their affiliate program: to grow sales by 40 per cent over the previous year; to expand the mobile and in-store strategy for affiliates; to mirror The Body Shop’s movement to an omni-channel brand; and to remain at the forefront of innovative solutions in the online space.

Tradedoubler’s affiliate programme was designed to meet all of these objectives, while integrating mCommerce and mobile-driven in-store activity into the heart of The Body Shop’s existing affiliate programme. Having over-delivered against all targets, Tradedoubler says it has not only achieved its objectives, but also transformed the programme into the first mobile-first retail affiliate programme in the UK. 

 

Westfield/nFluence – My Westfield Personalised App

This app is designed to personalise the retail experience for shoppers at the Westfield shopping centres in order to drive footfall and sales for the centres’ retailers. The app harnesses nFluence’s autograph technology, allowing users to have fun simply by “Swoting” brands (swiping and voting in one action). Users simply select ‘up’ for like and ‘down’ for dislike, then within 30 seconds the new Westfield app is able to generate a customer profile called an autograph which, based upon their choices contains over 600 interests, 2,000 brand affinities, and 84 demographics.

In order to achieve a precise understanding of the consumer’s preferences, with every brand or content piece ‘swoted’ up or down, 2,700 variables will change accordingly. The customer profile contains no personal information, just brand affinities, interests and preferences, and remains completely transparent and under the control of the shopper at all times.  

Content such as fashion events, cinema listings, offers, new product lines and new Westfield store openings are collated according to the user’s customer profile and served to their own personalised wall. Customers can also express their like or dislike on any piece of content served, thereby allowing them to continually refine their customer profile. Retailers upload their content to the app via a self-service portal in which they are able to set interest tags to calculate relevancy, and contextual parameters for when the content is available such as time and location. Shoppers are rewarded with relevant content and offers in the app; retailers are able to deliver these offers to those shoppers that have expressed an interest in them. The app has been warmly received by retailers and shoppers alike. 

 

Most Effective Mobile Augmented Reality Campaign/Solution

 

Audi and Somo – Audi A3 iPad App

This great-looking app enables potential Audi buyers to take a virtual tour of the inside of the car, and even see what it would look like parked on their drive. For Audi, its main role in life is to encourage users to try out the car for themselves through a test drive, something it has been extremely successful in doing. 

 

Audi and Somo – Audi Vision

Audi Vision is a mobile Augmented Reality platform which allows users to bring brochures to life. Using the platform, potential car buyers can point their mobile device at the car maker’s spring 2013 price and specification guides to unlock the static pages of the brochure, unveiling video, picture and other additional content. Audi Vision has proved successful for Audi and popular with dealers and car buyers, enabling them to get much closer to the car than they ever could with a flat, 2D brochure. 

 

Fetch – eBay Living Augmented Reality Campaign: Three Lives of Household Objects

Fetch created an Augmented Reality experience for eBay, as part of the company’s presence at the 52nd ‘Salone Internazionale del Mobile’, part of Milan Design Week, from 9 – 14 April 2013. The AR project was part of eBay’s drive to position itself as a creative marketplace, utilising mobile technology to highlight both innovation and mCommerce. The activity was hugely successful and positioned eBay as a creative brand as well as driving a high number of app downloads over a seven day period. 


Nimbletank – Universal Music Grrrrrr Rolling Stones Album Launch

For the release of The Rolling Stones’ 50th anniversary album, ‘Grrr’, Nimbletank set out to create the world’s first AR album launch. The result was uView, an app that allows Universal Music to create integrated campaigns that merge worlds instantly. More than 3000 locations around the world, including the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Statue of Liberty and the Sydney Opera House, were ‘tagged’ to release the virtual gorillas featured on the album artwork. When a user pointed his uView-equipped app at one of the buildings, he or she saw one of the Gorillas scaling the building. Grrregory (the gorilla) was seen over 200,000 times on buildings across the world with. There was also a 28 per cent clickthrough rate to buy the album directly from the app, and over 32,000 entries to a competition hosted in the app. 

 

Re:Systems: BT London Live App

RE:SYSTEMS was commissioned by Ticketmaster to develop this iPhone app for the BT London Live event between 28 July and 11August 2012. The event was the UK’s biggest free celebration of the London 2012 Olympic Games at three of the city’s most iconic locations: Hyde Park, Victoria Park and Trafalgar Square. With live coverage of all the medal events, visitors to BT London Live could also experience a variety of entertainment including two special live music concerts.

 The main aim of the app was to guide members of the public around the event venues. Using AR and virtual views of the locations, the app allowed visitors to easily follow directions using their mobile phones. This ensured people knew where to go, when and how to get there. The app was available to the public for free download via the iTunes App Store prior to, and during the events. The app proved popular with the public, attracting 11,500 users during the two weeks of the event. It peaked at number eight in the top free sports apps chart on iTunes. 

 

The Awards Ceremony takes place at the London Film Museum on the evening of 28 November. There are just five tables still remaining. A table of 10 costs £2,250. Individual seats cost £250. You can book your seat at the awards here. Or call Lisa Slavin on +44 (0) 207 183 5285 or email lisa.slavin@mobilemarketingmagazine.com