PUMA, one of the world’s leading sporting footwear company, launched a major mobile campaign recently to coincide with the Formula One race that took place in Shanghai.  It was a comprehensive campaign that included a mobile internet site, adver-gaming, coupons, banners, and search.

The PUMA campaign was put together by Phonevalley (part of Publicis) and Zenith China. The objective of the campaign was to increase brand awareness in China by introducing PUMA’s brand and culture in a fun, original way to the Chinese market.

The link with FormulaOne was a natural for Puma, which has a long history in the world of motorsports, and even has a special line of “Scuderia Ferrari” shoes.

The “F-Wan” Game

The main focus of the campaign was a mobile game called “F-Wan”, which sounds like “F1″ and means “Play” in Chinese.   It is a car racing game (no surprise!) which consumers could download from the Puma mobile internet site. The game showed 4 cars racing along a special “Puma” shaped race course.

To make the campaign even more attractive and interactive, Puma set up a number of ways for players to earn prizes. For example, players could submit their race scores to PUMA by SMS and thereby receive points. And, in order to increase the viral aspects of the campaign, points were also given to players that forwarded the game to their friends.

The top 3 players each week were awarded PUMA F1 merchandise like shoes, bag and hats. Players could also get wall papers and mobile “themes” based on the race game to let them personalize their phones.

Promoting the Game

To drive traffic to the mobile site and the mobile game download, the media plan covered all available mobile channels in the chinese market.

• Banners and text links were displayed on the top three Chinese mobile portals: QQ, 3g.cn and Kong.net
• SMS short-codes were integrated in all PUMA out-of-home and print ads. When a used sent ‘PUMA F Wan’ to the campaign short code, they received a clickable SMS with a link to the PUMA mobile Internet site
• WAP push (clickable SMS) were be sent to PUMA members
• SMS mobile search: mobile users who search for any sport related information are sent an SMS which includes a direct link to the PUMA mobile Internet site

Bringing business to the stores

Another objective of the campaign was of course to drive business for PUMA. There are 350 PUMA stores in China, and in order to bring traffic to the stores, PUMA sent an MMS coupon to each person that downloaded the mobile driving game. The coupon was redeemable for a mobile phone accessory in the store.

The mobile site also had a store locator function to help consumers find the nearest PUMA retailer. In addition, the mobile site provided details of the current promotions going on in the stores as a special feature to help bring people to the shops.

Malcolm Hanlon, CEO of Zenith China said “PUMA and Zenith are always looking for new and engaging ways to connect with our youth target in China. We can’t ‘outspend’ the huge budgets of competitors but we can ‘outsmart’ them. By being the first, the most innovative, engaging and unique with our PUMA campaigns we continue to ensure PUMA’s media budget delivers the best ROI compared with the huge budgets thrown around by other sports brands here.”

Read about the PUMA campaign for the Euro2008 football tournament (part of the interview with Alexandre Mars, CEO of Phonevalley).