At the MSN strategic summit in May, Admob and Coca Cola announced the launch of a major new mobile campaign using a “click to video” response, and utilizing tools from Admob that assist in the development of mobile landing pages. The campaign kicks off immediately, and will be serving ads in 160 countries.

Landing page
As noted in study recently released by Tribilis, having an effective mobile “landing page” is a critical link in any mobile advertising campaign. (Note: the “landing page” is the page of a site that a customer is directed to after they have clicked on a text or banner ad. For more about mobile landing pages, read the MobiAD article). The new web- based tools from Admob will assist their clients to build an effective landing page where they can direct the responses to the ads that are shown. This project with Coke is a beta test of the tools, prior to a full scale launch scheduled for later this spring.

The Campaign
The intent of this campaign is for Coke to reach its audience by offering entertaining videos on their mobile phones. Further, the campaign has a strong viral component, as the consumer can easily share these videos with their friends. “Coke is eager to reach its customers on the mobile phone as it is a highly personal device,” said Tom Daly, Group Manager of Strategy & Planning for Coca-Cola. “The AdMob Marketplace made it easy for us to engage our customers on carriers and handsets worldwide, using rich content from Coke’s Bottle Films.”

Here’s what it looks like.

The campaign uses the Admob platform to target video capable phones, and places text and banner ads on those phones
(this example is on the TapTap mobile site).

A consumer who responds by clicking on the ad is brought to a Coca Cola landing page (see example at left).

On the landing page they are offered the chance to view one of the “Bottle Film” short videos. These videos have been used previously in Coke’s online ads, and this is the first time they are available on mobile (some examples of “Bottle Films” can be seen below).

There is also have the possibility to download the video to their phone so they can watch it again later or show it to a friend without additional download time or charges.

Finally, the truly “viral” part is that they can also directly share the video with their friends by sending it via MMS.

The video is then either shown on the phone or downloaded. Here are a couple of examples of the Bottle Films. The first is “Doggy” about a hyperactive dog who drinks Coke and then finds himself in a calm and relaxed state. The second is called “Mr Happy and the Cloud”.

According to Wieden and Kennedy, one of the agencies that developed the short films, the brief for the Bottle Film series was ‘Romance the product – show that Coke is happiness in a bottle.’

Doggy
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/92qYglaOA7w" width="212" height="175" wmode="transparent" /]

Mr Happy and the Cloud
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Xyv_EuFgW20" width="212" height="175" wmode="transparent" /]


Global reach
One of the more interesting aspects of the campaign is its global nature. The Bottle Films by design have no language and are therefore very international. Omar Hamoui, CEO of Admob summed it up as follows: “What’s really exciting is that Coke’s ads are immediately syndicated – with their selected targeting parameters – across the entire AdMob Network. So within a minute or two of when we started the campaign, ads began showing up in over 160 countries. Coke saw traffic to the new landing pages from around the world, and people with video-capable phones were able to watch Bottle Films videos immediately. This is a powerful brand experience and Coke has been extremely happy with the program,”

13.05.2007    Tags: Banner-ads, click-to-video, Mobile-Video