News

Mutual project of MobiMark and the Progression agency was distinguished by the Silver Mercury festival jury

On May 22, 2008, the winners of the Silver Mercury prize were named. In the Advertising Campaign Using New Technologies category, the third prize was awarded to the Pepsi Avatarization promo developed by the Progression agency in cooperation with the MobiMark mobile marketing agency.

To participate in the advertising campaign, consumers had to first find codes under the lids of Pepsi, Pepsi Light, or Pepsi X bottles and send them in using SMS to the number 6342. Every 15 minutes, MP-4 players were raffled off among all participants who had sent unique codes. Winners’ numbers were shown on-line on the site of the SMS drawing. All participants who had had their codes registered via SMS received Pepsi’s exclusive content for mobile phones.

Participants were also asked to express themselves in a creative contest for the best Avatar. An avatar is a picture that expresses mood, style, and spirit, and represents the virtual character of the event participant. Taking part in the contest required the registration of one's code on the site of the Avatarization contest (avatars.pepsi.ru) and uploading the participant’s unique avatar. Participants could invite their friends to vote for their avatars. Voting statistics were reflected on the site in real time. Contestants actively invited their friends to look and take part. At the same time, they were discussing the possibilities for increasing their chances of winning the grand prize: a laptop, and they shared their impressions about the event in the forums on the main website: at www.pepsi.ru.

MobiMark provided technical support, SMS-notification of winners, development of the WAP-site and websites of the SMS-contest, as well as development of branded content for the Pepsi Avatarization contest. The company and Avatar Internet contest sites were developed by the Sterno.Ru agency. It also was the moderator for the Avatar contest and dealt with the site visitor community. PepsiCo actively makes use of mobile technology in promoting their products throughout the Russian market and is among the first companies that have started to use mobile marketing in Russia. Traditional media is losing its effectiveness, and companies are seeking new paths of communication in order to promote their products. The primary target audience of PepsiCo is young people 12-25 years of age, of both sexes, who are expressing their individuality through the brand. They have many friends, they like to communicate over the Internet, using SMS and WAP-sites, and they take part in all interactive campaigns. Therefore, technology for mobile marketing ideally matches the target audience of the brand and is the most effective when compared with other types of media channels.