Prepaid Broadband on mobiles allows "On Location" access to info

As a Digital Advertising agency or Experiential marketing services provider, how would you successfully pitch to a to a client for their account using emerging media delivery platforms such as Mobile and cell phones, or for an experiential marketing account? The Telecoms provider of today is an all integrated services company. They supply everything such as Land line access, Internet broad band, IPTV, Cellular services and mobile broadband access.

When pitching for such Digital advertising accounts either to the Telecom provider itself, or using their services and crafting an experiential marketing activity for an FMCG or other client, the Digital Agency needs more than IT skills and stock promotional package ideas, which are dated to the early 2000’s to win the account. Let’s take a look at creating a winning pitch with presenting ideas for just one of the services – Mobile broadband access.

Myth: Mobile Broadband is for Office-on-the-move.

The common belief with Telcos, their distributors and the general public about mobile broadband access packages over 3G, 3.5G and HSDPA is that these packages are useful for professionals on the move or for tourists who want to use their laptops while on holiday. They are even sold almost always with a free bundled USB modem-stick that is pre-configured to run when inserted into a laptop.

Prepaid Mobile broadband data packages are available to customers the moment they arrive in a country at the many airport kiosks. They cost as little as US$ 7 for 3 days broadband access at speeds of 2mbps in technologically advanced countries from the West, the Middle East and Asian countries.

The Experiential Marketing agency needs to create an awareness plan to educate or inform distributors and remind the Telecoms company itself that the supplied simm card with such prepaid packages is not just for insertion into a USB stick modem for laptop based access, but indeed can be directly inserted into a modern Cell phone such as Nokia to any of the popular brands that have 3G or higher capability and an Internet browser.

Case study of an End User Experience with Prepaid Mobile Broadband:

Let’s take the case of one prepaid mobile broadband service provider, Starhub, and a country such as Singapore . As of this writing they offer a 3 day fair usage (around 2 gb per day) mobile data package at the surprisingly low price of SGD 10! Creating an experiential marketing solution to promote such a packaging brings in many exciting opportunities to a Digital Marketing agency to run with!

Once the notion that data packages are meant only for the laptop is done away with, and the fact that the simm card can be inserted directly into a 3G capable phone is advertised, a whole online world opens up to the tourist or business visitor to a foreign country.

What could be done to promote the service provider StarHub? – They already have a home-landing page that opens up in the web-browser, when connection is first made using the data package. The page of course has been designed for computer friendliness, but mobile web browsers need something a little less ‘heavy’ and more user friendly.

Needless to say, web designers in a Digital Agency already know a lot about how to automatically re-direct a user to the appropriate version of a website depending on the signature of the web-browser i.e Internet explorer, Nokia’s Symbian, mobile Safari etc. What can be offered on this landing page that opens up the moment someone inserts the prepaid data simm card into their phone?

Ideas include:

• Well designed local weather info
• Currency converter widget
• Widget to Google maps for mobile with layers such as ATM locations and tourist attractions (Google maps for mobile use everything from a GPS to known wi-fi spots in a city to pinpoint a persons location on a zoom-able map which is updated because of the prepaid package in real-time)
• In a city like Singapore, a site such as www. gothere.sg is a website that you almost cannot live without if you are new to the country and hate asking for directions and wonder about taxi fare or bus routes.
• A free video channel can be designed using StarHubs TV on mobile – This will give visitors short videos on Singapore attractions, tourism hotspots and cultural places of importance.
• In countries where VIOP is not a telco monopoly – You don’t need a prepaid mobile number. Inform users that they can use the broadband data package and any number of very cheap Voip providers to make international and local calls!

and much more.

Leveraging On-Location and in Context Experiential Marketing Opportunities:

Having mobile internet access opens up a whole world of Experiential Marketing options. Let’s say that the Digital Agency’s client is NOT the telecom provider itself, but a client such as Starbucks. How can the Starbucks brand be tied in for an on-location experiences?

A co-branded Starbucks – StarHub Tourist prepaid data package can be offered on arrival into the country.  The landing page (homepage) can be suitably designed with the relevant branding and every one of the ideas listed above can contribute to the “experience” of a visitor to Singapore.

But wait, we also want to provide a Starbucks experience! This can be done for example with some cutting edge advertising technology now coming out for devices such as the Ipone and the soon to be released Google android – Augmented Reality.

On the Iphone this can already be done. There are applications such as LAYAR and YELP and many more. In brief they fire up the phones built in camera, and as you aim the phone at your surroundings, in the live camera view, all sorts of valuable information bubbles pop up, such as the location of ATMs, museums, food joints etc. This works by using a combination of GPS, the digital compass in the Iphone and when needed access to online data. A custom branded version showing locations of Starbucks in the neighborhood along with on-going promotions can be one of the “apps” that is available for download on the the landing page.

With a little creative thinking, even users with less sophisticated phones can enjoy a “Starbucks” experience on-location. For example users can click 5 or more pictures in the country, of different Starbucks coffee shops or billboards or even context relevant themes such as people having coffee etc. and uploading/ emailing them to a dedicated website or Starbucks Singapore Face Book fan page. The data card in the phone provides free bandwidth to accomplish this. Participants can then win Starbucks merchandise at participating outlets. Logistics on prevention of multiple free coffees being given away can somehow be tied to the persons phone number etc and the unique data card.

These are some of the seed ideas possible for creating user experiences with creative use of technology – Prepaid mobile broadband access. It goes without saying that this is applicable to regular or Post paid mobile data packages as well.