Mondelez adopts ‘feature phone first’ Facebook strategy for emerging markets
Mondelēz International is to create more Facebook campaigns for basic phones in emerging markets after tests showed the devices could boost commercial metrics similarly to its smartphone efforts.
The snacks maker claims its efforts have overcome the creative limitations of the low resolution, no video playback and limited data access found in feature phones - a large part of its mobile audience in emerging markets. It brings Mondelēz closer to its mobile goal of lifting sales at the point of purchase, particularly in those markets where mobile and social media habits are increasingly more ubiquitous in retail scenarios.
People in the Philippines spend 4.3 hours a day on social networks, according to Mondelēz, making it the joint highest country in the world alongside Argentina. Some 10 million new accounts were set up in Jakarta, Indonesia last year, and the city is known as the “Twitter capital of the world”, the snack maker added. Additionally, Facebook data revealed that over 100 million users log in to both markets every month, amounting to 90 per cent of the total online population.
Despite the spike in social media, smartphone penetration is just 14 per cent and 23 per cent in the Philippines and Indonesia respectively. The disparity between social media and smartphone, pushed the company to consider prioritising “feature phone first” campaigns in these markets, launching tests to prove the concept.
By conducting the trials, Mondelēz assessed how it can use the Facebook experience on basic phones to lift traditional brand metrics such as recall, message association and purchase intent. Carat, Dentsu Mobius and Facebook joined the business in Manilla to devise the concept via a campaign that ran for six weeks in both markets and on both feature phones and smarphones for comparative learnings.
Mondelēz found that ad recall from the Cadbury “Joytime” campaign was “exceptionally high” and that purchase intent was “significantly’ better than the baseline figure used in each country, demonstrating the campaign had lifted both awareness and sales for the brand. Brand association with the strapline “delicious tasting sweet snack that makes me happy” had also jumped during the campaign’s duration.
Interestingly, the message association and purchase intent results outperformed the smarpthone version of the campaign on Facebook. The performance was credited to how smartphone users have become accustomed to a richer content experience such as high resolution images and increasingly video. Therefore tailoring content to the capability of the device whilst still providing thumb-stopping content is key for a successful mobile campaign, Mondelēz concluded.
Doroty Arroyo, senior brand manager for Cadbury Dairy Milk Philippines, said: “This campaign has validated that through feature phones we can reach millions more Mondelēz consumers in the Philippines, opening up the opportunity for us to have connected consumer experiences that integrate mobile to a wider audience, especially for mass based brands and categories, such as Tang, Biscuits and Cheese. This is very exciting for future campaigns.”
The mobile concept is to be revisted later this month in India, forming the next phase of Mondelēz’s Accelerator programme. Mobile marketing initiatives are being fast-tracked across the Asia Pacfic region from the learnings gained from the Facebook “Growth Markets Accelerator” Programme workshops the business has been running in its fast-growing countries since last year.
It forms a central part of Mondelez’s global deal with Facebook, struck last year, to bring scale to its mobile marketing innovations.
Peter Mitchell, global innovations director at Mondelez International, said the “great results” spotlighted the potential of the Facebook experience on basic phones to “reach consumers of more mainstream demographic groups in emerging markets”.
“We will be addressing this moving forward, working to build more tailored content, or commercial messages most relevant to the devises people actually use,” he added.
The investments back the company’s bid to be more effective with its media spend, that has already seen it pen global deals with the likes of Google, Twitter and Tubemogul. Earlier this month, it said it would ramp up its search for non-working media in order to free up more funds to feed its digital activity.