With the growing popularity of smartphones, mobile marketing has transformed into a billion dollar industry. Smartphones allow companies to target consumers through websites, texts, applications, and direct voicemail messages. Mobile marketing is an effective way to reach a target audience, but must be done properly. Many times companies are too aggressive and their messages are ignored by receivers.

Kleenex is one company basing their new marketing campaign around this popular trend. Getmommed.com is the site established by Kleenex to cater to consumers’ psychological needs for extra motherly care during the cold and flu season. Consumers are encouraged to visit the promotional site via Kimberly-Clark’s main Web page, print advertisements, and television commercials. Site visitors can complete a quiz matching them to one of eight cyber moms. Pick Magnolia and this Mom can cure your cold with home-style cooking, while Lisa offers craft and home decor ideas. Kleenex reports the most popular Mom is Jessica, the “Best Friend” Mom. After signing up on the site, consumers are able to request wake-up calls, text reminders, Facebook messages, and words of encouragement from their new Mom.

The GetMommed.com Web site makes sure you have adequate access to motherly TLC this cold and flu season.

Kleenex combines internet and mobile marketing, resulting in a highly interactive campaign. They avoid sending text blasts and e-mail advertisements to consumers, instead offering helpful services that consumers can voluntarily register for. Companies who want to effectively utilize mobile marketing to target their consumers can follow these simple rules.

Integration is key

Smartphones have given users the capability to scan all types of advertising mediums, so integration of all platforms is now extremely important in a company’s campaign. Kleenex effectively merged their platforms and prompted consumers to visit their site through print and television ads.

Give and you shall receive

Offer helpful services or incentives that smartphone owners will use on a daily basis. Kleenex offers weather updates, wake-up calls, or text reminders. These tools provide emotional consumer appeal and help build brand loyalty and awareness.

Get Social with Social Media

Leverage your marketing plan and business with social media sites. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are all platforms that can take your campaign to the next level. Remember that connection of all social media outlets is key. Display links for Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts on your campaign’s homepage. Kleenex integrates Facebook links on their main page, allowing visitors to view each cyber mom’s Facebook and befriend them.

Get to know Magnolia, Lisa, and the rest of the Moms through Kleenex’s Webisodes on YouTube.

Kleenex has successfully entered the cyberspace of consumers with these simple rules and the help of eight fictional Moms. They continue to establish strong emotional ties with consumers and create long-term brand loyalty. Follow Kleenex’ lead and your company could be seeing similar results.

From Paula Berg, Manager of Emerging Media for Southwest Airlines.  Paula will speak at the Austin AMA’s Keynote Luncheon, part of the Power Lunch Series, on Thursday, May 21.  This month’s luncheon will be held in association with the Online Marketing Summit, a national educational event for marketing professionals.

April marked our third full year in the blogosphere, and I think the following photo sums up our experience.

Whether on a plane, in a plane, or in a plane costume, we’ve been completely consumed with social media.  I often joke that we haven’t slept in three years - which would be funny if it weren’t true - but I think we’ve finally turned a corner.

First, we’ve grown.  What began with two passionate Employees pursuing social media in addition to their day jobs has become an “Emerging Media Team,” with six of the most talented, creative, and passionate people I know.  We can now take vacations without taking our blackberries (gasp!).  Not that we would, but theoretically, we could!

Second, after all of the blood, sweat and tears, the sleepless nights, the blunders and the triumphs, I think our social media efforts may have finally “come of age.”

If one blog year is equal to 10 human years, that would make us about 30.  And, if you look at our evolution, that seems about right.

Our first year, we were learning to crawl, figuring out how it all worked, and finding our voice.  Our second year, we found our stride, we discovered our rhythm, and we gained some confidence.   By year three, we were fearless, we took risks, and pushed the envelope.

And, now, as we enter our fourth year in the blogosphere, we’ve matured a bit, we know who we are and what we need to do.  Today, we’re focused on doing it all better.

While we’ve learned from our past mistakes, we know there will be more to come.  We named our team Emerging Media rather than social media, because we want to continue to grow and evolve.  And, if we want to stay ahead of the curve, we’ll have to continue to forge through unchartered territory.  But that’s what makes it exciting.

We’re ready to mount that corporate blogging horse, and as we say in the airline industry.getting there is half the fun!

At next week’s meeting, I’ll share where we’ve been, where we’re going, our biggest successes, our biggest failures, and every lesson we’ve learned along the way.  I hope you will join me.

In the meantime, feel free to share your successes or failures, lessons you’ve learned along the way, your fears moving forward, or anything you’d like to discuss when we meet next week.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Paula’s presentation at the April Keynote Luncheon will be held in association with the Online Marketing Summit on Thursday, May 21, 2009.  This national educational event for marketing professionals offers the opportunity to learn and share with hundreds of peers and experts in Social Media, Search, Email, Analytics, Behavioral Targeting, and Website Strategy.  You can register for the full event or for the luncheon only.  Join us!

Paula Berg is the Manager of Emerging Media for Southwest Airlines, the nation’s leading low-fare air carrier and the largest domestic airline in terms of Customers carried. Over the last three years, Paula has managed and developed the Company’s corporate blog, “Nuts About Southwest.” In 2007 and 2008, “Nuts” was named Best Blog by PR News and has been recognized in major publications ranging from Wired Magazine to The Wall Street Journal. In addition to managing the Company blog, Paula leads Southwest’s online communication and social media efforts.

When John Ellett, owner of local advertising agency nFusion, speaks in front of college groups, it’s an Anheuser-Busch account that gets the most attention. Using interactive marketing, nFusion created a Bacardi Silver brand campaign, The Pick-Up Hall of Shame. The interactive campaign launched in January 2007 and is still running and pulling in viewers.

Yes, you have to be 21 to enter the website featuring all the flavors of Bacardi Silver. So, many of those college students have only heard of, not sampled the brand. After skimming through the over 1500 entries made by site visitors, the real list of Pick-Up Lines is surprisingly small. My favorite line was:

I wish I was a tear, that way I’d be born in your eye, live on your cheek, and die on your lips.

Many of the pick-up lines referenced advertising slogans:

When I studied advertising at Syracuse University, I chose a Bacardi ad for a critical analysis assignment. Through that exercise, I learned my first rule of advertising: Men like to look at women in ads. Women like to look at women in ads.

Bacardi often sells the social aspect of its product. So it was natural to continue the “fun feature” of the branding in nFusion’s campaign. The “Worse Pick-Up Line” feature is very viral. Of the viewers that “stick”, 82 percent of them will share the campaign with their community, add or rate the lines. That is an outstanding metric which shows the conversion of lookers to doers. The viewers spread the campaign through social bookmarking, adding it to their MySpace pages, or by forwarding it to their friends.

While we can’t trace actual sales that result from the Pick-Up Line feature, the Anheuser-Busch executives approve of it enough to let it to run for two years. In interactive marketing, that’s like dog years. I like how nFusion runs the flavor buttons at the bottom of the screen with a new flavor tag for the latest version of Bacardi Silver. The new flavor tag refreshes the content.

Bacardi Silver’s interactive marketing accomplishes the goals of stickiness and engagement with its target demographic. It also has a timeless quality — the pick-up line, “You must be wearing spacepants, because you’re out of the world,” could have come out of the David Bowie disco days of the 70s. There’s no other explanation for such a bad pick-up line. Why do you think this campaign works?

About the Author

Brenda Hessney

Brenda Hessney is a successful Austin marketing specialist with a knack for quickly analyzing, planning, and implementing effective, cost efficient sales campaigns.

Now that you’re working on your Big, Hairy Audacious Goal, known as your BHAG (bee-hag), let’s take a breather from your 2009 marketing plan. Skip this if you’re not in the wireless industry, use wireless (who doesn’t), or care about wireless access (show of hands). Okay. You’re all reading. Or as we like to say in Texas, y’all got eyes.

Personally, after seeing the gadgets at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, I got all hot and bothered about the iPod and projector combo. I’ve been wanting that for years. I’ve done my share of PowerPoint presentations over the years. Unfortunately, at my last job, that meant lugging around the old projector abused by 100 other employees.

The Cinemin Suite of pico projectors by WowWee Technologies is poised to change all that. As Tom Merritt, executive editor of CNET, explains, the pico projectors let you cast your videos, PowerPoints, or other content on any surface.

All you have to do is connect one of the projectors to your iPod, and you’re off to the races. No more lugging a suitcase-sized projector to your next meeting. Speaking of the “Eyes of Texas”, the whiz-bang DLP technology was invented by Texas Instruments. Like that? Whiz-bang tech for WowWee Tech?

We’ll have to wait and see what other devices will hook up to the Cinemin Suite of pico projectors. Meanwhile, I’m imagining a new swagger to my step when I enter the conference room, armed and ready to PowerPoint with a handheld device.

About Brenda Hessney

Brenda Hessney

Brenda is an Austin marketing specialist with a knack for quickly analyzing, planning, and implementing effective, cost efficient sales campaigns for small to medium sized high-tech companies.