Brand, mobile startup partnerships at Mondelez converting customers
- 27 November, 2014 08:33
Pollenizer CEO Phil Morle
The brand and startup partnership by Mondelēz International to drive mobile marketing innovation is already seeing encouraging results, according to Pollenizer CEO, Phil Morle.
Startup incubator, Pollenizer, assisted with the selection of startups for the Mondelēz Mobile Futures initiative in July, which has teamed five popular brands including Cadbury and BelVita with startups to design new mobile marketing opportunities.
Morle told attendees at the ADMA Engage conference in Sydney that the companies were seeing good conversion rates of up around 10 per cent for some of the brand-startup partnerships.
“For some, like SkyFii and Proximiti that need people to make accounts, we’re seeing 63 per cent or so actually setting up those accounts,” he said.
Also at ADMA Engage:
How TripAdvisor attracts travellers and promotes return visits
How Bank of Montreal has achieved one-to-one customer engagement
The Mobile Futures initiative has attracted the attention of other big brands, said Morle.
“It’s the new black and everyone wants to work with startups now,” he claimed. “All the big bluechip companies are wanting to do it right now.”
According to Morle, large enterprises are not optimised for innovation, but startups can innovate quickly and at low risk.
“The whole intention here is to do hyper graphic, almost disposable learning programs, and to do it in a context that is not deeply risky,” he said.
He cited as an example the Mobile Futures partnership between Cadbury Dairy Milk and Snaploader, which provides augmented reality information when a user takes a picture of a chocolate bar in the store.
“It just started off in one store, in a very small way, risk profile very, very low, but now is going into multiple stores, and is also coming together with another program that Woolworths is doing,” Morle said.
Woolworths and Mondelēz are also collaborating in a shared learning program, he said.
Morle advised marketers to look to startups and see if they can help them. “If you’ve got a brand, look out there in the world [and] see what startups can do for you. They want to help you, they can help you and they will passionately engage in helping you.”
One startup – not part of the Mondelēz program – that has been partnering with major brands is Wearable Experiments (We:eX). The company has created wearable marketing for major brands including Durex and Fox Sports Australia.
At ADMA Engage, the company’s co-founder, Ben Moir, advised marketers to look beyond existing mobile devices and consider how they might match a brand to wearable computing. This type of technology includes much more than smartwatches and Google Glass, he said.
For Durex, We:eX developed Internet-connected underwear called Fundawear]] designed to keep couples connected over long distances. For Fox Sports, We:eX developed “alert shirts” that enable AFL fans to feel the pain of a tackle and the rush of a goal.
“Wearable tech is a brand product that gets people out into the real world,” said Moir.
Pictured: Pollenizer CEO Phil Morle at ADMA Engage.
Adam Bender covers digital marketing and emerging technology for CMO and is the author of dystopian sci-fi novels We, The Watched and Divided We Fall. Follow him on Twitter: @WatchAdam
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