Olista Celebrates a Successful World Cup Campaign with éclat Marketing
The Brief
Olista is the pioneer in Service Adoption Management (SAM) for mobile service providers. Olista provides comprehensive solutions which enable mobile operators to encourage more customers to use value added services (VAS) by ensuring the services work first time, every time. This is a market which is relatively new to the industry and the real challenge for Olista has been to build a niche to fill and then to have enough muscle to ensure it is heard throughout the year and not just when the company has a customer win to announce.
The Challenge
Éclat recognised the need to identify an industry trend which Olista could comment on, in order to help the companies’ voice to be heard among the loud noise of the major players in the mobile and telecommunications world. The PR campaign would have to concentrate on an industry trend and the FIFA football world cup in Germany presented the perfect platform to ensure topical interest.
Éclat proposed an NOP (national opinion poll) survey to coincide with the tournament which looked to ask questions members of the public if they had used a mobile data service (such as MMS, WAP and mobile TV) during the world cup and whether they were happy with the service received. For this reason it was agreed the optimum time to run the survey would be the last weekend of the tournament, giving as many people as possible the chance to have used one of the many mobile data services being heavily marketed during the month long tournament.
To achieve the maximum results speed was of the essence as the tournament had already started by the time Olista had approved the survey idea. Another aspect which made timing so important was keeping the story newsworthy. After one whole month of mobile operators pushing world cup services and talking about how a particular service would flourish or fail during the world cup it was important the findings were not released too far after the competition had ended. If the results were released too late it would have resulted in the story lacking interest to both the media and the public.
For this to be achieved éclat compiled a strict timeline which broke down each stage by task and set a specific day when the activity had to be completed by. This was very important when planning the project and was implemented not only by éclat but also Olista.
The Implementation
Even though the survey was of the general public and it is impossible to predict the answers of a survey without losing its integrity, éclat drafted the questions in a certain manner to encourage responses Olista could comment on. This was achieved by firstly drafting eight headlines which could be used in the media and then working backwards to draft the questions which could result in these potential answers.
Éclat managed the whole process of refining the questions with the research house to get the best results. On top of this it had to be ensured the survey would run on specific dates and most importantly the results were promptly delivered on the Monday morning following the final (played on the Sunday).
Éclat received the findings on the Monday morning and drafted a press release relating to the most attention grabbing findings and ensured a fast approval by the client. The release was subsequently distributed to the media on the Tuesday morning and followed up comprehensively by the éclat team on the phone to drive coverage and generate interest in the story.
The Results
Éclat generated some outstanding results with Olista receiving substantial media coverage in all of the titles identified at the start of the campaign as being of key importance.
Over 40 individual pieces of coverage were secured following the release of the story including national coverage in The Independent. All target trade publications covered the story including Total Telecom, Unstrung, The Register, Mobile Europe, Mobile Communications Europe, Global Mobile and Mobile News.
A further piece of broadcast coverage was secured on Telecom TV after éclat arranged an interview with Olista’s UK MD to discuss the survey findings. Following the interview the story became the lead story on Telecom TV the following day and the lead story in its weekly newsletter distributed at the end of the week.
The news story and the coverage generated led to further interest in the findings interviews were secured to discuss topics which the story could be linked in too with Wireless Business Review, World Telemedia magazine, Total Telecom online, Stream and Mobile Communications International.
Interest in the story didn’t only come from the media though. Potential partners and customers contacted éclat and asked to see further details of the research and to be introduced to Olista. Éclat managed the process of passing these details to the client to progress.
Conclusion
The campaign proved to be a success due to the éclat’s ability to understand the market and generate a newsworthy story under pressure and the strict compliance of the project timeline.
Olista was positioned as an industry expert and the CEO was widely quoted following the distribution of the story building its profile in the core telecommunications press and ensuring the company was being seen by its customers in all the right places. Olista was overwhelmed by the results and the level of interest in the story with pick up of the story appearing on news sites around the world including Australia and the US.