By Gene Keenan
Mobile, specifically SMS, is often thought of as little more than a text-to-win or sweepstakes tool. But its scope is much greater. It has incredible potential as a means of enabling audience feedback. Enablement is different from engagement in that we are not trying to engage users as much as we are giving them the means to talk back to the brand; we are creating a soap box if you will. In this example, Reebok is the brand.
The campaign
With other brands focused on the aggressive and competitive aspect of running, Reebok wanted to differentiate itself by focusing on the camaraderie, joy and fun of running. The goal was to motivate consumers to enjoy the sport of running at a pace right for them. To support this strategy, Reebok wanted to launch an innovative, global marketing campaign celebrating the casual runner and integrating the Reebok brand into runners' everyday lives.
At the hub of the Run Easy movement is goruneasy.com. It features a mash-up of Google Maps, iTunes, Flickr and Jumpcut technologies. The site fosters community-building through user-generated content capabilities that help runners connect with other runners and share their running experiences.
The mobile strategy
To extend the web into traditional media, the outdoor promotions integrated a mobile component that enabled consumers to use text messaging, or SMS, to join the movement, no matter where they were or what they were doing. Meanwhile, digital advertising placed on high profile websites worldwide encouraged consumers to get active and enjoy their run "at the speed of chat." All of the messaging that was received via SMS from the out-of-home media placements was instantly posted to the Run Easy website -- unfiltered and un-moderated, to fulfill the authenticity of the brand intent and message.
The mobile portion of the campaign ran in the U.S., Canada, Korea and India; in the U.S. the campaign ran in Boston, New York, Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles with different messaging for each location. For example, one of the Boston area messages was, "Big Dig has set the pace. Run Easy Boston. To share your run TXT: 'BOS' to RUNEZ (78639)." (The irony here of course is that The Big Dig has set a very slow pace, in keeping with the "Run Easy" message.) In New York one message was, "Not everything needs to be done in a New York minute. Run Easy NY. To share your run TXT: 'NYC' to RUNEZ (78639)." A generic piece of creative was, "A 10-minute mile is just as far as a 6-minute mile. Run Easy. To share your run TXT: 'Run' to RUNEZ (78639)"
You will notice that the keyword was different for every city and different for each piece of creative. This allowed us to track the success of not only the individual cities but also the creative. Not surprisingly New York, with its heavy foot traffic, saw the highest participation rates -- approximately 40 times that of Los Angeles, which is also not surprising given the LA car culture.
On some of the creative participants had the option to geo code their location. Those who texted in saying where they liked to run were sent a mobile web link and asked to input their cross streets and zip codes. We would then query a map database and ask the recipient if he was at X location. If the user said yes, then his message would be tied to those coordinates within the Google maps mashup on the Run Easy website.
The results
The total global cost of the program, including the geo-coding application, mobile web site, short codes and implementation and management of all the messaging for all the countries was around $60k. New York and Boston saw the most traffic, followed by San Francisco, with Miami and Los Angeles following a very distant fourth and fifth. Total unique responses in the U.S. were less than 50 thousand. This was less than the three-tenths of one percent of 18-34 year olds with a camera phone that we had forecasted, but we were still pleased with the results. We attributed the lower response rate with the small call-to-action we put on the creative.
The lessons
Run Easy was an unusual program with a different kind of strategy, but one that demonstrates well that success is not always about clickthrough or response rates, but can instead be about providing enablement and being on strategy. Often in mobile we lose sight of the strategy and the brand message component and instead focus too much on the promotional piece.