Case studies

The Brighton Port Authority

The UK's appetite for summer music festivals is growing hand-in-hand with the popularity of digital media. Rockness and the O2 Wireless festival are set in two very different locations but both were the settings for Indie Mobile’s biggest ever Bluetooth marketing campaign. Broadcasting via four roaming Bluetooth hubs, we sent out over 10,000 exclusive video previews of ‘Toe Jam’ the debut single from The Brighton Port Authority.

The campaign consisted of five elements: bluecasting, roaming promo crew, promo cards, artist WAP site and onstage reveal. The Bluetooth hubs emitted four different exclusive video previews of the new single from The BPA ‘toe jam’. These videos also included single release date info, featuring artist teasers and call to action. The roaming promo crew (wearing branded outfits – including images of the single artwork & release date) hit every corner of the site carrying Bluetooth hubs (with 100m range) and distributing playing cards that instructed the audience to turn on their Bluetooth and call to action. The BPA WAP site incorporated artist news, tour dates, exclusive video footage, free text tones & a pre-order of the single. This WAP site was live, promoted & accessible via short-code at all BPA events. Web and mobile are now crucial to a successful music festival and will continue to be pivotal in taking outdoor music to the masses.

The final element of the promotion was the big reveal. This was Norman Cook playing the world exclusive first play of the now infamous ‘Toe Jam’ video on the big screens. This is just one of the ways Indie mobile has been using new media to promote their acts to the key 12-26 year old demographic. Online media has already revolutionised the way that festivals are created and sold. Most artists, promoters and consumers now agree that the future will be mobile, whether it be ticket sales, artist marketing, downloads or mobile internet.

Viral grime and albums for the price of a tone...

While soap powders and luxury car brands desperately battle to engage their customers on mobile, for the new album by Wiley, it is the only effective communication medium for interacting with fans.

Indie Mobile and record label Big Dada have created a two stage campaign which uses mobile as the central hook around which a street, online and print campaign hang.

The first single is being promoted by releasing limited edition stickers around London and the UK. Three Wiley stickers will be found on display, coloured from bronze to silver to gold. The gold stickers are the most rare of the set and feature a shortcode allowing them to download a free exclusive Wiley album mashup by Roll Deep’s DJ Maximum. The mix is 3 minutes long and features excerpts from all of Wiley’s album tracks and will not be released in any other format. The other stickers all offer free mobile goods such as exclusive text tones, ringtones and area checks such as ‘BOW E3’ which is the name of the new Wiley single. The content on all but the Gold stickers will vary depending on when fans text in allowing for a large raft of exclusive content and producing a set of over 30 different pieces of mobile content only available at specific times during the campaign. All content is DRM free and fans will be encouraged to Bluetooth the tones and tracks to friends.

‘Creating a street level campaign offering fans an exclusive experience on mobile is a must for this target market. This is not a fan base that responds to traditional advertising and, as anyone who has had to sit on the bus listening to a group of kids playing music on their phone’s loudspeakers will know, the norms of mobile use do not apply.’ Says Seth Jackson, MD of Indie Mobile. ‘ If the DJ Maximum mix isn’t being bluetoothed to every borough of London by the end of next week then the campaign isn’t working properly’.

For the release of the album the label has taken a brave step offering the entire album on mobile pre-order for the incredibly low price of £4.50. ‘For the price you pay for a ringtone out of the back of a newspaper we are offering an entire album’ says Laura Seach, Head of Digital at Ninjatune/Big Dada. ‘This is a mobile audience and if we are going to get album bundle sales from this market we need to offer something of real value to them with a payment method that is easy and instant’

The album, ‘Playtime Is Over’ can be pre-ordered for this price by texting WILEY ALBUM to 82822 and will be redeemable from the Tunetribe store at midnight on June 4th and will be a mobile initiated sideload sale.

Nizlopi – the jcb song/half these songs are about you

Indie Mobile hooked up with FDM records to help provide the last Indie sensation of 2005. We managed and implemented a killer mobile licensing campaign that saw this quirky track take the number one spot by storm. X-Factor's sham track may have made it to official Christmas number 1 at the last minute but we all know who the real winner was!

A solid mix of network penetration, above the line advertising, direct marketing and editorial presence made this release one of the highest selling mobile content campaigns of 2005. Nearly half the TV advertisements for mobile content over the Christmas period featured the track and advertised both the content and the physical release. Understanding the importance of promoting not just the single but the album and Nizlopi themselves was vital in producing a successful campaign, not just in revenue terms but also in achieving the goals of the label and the artist.

Franz Ferdinand – walk away/do you want to

Indie Mobile delivered the first centrally co-coordinated, pan-European exclusive across the Vodafone group. Supporting the release of ‘Walk Away', nine countries took part in a campaign involving MMS activity, bill inserts and key placement on the Vodafone and partner portals. This followed hard on the heels of Indie Mobile co-op marketing for ‘Do You Want To', which saw heavy advertising with T-Mobile and NME.

Freemasons – love on my mind/watchin'

A club smash in its own right, ‘Love on My Mind' was making waves on mobile nearly three months prior to commercial release thanks to Indie Mobile's ‘upfront' campaign on 02 and T-Mobile. Careful use of pre-release activity, on-pack mobile marketing and release date exposure ensured that this relatively underground track was at the top of 02's most downloaded for over nine weeks around release.

Using the impetus built up by this release, Indie Mobile ensured that The Freemasons achieved dedicated artist sections in the networks which paved the way for the success on mobile of their follow up release Watchin'.

Dizzee Rascal – mobile experience

The Indie Mobile team has been working with Dizzee since he very first signed to XL back in 2003. The cutting edge mobile campaign, utilising some of the earliest in-depth sms interaction and intelligent mobile database building, earned the award for Best Use of Mobile at the BT Interactive Awards. Developing the mobile strategy and helping it grow with the artist has been key to a process that has seen web, wap and java produce a dedicated mobile community putting XL in a strong position to maximize on mobile for Dizzee's rumored new album.