Motorola, Chicago, this week wrapped up the advance promotional campaign for its newest two-way pager, the Personal Interactive Communicator T900.
Also, for the first time, it will run an interactive marketing campaign consisting of seven video e-messages that will be targeted at 20- to 24-year-old, non-gender-specific consumers in North America.
“This is the first time we have used video e-messaging to promote a product,” said Leslie Dance, global director of communications and media relationships for the personal communications sector at Motorola. “It is also the first time we sent people anything that allows them to interact and go back to the Web site.”
Motorola claims this is its first guerilla marketing campaign. It has enlisted the help of Blueberry Frog, a strategic guerilla-marketing agency in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Starting in late July, 60,000 people from a database rented by Blueberry Frog began receiving the first of seven e-messages described as mini-movies by Howard Beale, co-founder and director of Blueberry Frog.
“The movies are centered around a character named Silent Bill, who is the founder of this worldwide silent movement aimed at getting people to communicate without speaking,” Beale said. “His goal is to get everyone to join him in his movement, spread the word of this silent world, and communicate through the new two-way pager.”
Each of the 60,000 people received all seven movies. The first movie was sent during the last week of July, while the remaining six were sent two at a time during the following three weeks. The movies are run on a Quick Time application.
After opening the movies, the viewer is provided with a link to a new site — www.leavesyouspeechless.com — developed specifically for the new pager and the Silent Bill character. Viewers are presented with several options at the site.
Motorola hopes they will take advantage of the option that allows them to forward the message to a friend.
“We know how many people we initially contacted,” Dance said. “But we are not sure yet of how far they have gotten beyond that and who sent them on.”
Other options on the site include entering a drawing to win one of a few hundred limited-edition two-way pagers. Users must provide their e-mail addresses to enter. They also can get more information regarding the capabilities of the pager and view it, find out more about Silent Bill and his movement, or link back to the Motorola home page.
There are no e-commerce options available on leavesyouspeechless.com since the pager is not available yet. Motorola will not e-mail any more messages, but it expects the campaign to go on for the next several months with the help of people forwarding the messages to their friends.
“The goal of these movies is to have them act as a trailer to get people to the site,” Beale said. “We also felt that this age group would understand what we were trying to do and wants to be spoken to in this way that has this authentic and underground feel to it.”
