Unilever opts for 'mobile marketing platform' to reach south-east Asia

The Dublin-headquartered mobile marketing company will deploy its platform for the personal care player in Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines through a mobile data led strategy.

The campaign involves asking consumers to give personal data, such as shopping habits, over their mobiles, in return for rewards.

Unilever first employed Brandtone's 'Konnect' platform in India in 2014 where marketers use everything from SMS on basic phones to rich media on smartphones to contact consumers.

According to the marketer's chief executive Donald Fitzmaurice; “Any consumer irrespective of the phone they have will be able to engage with the Unilever campaign for free."​

South East Asia is renowned for being partial to technology-led innovations, which comes as no surprise to the personal care brand's vice-president of media Rahul Welde.

“It is the ideal environment for mobile engagement to flourish - allowing our brands to engage in long-term, one-to-one dialogue with millions of consumers at scale,” ​he adds.

It's all about catching the customer's attention at every turn! ​

Japanese colour cosmetics retailer, Ainz & Tulpe recently introduced facial recognition shop windows that capture shoppers as they walk by with the latest make-up 'looks' they can then access in their native tongue at discounted prices.

Only 3 per cent of people in Japan can speak a foreign language, which has been a bit of an inconvenience for foreign shoppers in the past.

However, with the government hoping to attract 20 million tourists to the country by the time Toyko hosts the Olympic Games in 2020, more is being done to accommodate non-Japanese shoppers.

Ainz & Tulpe teamed up with advertising agency Dentsu and production company Birdman Puzzle to develop this technology that can detect the origin of shoppers and interact with them in Japanese, English, Chinese, Spanish and Russian.

The idea is that everyone has access to make up looks, how-to tips, discounts and other in-store applications. 

Since launching the displays in the front of its Tokyo based store, Ainz & Tulpe reports about 40 per cent more tourists have visited the branch.