Tag: tablet marketing

Lucky Charms is using mobile to go beyond traditional “prizes” to appeal to adult consumers.

In its most recent mobile marketing campaign, General Mills has created an augmented reality app for its Lucky Charms cereal that sends adult consumers on a “Chase for the Charms.”

This app allows mobile device users to go on a virtual hunt for marshmallow treats.

The goal of the augmented reality game is to reach the end of the rainbow with Lucky the Leprechaun. The cereal manufacturer released a video as a teaser for the app ahead of its launch, which is St. Patrick’s Day.

The augmented reality campaign is linked to the holiday that is known for its similar theme of Irish lore.

On St. Patrick’s Day, users will be able to tap on their mobile device screens when they use the augmented reality application, to capture Lucky the Leprechaun’s charms as they appear before them. The charms use AR technology to look as though they are located in the real world. As an incentive, the company is also offering prizes based on the number and type of charms that were collected.

Among the instant prizes are t-shirts, a cereal dispenser, or a chance to appear as an animated character in an upcoming ad for the product. The grand prize is a pot of actual gold that is valued at $10,000.

Behind the augmented reality campaign is the creative agency called Saatchi & Saatchi. The app itself was the creation of Ogmento. The app itself is being heavily marketed. On Friday, mash-up music video was released, featuring several of the classic advertisements for the cereal. The video itself was performed by John Boswell, who is better known as “Melodysheep”, and who is otherwise recognized for his Julia Child tribute.

This new mobile marketing campaign is the latest effort by the brand – now 49 years old – to reach out to adults who had grown up with the cereal and who are now using smartphones and tablets and are receptive to the augmented reality experience. The strategy was started last year with a television ad which has since broadly expanded to include the AR technology.

The industry is now wondering if the social networking giant has finally mastered this channel.

Facebook has been the recipient of massive criticisms due to its lack of mobile marketing revenues, which had lead to its exceptionally disappointing initial public offering (IPO) stock nearly a year ago.

At that time, there were hundreds of millions of users accessing the service without ads on smartphones and tablets.

Investors were disappointed that mobile marketing had apparently been ignored by Facebook, when it could have been used to reach these millions upon millions of people, but it was not. What has since been discovered, is that the executives at the social networking giant were perfectly aware of this trend and they were already well on the way to building their strategy.

The Sponsored Stories mobile marketing social ads were only the tip of the iceberg.

That element had only just been introduced at the time of the IPO, but what the investors didn’t know at that time – and what has only recently been revealed – is that Facebook had a great deal more up its sleeves for its mobile marketing programs. It took several months, but it has now been proving itself capable of exposing ads to the smartphone and tablet using masses in compelling and effective ways. This was far beyond what most people at that time could have predicted.

The mobile marketing ads at Facebook were not an instant success, but they did gradually build traction until they were earning $305 million by the fourth quarter. This represented approximately 23 percent of the overall ad sales revenue for the company. It is also one of the main reasons that the social network stock price has nearly doubled the low to which it plummeted shortly after the IPO, hovering near the $30 mark.

One of the main reasons that the ads in the Facebook mobile marketing strategy are considered to be successful is that they aren’t the same as those that are used on the desktop site. On the standard website, the ads run along the right hand side of the page. Instead, the smartphone friendly ads are worked right into the news feed and have both a look and a feel that are comparable to the posts that are made by their friends and the other brands and pages that they have liked.