Digital Media Buzz > BMW Gets Personal With Targeted Mobile Video Ads

BMW Gets Personal With Targeted Mobile Video Ads

By Ken Liebeskind

Just before Christmas, BMW sent personalized mobile videos to 11,000 young people in China. As a video depicting the BMW X1 played, personalized text messages were interspersed, which the company says is an advertising first.

The targeted messages, sent Dec. 21-24 to cell phones in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, were prepared by Clip in Touch, an Israeli software development firm that specializes in Web and mobile video messaging. Ila Bialystok, Clip in Touch’s vice president of marketing, says video footage from a TV commercial was edited so it fit a 90k limitation to work with mobile phones. “The challenge was to generate a high quality clip that can be sent through MMS,” she says. Personalized text messages were integrated into the video, using a database of names provided by BMW. Each video included two text message segments, one personalized with a reference to the BMW X1, the other a holiday greeting with links to BMW’s websites.

Bialystok says the recipient’s name was the only personalized element of the video. “You could send them a clip that tells them to visit a local dealer with a relevant location, but they wanted it straightforward.”

Michael Becker, the global board vice chair of the Mobile Marketing Association, says personalization of mobile advertising is relatively common, but the personalized mobile video may be unique. “Personalization is the key to relevance, and we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this,” he says.

Personalized mobile video can work because the consumption of mobile video is growing, with 7 percent of mobile subscribers consuming it. The consumer adoption of smartphones, coupled with the desire to view video, will spur the use of mobile video.
As for the use of personalized mobile video, it’s an exciting concept because personalization makes the video more relevant. “If I see my name, it makes it more relevant,” Becker says.

BMW’s personalized mobile video was an example of “a major global brand creating original content,” he says.
The fact BMW introduced the idea in China is supported by the fact that 58 percent of Chinese mobile users access the Internet via mobile phones and post content. In China, “mobile is the access point for Internet usage,” Becker says. “BMW realized that the customer segment in China that will buy this type of car has higher-end phones with the right data plan, so it was the best medium for targeting their audience. They engaged the audience in relevant fashion and they got to share it with their friends.”

(There have been initial reports that the campaign was a success, but DigitalMediaBuzz was unable to contact BMW in China or its agency for details. It was also unable to determine whether BMW got the names for the mobile video campaign from a carrier or through a list it developed itself.)