Procter & Gamble turn to mobile phones to boost Crest sales
phones, Procter & Gamble is launching a promotional campaign
that uses the services of a UK-based company to create a
text-messaging game featuring the Crest Whitening brand.
The promotion will be based around the brand's Plus Scope Extreme Toothpaste and will feature SMS-based promotions including sweepstakes and text-based campaigns to promote awareness of the brand amongst the adolescent to 30 year old age group.
Having identified this group as its target audience, P&G decided that text-messaging would be a good means of promoting the brand because it is such a popular means of communications with this target audience. It also said that this campaign should prove to be the first of a series of similar promotions.
London-based Flytxt calls itself a mobile direct marketing and services company and has been commissioned by P&G to instigate a series of marketing campaigns aimed at growing brand awareness amongst its younger consumers.
The first of these campaigns features a game developed in association with relationships expert Samantha Daniels. The result is the Irresistability IQ Test, designed to gauge consumers' social skills in a variety of situations.
The game is initiated using flyers for bars across the United States. Each flyer contains a specific number that participants have to dial up in order to initiate the quiz. Once the number has been dialed a series of questions are sent by SMS and the responses to the questions are judged accordingly resulting in a final score.
Flytxt founder Carsten Boers said, "The mobile phone is the perfect channel to connect consumers," adding that the game is supposed to be fun and is aimed squarely at a generation that is focused on both socializing and communications.
The P&G campaign also aims to focus on a segment of the oral care category that is currently one of the main driving forces behind market growth, that of multifunctional products. As well as promoting oral hygiene, many consumers are now seeking 'total' oral care products. This means added benefits such as tooth whitening properties.
Last year PediaMed launched an SMS-based marketing campaign to promote its acne treatment Tazorac. The 8TDAZE program - named using the same slang that has come to popularly characterize text messaging - aimed at reminding often forgetful teenagers that they need to apply the treatment in order to optimize the product's efficacy.
