In this section: 1. Typhoon Ondoy 2. Making Online Media Accessible by Mobile Internet Use 3. Nike Philippines- Advertising on the Mobile Web

Typhoon Ondoy
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When typhoon Ondoy (internationally labeled as typhoon Ketasana) devastated the Philippines at the end of September 2009, the Philippine government and private sectors were overwhelmed by massive disaster efforts and insufficient manpower and resources. As floods cut off important connection lines, individual Philippines citizens turned to the internet and social media to tell their story to the world. Appeals for help have never been so effective and people from all round the world were galvanized to take action. Overview of Ondoy Typhoon Ondoy swept through the Philippines on a 24th September 2009 with little prior warning. By the time it left the next day, it has unleashed more rain in the country than all of the month put together. The resulting floods and landslides left more than 600 dead and damage to infrastructure and agriculture estimated at close to P30 billion . 500,000 people were displaced and 1.2 others had their electricity cut off. Victims were in dire need for basic relief items such as food, water and clothing.

Using the Internet

With landlines being cut off, the Philippine citizens took to connecting with the global world through the internet. For anxious Filipinos residing overseas during the time of the crisis, the internet became the main source for tracking realtime updates on the current situation. Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook because the first sources for information on typhoon Ondoy as affected citizens accessed these sites through their mobile phones.

As the global community caught wind of the situation, these social media sites were further used by people outside the Philippines to spread the message. This generated significant conversations online and people were quick to take action. Social communities, both local and global, were immediately set up to solicit donations that will bring necessary aid to the victims. Many of these communities directed donators to the official Philippines Red-Cross page.

(source:http://www.typhoonondoy.org/)

Twitter Twitter, with its realtime updates, was most efficient in providing updates about topics regarding the typhoon. At its peak, realtime updates for the Philippines tag was rolling out at about 1 tweet per second. (source:http://www.penn-olson.com/2009/09/28/philippines-typhoon-ondoy-social-media-playing-a-big-part/)
Facebook Facebook groups such as the Student Calamity Fund were set up to help raise donations. The Fund is a joint effort of students and alumni from schools such as Columbia, Harvard, INSEAD, MIT, Stanford, UPenn/Wharton, Audencia Nantes SOM, London Business School, University of New South Wales, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, SMU, IESE, AGSM, Berkeley, Yale, Babson, NYU, ESADE, Tuck and others. With so many individual institutions, spread over the globe, participating in this donation drive, Facebook became a choice platform to host the main page of the fund because its versatility made it easier for organizers to coordinate a mass effort to contribute to the relief operations. Different users from different institutions can post updates, while members of the group can help spread the message by linking their extensive social network to the Facebook group. This multiplies the relief efforts by leaps and bounds. (source:http://media.www.harbus.org/media/storage/paper343/news/2009/10/05/Features/KatrinaLevel.Disaster.Hits.The.Philippines.Students.Lead.A.Web.2.0.Drive.To.Help-3792996.shtml)
Youtube and Flickr Devastating images of the disaster was photographed and filmed by ordinary Philippine citizens and posted online on channels such as Youtube and Flickr. In the past, people could only access such visual content only after professional news crews have entered the area. Now, videos capturing the poignancy of the event can be seen sooner than ever, and by a much larger audience. Many of such user-generated content also doubled up as rallies for donations. The embedding functions of flickr and Youtube allowed for people to easily repost this content and really helped spread the message across a wide network of people. (source:http://www.penn-olson.com/2009/09/28/philippines-typhoon-ondoy-social-media-playing-a-big-part/)	An example of citizen journalism, where someone in the Philippines filmed the situation, provided his experience, and posted the video online. Images of the disaster left behind by the typhoon served to rally for donations.

Making Online Media Accessible by Mobile Internet Use
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In a country with about 40 million mobile subscribers and just 20 million internet users, Smart Communications, one of the Philippines’ leading mobile telecommunications companies, set out to make online media accessible to a wider audience. This was to involve popularising the concept of mobile internet use by developing a WAP-based platform.

Smart worked with Omnicom-owned Tribal DDB to develop Sandbox, the country’s first fully integrated web-to-WAP portal that bridged the internet gap between computers and mobile phones. Web and mobile-optimised features such as social networking, blogging, gaming, music and videos made Sandbox a one-stop portal that fulfilled all the internet needs of Filipinos.

To drive people to sign up-online and by mobile, Smart crowd sourced for influential people, internet personalities, and media practitioners in the Philippines to beta test Sandbox. Bloggers such as technology blogger, Jayvee Fernandez, were making blog reviews about the product even before it was officially released.

Smart also released humorous viral videos featuring local internet celebrity Ramon Bautista. The videos were seeded in top video hosting sites and invited viewers to visit the official Sandbox site. The viral element was supported by an unbranded set of display ads prompting people to 'find out what’s inside the box'. Banner ads were strategically placed within Sandbox and Smart’s own sites, as well as exclusive mobile content, such as the Eraserheads reunion concert video clips and music downloads, enticed people to try the mobile version of Sandbox.

The Campaign was a huge success. Smart reached its target of having 100,000 people sign up for he phone in 4 months, instead of the projected 6 months. The site itself is enjoying mass traffic with an average of 1 million monthly site visits, and a total of 5 millionvisits so far.

Source: http://www.media.asia/DigitalMedia/Case-Studiesarticle/2009_09/CASE-STUDY-Bringing-online-access-to-the-masses-in-the-Philippines/37075


Nike Philippines- Advertising on the Mobile Web
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In August 2008, Nike Philippines partnered with Yahoo to run a mobile campaign around the launch of the Nike Sportswear Collection and to stimulate interest around its new mobile magazine, "Nike 8 Mobizine." Mobizine, short for “mobile magazine,” covered the stories behind each of the 8 Nike Sportswear icons, including exclusive mobile video content featuring icons in the local music and sports scene and updates on what’s up and coming at the Nike Sportswear retail installation store.

"Nike developed ad creative specifically for the mobile user as they wanted to reach their audience where they are -- on the go," said Zealous Wiley, senior manager of public relations at Yahoo Mobile, Sunnyvale, CA. With Philippines high mobile usage, Nike's campaign directly reached out to the Philippine consumer. An integrated campaign was put together for the Yahoo Philippines mobile Web homepage, PC homepage and mobile messenger for first two weeks of launch. The Yahoo Philippines Mobile homepage ran the Nike Sportswear banners for two weeks between August and September while Yahoo Mobile Messenger ran banners for a week . On the PC, standard banners ran across Yahoo Philippines homepage for a week, driving traffic to switch to their mobile sets to visit the Nike 8 Mobizine. Over the course of the two-week campaign, 22,000 clicks were sent to Nike Mobizine and an amazing 5.09 percent click-through rate (CTR) was achieved on the first day when banners ran across the Yahoo Mobile homepage. An overall average CTR of 1.86% was achieved across the two week campaign. For the PC ads, Yahoo! Philippines Homepage delivered more than 420,000 impressions in one week. This translated to an above-industry standard CTR of 0.28%

How the Nike 8 Mobizine looked like on a mobile phone

Yahoo! provides some advice on how to run a mobile ad campaign:

1. Integrate mobile into the overall marketing campaign – Nike maximized its mobile investment by integrating with non-mobile – PC, print and other – campaigns.
2. Keep it simple – In mobile, less is more. Inherent limitations of mobile – typing, navigation, latency – require that mobile Web sites make it easy to find information that users are looking for. Nike kept the call-to-action obvious, simple and capable of being fulfilled from a mobile device.
3. Embrace the medium – Mobile users are on-the-go. They use the mobile Web to communicate, for entertainment or because they are looking for specific information quickly. Use mobile to address these needs. Nike kept the Web site interesting for users to have fun and pass time while learning about the products.

Click here to download Yahoo!'s slides detailing this case!

Source: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/2491.html