I put this together for an Idea Bounty brief. For some reason I didn’t submit it.
Maybe that was a wise decision…judge for yourself.
Brief
Help Mobile Marketing Inc name their consumer-facing brand/persona
Background:
Mobile Marketing Inc is a mobile marketing agency that takes advantage of the high cell phone penetration in countries like South Africa to help brands build rich databases of people who have given their permission to be contacted and offered promotions. Mobile Marketing Inc does this by enabling brands to communicate with consumers through SMS, voice and USSD engagements via their cell phone.
This is how it works:
Consumers enter Mobile Marketing Inc promotions on great brands to win prizes, receive rewards and engage with the brands they use. Through an opt-in engagement process – using SMS, voice and USSD engagements – consumers are able to receive rewards in exchange for answering a few easy questions about themselves.
These questions build up a “profile” of each consumer, linked to their unique mobile phone number, to create a rich understanding of each consumers’ attitudes, needs and behaviours. Using the valuable information contained in this profile, Mobile Marketing Inc can send each consumer tailored, relevant information, offers and brand communication in the future.
This means that Mobile Marketing Inc has two faces:
1. On the one hand, they are a business-to-business agency, who work with brands who are their clients. Mobile Marketing Inc is an effective “business name” in this context.
2. On the other hand, Mobile Marketing Inc needs a consumer-friendly name that can be used for interactions with the end consumers who engage with the business on their cell phones during promotions, profiling and other communication. In this context, Mobile Marketing Inc is not an appropriate brand name – we need help to find a name that suits us better in this consumer relationship.
The Challenge:
Mobile Marketing Inc needs to develop an ongoing relationship with the consumers responding to all the promotions they run, so that they can build trust and engagement for future communication. Currently, consumers give their permission to be contacted again only to the brand running the promotion – so if another brand, or Mobile Marketing Inc, would like to contact them in the future it could appear odd and unexpected.
Instead, Mobile Marketing Inc wants to ensure that consumers give them directly the permission to communicate further in future, and that consumers come to recognise not just the brands they love but the consumer-facing brand and persona or Mobile Marketing Inc itself. This will allow Mobile Marketing Inc to maximise the database for their clients, and build value to consumers by providing offers and incentives from other partners who have suitable offerings for the consumers’ unique demographic.
The challenge is to help us name this consumer-facing persona/brand.
Supporting Information:
To help you understand a little bit more about the situation in which this consumer facing persona/brand will be used we have provided the following “case study” that poses the need to find a suitable name:
Today, when Nkasi – a mom of 3 in South Africa – responds to an OMO promotion, she doesn’t have any awareness of Mobile Marketing Inc – she thinks she is speaking to OMO and giving them her information in exchange for discounts and other promotions. OMO is represented by a well know South African and he lends his personality to the exchange. As the data shows, Nkasi and others appreciate this ‘human touch’. But as we get to know more about Nkasi and want to use her data for other clients, how do we approach her? Nkasi would probably love to receive a free Kiddies meal offer from KFC. How do we offer this to her on mobile, enabled by Mobile Marketing Inc?
As a working notion imagine that Tony represented Mobile Marketing Inc. Every time Nkasi responds to a promotion Tony would say hello and introduce the brand making the offer. Tony would know whether it was a first time caller or a repeat, with the repeat callers we could of course build in the “Welcome back Nkasi” personalisation delivered by Tony.
Once we have a repeat caller we can ask for permission to proactively contact the caller but they will already be familiar with Tony, they know his voice, they appreciate the offers he has brought them and they are happy to give Tony permission to get back in touch with them when he has other great offers.
Target Audience:
Currently Mobile Marketing Inc are targeting consumers who are mid to lower income in emerging markets like South Africa, Brazil and Turkey. Our chosen consumer brand name needs to resonate strongly with these mass market consumers.
Eventually we may want to incorporate consumers of all social strata into our offering, so keep this in mind too.
Requirements:
We need a name for the consumer-facing brand. It should be memorable, emotionally engaging and consistent with our warm, friendly, trusted character.
Mobile Marketing Inc is present in many global markets – currently South Africa, Turkey and Brazil, and soon in other emerging markets. A name will be needed in all markets – either one, consistent global brand & persona name, or some common approach that can be localised easily across multiple markets.
The name could be abstract (as Apple is to technology/computing), it could be literal (direct explanatory name) ,it could be a rewards club (Like “Virgin Air Miles”), it could be a person’s name (Tony as illustrated).
When submitting your Ideas for names please include the following:
1. The Name
2. A Short rational for the name
3. Finally we will need some ideas about how this name will work as part of a logo and visual identity. Some thoughts, rough sketches and idea on this would be great
Ideas
- Bumble
- Rationale: Takes its name from the buzzing sound a cell phone makes when a message is received.
- Honeybee
- Rationale: Takes its name from the buzzing sound a cell phone makes when a message is received, and the reward the message brings – the offer.
- Buzzta
- Rationale: Takes its name from the buzzing sound a cell phone makes when a message is received, personalise the proposition with a character a bee character that consumers can relate to.
- Buzzaar
- Rationale: A portmanteau that takes its cue from the buzzing sound of an incoming phone message combined with a market/meeting place. Also has connotations of immediacy – buzz.
- Bezzi
- Rationale: Onomatopoeic, and generic enough to be universal, but also a term meaning ‘best friend’ in the Liverpudlian regional dialect.
- ZipZap
- Rationale: Onomatopoeic term describing an incoming and outgoing text message. Connotes receiving and acting upon something- and has no linguistic bias.
- Swami
- Rationale: A knowledgeable person who imparts good advice
- Fez
- Rationale: A symbolic image that most people will recognise. As it’s a hat, it’s a universal object that anyone could pick up and use.
- Presto
- Rationale: A word that’s associated with revelatory magic and immediacy. Also connotes ‘simplicity at the touch of a button’
- Pronto
- Rationale: A well known Italian word used as a telephone greeting, and also used in English to mean ‘quickly’
