JAKARTA – October 2, 2013 – A hundred implementable mobile ideas were pitched to attending brands at the Unilever Mobile Expo, an event co-created by Mindshare and Unilever Indonesia.
Held in Jakarta in July this year, the expo saw 11 participating mobile partners and telecom players including VServ, InMobi, Millenial Media, BrandTone, XL Axiata, Indosat, Telekomsel, Google, and Yahoo to pitch their mobile ideas, which were then ranked by marketing teams from across Unilever. The rankings indicated the company’s interest in exploring the ideas.
The expo was opened by Maurits Lalisang, president director of Unilever Indonesia. Keynote speakers included XL Telecommunications CEO Hasnul Suhaimi and Samsung Mobile Indonesia VP Andre Rompis.
The expo also had stalls for all mobile partners where the group of over 200 attendees could witness and participate in demos of innovative mobile applications.
The event was mobile-centric from the beginning: a week before it began, participants received a call from Unilever Indonesia country media head Adeline Ausy Setiawan, who invited them to the expo. Mindshare worked with Telkomsel to pre-record this message and timed it to reach everyone as they came into work. This was followed by an MMS invite that included an RSVP to the event via a link that went straight to the expo site. Reminders were sent via SMS a couple of days before the expo itself. All votes and comments at the expo were shared real time via a mobile site.
The real time feedback data on shared ideas were then used to align mobile partners with the Unilever’s marketing teams based on what they found most interesting.
Mindshare Indonesia digital leader Maneesheel Gautam said: “At Mindshare we believe in open source collaboration. In this case, we created a convergence of creativity and technology on mobile platforms to bring out the inspiration for marketing. Unilever and our mobile partners loved the idea and so do we!”
Meanwhile, Setiawan commented: "Together with Mindshare, Unilever Indonesia have built a strong understanding of our brands and changing consumer behavior towards digital. Mobile usage in Indonesia is growing exponentially, and to not focus on this more heavily would mean missing out. We were very excited about this mobile expo and saw brilliant ideas coming forward from participating mobile partners – in fact some of our marketing teams have begun exploring many of these ideas already. This has proven to be a win-win idea for everyone."
