Gaviscon Mobile Applications Advertising Campaign

Saw this advert on the tube in London - quite interesting.  Basically, Gaviscon (indigestion medicine) are offering a branded "Journey Planner" mobile application through advertising a shortcode on the ad.

They are charging a small premium of 25p for the SMS to trigger the download which seems a bit odd but I guess it covers their delivery costs.  You would have thought it would be better to offer it with no additional SMS charge if they are looking to do as many downloads as possible. 

I'm really not convinced this poster can be getting much of a response rate of people texting in but maybe I'm wrong?  There is no mobile reception on most of the London Underground so you would have to actually save the shortcode and send the text later or something - hardly a great user experience.  Shouldn't really bash them for trying but it does seem a bit like the end-to-end transaction hasn't really been thought through by the agency - chimes in with a lot of what Helen at Beep marketing has been saying about mobile marketing needing to be a bit more "joined up". 

So I downloaded the app to check it out - it's basically a journey planner for the tube.  To be honest it's not that great - would have been good as a very simple mobile tube map but they have put on animation features and things which slow it down.

The ad works with interstitials popping up as you navigate around which also makes it less user-friendly - would have been better to have had an interstitial on startup and then just branding around the app perhaps?

So a really interesting example of "branded mobile content" but quite worrying in a couple of ways:

- will the premium sms charge and the way the short-code is advertised mean that they won't get many downloads?  (and blame mobile as a platform rather than the campaign execution)

- will the interstitial ads put off consumers who DO download it, not only from this campaign but from those that follow?

Does anyone know anything else about this campaign or seen it out and about?

 

Comments

[Helen Keegan]

I saw the ad too and unfortunately was unable to download the application to my phone. On retrying the link, it wouldn't let me saying that I had to try from another phone. FAIL.
A really nice idea let down by the basics - too much reliance on the 25p PSMS to generate revenue and not enough focus on the customer experience to make it easy to download and use, fast and relevant.
We will learn one of these days...!

[james]

They really shouldn't be executing campaigns this badly in this day and age surely? Anyone know what agency is behind this?

[Satya]

Really good article. I have been following your blog for last 3 months. You have good knowledge
on Mobile(cell phone) Industry and happenings. Please continue the good work. Thank you.