Sony Ericsson ran a personalized advertising campaign across 13 countries in Central Europe to promote their K550i phone and engage users. The campaign involved a 4-week competition where users uploaded photos related to extreme sports challenges to win a trip. Personalized ads targeted users based on their location and stage in the competition, with over 140,000 ad clicks and 56,000 impressions by the end. The personalized approach helped offset ad wearout and encouraged viral sharing.

1. Sony Ericsson Uses Personalization to
Engage Users & Drive Performance
Campaign Builds Campaign Details
Relationships via 4-stage Strategy & Media: MEC Interaction GS
competition in 13 countries! Design: MEC & Saatchi DE
Publisher: MSN Multi-National
Interactive features: Global Campaign
Overview Management; In-banner Games; Data Capture;
Sony Ericsson aimed to engage with users with personal messages Photo upload; Dynamic Data via XML; Re-targeting;
based on their actual physical location in what are traditionally hard-to- 1:1 Personalization; Behavioral sequencing
reach markets of Central Europe. The campaign aimed to demonstrate Target Markets: 13 countries across Central Europe
the photo capabilities of the SE K550i phone.
The campaign was built around a competition to win a world trip for the entrant and four of their friends to participate in extreme
sports including Bungee jumping out of a helicopter over the Fjords of Norway to sand boarding in the deserts of Dubai.
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2. Users would sign-up for the four-stage
challenge that would continue over 4 weeks.
Each week entrants needed to demonstrate
how they would prepare for one of the ‘extreme’
challenges and upload 5 related photos of their
preparations. For Jet Skiing in Venice users
could upload a picture of themselves on a bike
in a shower cubicle, for example. Other visitors
to the competition micro site would then vote
on who was the craziest – and the person with
the highest votes after 4 weeks would win the
competition.
After initial awareness, the primary hurdle of
the campaign was to get people to sign-up to
the challenge and then continue to participate
in each stage over subsequent weeks.
Strategy
To encourage continuous involvement with the competition, the ads would need to be personally relevant to each entrant based
on their status within the competition lifecycle. A sophisticated re-targeting process was thus developed, which also addressed
likely privacy concerns.
Sony Ericsson used Eyeblaster to deliver
personalized ads to the individual entrants based
on their physical location and what stage they
were at within the campaign lifecycle by combining
data from multiple digital channels including site-
side, email and display ads including desktop
communication applications.
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3. » The audience would be alerted to the campaign and encouraged to register either within the ad itself including photo upload,
or via click-through.
» Registration would be confirmed via email and drive site visit to complete their profile registration.
» Users would be alerted to each week’s challenge through a simple game and asked how they would prepare for each challenge
by submitting photos of themselves to the site.
» Each week, the ads would either be personalised to their position in the competition lifecycle or with an additional personal
address if they had previously submitted their details.
» Backed by an international competition, the prize would be an impressive world tour for the winner and 4 friends to experience
adrenalin-fuelled challenges.
Tactics
» The campaign consisted of four ‘waves’, each one representing
a different color-coded challenge.
» Each ad creative introduced the week’s competition, and
ended with a personalised call-to-action.
» Flexible registration took place either within the banner or on
site and was further confirmed by email, including an option
to recommend a friend.
» The ads remembered which stage the individuals were at
within the competition lifecycle.
» User data was combined from tags on the various stages of
the micro site with multiple possible ad interactions.
» Users were re-targeted across the MSN network, irrespective
of physical location, while being personally relevant to where
a user was within the competition life cycle.
» Each week, the campaign delivered the correct behaviorally
sequenced message in the correct language from a choice of
800 possible creative executions.
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4. » The ad also remembered who the user was and brought their name and photo back into the ad (if relevant)
or else it would show a generic retargeted ad to the more privacy conscious.
» Once the person had completed each week’s challenge, subsequent messages for the remainder of the
week encouraged them to send to a friend to drive viral awareness.
Results
» The campaign saw 140,906 clicks from ads to the micro site (standard and adapted re-targeted ads).
» 28,110 users visited the competition landing page and 2,551 logged into the competition.
» 5,213 participants uploaded their photo from within the ads, 959 of which used the ‘send to a friend’ option
and recommended the competition through the adapted re-targeted ads
» By the end of the fourth week, Sony Ericsson had 56,309 impressions served continually at users being
re-targeted via the adverts
Lessons
» The re-targeted ads offset the decline of clicks week-on-week – making the ads personally relevant addressed the typical
creative wear-out.
» The ads themselves enabled a viral effect; send-to-friend was a perfect fit for communication channels afforded by the
competition.
» The response to the campaign highlighted a new level of granularity, affording insights as to which countries would be most
likely to respond to personalised ads, give away personal data or upload photos, or share the brands message with friends.
» The campaign sets a new benchmark for advertising effectiveness and an assurance for future advertisers considering
re-targeting to maximise media spend by influencing users through the purchase lifecycle across channels.
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