Mobile marketer rides on Valentine's day to lead in recall

Taiwan's youth market appears to have lapped up the Valentine day marketing spiel, helping an advertiser with a service targeted at couples to romp to the top of Media's advertising recall chart. Taiwan Cellular Corporation's 'Love 901' spot had been created to market its NT$901 service package, which the telco developed with young couples in mind. "Our niche market is young couples who have a very different calling pattern. They mostly make phone calls to each other," Alex Cheng, the telco's marketing communications vice-president, said about the brand's latest segmentation marketing initiative. The $901 service deal allows free calls to one selected phone number, a bonus for couples or those who tend to call one number more frequently. Dentsu crafted the TV spot, which garnered a total recall rate of 79 per cent. The recall level was noticeably higher with TCC's target demographic -- 91 per cent among those aged between 15 and 24 years. The operator opted to segment its marketing because of the largely similar target market base it shared with one of its rivals, Chunghwa Telecom. "TCC is similar to Chunghwa, which also has a major group of middle class subscribers," Cheng said to explain the telco's decision to broaden its customer base by targeting the youth market. Cheng said the telco needed to grow its base through segmentation as Taiwan's mobile market was inching towards blanket coverage. He estimated that almost every Taiwanese holds at least one mobile phone sim card. TCC is currently crafting another campaign to target a different market segment, with the launch likely to take place in May.