Southeast Asia: MEC scores firsts for Sony ad blitz

The media blitz spanned television, print and online in an effort to reach target consumers - largely affluent business professionals for whom the mobile phone is an image symbol, and trendy young adults. The campaign targeted 13 markets, including Singapore, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan and Australia.

The content-related strategy integrated the Sony Ericsson S700i's swivel design and camera capabilities to the media. According to Aditi Anand, regional director, international at MEC WCSS, the challenge was making optimal use of the budget to cover a diverse geographic territory.

Consequently, MEC placed L-shaped ads in two Dow Jones titles and Newsweek.

"The ads were conceived to provide a creative unit capable of demonstrating the swivel movement of the phone. It was a first for some regional print vehicles that did not allow this shape to be carried."

The agency also identified TV channel genres based on the target audience's lifestyle.

"The core target identified was based on attitudinal homogenity and straddled a fairly wide age demographic. These were people who went for stylish phone design and functional superiority."

As part of the TV push, BBC World carried motion-themed vignettes titled Pro-Motion. The phone's swivel motion also swung across MTV feeds as a 'stinger' and was integrated between music videos on the Powermix show.

"Exposure within this programming content in 13 Asian markets is extremely valuable, especially in 'no foreign commercial pass-through' markets like Malaysia and Thailand," added Anand.

National Geographic also carried sponsored travel and wildlife vignettes.

Sports alerts were set up online through 'Desktop Dasey', a caricature of ESPN Star Sports anchor Jason Dasey. An online contest was launched at soccernet.com.