Unilever sees mobiles as a marketing “supercharger”

The AOP conference saved some of the best to late on Friday with an address by Jay Altschuler, Global Media Communications Planning Director of Unilever that illustrated a range of creative – and sometimes slightly quirky – thinking around digital solutions, with an emphasis on mobile. He was keen to highlight the partnership between marketing department, agencies and media owners around each idea.

Altschuler told how Unilever took the marketing department to Silicon Valley to meet the major players – a trip that brought about a major partnership with Apple around the i-Ad platform – and how he immersed the team in digital media under the phrase “live the space”. The theory was simple – if you don’t use the technology you are far less qualified to create marketing solutions.

He stressed how important the mobile platform would be to Unilever. The i-Ad deal was initially in the US, but would be extended to three countries in Western Europe by the end of this year. “Mobile supercharges our static messages (in TV, print and outdoor). It’s a one-click billboard.”

As an example, Unilever was keen to get recipes on phones for customers – it linked with outdoor via a short-code on the poster, but then went as far as offering a subsidised phone, pre-loaded with recipes.

We also heard of Ben & Jerry’s Pecan to mimic Obama’s “We can”; upside down Facebook pages and Wall’s vending machines that gave you free ice creams if you smiled.

Altschuler summarised all these solutions as “penetrating your customers’ culture.”