BEIJING--(BUSINESS WIRE)--China mobile ad company, Guohe, earned top awards at The Smarties™ 2012 China ceremony of the Mobile Marketing Association for the company's Starbucks Christmas promotion that bridged the real and virtual holiday worlds to inspire tens of thousands of young Starbucks customers to tweet and check in at Starbucks as they earned a yuletide drink upgrade.
Guohe started the two-week "Let's Merry" campaign with Starbucks banner ads in Business Value, a business magazine app, as well as in Tweetdeck-like Weico, FourSquare-like Jiepang, and calendar app Days Matter. The ads prompted users to change the user interface of the app into a Starbucks theme by downloading a "Let's Merry" app skin and to use social media sharing and LBS check-in functions. Users could easily check in at a Starbucks using Jiepang, and message their friends using Facebook-like app Sina Weibo all while remaining on the Starbucks HTML5 holiday-themed landing page. Guohe took the "Let's Merry" campaign one step further by integrating yet another medium: Outdoor. A large electronic billboard at Raffles City in Shanghai lit up with special Christmas wishes enabled once enough people had checked in on the Starbucks ad.
Liana Yu, Digital Manager of President Starbucks Coffee, commented: "This campaign is the very first time that we have tried to integrate mobile advertising in our marketing matrix. It is very impressive in its efficiency to convert mobile users into actual consumers. The Christmas atmosphere occupied the virtual and real world via the campaign and let our consumers experience the fantastic fourth-space created by Starbucks."
Guohe launched the Starbucks' special Christmas drink promotion ad campaign with 200 Starbucks stores across Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces last December. Total Starbucks brand exposure during the promotion totaled 4.6 million impressions. 670,000 people participated in the promotion. 450,000 users downloaded the "Let's Merry" branded app skin. 40,000 tweeted about Starbucks, 60,000 checked in via Jiepang, 27,000 downloaded the Starbucks badge via Jiepang for an upgraded Starbucks drink, and as many as 21,000 people followed Starbucks in a single day.
Neo Zhang, co-founder of Guohe Ad said, "It is a real honor for Guohe to receive so much recognition from the judging panel consisting of senior experts in the industry and to win the special award. We will keep on innovating and bringing more new and fresh ad formats for advertisers and mobile media."
Guohe won both the Gold Award for Mobile Interaction and Special Gold Award of all categories. This is the very first time that MMA held The SmartiesTMÂ China event. The gold award winners will compete directly to the The SmartiesTMÂ 2012 Global, introducing their Chinese wireless marketing case studies to the rest of the world.
About Guohe
Guohe (guohead.com) is a leading mobile advertising management platform in China which is dedicated to helping developers realize business value for their apps and to provide advertisers with mobile ad planning, analysis and optimization services. Guohe has integrated 15 mainstream advertising networks both inside and outside China and concentrates on providing premium advertising optimization and management services.
Guohe has won recognition from prominent experts within the industry and has been adopted by many of the elite developers in China since it was founded at the end of 2010. Guohe now has a team of 35 people, with offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Taipei. Guohe was awarded "Best Mobile Ad Platform" at the end of 2011 by Sohu IT, and Special Gold Award in MMA SmartiesTM 2012 China for its Christmas mobile campaign for Starbucks.
Screen shots available on request.