The local industry is continuing to showcase its creative prowess at Cannes - in all categories but Mobile. For the second year running, we've walked away empty handed. So what does it take?
Two entries shortlisted in the Mobile Lions - McDonald's 'Track My Maccas' app and Durex's 'Fundawear' - tried to represent our island nation but was pipped at the last post.
The winning-est campaign this year was telco Smart Communications' 'Txt Bks' campaign from The Philippines, created by DDB in Makati City. The push was based on the premise that many school children within the region were suffering physically and mentally due to the weight and length of time required to carry heavy textbooks. Knowing that families couldn't afford the mobile devices many Western countries use instead of textbooks - and that the main device owned by citizens was an analogue mobile phone - the telco attempted to transfer content from the books onto mobile phones.
For six months, the company collaborated with textbook publishers to condense official school texts into 160-character text messages, including in-class lesson guides to homework exercises. It then programmed the text into many surplus sim cards, which were then rebranded as "Smart Textbooks"
It rolled them out across various partner schools. "It turned even the oldest of phones into a new kind of e-reader and old sim cards into a new brand of text book, so less effort was spent carrying and storing books and far more effort into learning from them," the entry said.
So what is it about this campaign that made it win? What are your thoughts on it? And what can the local industry learn from this work? Let us know your thoughts on the comments below.
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