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Challenge: Build a mobile database and increase audience engagement.
Solution: Create a texting campaign.
Results: About 900 cinephiles opted in to receive text messages from the San Diego Asian Film Foundation, with almost all of them participating in at least one activity promoted by the texts. About 700 remained opted-in after the promoted event ended.
Leonardo Nam may have been featured in "He's Just Not That Into You," but he was sure into his role during the San Diego Asian Film Festival. Alerted through text message, about 100 festival attendees arrived to take turns sitting in a Toyota with the actor and record scenes for an online video.
The texting and the video came courtesy of a brainstorm from the organization hosting the festival, the San Diego Asian Film Foundation (SDAFF). Daniel Matthews, the foundation's marketing and public relations coordinator, says the organization wanted to create a mobile database and increase moviegoers' engagement in festival activities.
So to prepare for the October 2009 festival, the foundation hired San Diego-based mobile technology company Globaltel Media in May 2009. After training, in which Matthews learned that the foundation would own the opt-in data collected on Globaltel's system, it got the campaign going in July 2009.
"We had [the mobile call to action] in all of our collateral," Matthews says.
Before the festival, program booklets, fliers, the website, social media sites, press releases and the foundation e-newsletter urged cinephiles to text "SDAFF" to 53137. Then the most successful marketing channel arrived. During the festival, the advertisement flashed on movie screens before films started.
The mobile effort even netted some new e-mail addresses to add to the e-newsletter's circulation of 5,000 recipients. The push for opt-ins continues. Even Matthews' e-mail signature urges recipients to "Text "DANIEL" to 53137" to receive his contact information.
But mostly, Matthews says, the festival benefited from the mobile campaign through increased audience engagement.
In addition to the calls to action—such as the chance to win a prize—unexpected gifts would arise.
"We would use it for certain films," he says. "For instance, if we needed to fill up a film screening for a lesser-known film, we would text out, 'We've got these free tickets for a film screening.' And so, I'm sure that we were able to increase attendance very easily based on the fact that we had very direct, immediate responses for these free tickets."
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