Brief:

• Pond’s, the storied skincare brand owned by Unilever, saw a 5% gain in sales with an award-winning mobile campaign that targeted Indonesian commuters with ads urging them to take a photo of posters at 45 locations to see the perils of air pollution for their skin, per a report in Campaign  The campaign reached 12 million women in Jakarta, which consistently ranks as one of most polluted cities in world.

• The campaign targeted the 8 million Indonesian women ages 18 to 25 who commute by train daily to Jakarta from surrounding areas. While many women were aware of pollution exposure in buses and motorcycles, they didn’t realize that mass transit transportation doesn’t shield them from contaminated air, per a campaign video.

• Pond’s allocated 15% of its ad spend into the mobile campaign, which used programmatic buying and was developed with AdColony and Mindshare. The campaign helped the brand gain 20 basis points of market share and was honored at the 2018 Mob-Ex Awards with a gold for best campaign in the location-based marketing category.

Insight:

With Pond's market share declining in a competitive environment, the brand effectively combined location targeting for ads on mobile with outdoor posters to encourage commuters to take an action — photographing the posters — to access valuable information. Users could also learn more about the brand and make a purchase directly from their phones. The success of it the effort comes from its innovative use of location data to reach consumers at a time — during their daily commute — when they are known to be browsing for purchases on their phones and pairing this approach with an interest in photographing real-world media with their phones as a way to make the campaign interactive and provide added value. 

Indonesia is one of fastest-growing mobile markets in the world, with the number of smartphone users surging 49% from 67.1 million in 2017 to 99.9 million by 2021, per eMarketer. The country will have the biggest digital economy in Southeast Asia with a market value of $130 billion by 2020, per IDC. Indonesian consumers are also seeking out smartphones with better features, as the segment of ultra low-end devices priced at $100 or less collapses from 56% of smartphones shipped in Q2 2015 to 26% in Q2 2017.

But that doesn’t mean that Indonesia, home to about 250 million people, is brimming with consumers who are buying higher-end phones from luxury brands like Apple. The iPhone maker’s market share in Indonesia has fallen to 1% from 3% in 2013, per Canalys data cited by The Wall Street Journal. The typical smartphone Indonesia sells for less than $200, lower than the least expensive iPhone model and much less than the iPhone X at $1,000, per IDC. Chinese handset makers like Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo have been actively acquiring new customers with smartphones that specialize in taking selfies. As Indonesia’s user base grows, marketers will need to shift their media strategies to mobile device while recognizing some of the limitations of a region where lower-cost phones with less processing power and limited connectivity are more common.