Unilever Mobile Expo takes off with Mindshare in Indonesia

Unilever Indonesia and its long time media partner since past 8 years, Mindshare, co created an exclusive Unilever Mobile Expo where 100 implementable mobile ideas were pitched to all attending brands. Eleven participating mobile partners and telecom players including VServ, InMobi, Millenial Media, BrandTone, XL Axiata, Indosat, Telekomsel, Google and Yahoo! were asked to pitch best mobile ideas. Marketing teams from across Unilever brands ranked these ideas, indicating their interest in exploring them.

Maurits Lalisang, President Director of Unilever Indonesia, opened the expo. Keynote speakers included Hasnul Suhaimi (CEO of XL Telecommunications) and Andre Rompis (VP of Samsung Mobile Indonesia).

A week before it took place, participants were surprised with a call from Adeline Ausy Setiawan, Country Media Head, Unilever Indonesia, inviting them to the expo. Mindshare worked with Telkomsel to pre-record this message and timed it to reach everyone as they came into work. This was followed by an MMS invite that included an RSVP to the event via a link that went straight to the expo site. Reminders were sent via SMS a couple of days before the expo itself. All votes and comments at the expo were shared real time via a mobile site.

The real time feedback data on shared ideas were then used to align mobile partners with the Unilever’s marketing teams based on what they found most interesting.
The expo saw nearly 200 attendees. The event was designed to focus on mobile ideas rather than on just mobile technology showcase.

Maneesheel Gautam, Digital Leader for Mindshare Indonesia said, “At Mindshare we believe in open source collaboration. In this case, we created a convergence of creativity and technology on mobile platforms to bring out the inspiration for marketing. Unilever and our mobile partners loved the idea and so do we!”

Adeline Ausy Setiawan, Country Media Head, Unilever Indonesia, said "Together with Mindshare, Unilever Indonesia have built a strong understanding of our brands and changing consumer behavior towards digital. Mobile usage in Indonesia is growing exponentially, and to not focus on this more heavily would mean missing out. We were very excited about this mobile expo and saw brilliant ideas coming forward from participating mobile partners – in fact some of our marketing teams have begun exploring many of these ideas already. This has proven to be a win-win idea for everyone."

Indonesia is the fourth largest mobile market in the world with 278 million mobile subscribers. Mobile technology and innovative mobile applications are on the rise. Indonesians use the internet primarily from their mobile phones: it is estimated that by 2016, Indonesia will have 102.8 million internet users, 80% of who will access it through mobile.