Phonevalley uses free SMS to promote PUMA Ocean Racing mobile site

Phonevalley, the mobile advertising and marketing arm of The Publicis Groupe, has created a mobile site for the PUMA Ocean Racing team. The PUMA team is competing in the Volvo Ocean Race, also known as the “Everest of Sailing”. Over nine months, the PUMA team will sail over 37,000 nautical miles between Alicante, Spain and St Petersburg, Russia.

For the PUMA mobile website, m.pumaoceanracing.com, Phonevalley created a news hub for fans. The site displays up-to-date race news, downloadable photos and videos, and an LBS function that pinpoints the location of the ship on a Google map. The site also serves as a PUMA store, presenting produce and a store locator.

In order to promote the site, Phonevalley has integrated a system where visitors to the mobile site can send a free SMS to a friend to let them know about the site.

From the release:

Alexandre Mars, CEO Phonevalley and Head of Mobile Publicis Groupe, is thrilled: “We are extremely proud to support PUMA in building close relationships with all sailing fans for this ultimate sailing adventure. After our cooperation for their first mobile campaign during Euro™ 2008, followed by the great mobile platform for last Shanghai Formula 1 Grand Prix, the PUMA Volvo Ocean Race initiative stands as one of the most briliant illustrations of the power of mobile to support brand awareness”.

“Today, thanks to their mobile phone, all fans of the PUMA Volvo Ocean Racing team get the opportunity to stay connected 24/7 with il mostro and its fantastic, though grueling, adventure” says Antonio Bertone, PUMA CMO.  “They will follow the race up to its final leg, when the PUMA team will hit the finish line, live on their phone. This ultimate human adventure did need to be scrutinized on the mobile screen!”

What we think?

This honestly isn’t a bad little service. It’s extremely niche. Only harcore sailing enthusiasts are going to be interested in it, which makes discoverability less of a problem for Phonevalley. There are a limited number of places that a service like this can be advertised, and each of those will have a high level of exposure to it’s target audience. To boost that, they’ve put that free SMS funciton in, allowing enthusiasts to inform each other of the site’s existence. That kind of thinking, where an exisiting community is taken advantage for viral/social networking purposes, will see niche sites like this do well.