Mobile marketer Velti is working with the Peace Cup to try and drive charity via SMS. Some of the worlds top footballers, including Cristiano Ronaldo, will be participating in the tournament. Velti will be entering fans who donate to charity via SMS into a competition to meet the star players, get VIP tickets and signed memorabilia.
What is the Peace Cup?
The Peace Cup is a Spanish initiative that treats sport as a kind of universal language. It tries to use football to bring people together in some of the more divisive parts of Spain. It runs every two years and features the top teams in Spain.
What is Velti’s offering?
Velti is running a TV campaign to promote their SMS offering. Fans can send an SMS containing the word PAZ (Spanish for “peace”) to a shortcode provided by Velti. This automatically donates 1 euro to The Peace Dream Foundation on behalf of the sender. It also enters the sender into the prize-draw.
From the release:
David Yoo, Secretary‐General of the Peace Cup Organizing Committee: “We’re very pleased with Velti’s involvement at this year’s tournament in Andalucía. Giving supporters of the competition the ability to text donations means The Peace Dream Foundation will benefit from the immediacy that mobile brings to advertising campaigns; enabling fans within the stadia and people watching on TV to make donations as the games are being played. After very strong support over the first weekend of the competition we’re looking forward to raising even more funds for the foundation.”
Alex Moukas, Velti CEO: “The mobile device is a powerful tool for turning passive spectators into active participants. By incorporating a mobile element to their advertising campaign, The Peace Dream Foundation is able to create a simple call to action for supporters which enables them to easily and effectively donate to a good cause; without the hassle of filling in forms or returning to a website at a later date. Velti was extremely pleased to be chosen as the partner of choice to work with The Peace Dream Foundation on its first mobile campaign.”
What we think?
Basic campaigns like this can run very well. It uses SMS, a trusted technology that everyone is familiar with. TV spots are also a good way to target it – you can pretty much guarantee when and where your audience is going to be. Everyone else knows it as well though, which means the advertising space is going to be at an absolute premium. I’d love to see a breakdown of the costs involved here afterwards. Combining the costs of booking Velti and the advertising campaign, it would be interesting to compare how much money will have been invested vs. how much money is actually generated for the Foundation.
