Wallace & Gromit taking mobile world by storm

Rating: first iPhone apps now an M&S promotion

It’s seems that UK cartoon characters, Wallace & Gromit can do nothing wrong where the UK mobile sector is concerned. Not content with being among the top selling iPhone applications, they also star in a new mobile orientated ad campaign with top retailer, Marks & Spencers (M&S).

Titan Publishing’s Wallace & Gromit comic, The W Files , has hit the No: 1 slot in free books and an overall third slot in the iPhone free apps chart. Globally there have been over 170,000 downloads of the Wallace & Gromit free app.

Good news for developers is that all four Wallace & Gromit comic apps that are paid-for are currently within the top 20 paid apps in the UK book chart. The cost is £0.59 pence each.

Perhaps the most intriguingly development is a Wallace and Gromit based advertising campaign put together for the retailers by Incentivated. The promotion is hosted on a mobile internet friendly site create using Incentivated’s own WAPsite Publisher application.

To this experience this campaign, the easiest way is to text the word ‘go’ to the shortcode 65006. Actually, the delivered URL was bugged but GoMo News overcame this slight setback, but it was unusual to see such a mistake. The correct URL is wag.mands.mobi.

The whole purpose of the site is to M&S promote as a Xmas gift vendor. The site is based around a ‘cracking contraption’ which is actually a Gift & Cheese profiler. Mobile surfers are enticed to enter a few personal details in order to nudge the profiler into sending out Xmas recommendations.

There’s plenty of mobile technology cross-fertilisation in M&S’s offering. A surfer can forward his or her wishlist or suggestions to a friend via MMS or a link to the personalised WAP site. Additionally, a surfer would also receive an email with deep-links to the M&S website.

The email also encourages the recipient to follow M&S via Twitter and Facebook or receive text based alerts. However, the skilled mobile surfer is also rewarded. Those who complete the online survey can access free Wallace & Gromit wallpaper and screen savers.

They can also receive ‘vCalendar’ mobile reminders with last dates to buy gifts for delivery before Christmas, each depending on the destination and type of delivery.

Incidentally, the whole Wallace & Gromit mobile promotion is not the first time that M&S and Incentivated have worked together. The latter has previously put together four other mobile campaigns for M&S.