Smart Bro online drive wins digital marketing award

Smart Communications Inc. and its partner-agency Havoc Digital Media recently won in this year’s Boomerang Awards for the Smart Bro Prepaid online campaign called Smart Bro Sugod.

The Boomerang Awards is the first and only award-giving body in the country that recognizes the role of the Internet and mobile platform in building and strengthening brands, services, and companies.

The Smart online campaign was implemented in parallel with the nationwide launch of Smart Bro Prepaid, the country’s first and largest prepaid wireless broadband Internet service, offered by Smart subsidiary Smart Broadband Inc. (SBI).

“We took the digital route to enhance the above-the-line campaign for Smart Bro Prepaid not only because it’s a natural fit for such a service, but also because of the online campaign’s scalability and measurability,” said Annie Naval, Smart head for consumer acquisition, loyalty, and marketing services.

The Smart Bro Sugod involved rich-media banner ads placed in the sites of strategic Web brands such as MSN, Yahoo!, Friendster, Facebook, and Multiply, which engaged visitors in a couple of ways: an invitation to view the ubiquitous Smart Bro TVC of popular celebrities Sam Milby and Toni Gonzaga and listen to the Smart Bro jingle, and to play a highly interactive game and challenge their friends to do the same.

As a clever ending, the interactive banner also urged visitors to leave contact details within the portal – generating valuable data, which could then be translated to sales leads for Smart.

Smart and Havoc Digital Media received the Gold Cyber Boomerang award based on the campaign’s creative excellence and return-on-investment metrics.

This is the second Boomerang Award for the wireless services operator — last year, Smart’s digital campaign for its 3G services won a Bronze Cyber Boomerang Award for the highly targeted and customized execution of banner ads placed in various partner sites.

WolfPac Mobile Inc., another subsidiary of Smart, also won two Boomerang Awards this year: a Gold Award for a digital campaign it implemented for cola brand Pepsi, and a silver award for Nestlé’s Coffee-Mate.    

“We have only scratched the surface in terms of tapping the power of digital media. The Boomerang recognition will keep us on our toes, as the Internet and social media become increasingly critical channels to our campaigns,” said Danilo Mojica, Smart’s wireless consumer division head.