Etisalat partners Alcatel-Lucent, WildFusion on EasyAdz

Manager Digital Media Mrs Chinenye Faleye responding to

 Q&A while chief commercial officer Mr Wael Ammar

and CEO Mr. Steven Evans look on. Pix: DSN

Etisalat Nigeria is partnering Alcatel-Lucent and WildFusion to launch EasyAdz, a permission-based mobile advertising service.

Whereas Etisalat Nigeria has deployed this service through Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism, a mobile marketing platform which allows customers to share their interests and preferences with their mobile operator and subscribe to receive personalized, relevant advertising and special offers on their mobile phones from their favorite brands.

The chief executive officer, Etisalat Nigeria, Mr. Steven Evans, said at the Oriental Hotel Lagos, venue of the launch, Tuesday, that it allows customers to “opt-in” to receive advertising messages and marketing offers from their most valued brands.

Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism, he said, is a mobile marketing platform which enables customers to share their interests and preferences with their mobile operator and subscribe to receive personalized, relevant advertising and special offers on their mobile phones from their favorite brands.

“Etisalat mobile advertising ecosystem is made up of key players in the advertising industry such as brands, advertisers, media buying agencies,” he said.

Stressing that the solution seeks to establish a mutually beneficial relationship between the brands and its customers cum potential customers by facilitating the communication of only relevant and important product and services information from a brand to the customer based on users area of interest.

Also commenting, chief commercial officer, Etisalat Nigeria, Mr. Wael Ammar noted Optism is empowering Etisalat to achieve a number of exciting and important objectives.

L-r: Key Account Manager EMTS Alcatel-Lucent Mr Miguel Bueno

and MD WildFusion Mr Abasiamo Idaresit at EasyAdz launch

“First, we are bringing the power of permission-based mobile advertising to the Nigerian market with our EasyAdz service. For our subscribers this is a service that is respectful of their choices as well as being enjoyable and engaging.  For brands and advertisers, we are providing a large and highly profiled audience base as well as creating an  avenue to connect with our most important asset, – our growing base of over thirteen million subscribers” he said.

Equally, head, Alcatel-Lucent's business in the Middle East & Africa, Mr. Amr El-Leithy pointed out that the company is very enthusiastic to again be working with the Etisalat group to bring a more personalized and compelling experience to their customers.

“After a successful launch of Optism in the United Arab Emirate (UAE) it is extremely gratifying to have another member of the group choose our solution for permission based mobile marketing. We see this as a solid endorsement of the way we are meeting expectations,” El-Leithy said.

Further, he explained that the Alcatel-Lucent’s enabled mobile advertising platform has been commended by stakeholders who participated in the limited initial trial launch held at the beginning of 2012 with over 1 million subscribers opting in to the over 30 campaigns that ran.

British Council, Coca-Cola and Nigerian Breweries were some of the brands who ran campaigns, they received different rates of response among particular demographic groups, the results however showed impressive response rates compared to the typical 1 per cent response rate for other digital media advertising.

... Making SENSE of digital revolution!