Team Roar
Softlogic Life, leading life insurance provider, has become the first-ever Sri Lankan brand to emerge winners in the prestigious Global Mobile Marketing Awards for the most innovative mobile messaging campaign in the world. The award was won for the ‘Campaign That Saved 2,500 Lives’ at the Global Smarties Awards, New York, 2017; the world’s only global mobile marketing awards programme honouring innovation, creativity, and success.
The Global Smarties Awards, otherwise known as the “Oscars of Digital Marketing”, is organized annually by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) to celebrate talent who are leveraging the power of mobile to create marketing campaigns that drive business impact. This year’s selection process involved over 100 global senior-level mobile marketers along with agencies, and was reviewed by the MMA’s independent jury, led by Richard Kellam, CMO of Goodyear.
The Softlogic Life team behind the winning campaign (Image Source: adaderana.lk)
The campaign was focused on helping people in flood-affected areas during May 2017. Due to high network traffic during this time, connecting to the DMC was extremely difficult. Having lost all their belongings, many who were affected were only left with their mobile phones (mostly basic feature phones), which they used to call for help. Softlogic Life together with Mindshare Sri Lanka chose to take action through a simple and agile technology solution. Within 24 hours, they were able to create a mobile-integrated SMS line, in partnership with Etisalat. This established a connection between the affected individuals and relevant government authorities, and expedited access to aid and assistance. Softlogic Life then used the same SMS line to amass requests for essential goods to help those in need. The initiative was highly successful and enabled Softlogic Life to help 2,500 distressed individuals, who were directly impacted.
Mobile platforms have changed the game for marketing professionals all over the world and have become a core driver for businesses to foster innovation and creativity. “This campaign is a great milestone for all marketers in Sri Lanka, as it shows that we, as a country, are well in-line with global trends and have the capability and the vision to be as great as any global brand,” says Iftikar Ahamed, MD of Softlogic Life.
Together, Softlogic Life and Mindshare Sri Lanka were able to target flood-affected areas through a successful geo targeting strategy, and leverage social media as well as radio channels to raise awareness amongst the community very effectively, landing them this win and beating an all-time global multinational giant. This not only marks the first time that a Sri Lankan brand has been awarded a Global Smarties Award but also the first time a brand has gone head-on with many other global giants and emerged victorious.
The Gold and Silver Awards that Softlogic Life won at the Global Marketing Awards, this year
“What is great about this effort is the fact that a brand in the insurance category, which is generally reserved in nature, was able to achieve something of this magnitude in marketing,” says Nuwan Widyapathige, Head of Marketing of Softlogic Life. “It’s a testimony to our innovative culture and business philosophy. The digital space is one of our key strategic priorities, and we want to make use of digital channels to effectively reach out and engage our customers. This award marks the third consecutive international recognition we have received.”
“Following this, we won a Smarties APAC Award in the Messaging category at a ceremony held in Singapore, in November. Out of the five shortlisted brands, we won Gold. As the latest achievement, we are currently shortlisted in the Tech category at WARC Media Awards 2017. WARC is the global authority on advertising and media effectiveness, best practices, benchmarks, insights, brand and category intelligence, data, and more. More than 25,000 people from over 1,200 companies use WARC globally. The Tech category looks at communications that have effectively used or combined emerging platforms or technology in the media mix, and looked at how a particular technology or platform has helped address a specific problem,” says Widyapathige. “We also managed to secure two records within the Sri Lankan social media space; the most engaged branded video on Facebook for one of our commercials, and the fastest branded video to reach one million views on Facebook, for this year’s Father’s Day video.”
This article is brought to you by Softlogic Life
