By Ken Liebeskind

ATLANTA --

There’s been a lot of talk about mobile video lately and now one major company has taken action. The Coca-Cola Company has launched the Sprite Yard, a mobile community for young consumers that offers downloadable content, including mobisodes starring the Lymon characters that define the taste of Sprite. The mobisodes are still being developed by Marvelous, a London mobile agency. Sprite Yard launched in China on June 1 and goes live in the U.S. June 22. Shelley DeVilliers, The Coca-Cola Company’s director, Global Brand Management of the Sprite brand team, discusses Sprite Yard and the mobisodes in this week’s iChat.

iSPOT: What is Sprite Yard?

DeVilliers: It’s a mobile platform that primarily does two things: through pin codes on the Sprite bottle it enables consumers direct access to digital content. In addition, it allows access to functionality on the mobile phone such as pictures in a mobile picture gallery, and shouts, which is messaging; it also allows you to create a profile to meet and greet other people in this environment and invite them to join your friends network; it has a scribble function, which is a mobile message board that allows you to have discussions in a smaller group; and it has a planner function where you can allow friends to see what you’re up to and invite them to join you. For all these functions outside of the downloadable digital content you don’t actually need a Sprite.

iSPOT: How did the company develop the idea?

DeVilliers: The company charged the Sprite brand with pioneering the mobile space. We broke the platform idea from identifying our target consumer, teens and youth, understanding their behavior and trying to determine what they will be looking for in a brand connection that will be relevant to them. Once we understood we need to go to mobile by identifying teen behavior, we presented the idea to the organization of going beyond promotion for the simple reason of sustainable connections. If we could build a platform that enabled or facilitated sustainable connection with this group of consumers, we would not only build a deep and meaningful relationship with the consumers, we’d also build a competitive edge for the company for other brands to use with their marketing plans. They supported those imperatives but also the mobile space moves very fast with things evolving every day so the benefit of having the platform enables us to respond to changes very quickly and scale across different markets over the global landscape as well as across our portfolio of brands.

iSPOT: How is Sprite Yard accessed?

DeVilliers: A consumer would be required to have a WAP enabled phone and most phones are WAP enabled. Then they would need to have data access from their carrier. Once they have that, they text the keyword and short code we provide. In the U.S. the keyword is Yard and the short code is 59666. This differs around the world because short codes are country specific. Then, they receive a message back from us with the embedded link to register by selecting a tag name and password.

iSPOT: Who created the mobisodes?

DeVilliers: For the entire platform our interactive agency partner is Isobar. There are two agencies within Isobar–Molecular, which handled back-end development, and Marvellous, which is a mobile agency based in London. They are creating the mobisodes.

iSPOT: Can you describe the mobisodes?

DeVilliers: The content is very visual and audio. The mobisodes were made for mobile with a small screen in mind. It’s quite important from a consumer perspective because we don’t want to get content from other media. They appreciate the fact it was made for the small screen. It’s important on two fronts. The first is a technical perspective because it needs to be a certain file size that is quickly and easily downloaded over the wireless airwave to a multitude of different handsets all with different speeds. The second is resolution and the quality of graphics and sounds that comes through on the phones. Colors and graphics have been specifically designed for mobile and the size has been configured.
    The content within it we’ve only just started to explore. We’re bringing to life equities of the Sprite brand in visual content on mobile episodes that are part of a collectible series, so consumers will want to buy another Sprite to see the next episode. They will start to bring to life elements of the brand we can entertain consumers with. The first series we’re looking to launch is the adventures of Lemon and Lime which will bring to life the lymon taste aspect of the brand in a way that is relevant to consumers. They’re in the works and should be ready within five to ten days. From there the possibilities are endless. We do not have it in our minds that everything that runs through the mobisodes has to be heavily branded. Some of the content will have brand elements because consumers want that information, but some may not be branded.

iSPOT: Are the lemon and lime characters actual fruits?

DeVilliers: They are the fruits, but they’ve been brought to life. They started off as having escaped from a juice bar in downtown New York, that’s where they start their journeys. Each episode will be about what they are up to, primarily designed to be for the phone on the phone, but the character experience could take them beyond the phone, but you’re not going to see it on TV and it may or may not be on the web. It was designed for the phone and we’re doing everything with the mobile phone in mind.

iSPOT: What is the advantage of the mobile platform to promote the brand?

DeVilliers: It’s fast moving and in the palm of your hands, in the here and now, which gives us the opportunity to experiment with things that are very quick and we can continue to keep the content fresh, unlike a TV ad or a piece of print advertising it doesn’t take us months to make a piece of content. We need to change the way we think and move very fast in terms of keeping relevance.

iSPOT: Does Marvelous, the mobile agency, move that quickly?

DeVilliers: Yes.

iSPOT: Are the carriers involved?

DeVilliers: Yes, and in fact we’ve involved the whole carrier ecosystem. It’s carrier agnostic and we’re involving everybody. We’ve been in discussion with all major carriers and emerging carriers and they’re all participating in an industry-wide initiative.

iSPOT: Do consumers pay carriers to access it?

DeVilliers: There’s no charge to get the content from Sprite. The only charge is what consumers pays carriers for data access.

iSPOT: Sprite Yard started in China. Do you have any results?

DeVilliers: The program launched June 1. We’ve had some early qualitative feedback that’s very sharp, but we’re waiting for official reports. It’s too early to say.

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