Beem: Mobile payments launch in UK
The ProblemLate 2008, a new and so far unknown mobile payments company, Beem, was ready to launch a new service which allows users to send cash quickly and securely via text.
Beem allows subscribers to pay for any goods and services, top up pre-pay mobiles and send cash to family and friends via text. Users sign up online or via text and, once registered, can load up their Beem account with cash via their debit card.
Beem hired Hotwire to launch its new mobile money technology. Facing industry scepticism and with a launch budget of less than £10,000, the campaign had to be highly innovative and results-oriented.
Campaign
To start, we had to challenge an issue head on: Many media targets had little interest in the mobile payment space due to previous negative reports and the failure of Simpay. To address this issue the campaign had to be seen to lobby against the hype surrounding cashless payments.
Hotwire was also aware that the journalists being targeted had over the previous 12 months become disciples of social media and used Twitter as well as other new online tools to gather news and communicate with each other. Hotwire capitalised on this to reach out to influencers.
Christmas was approaching and many companies were facing the downturn and as a result cutting back on media entertainment. Hotwire realised that Beem could benefit from this and buy their target journalists and influencers some seasonal rounds of beer.
Key tactics for the launch strategy included:
1: Get the technology in the hands of target influencers
2: Use social media tools to spread the message
3: A traditional evening launch event
Outcome
Media results: Interviews were conducted with media such as Press Association, FT, The Guardian, The Sun and the Evening Standard. Exposure further achieved in The Sun, T3, BBC News, Stuff, Mobile Choice and across many online outlets. This was a low budget launch and average OTV cost came in at over £100,000.
Social media results: Beem’s Facebook presence and use of Twitter has helped greatly to spread the word about this new payment technology. The student community in and around some major universities are using Beem technology, while also actively chatting about it online.
Business results: Beem has already experienced a massive rise in sign ups and fantastic interest from merchants and other potential partners.
Companies that have signed up already include national pizza chains: (Pizza GoGo and Tops Pizza), taxi companies and convenience store chains such as Premier Stores.
“We’re a start-up business and watch what we do and spend our resources carefully,” says Kerl Haslam, Beem founder and CEO. “We had fantastic results from the launch managed by Hotwire – we now have household names talking to us about using our technology. In the words of Elvis ‘that’s the wonder, wonder of you….’…”
