Both Cell C and MTN have opened up new competitions this week focused on social media and mobile app development respectively.
Cell C hopes to up its number of Facebook fans and become one of SA's biggest fan pages, through its new social media competition, while MTN aims to find user-friendly apps for the African and Middle Eastern markets.
Together with 94.7 Highveld Stereo, Cell C unveiled “Fan It”, a social media-based competition involving the cellular provider's fan page, as well as that of 94.7 Highveld Stereo's Breakfast Xpress and Kfm's Breakfast show.
Cell C says six entrants will be chosen each day during the weekday line-up on both 94.7 and Kfm. The first entrant to call wins their share of R340 000 worth of prizes.
Listeners are asked to enter the competition via the radio station Facebook pages.
"Facebook provides us with an important platform to interact with our customers,” says Cell C executive head of marketing Simon Camerer. “It is also a great opportunity to join forces with Primedia and to introduce more people to the wonderful world of social media."
New strategy
"This is a first for our stations," says Primedia group promotions manager Simon Parkinson. "We are taking the promotion to where our current listeners and potential new listeners are engaging in social media. This is a new strategic way of thinking for traditional radio media."
According to Cell C, listeners will be asked a social-media-specific question while live on air. The answers for the questions can be found on the Cell C Facebook fan page.
"Cell C is hoping that the competition will attract new fans to its site, elevating it to one of the country's biggest Fan Pages," says Camerer.
App innovation
MTN's competition, aimed at the developer community, calls on developers to create innovative apps “inspired by the realities of Africa and the Middle East”.
According to a statement from MTN, the apps competition aims to speed up the adoption of data-enabled technologies, especially those that feature digital content developed with the African and Middle Eastern user in mind.
MTN is developing its own App Store, which will be available for users in MTN's 21 markets across Africa and the Middle East.
“The more user-friendly and relevant the app, the more differentiated it will be, thus increasing the likelihood of its adoption on a wide scale in two vast markets that are hungry for local solutions - not least of which is digital content with an African and Middle Eastern flair,” says MTN Group chief commercial officer Christian de Faria.
Exposure
According to De Faria, there is a huge apps developer community out there, but many of their inventions do not get wide adoption.
“The apps competition we are launching today will, therefore, give the developer community an alternative, and serve as a distribution channel that reaches more than 150 million MTN mobile subscribers,” adds De Faria.
App developers can upload their apps to MTN's digital portal www.mtnplay.com/appcomp. The competition will be open for five months and initially focuses on the Android OS. There will be five monthly winners for the duration of the competition.
“All apps must be built in English and should be relevant for the African and Middle East markets,” says MTN.
First prize for the monthly winners is a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and second prize is a Samsung Galaxy S2.
The overall winner will be selected from the monthly first prize winners, and will get an all-expenses-paid trip to the Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, in 2012.
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