Synapse Group Technology Helps Secure Gold

A successful combination of clever creative, interactive television, and wireless technology was recognised with a gold medal win for ‘Best Smart Media Idea’ at the Communications Agencies Association of New Zealand (CAANZ) awards last week.

Saatchi and Saatchi Auckland won the award for the October 2001 ‘TV2 Viewers Choice’ campaign.

Behind the win was Wellington-based mobile Internet Company, Synapse Group, which utilised its PromoTxt technology for the TV2 Viewers Choice promotion.

In a New Zealand first, the campaign saw television viewers vote via Telecom mobile text messaging for their choice of feature film to go to air on TV2 on Saturday 6 October 2001.

Synapse Group Business Development Manager, Dion James, says the CAANZ win for Best Smart Media Idea recognises innovative organisations using leading edge technology to reach its target markets.

“Determining which primetime movie would be played was literally in the hands of TV viewers,” says Mr James.

“With Saatchi and Saatchi’s concept, Synapse’s technology and TV2’s vision, the Viewers Choice campaign proved to be a highly effective, interactive and engaging way of reaching out to and involving the wider public.

“With text messaging becoming increasingly mainstream, it’s proving to be a successful means of adding value to more traditional mass-media marketing and communication strategies.”

PromoTxt is a highly configurable web-enabled text messaging solution providing simple broadcast messages through to highly interactive short message service dialogues – such as multi-choice quiz games.

Mr James says the TV2 Viewers choice campaign was repeated on 10 March this year. Some 23,000 viewers voted using text messaging, an 0900 number or online via tv2.nzoom.com to choose New Zealand’s own Scarfies movie over the Hollywood blockbuster Forces of Nature.

To date, PromoTxt has been used to deliver a range of interactive text messaging services from answering radio DJ’s questions and receiving real-time sports scores through to distributing daily inspirational messages to a national religious group.

Synapse Group bases its PromoTxt solutions on SMS infrastructure from its European partner Peramon Technology, standardised on the Java development platform. PromoTxt is highly scalable with a standard installation supporting more than 120,000 messages an hour.

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