• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, April 11, 2008

Pepsi-Cola has launched a wide-ranging digital campaign with snap-and-click marketer MyClick aimed at young Chinese consumers in connection with the upcoming Olympic Games.

The contest, targeting 12- to-24-year-olds, invites consumers to upload their photos and basic personal data including birth date, mobile phone number and nickname on any of six Chinese Web portals for a chance to be featured on Pepsi cans during the summer Olympics in Beijing.

Three winners will be chosen by fans, who will participate by downloading the MyClick application on one of the portals to access voting, blogging and status updates on their submissions.

MyClick's mobile platform, based on image-recognition technology, will also let users take advantage of Pepsi promotions by pointing and shooting their mobile cameras at MyClick-enabled images on Pepsi cans as well as print, outdoor and other media.

The campaign, Pepsi's third "Creative Challenge," will be supported by TV advertising, point-of-sale promotions across retail outlets and other formats including the Web, mobile WAP sites and MMS text-messaging.

Pepsi is keen on tapping China's fast-growing mobile market. The country's Ministry of the Information Industry reported over 150 million mobile data users as of December 2007. By 2012, eMarketer expects the Asia-Pacific region to pull ahead of the U.S. in mobile ad spending, mainly because of the huge middle class in China and India that use mobile as their primary interactive screen.

Kevin Cohen, a senior advisor at Hong Kong-based MyClick, said the company's snap-and-click technology doubles response rates compared to traditional SMS marketing by saving consumers from having to enter a shortcode or mobile Web address.

"In a market like China, the idea of tapping out keystrokes on a phone is so much more complicated because you've got all of the Chinese characters," said Cohen. "This technology makes that experience much smoother."

With the user information collected through the latest Creative Challenge, Pepsi and MyClick will potentially gain valuable marketing data on millions of young Chinese consumers.

Cohen emphasized that using the MyClick software involves an opt-in process, and that personal data gathered wouldn't lead to a mobile marketing blitz.

"Trust has to be generated that a marketer isn't going to bombard them with information, but treat them in a way that's conscious of the personal nature of the mobile phone," he said.