In early 2003, Arthur Policarpio, a marketer at Procter & Gamble, and Jeremy Obial, owner of an Internet company, decided to focus their individual expertise on forming the country’s first mobile marketing agency. “After spending three years at P&G, I saw that the marketer’s dream is to communicate with customers on a truly one-to-one basis, but it was something that couldn’t be done with the usual tri-media,” says Policarpio. “Today, however, mobile phones can accomplish this targeted marketing task on a massive scale. In fact, over one billion text messages are sent every day in the Philippines.”

So, in December of that year, Policarpio partnered with his college friend and IT expert, Jeremy Obial, and the two worked together to set up Global Wireless Connections (GWC), an agency that offers companies the capability to use mobile technology as a marketing tool.

A FIRST IN THE LOCAL MARKET

GWC’s major product offerings include such marketing software as Text Raffle, for which consumers can text in the unique codes found on purchased products; Mobile Voting, Mobile Coupon, which enables companies to distribute mobile coupons that customers can present to stores; and SMS Advertising, which sends permission-based texts.

“But what makes us different from other IT providers is the end-to-end service that we provide our clients,” say Policarpio. “In addition to the IT portion of the work—software, access code, database, etc.—we also handle total campaigns from concept to execution.”

Most of GWC’s initial investment of about P10 million went to the building of a secure, reliable, and scalable IT infrastructure. Says Obial: “We use clustered servers—multiple servers working as one—so we can process millions of SMS daily. We use IBM’s storage area network technology (SANs) for our database storage, and store all of our mission-critical systems in ePLDT’s Vitro Data Center. Our systems run continuously, provide the highest level of data protection, and have the scalability to store over 32 terabytes of data.” To make its mobile technology system work, GWC also had to form tie-ups with the country’s three mobile services providers, namely Globe, Smart, and Sun Cellular.

Obial and Policarpio used the remainder of their start-up capital to lease a cramped, one-room office along Shaw Boulevard. Hiring just three employees to begin with, they went from company to company presenting their mobile marketing platform. “The first few months were definitely tough,” recalls Policarpio. “Since we were the first of our kind, a lot of companies were skeptical about the benefits of our new service. But we persisted because we strongly believed in our company and were determined to make mobile marketing a big thing.”

THE BIG BREAK

GWC’s lucky break came in April 2004. This was when Unilever, the consumer products giant, commissioned the company to handle its first mobile marketing campaign, the Axe “Big Bike Promo.” Under the scheme, Axe would give away big bikes worth close to P1 million to five lucky consumers who had bought the product and had sent the chosen unique code attached to it through SMS. “It was a huge success compared to Axe’s traditional raffles that used drop boxes, generating exponentially higher entries and significantly increased sales,” says Policarpio. “Because of its success, Unilever rolled out several other mobile campaigns, and other companies soon followed suit, among them Pepsi, SC Johnson, Western Union, and Bankard.”

GWC’s current clientele consists mainly of consumer product companies, retail companies, and financial institutions, with such notable projects as Rexona’s “First Day Funk” and Gatorade’s “Get Into the NBA.” All throughout 2005 and 2006, GWC launched one major mobile campaign almost every week, and in only three years’ time managed to compile a database of over four million text participants.

“Our earnings are derived from our share in mobile campaign revenues and from the service fee paid by our clients,” says Policarpio. “The bulk of our work and expenses were during our first year. Now, using the same hardware, we just tweak our existing programs to suit the particular needs of our clients. GWC has been profitable since our first year of operations and we recovered our initial investment by our third year. We have sustained a healthy, double-digit growth rate during the past few years, and at present hold a market share of about 50 percent.”

Today, riding on its success, GWC now has 35 full-time employees and has moved to a new office in the Ortigas business center in Pasig City. Policarpio and Obial remain as bullish as ever. “Overall, the industry is still in its infancy,” they say. “We still have to tap a lot of brands in the country that haven’t tried mobile marketing technology yet, especially small and medium enterprises—and, of course, there’s the even bigger opportunity abroad.”

Contact details:

GLOBAL WIRELESS CONNECTION
22/F Tycoon Center
Pearl Drive, Pasig
Telephone: (02) 910-0105
Website: www.gwconnections.com