PayMate India brings Lowe on board for its advertising duties

PayMate India, a mobile commerce solutions company, has zeroed in on Lowe to handle its creative duties, following a pitch held in October, 2006. Lowe will handle the advertising for PayMate (the company’s signature product). PayMate is an SMS-based mobile payment service launched in July last year, which enables you to make payments using mobile phones.

The pitch saw participation from a dozen agencies, including Euro RSCG, Dentsu Marcom, Mudra, McCann Erickson, TBWA/India and Lowe. It is learnt that the final round saw a tussle between Lowe, McCann Erickson and Dentsu, following which Lowe took away the cake.

Tarun Chauhan, senior vice-president, Lowe, says, “For us, the fact that we’re building the category from scratch is a strong motivation.” He adds that no matter what media is used, the task will be to bring about a behaviour change amongst consumers, getting them to see mobile phones as a viable option for payments. “We’ll do this by adding a credibility story to our communication,” he says.

The search for a media agency is still on, and will be finalised only after a communication strategy has been worked out. PayMate India wishes to employ an ideal plan which offers a mix of conventional and innovative media solutions.

However, he says, Lowe grabbed their attention by going beyond the brief, and instead of solely defining the brand, Lowe tried to understand the DNA of the category which came closest to PayMate’s value proposition. “Also, Lowe brings to the table the right mix of experience, people and spirit, which makes the agency an ideal partner in the m-commerce evolution,” adds Sharma.

As consumer adoption towards a completely new payment platform may not necessarily be achieved through conventional advertising vehicles, marketing PayMate will also involve implementing category building tools.

As agencyfaqs! had reported earlier, the company’s campaigns will be divided into phases, with the first phase involving spends of around Rs 3-4 crore. These will be stepped up significantly in the later phases. There will be four-five campaigns in a year. In the first phase, the task will be to address the mindset of the consumers and get them warmed up to the concept of making payments through mobile phones. The second phase will encourage people to conduct more and more transactions through their mobiles phones. This will be done by showing ads with specific benefits (such as an airline ticket purchase or a payment for a broadband service) as well as generic ads.

© 2007 agencyfaqs!