South African daily magazine Isolezwe, based in Durban and published in the area’s native isiZulu language, has bucked the print industry trend over the past five years by showing consistent growth. In November 2014, with the latest audited circulation figures at 110 000, Isolezwe wanted to reward and engage their loyal audience while aiming to increase their circulation even further.
Isolezwe introduced an element of mobile gamification of the Premier Soccer League (PSL) to their audience, with the aim of creating sustained mobile engagement over a period of seven months.
The campaign was run over Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), which works on all mobile phones and is very familiar to Isolezwe’s target audience, who use USSD to recharge airtime and send “Please Call Me” SMSs.
The Isolezwe case study
In November 2014, Zulu-language newspaper Isolezwe had audited circulation figures of 110 000. Yet the Durban-based newspaper wanted to reward and engage its loyal audience while aiming to increase its circulation even further.
But how can a daily newspaper grow its circulation in a world where print media is strongly challenged by digital media, and many print newspapers and magazines are battling dwindling circulation figures?
Isolezwe decided to introduce an element of mobile gamification of the Premier Soccer League (PSL) to their audience, with the aim of creating sustained mobile engagement over a period of seven months.
Research on past promotional campaigns indicated that basic and feature phones dominated Isolezwe’s audience. This tied in with industry research estimating that only 48% of South African adults own a data-connected mobile phone. As such, the campaign was run over USSD, which works on all mobile phones. It is also very familiar to Isolezwe’s target audience, who use USSD to recharge airtime and send “Please Call Me” SMSs.
Bringing an element of gamification to life, readers could purchase a Tuesday or Thursday daily edition and enter the Asidlale competition, using a unique code printed on the front page of each newspaper.
With a copy of Isolezwe purchased, entrants would simply dial the USSD number, enter their unique code and, once proof of purchase was confirmed in real time, they could make quick predictions for each of the eight games scheduled. Predictions were kept simple with the choices being “Team A Win”, “Team B win” or “draw”. All screens during the USSD session appeared in the isiZulu language.
Each round had a prize of R5 000 for anyone who correctly predicted the results of all eight games. In the case of there being no winners, R2 000 was carried over to the next round.
Results
The Asidlale competition enjoyed 160 000 interactions over USSD, with 61 000 successful predictions cast by 41 000 unique entrants.
In turn, this drove newspaper sales to increase by 4 000 to 4 500 copies per pool day, which is 6% of the audited circulation figure. In addition, social interaction with the Isolezwe brand on Facebook and Twitter increased around the live pool days.
Linking print experience to mobile is now an ongoing priority for Isolezwe and the second Asidlale promotion is currently running during the 2015/2016 PSL season.
In short
By using USSD services, Isolezwe created a ground-breaking campaign that led to unheard of results in the print media industry.
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