SINGAPORE: Incorporating Facebook into a campaign aimed at users of basic feature phones in Indonesia and the Philippines helped to lift key brand metrics while taking ad recall to "exceptionally high" levels, Mondelēz International has revealed.

The snack food multinational released findings from a six-week trial that ran in both countries to promote Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate and which marked the first stage of the company's Growth Markets Accelerator Programme.

This mobile marketing joint initiative brings together Mondelēz, Facebook and Carat, the global media network, to reach new consumers in key emerging markets by using the Facebook experience on feature phones, Digital Market Asia reported.

Even though social media usage is high in both countries, smartphone penetration is just 15% in the Philippines and 23% in Indonesia, so the study focused on "feature phone first" campaigns in these markets.

The aim was to identify whether Facebook on feature phones could serve as an effective platform to drive traditional brand metrics, such as recall, message association and purchase intent. Smartphones were also included to provide a comparison.

After reaching over 36m consumers on their phones, most of which were not smartphones, Mondelēz reported "exceptionally high" ad recall for its "joytime" campaign as well as significant increases in message association and purchase intent.

"The great results from this study tells us Facebook on feature phones can serve as an effective platform to positively influence core brand metrics," said Peter Mitchell, global innovations director at Mondelēz International.

"[It] can also serve as an effective medium to reach consumers of more mainstream demographic groups in emerging markets," he added.

Echoing his comments, Doroty Arroyo, senior brand manager for Cadbury Dairy Milk Philippines, said: "This campaign has validated that through feature phones we can reach millions more Mondelēz consumers in the Philippines, opening up the opportunity for us to have connected consumer experiences that integrate mobile to a wider audience."

Mondelēz plans to build on the success of the trial by launching the next phase of the Accelerator Programme in India in a few weeks time.

Data sourced from Digital Market Asia; additional content by Warc staff