An­na-Lisa Paul

Carib and Trend Me­dia, al­so known as Loop, have joined hands to launch a mo­bile plat­form to in­crease their client base lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Dur­ing the launch at the ANSA McAL Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Suite, Queen's Park Oval, yes­ter­day, Carib's mar­ket­ing man­ag­er, An­ton Forte, sought to un­der­score the im­por­tance of tech­nol­o­gy in one's dai­ly lives.

He said: "Re­gard­less of your so­cio-eco­nom­ic sta­tus or lo­ca­tion in the world, tech­nol­o­gy brings us to­geth­er at light­en­ing speeds. "Com­bined with so­cial me­dia plat­forms, peo­ple can ex­tend their reach through mo­bile de­vices and pool their re­sources in a mean­ing­ful way,"he added.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that both the world was chang­ing in an alarm­ing way, Forte said con­sumers had be­come less tol­er­ant; com­mu­ni­cat­ing more with each oth­er via so­cial me­dia; they were now more in­formed; had be­come less loy­al and were chal­leng­ing mar­ket­ing mes­sages.

Ad­mit­ting that Carib Brew­ery had pre­vi­ous­ly de­pend­ed on sales records, as well as sur­veys and ques­tion­naires to gain valu­able mar­ket in­for­ma­tion in­to con­sumers wants, Forte said dig­i­tal me­dia had now made it eas­i­er to iden­ti­fy new con­sumers, mea­sure affin­i­ty and sen­ti­ment, de­tect chang­ing be­hav­iours, iden­ti­fy and man­age risks, en­abling a time­ly re­sponse, track com­peti­tors and man­age mar­ket mes­sages.

Fo­cus­ing on the Carib mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion, Forte de­scribed it as "yet an­oth­er touch point for the brand to en­gage with its con­sumers."

With so­cial me­dia now gen­er­at­ing vast amounts of new and un­struc­tured da­ta about con­sumer be­hav­iour, opin­ions, de­sires and needs, Forte said the new ap­pli­ca­tion would al­low users to learn more about the Car­ni­val cam­paign, win free Carib beer and learn of the lat­est ad­di­tion to the Carib brand, Carib Radler.

Al­so de­liv­er­ing re­marks was Vin­dra Dhan­raj, Trend Me­dia's coun­try man­ag­er, who re­vealed that Loop car­ried out a lo­cal sur­vey last No­vem­ber and found that 48 per cent of those who par­tic­i­pat­ed, spent at least four hours a day on their mo­bile de­vices.

Con­grat­u­lat­ing the Carib team on the move to launch a mo­bile first plat­form to dri­ve con­sumer aware­ness and build a com­mu­ni­ty of Carib fans around the world, Dhan­raj said the "Al­ways On"plat­form would al­low Carib fans the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case their en­joy­ment with Carib beer, earn re­wards through en­gag­ing and shar­ing their ex­pe­ri­ences by post­ing im­ages of them or their lime, hav­ing a good time with the brand and to be the first to know all that's new with the brand, in­clud­ing the Carib cal­en­dar of events.

Adding that the site was adap­tive for the mo­bile user to en­sure the best ex­pe­ri­ence, she as­sured that there was an age gate that pro­tect­ed con­tent from un­der age view­ers.

Face­book, twit­ter and in­sta­gram users are al­so able to log on through their ac­counts with ease.

Dhan­raj said un­like the tra­di­tion­al ap­pli­ca­tion, there would be no need to down­load or wait for ap­pli­ca­tion ver­sion up­dates as the mo­bile site would have its unique html link that could be book­marked on­to the home screen of any type of mo­bile de­vice with brows­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty.

Trend Me­dia, which is the me­dia so­lu­tions di­vi­sion of the Dig­i­cel Group, will be of­fer­ing the mo­bile site as a ze­ro-rat­ed to all Dig­i­cel da­ta sub­scribers, which means they will en­joy free da­ta brows­ing when on the Carib mo­bile site.