A few days ago I found a small box in my office. Inside a mobile phone packed in sand and nails. A what? A mobile phone inside a plastic bag full of sand and nails. There was a hand written letter: “Dear Andreas, attached is a very tough phone. I’m curious if you can break it”. The writer is somebody called Sven from the brand agency Kamps Markenberatung in Berlin.

I do not know Sven, but after checking back via Xing my suspicions are affirmed: I’m the “victim” of a viral marketing kampaign. I should be so much interested in the sandy mobile phone to blog about it. As you can read this, it worked…

The mobile phone is a Sonim XP1. Quite big, chunky, and ugly. But that’s part of the specs, because it is the toughest outdoor cell phone. At least that’s what the producer claims. I have cleaned it with floating water and thrown it on concrete several times. Did not seem to hurt the phone.

But hey: you send a mobile phone to a supplier of mobile games, and the phone is not cappable of executing Java?!?!?! Ok, maybe it’s good for doing something else? Maybe for phone calls? Checking the specs: yes, it can do that. So all I have to do is sync my contacts. Oh, there is no Outlook sync? Any other software? How do I get my contacts into the phone? Typeing in? What?

Ok, that was a neat marketing campaign, that would succeed if the product is a good one. As there is a tendancy to have two or three mobile phones, I would have taken it with me sometimes. But I will never ever type in all my contacts! I do not have time for that and I would rather take a cheap phone with Outlook sync and I would replace it, after it has fallen into a puddle.

There are other victims of the campaign in Germany: Florian and Nico received such a box as well.

So what should I do now with the phone? My girl friend said she has managed to break every electronic device yet, should I give it to her for testing? If we do not break it the agency want’s to get the phone back. That’s not cool - if you want bloggers to write about it, they should at least have some benefit.