Motorola wraps Beijing headquarters

BEIJING--Motorola has installed Beijing?s largest outdoor ad to date to boost its profile as an innovator. At 13 stories tall, the poster advertising Motorola?s upscale PEBL U6 model is larger than the iconic Financial Times poster that blanketed Hong Kong?s IFC 2 building in 2003. ?Motorola recently rolled out the global advertising campaign in China and northeast Asia to capitalize on the worldwide demand for our handsets, including the PEBL U6,? said Ian Chapman-Banks, general manager, marketing & business development, mobile devices for North Asia based in Beijing. ?The culmination has been the wrapping of the Motorola headquarters building in Beijing with one of the largest advertising images ever seen in China.??The PEBL U6 campaign was created by WPP Group?s Ogilvy &? Mather, with media buying by WPP?s MindShare, and was shot by fashion photographer Platon in Iceland. Besides China and Hong Kong, the campaign is running in Southeast Asian markets like Singapore and Malaysia. Alongside print and outdoor ads, a TV spot shows a meteorite falling to earth and becoming polished through the decades into a smooth pebble, symbolizing the PEBL U6 handset?s simplicity and rounded shape. Over the past year, Motorola has intensified marketing on its hippest phones in China, its largest market outside the U.S., starting with the RAZR, as a strategy to regain credibility among trendsetters. Although the American company accounted for more than half of China?s mobile phone sales just five years ago, its market share has dropped below Nokia in recent years to low double digit figures in 2005. spots.??? ?That?s a deadly situation for Motorola, which is increasingly dependent in China. About one-third of its global handset sales now come from the mainland, largely due?to the rise of China Mobile. The world's largest mobile phone service provider has more than 240 million of China?s 375 million overall subscribers, according to China's Ministry of Information Industry. The company? signs up more than 3 million new users per month.