A case in point is a brand experience where real and virtual worlds intersect, called The Grid. A mobile social network that allows users to chat with friends, locate them on a map and share media, The Grid is a first for the African continent. Part Facebook, part Flickr, and a dash of Twitter combined with a GPS-type navigation system, The Grid allows customers to share their lives in a mobile location-based matrix with all of their friends.

The application is all about socializing on the go. If users want to have a cup of coffee with a friend, all they need do is log into The Grid to see which friends are nearby and tag the location of a nearby coffee shop. Then they send a coffee invitation with directions to tempt their mate to pop on over. If the coffee drinking duo wants more friends to join them, they can log in again and type up a blog, message or record a quick video and invite everyone who’s free and happens to be nearby.

Because The Grid displays the user’s approximate position on a street map, everyone can easily see where friends are and what they are doing where. Users from any network can join in because the independent and network-neutral application was developed to showcase innovative new technologies to all South Africans.

“There are several areas where users get significant value when interacting with The Grid,” says Vincent Maher, portfolio manager for social media at Vodacom. “The service enables low-cost and real-time conversations, as well as an opportunity to meet new people and interact with them via mobile phones. Then users can create the mobile equivalent of a blog by combining multimedia elements and maps to show where the content was created. The Grid is a highly social environment, and what we are seeing is that people love to share their experiences and contribute to creating a social map of their experiences across all walks of life in South Africa.”

The Grid is offered as a free or value-added service to users, who only pay for the data usage from their mobile phone to access the service. “Right now people are using The Grid to meet and interact with friends and new people, and to share their experiences through photos and stories about the things they do in their day-to-day lives. The service is busy most of the day, but usage peaks in the evenings when people are home from work and relaxing,” Maher says.

The winner of the New Telecommunications Service at the Comms MEA Awards—held to recognize outstanding performance in the Middle East and African telecommunications sector—The Grid’s branding plays a significant role in promoting the larger Vodacom brand as a technological mover and shaker. Not only does it underscore innovation as a key brand value, but it does so in a way that is completely experiential. What’s more, it is changing the way marketing is delivered by offering a new paradigm for brand messaging.

“The Grid demonstrates how the physical and digital can be meshed to create a more compelling and relevant marketing message,” Maher says. “By tying location to the delivery of messages it means small businesses finally have a viable digital platform to advertise on, and this means that bigger brands can leverage multiple locations simultaneously to interact with their customers in an interesting, innovative way. There are a lot of very interesting ways that brands can leverage The Grid to integrate digital and mobile campaigns with the physical world. The revenue model has been developed in such a way that deeper integration can be done to encourage users to go to specific places as part of a promotion. Another element of the model is the ability to deliver location-targeted advertising, which makes the content of the ads more relevant.

At the heart of The Grid is the digital marketing “holy grail”—the viral effect. “Usage is driven partly by viral growth as users invite their friends to join and partly by innovative media integrations,” Maher says. The more friends users have on The Grid, the more they can get out of the service and the more they can do with it.

“The stickiness is directly connected to how many friends a user has and the quality of conversations. The ability to meet new people without revealing your mobile number is also very appealing and, as users become more advanced, they start to use the features like the street maps and content uploads,” he says.

To launch the new service, Vodacom commissioned the world’s first geo-tagged documentary for mobile phones, which centered on the issue of youth culture in South Africa’s biggest urban township, Soweto. Called Mobikasi (literally translated this means mobile township), the mobile documentary utilizes The Grid’s location-based service capabilities to tag real-life physical locations and link them to relevant content in the movie.

When users look at the film, they can explore Sowetan youth culture on their mobile phones from anywhere in South Africa through The Grid’s map interface, or by physically touring the famous township and watching documentary clips on their phones at the locations where they were shot.

Mobikasi features people, music, fashion, social issues and places of interest and is unique in that it is not linear in nature. Rather, Mobikasi splits the content up into 25 one-minute inserts, and each is geo-tagged to the location where it was shot. This means that viewers can now explore Soweto’s vibrant youth culture by virtually “traveling” through a mobile street map of the township and stopping off at points of interest to enjoy the short video clips about each destination.

The mobile documentary has proved so successful that a second season of Mobikasi is on its way and will take place in other townships around South Africa.

In short, The Grid is a smart social networking solution with a branding strategy and message that targets a continent where mobile connections are more pervasive than television, the radio or the Internet.

Mandy de Waal is a columnist and journalist based in Pretoria, South Africa where she writes for a range of technology, financial and marketing titles. For more information, visit her blog.