Advertising
IBM’s Beyond Advertising Executive Brief
IBM has released a new executive brief title Beyond Advertising. The Path to the Digital Consumer which is a summary of consumer trends that they are seeing, and more importantly, reacting to. The study highlights the thinking of 2800 marketing professionals from six different countries who are targeting consumers that are 13 and older. There is definitely some valuable information for digital marketing professionals, but here are a few things that really stand out.
Move from impressions to impact. This is especially true for mobile marketing where simple CTR doesn’t cut it, mainly because CTR is always going to be skewed by how total impressions. The better metric for measurability is impact i.e. engagement.
Massive Passives, cool kids and gadgetiers. These are three distinct defined by consumption patterns:
Massive Passives are the vast majority of people who are middle-to late adopters, they rarely make technology changes unless forced too.
Cool kids, are typically older and have more money than time. They are quick to adopt new technology—basically the innovators or early adopters.
Gadgetiers are typically younger and have more time than money. This group will be more accepting of sponsored content in exchange for value while the cool kids would be less accepting.
Consumer-centric marketing. This isn’t a new term but basically highlights the need for micro-targeted messaging that is not driven by media channels.
Brands-actional advertising is the marketing that simultaneously addresses both transactional and brand requirements.
AAA ‘mobilizes’ brand in smart way
AAA recently released a free mobile application that allows people to see which local businesses offer membership discounts. Technically, this is not a complicated application, as it relies solely on existing existing GPS technology. But it’s a great example of ‘mobilizing’ a brand. By mobilizing, I mean how do you take a core offering or benefit of the brand and liberate it. In this case, the valuable AAA discount travel services offering. But, what AAA has figured out is that by mobilizing that key benefit, they could allow customers (and maybe future customers) to engage with their brand in a new and very useful way. I would say this is a good example of how marketers should be looking at mobile; figure out what your brand does and mobilize it.
5 tips for creating good mobile advertising
When you’re working with a nascent technology like mobile, it’s common to get requests for “best practices.” While I’m still not sure if there is truly a set of best practices, like you see for direct marketing, there are certainly some things that seem to have some repeated success. Here’s a list I developed of 5 things that you can pretty much always apply to mobile marketing.
- Don’t create complex hierarchy. I’ll often work with writers who approach mobile the same way they approach banners and email. It doesn’t really work. One of the reasons is that when you’re working in small spaces you can’t have a lot of complex or layered hierarchy. For example, you don’t have the luxury (or space) of writing both a headline and a subhead. Just get to the point.
- When designing for mobile, go for high contrast not subtle details. You know all the stuff that designers (and I’m one of them) love to pour into web projects? Well, that stuff doesn’t hold up so well in mobile. e.g. hairline rules, gradients, etc.
- If you’re going to say something, try to say it in six words or less. This is a good trick that creatives use when concepting for outdoor spaces like billboards. It forces you to really condense your message. Extra tip here, it’s okay to speak in the vernacular of mobile. So drop the m-dashes, this isn’t the queen’s english you’re writing.
- Whenever possible, test creative on actual devices. I can’t stress this enough. It makes such a big difference looking at these things in their real environment and not on a big 1080p resolution monitor. Try it on as many devices as you can. You’d be surprised how differently each screen and browser renders graphics.
- Don’t create mobile marketing by shrinking down a regular web banner. Mobile sites are littered with WAP banners like this right now. Illegible font sizes and mis-proportioned logos are the give-away. And a mistake they all make is having some kind of button as a call to action. WAP banners are giant buttons, you don’t need extra stuff.
myOrder. The best mobile idea I’ve seen in a while.
Everything that makes mobile a great marketing channel, essentially comes down to two things. The first being the ability to offer people an immediate benefit, which usually means making their lives easier. These are the the task-based applications and services that we see a lot of. It can be anything from mobile banking applications to purchasing movie tickets.
The second is the one-to-one personalization. Although maybe not as sexy as an applciation, it provides people (and marketers) with a personal channel like no other. This can be everything from social networks to mobile coupons that you get just for being a good customer.
So wen you see a service, or in this case an application, that accomplishes both you know it’s going to be a success. Enter myOrder, a downloadable mobile application that allows anybody in a restaurant, club or hotel to place an order through their mobile phone. Essentially, this is how it works.
You’ve downloaded myOrder from the Apple app store (currently there doesn’t seem to be anything for RIM devices, hint hint) and you’re in a busy bar. Well, if that particular bar is a myOrder partner, meaning that they had to pony up some cash for a special monitor and an internet connection, then you can just order your drink based on the bar’s menu and have it delivered to your assigned seat, which you can also specify. There’s some GPS stuff going on in the background that determines where you are, but nothing too technical. Et voila, you get your drink. So what’s the value proposition for everybody involved here? Good question, let’s explore.
First the customer. You get drinks much faster and potentially with some sort of VIP status that you may not have before. Next the bar owner. In addition to being able to expedite drinks faster, the bar owner can use this as an incentive to offer patrons drink specials, which comes in very handy when they’re about to leave. Also, they can analyze ordering behavior which helps them as well. And lastly, the advertisers. The advertisers have the ability to add contextual ads within the ordering system. So if you’re ordering a vodka/soda, you may see an ad at the top of the screen from Skyy. Nothing too intrusive, just a little banner or link. Here’s a good example of who already doing it. Skyy Vodka campaign
So there you have it. A great mobile idea that makes people’s lives easier and allows a on-to-one personal connection to customers. Well played myOrder, well played.
Better phone, better ad recall? Maybe
There have been a whole bunch of stories published lately regarding the superior recall of advertising on the iPhone. A lot of this was triggered by the emarketer report I’m sure. But, it’s interesting nonetheless. Kind of makes sense though, right? I mean, the more emotionally invested people are in their smartphone then the more they are likely to invest in the messages on them. Not too mention the superior display the iPhone has. Furthermore, the iPhone seems to be the most “personal” of all the smartphones out there and I can kind of see a connection there too. It will be interesting to see if Google phones and RIM devices can catch up.
iPhone Advertising. In a Word, Video.
There’s no doubt that the iPhone is a marketer’s dream. I mean, you’ve got a device that is 24/7 with incredibly high engagement levels and built-in social opportunities. But, what really makes the iPhone great for marketers comes down to one thing, video. At the end of the day all of the talk about 3G this and 4G that is about being able to move video around. The current iPhone is built for streaming video, one of the reasons for its popularity. And plenty of advertisers from Nikon to Burger King have already tapped into its 20 million users, not to mention the iPod Touch which has about another 15 million. You can stick video in an ad, connect to it in a youtube link or even use it in a downloadable app . It’s omnipresent and quite frankly if you don’t understand that it’s how people are consuming content online and on smart phones then you’ve got some catching up to do.
Mobile Ads are Picking Up in 2009. Shocker.
Mobile advertising growth hasn’t been stellar over the past few months but is expected to rev up later this year. U.S. advertisers are seen spending $229 million on mobile ads this year, up 26% from $169 million in 2008, according to a report by Brian Wieser, global director of forecasting for Magna. Furthermore, Google will help things along by making a strong play in the space. I hear that they’re in bed with everyone from Samsung to Motorola. Good luck to Jha and Sanjay over there at Motorola, this may be their hail mary. Still, not sure what happened to all that Microsoft stuff they were talking about not long ago.
Amazon’s Kindle DX. Don’t Get Too Excited.
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Amazon is trotting out their new Kindle DX. With a larger format screen, DX is designed for every day uses e.g. viewing documents like PDFs that originate as electronic files but ultimately are printed out, wasting valuable paper and toner. Amazon’s Kindle also seems to be aimed at academia, alleviating the problem of out of date editions and having students carrying around half a dozen books at any given time. As far as advertising opportunities though, there are none. In fact there are no opportunities for the foreseeable future since there is no method for serving ads on the device currently in place. That being said, there’s no real loss here since Kindle would never replace a mobile device, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon introduces a version in the future that is advertising enabled in exchange for a discount on content.
