If you were in Beijing during the Summer Olympics and had the properly equipped Bluetooth cell phone, you could have seen select Coca-Cola commercials on the mobile run while at Olympic stadia, arenas and playing fields as well as at restaurants and other hot spots sprinkled throughout Beijing and Shanghai.
While the jury is still out relative to the bottom-line effectiveness of Coke extending its marketing reach in this manner to outdoor entertainment venues, the Summer Games endeavor represents yet another way that the mobile marketing waters are being tested.
Closer to home geographically, consider how AtmosphereBBDO New York extended the reach of the Bud Light “Dude” character whose different iterations of the word “Dude” to convey assorted emotions and attitudes first became popular via various commercials out of DDB Chicago.
Though DDB created the “Dude” guy, AtmosphereBBDO mapped out a digital strategy giving him an engaging online and cell phone presence. Last month the digital “Dude” campaign scored an OMMA Award for Online Creativity in the food/beverage category.
Log onto dudemadness.com and among your options are multiple “Dude” phone messages, each with a different vocal inflection to convey a certain emotion, tone and/or state of mind. You can send a voicemail to a friend’s cell phone with whatever iteration of “Dude” you desire. This is followed with a text message translation of what the “Dude” you hear actually means.
“It’s a mobile component which is both voice and text to extend a successful on-brand character and message for Bud Light,” related David Bear, executive director of mobile for AtmosphereBBDO.
“You either have to have entertainment value or an application that is useful,” stressed BBDO New York executive creative director Greg Hahn. “The cell phone is such a personal thing. If you interrupt or barge into it, you run the risk of alienating the people you’re trying to court. Yet you can’t ignore the medium. A lot of clients have become increasingly interested in mobile phones and devices because they’ve become the new laptop computer. They are where laptops were a few years ago.”
Examples of practical applications include relevant information based on the user’s location (where to find the cheapest gasoline, a Starbucks finder, an AT&T Store locator), a branded pedometer to track one’s walking mileage, an iPhone link to participate in and/or monitor an eBay auction, and a coupon offering a monetary discount on a service or product.
And entertainment can take varied forms. Hahn cited the lauded HBO “Voyeur” campaign.
While many are familiar with the high profile web, VOD and outside venue components of that campaign, often overlooked is the mobile aspect through which curious viewers could access additional content over their cell phones.
The mobile content centered on what’s captured by a security camera on the top floor stairwell of the “Voyeur” apartment building.
Amidst the various goings-on in the building over the Internet, attentive viewers might notice that fire sprinklers went off suddenly on the top floor. It’s an incidental moment that nonetheless might pique the curiosity of certain viewers. To find out what set off the sprinklers, the stairwell security camera footage can be accessed over cell phones and other mobile devices.
And according to Hahn, people indeed sought out the additional material, again further serving to brand HBO. as the place for storytelling.
Spike in interest
As earlier reported in SHOOT, Nokia has reached out to its consumer mobile device users to shoot original content for a competition in which winning material will be incorporated into a short film (nine to 12 minutes) directed by feature filmmaker Spike Lee.
The final film–with content shot on Nokia mobile devices–is slated to debut on Oct. 14 at a Club Nokia venue in Los Angeles and then presumably online.
The Nokia contest generated thousands of submissions which were culled down to 30 finalists with Lee choosing the work he will use in the collaborative film project. (For a look at finalist footage, log onto www.nokiaproductions.com).
iPhone Indeed the user-generated content dynamic has its place in the mobile marketing arena. But the landscape is growing on varied fronts, fueled in part by the growing penetration of high-tech mobile devices.
“The iPhone, its competition and other high-end devices afford brands the potential to deliver value in terms of video and audio content,” said Atmosphere BBDO’s Bear.
But Bear noted that a big picture perspective lends itself to more relevant, viable mobile marketing solutions, citing his own recent career arc as a case in point.
In 2006, he joined Omnicom Group as VP of business development for the then newly acquired mobile marketing and advertising company IPSH!
While at IPSH!, Bear developed and managed multiple mobile marketing and advertising campaigns for different Fortune 500 companies.
Although that experience at a mobile-only focused shop was gratifying, it led Bear to quickly recognize the value of being at a broader digital advertising/marketing agency, an opportunity that arose when he moved over to another member of the Omnicom family in ’07, AtmosphereBBDO, to head the newly developed mobile and social media practices.
“This new role allowed me to be a person at the table when discussing a broader digital strategy, with mobile serving as one leg of the stool so to speak,” observed Bear.
“It’s important to understand the broader objectives of a client as it relates to digital and then to bring a mobile perspective to that conversation. It’s much better than just being narrowly focused on mobile which can lead often to making mobile an accessory after the fact, no more than an add-on.
“At AtmosphereBBDO,” he continued, “I have the luxury of being able to have a hand in formulating the larger digital strategy, working across all accounts, with creatives embracing me to be part of the early conversations, tapping into my expertise from mobile and social media perspectives. This way, when mobile is discussed, it’s done so in a logical, strategized way to fit into the broader communication plan for a client.”
While Europe and Asia have generally been ahead of the curve in mobile marketing, Bear added that the United States recently surpassed Europe in terms of Internet usage on the phone.
This is attributable in part to such factors as unlimited data plans from carriers and the advent of the iPhone as well as iPhone competitors.
Branding boost A report released this summer by research firm Dynamic Logic concluded that advertising on mobile websites and applications could have a substantive positive impact on brand awareness among prospective consumers. in the marketplace.
The report found that awareness of a particular brand on average increased by a whopping 24 percentage points among those who were exposed to a mobile advertising campaign as compared to those who were not.
However mobile campaigns haven’t yet reached a saturation point, meaning that consumers might be more receptive to them now as opposed to when and if they become too prevalent. and seemingly inescapable.
Thus there’s a delicate balancing act that savvy marketers will need to maintain or they will risk being viewed as no more than creators of mobile spam.
For Bear, the key to success when looking at and developing mobile marketing is “to make sure that it is being driven by consumers’ needs and behavior as they use and seek value from the actual device.”
He affirmed that “only then can brands effectively communicate with consumers through cel phones and mobile devices.”
