How can you charge your mobile campaigns?
While mobile is taking an increasingly large chunk of consumers’ time marketers are slow to divert their ad spend. Google’s Lisa Bora looks at how it can be used effectively to make compelling campaigns.
Does size matter? When it comes to screens, Australian advertisers seem to think so, devoting just 8 per cent of total ad spend in Australia to mobile, despite them taking up a third of total daily media consumption.
Will this change in 2015? Many Aussie advertisers say that they recognise the importance of mobile but are uncertain how to proceed.
If you’re in this position, here are three guiding principles that you may find helpful as you look to make your marketing more mobile-ready this year:
The three C’s of mobile content
Mobile content should tap into at least one of these three unique properties of mobile:
- Control: As a physical object, phones invite users to touch them. Incorporate this impulse into your campaigns by giving users the power to use their phone as a remote control, or as a means to interact with other screens. This is a great way to give your campaigns a more dynamic feel. One of my favourite examples of this is Cheetos’ Cheetapult game: the game is controlled by a mobile phone acting as a virtual slingshot to fling Cheetos from their phone into a video playing on their desktop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp8clKYeCUU
- Context: If you’re anything like me, your phone follows you wherever you go. According to Morgan Stanley, 91 per cent of people keep their mobile within three feet of them, 24/7, 365 days a year. This rich combination of location and time gives marketers can context that can lead to innovative campaigns. For example, the 35-year old Sunshine Aquarium in Tokyo created a “Penguin Navi” app that used virtual penguins to help people navigate the 1km walk from the nearest subway stop. This resulted in a 152 per cent increase in attendance in one month, with no changes in programming or exhibits.
- Customisation: mobile is the ultimate personal platform. The more customisation you offer people, the more the will feel they ‘own’ the experience. Virgin Mobile’s Game of Phones allowed users to look for prizes that suited them, and chase them down when it was convenient.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5bGRQyeEgw
What does it look like when it works? One of my favourite recent examples is McDonald’s “Surprise Alarm”, which let people wake up to free treats, music and video each day.
McDonalds took a general observation about smartphone users — the alarm clock is one of the most used functions on a smartphone — and tied it to a strategic goal: promoting McDonalds’ breakfast options. The result was a McNugget of an idea and an execution that was both useful and playful.
According to PQ Media, Australians spend an average of 16 and a half hours per week on their mobile. With the right ideas, marketers can tap into this. These first few weeks of 2015 are the perfect time to get your creative juices flowing, and add a dash of mobile to your marketing palette.
Lisa Bora is head of mobile for Google Australia
Or you could just forget about all this naff crap and remember a phone is first and foremost a device of convenience. And as a marketer or a product manager ask what problem can mobile solve and what do your customers need. It could be an app (we don’t need another alarm clock) or simply a responsive website that displays content relevant to my location / time of day etc etc
You don’t have to set out to reinvent mobile. Just be a mature marketer and stop being a slave to silicon valleys ‘must embrace the latest to be relevant/cool’ attitude.
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I wish people would stop rolling out the ‘mobile deserves the same % of ad spend as time spent’. It’s lazy.
As the above piece goes on to prove, the real benefit come from immersive solutions not just more bloomin’ ads.
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The average person spends 37 minutes per day on the toilet (*), therefore 2.5% of ad-spend should be on cubicle advertising.
(*) I made the number up, but I think you get my drift.
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People use their mobile for a host of reasons including entertainment. The amount of money some are making from such apps because people like them is hardly “naff crap”.
Personally, I think the McDonalds campaign was a very clever, fun idea. If it engaged consumers to learn more about their products, visit stores, share with friends etc, in this light hearted, value add, entertaining way then well done to the marketing team behind it.
I’d love to know who the agencies were that worked on campaign – well done to them all.
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If every media took the ‘people spend x amount of time hence x amount of spend should be allocated’ then outdoor would be a monster as 100% of people generally go outside most days, public transport advertising would also be huge … so would a host of things.
Time spent has nothing to do with allocations – Google should know that (it was only 7-8 years ago they dubunked this myth by trumpeting the low page dwell of Google search pages as evidence they were more effective)
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“Customisation: mobile is the ultimate personal platform. The more customisation you offer people, the more the will feel they ‘own’ the experience. Virgin Mobile’s Game of Phones allowed users to look for prizes that suited them, and chase them down when it was convenient.”
How exactly does a phone that allows me to pick prizes I want constitute the customisation of my “ultimate personal platform”. Seems like a far fetched effort to name drop Virgin…
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