App vs. WAP & Thai Mobile Marketing

Hi everyone

Interesting to read today that VW in the US is launching the latest Golf GTI car, using ONLY an iPhone application as its sole marketing media

Which raises some interesting questions – like when should marketers invest in an iPhone application (App), as opposed to a mobile web service (WAP)?

And what focus should we put on these strategies, compared to the rest of our marketing mix?

In Thailand, with the lack of a 3G network and slower development of mobile web, getting the answer right has never been more important.

So today I want to look at 3 points when considering the benefits of each:

1. Smart Phone Application
- This presentation App vs WAP – what is a marketer to do? does a great job at comparing the pros and cons of each approach. The key benefits of an app are:

1. Allows you to build a richer experience without impacting data speeds / charges. It’s more focused, fun and faster to use then mobile web.
2. Allows you to take advantage of native phone features (GPS, camera & voice). Localisation services using GPS are often a key to app success.
3. Features can work offline. No problems with bad connections.
4. Integration with other services (i.e. Facebook connect) Works well with many new platforms.
5. Can become a great extension of your brand attributes. It’s useful, fun and they almost always perform very well.

On the other hand, in Thailand with perhaps 200,000 iPhones phones you are only looking at less than 1% mobile penetration. Sure there are apps for BB and Android, but not many yet.

And then what % will find/ take up the app? As good as apps are, the audience reach is still at an early stage, and you need a good strategy to get buzz and generate usage

2. Mobile Web Site (WAP site)
The growth in mobile web sites has been pretty big this year. Most media, technology, social networking, gaming and banking/financial companies have one. Check out this list for an insight into 30 of them. The benefits to mobile are sites are:

1. Can work on 100% of devices. We are not restricted to just iPhones, we can adapt the site reach all mobile users.
2. Experience can be optimized to the highest common denominator. Means we can set a high standard across all platforms.
3. You can publish when you want – no approval process by App store required. No more 1 month delays for app approval!
4. iPhone, new Blackberry, Palm, and Android all share same Safari open source application framework Web kit. Makes developing easier.
5. Easier to drive to mobile web vs. drive to mobile App from mobile advertising networks. Driving traffic to a WAP site is easier for marketers.
6. Content from mobile web is searchable / search friendly. It works more like a Web experience people are used to.

Of course the issue is WAP sites need to be made for phones, they are very different and need to be much simpler than web sites.

And let’s face it, with download times and connection problems and a lack of confidence in transacting over the web here – a mobile site approach needs to be simple, well thought out and highly practical to make it work for this market.

3. The Right Mix?
In this excellent 3 min video from President of Major League Baseball in the US explains why for media organizations like his, you need to have both.

Clearly he makes a lot of sense. With apps you get a great experience, but a much smaller market. Albeit a market you can make money from. But with WAP you can get a much bigger reach. For Thailand it does depend on your industry, but some basic rules apply:

1. For WAP if you’re in media, banking, tech or entertainment you need a WAP first and need it now. Most other industries may not have one yet but with estimates saying a majority of Thais will access the Internet primarily through mobile within 2-3 years – you need a WAP strategy now!

2. For iPhone, apps make sense here and are great for a targeted and quite youthful (20-40), urban demographic. As part of an overall digital marketing strategy though, it is not a silver bullet but a great addition to the digital marketing plan.

Even in the States, some are questioning VW’s iPhone launch approach. And so do I. I tend to a agree with this reader who makes interesting strategy comments then finished with:

“In Volkswagen's quest to be the world's largest car marketer, saving money by launching a brilliant new vehicle with an i-phone app is akin to cutting back on an army's bullet budget...you'll have a little extra cash on hand when you've lost the war.”

Cheers, Rob

Feel free to add comments below, or for further questions or advice contact me at rob.h@th.arcww.com

Times are A-Changin' Again for Marketers

Hi everyone

Over my recent holiday break I watched the latest series from the hit TV show Mad Men, about a New York ad agency set in the 1950’s.

It was a time of real insights and storytelling, of brand creation, and when the ad agency had the influence to shape a company’s future. They were times of great change.

Many agency people, and marketing commentators, would love to go back to that same role we once had.

Some people even wonder, with the advent of Web 2.0 and fast & cheap social network enabled content, whether this is the beginning of the end for marketers? Unilever’s so called crowd sourcing experiment is cited as one example of this outsourced marketing movement.

Are we then, as marketers, becoming obsolete?

Those people who haven’t experienced fully the revolution that’s been going on in agencies in the last few years might think so. But I’d argue that agencies are becoming as important as we were in the Mad Men days, but for totally different reasons.

The agency and client model has radically changed to suit the times. Here’s what we’re doing different now, and why I think it’s so important:

1. Understanding & reaching people better: With the shift to social media, changes in consumer preferences, growth in communities, etc. it has never been more important to not only understand relevant consumer insights, but also work out new ways to provide access to these audiences.

“Agencies now help to create or manage customer communities for their clients. They will also create client specific media channels – whether it’s Twitter feeds or Internet radio – which can be used to deliver specific campaigns.” (Phil Johnson, Ad Age, ‘Creating the future of Adland’)

2. Creating engagement not just advertising : Agencies like ours are now are creating acts, not just ads. We therefore must be able create a large type of different brand experiences in different media, but that all speak with one voice.

That means a marketer and their agency should be able to offer everything from a branded web site, TV campaign, mobile promotion, package design, software applications, PR buzz, online games, branded events, email stream or retail experiences that are all integrated and work together seamlessly.

To do this agencies become more like content super-producers, managing the dozens of technology production and content streams, to come together as one. As Allison Mooney notes, agencies need to think like software companies to survive.

3. Managing the social media experience: Social networking does give more power to our customers – but any marketer will know there is a real challenge in getting a social media project balance right. Just setting it up is not enough, nothing will happen. Spend all your time maintaining it and it will drain your resources. And how do you turn the noise into sales?

An agency is crucial to understand what a brand’s role is in this social media conversation, when to contribute, when to listen, and what tools we can give our consumers to be useful. Ad Age Editor Jonah Bloom said it best: “Social Media isn’t a box to be ticked or a department to be manned or even a campaign to be launched. It’s about thinking differently about marketing, customer service, the entire company.”

4. Helping change the business not just the marketing: This leads to perhaps the biggest revolution has been taking place for marketers: by understanding our changing customers' lives better, we are now better positioned to provide advice on real customer utility. That is, not just better communications – but better products ideas, better services channels, and better ways of being useful in people’s lives.

Look at all the work that’s being done in an agency now, so much of it is about addressing the core issues of the business. In this way, as Wayne Arnold says in this article, we stop being an agency and start being an agent of change.

Welcome to Agency 2.0

Cheers

Feel free to add comments below, or for further questions or advice contact me at rob.h@th.arcww.com

How Location Changes Digital Marketing Pt. 2

Hi everyone

Apologies for the late post this week – so I’ll make it brief.

Following up from last week, I wanted to talk about the ways in which marketers are using digital in retail environments.

While we can’t yet do what GAP did in the film Minority Report, there are some big changes going on in the way we can enhance the retail experience and drive sales.

It’s important because research shows that up to 70% of purchase decision are finalized at the point of purchase. If we can use digital tools to deliver more engaging, more customized and more compelling product experiences this can have a big effect on our sales outcomes.

Let’s look at 2 areas that are making a difference at the shop store.

1. Digital Signage/ Product displays: Whether it’s in the shop window to attract people inside, or as part of the signage within the store, digital enables us to localize and customize the content depending on customer type, time of day or seasonal changes. Add to that interactivity, and it starts to become an interesting sales tool.

I love what Samsung are doing in the UK, and you see that digital retail is evolving from just pretty pictures, to far more interactive product experiences that enable people to control what they want to see, even before they get into store and feel the ‘sales pressure’.

Equally powerful but more communication specific is digital signage, like this example from Tesco Europe. The beauty of this signage is its ability to not only give information about products, but give customer/time/location specific offers or information throughout a retail environment, and connect to mobile devices as well.

2. Digital Interactive Sales Tools: Take the above examples and make them even more customized, more sales driven, more involved and you end up with something like this from Nike ID at the Nike store in Fukuoka in Japan.

A great concept which makes the most of a branded destination, by providing and customized sale tool to really put fun back into buying shoes. And isn’t that what we’d love shopping to be all about.

This type of marketing simply evolves from the interactive web site search and explore model that customers already understand. They are in control, and that’s the way they want it.

No matter what industry you are in – technology, automotive, fashion, you name it – there is a relevant retail application that can draw traffic and fast-track the retail sales process for you.

Cheers, Rob

Feel free to add comments below, or for further questions or advice contact me at rob.h@th.arcww.com

How Location Changes Digital Marketing: Pt. 1

Hi everyone

One of the fastest growing and most important areas of digital marketing is based on providing ‘distributed digital experiences’.

That is, reaching out to people in the real world with digital experiences and communications, not just trying to reach them at our branded space online.

Mat Honan from Wired wrote in this article recently about how important location is to people’s decisions, and the impact digital services can have. “Simply put, location changes everything. Where we shop, who we talk to, what we read, what we search for, where we go – they all change once we merge location and the web.”

For marketers that means if you aren’t building location-based digital marketing into everything you do, you will lose them, because their choices are increasingly being dictated by their location.

The social networking tools people use, the mobile applications they choose, the stores they visit – are all influenced by digital location specific content and it's changing the way people behave.

This week I want to look at what marketers are doing with digital marketing installations and location-based mobile marketing experiences.

1. Digital Installations: One of the most visible ways of reaching out to customers is through large scale digital installations, often event-style communications, where people can not only experience visual/video/audio communications, but interact with them as well.

HBO’s Voyeur campaign was a great example of this type of communication, and interesting to see they will follow up with a new campaign called HBO Imagine to be launched soon. The reason why this was so powerful was it used the visibility of an installation medium embedded into everyday life, then led people to explore other mediums to interact with the idea further. Using these installations to excite and inspire further exploration is a key to success.

Other interesting examples of different real-world digital installations the fascinating Nike Chalkbot, Puma’s engaging installation Lift, and the interactive billboard experience Nike ID. This last, mobile digital experience we’ll describe further below.

2. Location Based Mobile Experiences: I’ve spoken about mobile a lot lately, and the reason why it is becoming so important – as highlighted in this excellent Ad Age article – is the realization by most markers “that mobile isn’t an ad play, but an extension of the services and products already on offer. And location is one of the most important contextual clues a mobile phone can provide”.

I’ve listed 4 of the most popular ways that marketers are using this added layer of location to enhance services and communications to customers:
- Mobile Applications: This great mobile real estate app from Zillow allows you check out home prices on houses from where you are
- Social Networking: Location specific social networking communities like 4Square add another layer of utility to online relationships
- Interactive Destinations: Combining the attraction of a digital installation and mobile interactivity, Nike ID campaign a good example
- Location Aware Communications: RFID, Blue-tooth, augmented reality and mobile web are allowing us to communicate with customers at a specific location.

Next week we’ll look how digital experiences are transforming the retail environment, creating unique branded destinations and digital shop-fronts.

Cheers, Rob

Feel free to add comments below, or for further questions or advice contact me at rob.h@th.arcww.com

Facebook, Twitter & Social Context Marketing

Hi everyone

Try this, it will only take a minute.

Click here and enter your Facebook login for this Prototype Experience. Then watch the video.

Pretty cool, huh? This is the direction social networking marketing is going, and it is important for 2 key reasons.

1. Context drives engagement
In the future, the Era of Social Context will mean we are able to serve personalized content to users based on their social networking information. And this ‘contextual’ content will not to be limited to just ads or marketing like the Prototype example, but also include all media sites, e-commerce, corporate sites, and TV.

Every brand will adapt, at some level, to this model.

We are moving quickly from fairly static and one-way social marketing model, for example using just a simple Facebook page, to far more engaging applications using features like Facebook Connect that allow us to create a rich, interactive experience and far greater personalization.

The beauty with this approach is that you don’t have to ask people to enter any details, they just log in to Facebook, and you use things they’ve already shared.

Imagine how we could use this data in a campaign? We could use a customer’s personal photos to create personalized marketing with just them as the hero, as with the Prototype example.

Another good example of this is this case study from Doritos called iD3, where coming up with a new flavour has rarely been so socially connected.

2. Engagement drives sales
Importantly, we can also help a customer with an online purchase decision by asking them to connect with Facebook/Twitter so we can give our recommendation/suggestion on what they should buy.

As we all know, customers are far more likely to be involved and interested in a purchase if the message is just right for them. And that’s just what Volkswagen has created in this cute little ad which looks at the info from your Twitter stream and recommends the car most relevant to you.

Test it for yourself here (Volkswagen Rich Media Twitter ad), and if you still do not have a Twitter account, why not try a celeb Twitter name instead!

This is a simple, but totally engaging tool, with huge sales potential. In this interesting article, The Future of the Social Web, Jerimiah Owy explains how the movement towards Social Commerce is quite simply inevitable.

Of course there will be significant hurdles for brands to address in terms of privacy issues. But these will be overcome as people learn how better to filter their social information, and when they see the personal benefits this marketing can deliver them.

Cheers, Rob

Feel free to add comments below, or for further questions or advice contact me at rob.h@th.arcww.com

Virtual vs. Augmented Reality

Hi everyone

This week I wanted to mention 2 areas that hold a fascinating future for marketers - virtual and augmented reality.

To put it simply, virtual reality creates a whole new digital (virtual) world for people to interact with, while in augmented reality we add a digital layer over the real world (via PC, phone or other digital device) to enhance our view of the existing world.

It's the difference between Second Life virtual game for example, and this fascinating TATS augmented reality phone application.

Virtual reality was the hot topic a few years ago when talking about digital marketing potential, but it rarely gets a mention now.

But this recent overview in the Guardian article notes, virtual worlds are alive and doing very, very well - especially among younger audiences. Online world for kids Habbo has 135 million registered users alone, that's more than the population of most countries!

In virtual worlds brands are able to hold meetings, openings, have launch parties, create virtual showrooms, have exposure at different events - the possibilities are enormous. However despite all this success, you won't find a lot of marketers investing much there.

As the Guardian article says about Second Life: "Only a small fraction of its 19 million registered users are active, and it is still the creative laboratory of the genre."

Quite simply, the virtual experience is not interesting or immersive enough for most adults, yet. Until then, most marketers will keep their budgets on hold.

Augmented Reality, to me, is another story. AR has recently been highlighted in various marketing campaigns as a cool way to show your product via PC or mobile phone, such as in this concert launch by the BBC. But it is much more than just a gimmick, and the potential to change product and brand communications in remarkable ways:

- Create virtual maps/marketing information via phones: Check out world's first augmented reality browser, from Layar
- Connect you with social networks: An incredible augmented ID system from TATs to enhance your social and business networks
- Create digital shop fronts: Check out how we could all be buying clothes soon, in this digital shop front from Zugara
- Bring gaming to life: Want to see the future of gaming - how about a virtual pet on iphone?
- Change the way we teach/learn: How cool would it be if we all had school books like this?

There are endless possibilities to add useful and interesting information onto a world we, and marketers, are already in.

If you want a marketing reality we should start thinking about now for our products and campaigns, this is the one to watch.

Cheers, Rob

Feel free to add comments below, or for further questions or advice contact me at rob.h@th.arcww.com

Our Mobile Marketing Future

Hi everyone

For a long time mobile phones have been both the great hope, and the great disappointment, of digital marketing.

But with the launch of the iPhone, and development of smart phones like the Blackberry & Pre, things are getting really interesting for marketers. For the first time our phones are becoming a primary source for many to access the web and communicate with each other.

And this is driving a huge growth in mobile marketing opportunities in Asia, beyond just the usual mobile 'hot spots' of Japan and Korea.

Thailand in particular has a fast growing smart phone uptake, and one of the highest uses of mobile phones in Asia, so the possibilities here are tremendous.

But before we can realize these opportunities, it's worth highlighting the top mobile marketing mistakes . Too often in the past, marketers have done a poor job at adapting digital to mobile environments. The main points are:

- Design for mobile not PC: Customers want fast access to relevant information. So they need services that recognize they are on the move. They also want location-aware, activity-specific experiences. So thousands of words, massive images, slow downloads, and lots of clicks are NOT the answer.
- Don't ignore mobile's limitations: The phone can't replicate the PC experience. Remember that the screen is smaller, there’s no mouse, no printer, the keyboard is limited, bandwidth may be restricted, and megabytes cost money. But creative marketers can still overcome all of these to deliver fast, fun, fantastic experiences designed just for mobile handsets.
- Do exploit mobile's capabilities: The best mobile experiences take advantage of mobile's strengths. Remember It’s a phone, a camera, a video camera, it sends text messages, It’s location-aware, it’s a micro-payment device, it sends email, has a music player, a video player, a calendar & a browser . If all this doesn’t inspire you and your campaigns, nothing will.

Okay then, so what are our options? Below is a list of mobile marketing tools, and recent best practice examples, that show the beginning of the new mobile marketing revolution:

1. Mobile Web (WAP) Sites: These are great for everything from online retail utilities, to campaign supported sites. But the best sites don't try and do everything, but keep it simple to serve the specific needs of its users. The Bank of America mobile site is often given as an example of a site that does a great job. Find other great WAP sites here.

2. SMS/MMS Campaigns: It's perhaps been around the longest of all mobile marketing desciplines, and is still the most powerful tool for mass interactivity, and continues to evolve. Great SMS campaigns now are about opt-in, two-way involvement and immediate reward. Here's a good example of a campaign to launch an album from the popular Gorilaz band.

3. Mobile applications: With nearly 100,000 iPhone applications now developed, this is now a massive growth area which some people think could rival mobile web access for mobile marketing budgets. Mobile apps range from the fun, to the useful, to the silly. But if done right they can really provide a new way to interact with your audience and drive sales. My favourite branded apps at the moment are Barclays Card app, Grolsch beer fun and Pizza Hut ordering!

4. Mobile Advertising: One marketing tool which has promised much but rarely delivered has meen mobile advertising. The nature of the media and user reluctance to engage rarely makes this a compelling experience. Even advertising supported-mobile models such as Blyk have failed to really catch on. Having said that there is a place for mobile advertising with the right audience and as part of a more integrated mobile approach, as this campaign from K-Mart shows.

5. Mobile Video: As I discussed last week, video is exploding on the web, including on your mobile phone. Consumer generated mobile content, video sharing sites and even specialised video channels for mobiles - such as this mobile TV show from Sony Ericcson - are taking off.

6. Mobile Retail: It's not just marketing, our mobile phones are allowing us to search/shop/buy online like never before. Anything you can do on the web you can do more conveninetly - and often more simply - on your mobile. As this article shows, there are so many ways that creating shopping opportunities via mobile can be used effectively by brands.

7. QR/Short Codes: These so-called 'URL Killers', that allow you to scan a code on your mobile and get immediately connected to a mobile (WAP) site, have been around for a while in Japan and Korea - but not much elsewhere. All that is changing with smart phones and WAP access becoming popular, and you can see here that brands such Green Day, Firefox and Louis Vuitton are just some of the companies getting in on the act.

8. Location Based Services: The best thing about mobile is it's always with you - which means doing something out and about where you are is so relevant when done well. I've always loved this Hong Kong Airport campaign from Motorolla, but what really caught my imagination is how location marketing and social networking are combing to create some really interesting possibilities, such as this service from Four Square. Compelling stuff.

9. Future Mobile: I'll discuss more on this next week, but the integration of digital technologies to 'augment (add to) reality', such as giving you information overlayed on the real world when seen through your mobile, will be a really exciting area for marketers in future. To see what may be possible with this concept of augmented reality , check out here how we could use it to enhance our social networks!

But more on augmented reality vs virtual reality next week...

Cheers, Rob

Feel free to add comments below, or for further questions or advice contact me at rob.h@th.arcww.com