Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

CMS Wire has an excellent article about how mobile marketing is changing, and I found one sentence (actually the first one in the article) especially remarkable:

It used to be about “mobile access” but that’s not it anymore. Our portable devices are now access, participation and creation devices.

Ultimately, this little sentence encapsulates what so many marketers find difficult to accept in how technology has changed how they can engage consumers.  It expresses that the consumer expects more than just hearing about your product or service.  Reach cannot be only measure of your success anymore. The consumer today needs more than just access to your marketing message.

The rise of mobile as a powerful communication and engagement channel has some marketers thinking about fixing access, rather than designing the right experiences.  ”Our site isn’t mobile-accessible!  Quick! Make a mobile version!”  Unfortunately this reaction tends to lead to suboptimal design for the mobile user.

Thoughtful and strategic marketers know that mobile is not just about access, there are 4 other steps to take in order to have mobile as a strategic element in your marketing plan.

1.  The Person - Yes, we always start with the user.  What are their behaviors?  What devices are they depending on, and what are they doing with them?  How are the steps on their journey helped or hindered due to the products, information or services they are using?

2.  The Purpose - What do you exist to offer or do?  Why would a person desire to participate with you? Linked to the first step, you have to know WHY WILL THEY CARE?

3. The End Game - If they participate with you, what can they gain?  And linked to this element is the step of planning how you will be able to measure the participation that you garner from your supporters.

4. The Structure - Where and with what will they participate?  In this step you start to get a good idea of the overall shape of the idea.  This phase also requires knowing if there are already great platforms out there to utilize, like a smart partner or existing application that can help bring easy functionality to whatever you’re creating.

5. The Access - OK, it is a consideration.  Just not the only one! You have to know what the experiences will feel like across the various devices that they may have access to.

And if it looks like the first 3 steps are not unique to mobile campaigns, you win the jackpot - they’re not.  Any use of mobile as a delivery channel should start rooted in the Brand, not the channel alone.

So - looking at mobile elements of campaigns you’ve seen, who do you think has taken a strategic approach?

Via @cmswire

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Over on eMarketer there is a post about college student’s web browsing habits, showing the results of the ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology.  The study shows that although teens and younger children tend to rely on feature phones, the college set is increasingly moving into smartphone ownership as a matter of course.

As the trend continues, we will begin seeing mobile browsing start to eclipse desktop computing across more and more segments, and companies should be preparing now for this situation.  When we spoke about our mantra recently, we said that mobile must be a part of brand planning, and it will continue to be more and more vital to consider as plans are finalized for 2011.  The frequency of access show in the following chart should be enough impetus for most brands to realize that the trend is accelerating at an astounding pace.

At the Forrester Consumer Forum on October 28-29, John Kosner from ESPN said that mobile is the #1 screen, personalization is expected and real-time is the new reality for content.  People are learning to rely on access to solutions anytime, anywhere, and Brands that offer those solutions will reap the rewards.

Are you mobile-ready?

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Unfortunately this is actually totally believable user behavior:

Via: Zoofs

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On October 7th, ComScore released their latest study, a comparison of mobile phone use in the US, Europe and Japan.  It’s a great resource for mobile marketers, and worth a read of the press release to get the top-level learning.

There’s nothing in here that should surprise you, but it effectively reminds us of the historical differences in mobile behavior across markets, due to both cultural, business and infrastructure differences in the markets.

Europe’s love affair with texting is highlighted, showing the power of that communication form that benefited from cross-carrier standards abroad, while we suffered in the US - waiting for the manufacturer and network operators to agree on anything.

Japan is shown to be the ‘most connected’ - with high levels of all advanced mobile activity.  (Notice the relatively low level of SMS use - since email packages are standard, some phones don’t even offer this service.)

Via Cellular-News

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Bud Light is working with Spyderlynk to use SnapTags on their latest promotion.  It’s easy to do (well - easier than QR codes anyway) - since all the user has to do is text the picture to a number to get the video content.

I do have a few questions, however.  Such as - I’d like to see how it could be more directly related to sales than the current version seems to be.  It looks like all you need to do is go into a liquor store and snap pics of all the cases there and you’ve got a big load of tags to ‘redeem’.

Also - my biggest question when I met with Spyderlynk was how their technology could allow for ongoing dialog - not just a promo quick hit.  We talked about having information capture at the point of value delivery, but that seems like a hurdle that some consumers wouldn’t cross easily - making the promotional aspect of the idea even stronger.  I don’t fault their technology - I think they’ve got a great system that is miles better at maintaining branding than their competition - but I stressed that to use them correctly, the marketer should be thinking long term.

Why settle for a quick hit when you could be starting a long and mutually profitable relationship?

Check out their video:

From Spyderlynk - see more here

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On their site Nokia/Coke work together to give their young audience a reason to interact. In a fun design, you can record your voice, apply effect and create your own ringtone using Flash technology. You then enter your phone number and get ringtone delivered to you. Great way to generate addresses, indeed: Give kids a tool they enjoy using in exchange for their information.

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First we had the browser wars. Remember? Those days when digital shops had to make websites work for a dozen versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer with no common standards. Then came the mobile device wars which are still ongoing, which means as a user you can’t even download a blackberry app if it isn’t compiled for THAT specific blackberry.

No one really cared about that much about this before, because, frankly, before the iphone, people just sort used phones, well, to phone people. Now all of that has changed. Apple’s iTunes Store made 30 Million bucks in the first month after apps were launched. What a great case of how product innovation and marketing innovation changed people’s behavior with one product launch.

Of course there’s Google, not wanting to be caught with their pants down, and started with Android, who some tech guys think will kick Apple’s butt because it’s much easier to program for than the iPhone Objective C programming language (an anacronism, really). Plus, of course Android has the chance to be a standard to many more millions of mobile devices already out there before iPhones can rule the world.

Well, guess what, now it looks like Microsoft (known for sluggish market entries) is entering, and you can get ready for the application store war. CNET reports:

It appears the software giant expects to launch an applications store called “Skymarket” this fall for its Windows Mobile platform, if a recent job posting spotted by Long Zheng at Istartedsomething.com is accurate. According to the ad posted Sunday on Computerjob.com, the Skymarket senior product manager will head a team that will “drive the launch of a v1 marketplace service for Windows Mobile.”

So now you basically got 3 forces: the closed-sourced innovator apple, the open-sourced Internet Giant Google, and Microsoft who’s just gonna fuel the fire through distribution power until the anti-trust cows come home. Wait… isn’t it always the same warring parties here??

Anyway, it seems that with every new delivery channel, and the random tech territory behind it, a necessary war has to ensue which at first is a hassle to end users.

However, after each one of these wars, we were better off than before. This war will ultimately really get the mobile phone out of the crib of technology used by early adopters and spawn a whole new set of mainstream innovations, better interfaces and usability (especially the iTunes interface could need an overhaul if you ask me). Not only will this make the mobile Internet omnipresent, but of course change the importance mobile marketing as well, as mobile platforms are bound to finally become the new integrator of all channels.

Just like the Web evangelists, the mobile evangelists were right, they were just too early. And however thankful you might be about Apple, they are not gonna win this war with their current closed-source approach. Oh, and agencies, if you don’t have a mobile marketing services business plan yet, get busy!

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