Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

A pretty interesting and recent case of how to do a social media led campaign is the Who Killed Summer campaign by Vodafone.

The idea is that you can follow a bunch of contestants who were invited to a 9 week stint of parties across Europe. The last one standing this excessive party-trek and can hunt down the biggest celebrities wins. What the contestants don’t seem to know: as time goes on, they are actually have to work for Vodafone to organize the parties, and the whole thing becomes a bit reality show (reminiscent of “the apprentice”). On the youtube channel the campaign is described as

Who Killed Summer? is a groundbreaking multi-platform drama set against the backdrop of an online reality show.

Strategically, the whole thing seems pretty well thought-through and planned in terms of awareness/reach, target relevance, multi-platform spread, content, drama, the works… However the youtube channel only got 300+ views so far. Maybe it is the lack of participative elements.

So far, the site traffic rank is 30,000 in the UK, 90,000 in Germany. Average time on site is under 2 minutes. 40% of traffic comes from and goes to facebook and twitter.

We’ll see…

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Talk about selling to a narrow target audience. This music mixer appliance lets you mix the songs of 2 iPhones. I know a lot of people who have two cellphones. But I don’t know anyone who has two iPhones. Maybe the hope is that DJs will get a second iPhone to be more mobile going to gigs and so they can leave their rig at home?

Via Thomas Junk

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There are several good articles out now about the race to create applications (apps) for mobile phones, with the iPhone leading the charge for most agencies in the rush to create branded applications.

Ad Age: Insisting on an iPhone App? Not So Fast

Media Renaissance@mediablog.com: Going Ape over iphone apps: will the trend last?

These articles all tend to point to the somewhat obvious conclusion that apps don’t kill people, short-sighted marketing plans do.  In other words, too many marketers skip the step of making sure that their app has a reason for being before setting it loose upon the world and expecting to be on everyone’s phone tomorrow.

I think the outcry is a little exaggerated (after all we’ve really only started to see examples of obvious app abuse - there likely will be much more), but there are some basic considerations that do need to be put in context to have a successful trial of app technology.  For the most part, what we are seeing is still people testing the waters, given the lower penetration of the types of phones that run apps.  But the articles are dead-on about one thing - there are many more coming.  In a few years every phone will be app-capable, and campaigns without an app will get scoffed out of the room.  <shudder>  Yes, get ready for that to be added to the checklist, kids.

The Ad Age article at least has a smart collection of 5 reasons you might want an app:

Engagement 101. If done right, an app is an opportunity to deeply involve the consumer and a way to extend dialogue after a campaign has ended.

It can raise brand loyalty. The more times consumers interact with a brand, the greater the chances they will gravitate toward it when they’re ready to buy.

You’ll be ready when the app market really explodes. Within five years, In-Stat expects handset makers to ship a total of more than 100 million units that are app-compatible, so now is the time to gain some experience.

It’s where the eyeballs are. The numbers are compelling: some 800 million downloads from the iPhone App Store.

IPhoners have great demographics. Their income specifically makes them a very desirable target, and they’re ravenous multimedia users. According to AdMob, iPhone generates half the smartphone traffic in the U.S.

As we covered in TechCheck last year, mobile applications are going to keep exploding, and first movers will generally have the advantage, especially if they really focus on creating smart value for the user, and make sure that the use of the app resonates with their Brand.  Our opinion and recommendations to clients remain rooted in human behavior:  what we do must be relevant for the person, feel like the Brand, and have a clear reason for being.  (I’m not sure how the iFart app rates on these items, but it’s funny as hell.  For about a week.)

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In what could be considered an unorthodox marketing strategy, toilet paper brand Charmin’ came out with a mobile application that shows you and let’s you review/rate toilets in your vicinity. Says Adage:

Charmin can’t be accused of just trying to sell toilet paper: Unlike major rivals, it doesn’t have a commercial-bathroom business. Rather, it’s just another effort at nontraditional branding, a la the Times Square restrooms the brand has provided the past three holiday seasons; the mobile Pottypalooza program it ran from 2003 to 2005; or the “Charminizing” program in which it cleaned up public restrooms at state fairs starting in 2000.

To be honest, at first, I thought this is a bit of a desperate attempt to insert any type of “innovative/mobil/usergen marketing” into a brand, that’s just, well, toilet paper. But then I remembered that a) people online review just about anything these days and b) I remembered all those moments where I was walking through city centers, frantically looking for relief and wondering if I was gonna make it. This mix of facts is probably the reason why, according to Adage, the application “logged more than 52,000 toilets since launch.” I for one got the thought stuck in my head how it would be picking up an Effie award for “logging toilets,” but why not? Times are a-changing.

The fact is, however: people appreciate any act a brand undertakes to make a qualitative difference in their lives (however big or small, no pun intended), even when it comes to toilets.

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Who needs a smartphone that does everything if you can have a digital assistant that does all the heavy-lifting for you?

Enter Dial2Do - the service that gives you a handsfree productivity tool that is only a phone call away.

Using it you can:

• Send email
• Send text messages
• Record reminders
• Send updates to Twitter or Jaiku stream
• Play internet audio content

I love this kind of service!  Why isn’t it offered from a company who needs to “own” productivity?  Or memory?  Or Safety?

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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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If you haven’t seen it, ask your friend with an iPhone.

It blurs the lines between advertising and mobile applications. It is a game that uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to slide a pint by various obstacles down a bar and into a patron’s hands. Once you do this, your phone turns into an empty glass which fills with Carling beer, ready for you to drain it, virtually.

The application was created by Beattie McGuinness Bungay, who worked with the Swedish developers Illusion Labs. Incredibly viral (well - OK, it could be more viral if you could easily put it on ANY phone…), and a great bar game to boot.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/comment/claire-beale/claire-beale-on-advertising-872637.html

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