Mobile Advertising - Expanding Brand Engagement

Being engaged in the business of mobile advertising, I've wanted for many months to put down on paper several of the key learnings drawn from actively selling in this environment, sitting through innumerable conversations with other companies engaged in this industry, and consulting with software, hardware, advertising agencies and other partners trying to understand and leverage customer sales within the mobile space. Below, I've attempted to set out history, key learnings and guidelines for brands as they negotiate customer interactions within their mobile lifestyle.



Moving a Brand from Passive to Participant

In ancient branding history, clients hired advertising agencies to present brands to prospects through mass media channels. More recent history has clients hiring agencies to optimize brand messages to reach prospects through focused niche media channels. Now, in the mobile advertising age, customers interactively engage products and companies in a location-based socially-informed mobile environment. Agencies help companies jump start and promote the conversation.



Mobile devices drive multiple brand touch types

Let's start with the types of touches: mobile applications, text messages, GPS-derived interactions, social media interactions. Mobile applications, from the very simple like money conversion calculators or calendaring apps to complex apps like games played within a social networking environment, offer brands the opportunity for inter-application advertising, application sponsorships, and applications whose very features engage the brand's core attributes (ex. Kimberly Clark's poll generating application on which way should the toilet paper hang on the roller). Text messages are another opportunity for interacting within a mobile environment. As part of an overall offline/online/mobile campaign, SMS can be used with embedded video/text content to either drive attention or receive attention from other advertising channels. Text messages can result in clicks of mobile web links, click-to-map, click-to-app (APIs), click-t0-opt-in, a straight brand message click-to-enter-contest, click-to-enter-review, click-to-contribute-opinion, click-to-coupon, click-to-join-group and other actions. The rising percent of the U.S. population with smart phones containing integrated GPS (20% in 2010 estimated to rise to 50% by end of 2011) offers the opportunity for location-based advertising with interactivity such as maps, coupons, social networking, time-based promotions (malls, bluetooth advertising), contests, reviews and other time + place sensitive communications. The environment now can feed the device and respond to the device's presence and communications. So, if I'm in the mall and the store senses my presence it can send a message to me via bluetooth. If I move away from the store, the store knows and can send another message, sweetening the offer or sending some other type of communication to build goodwill and future interactions. And that leads me to the most intriguing aspect of the mobile brand communication interaction - the social networking crossroads brands must now pass. There is opportunity for constant, instant give and receive either 1 to 1 or 1 to many in which the brand is in continuous definition through social commentary - what people say about a brand shapes the definition of that brand dynamically. And engagement with the brand in this manner feeds the experience a brand conveys. As any marketer will tell you, a brand is a promise for a particular expected experience. Through social networking accessible on the go, that experience is continually being redefined; consequently, the brand itself is fluid.



Lessons learned from running mobile advertising campaigns

The device on everyone's hip is transitioning from a calling device and an internet searching device to a personal assistant device. Applications either nascent to the device or downloadable through an apps consolidator, in conjunction with the device design itself, are creating a cyborg-like interaction: the device can understand our likes/dislikes, wants and needs and then go seek these brands out on its own time. Brands therefore need to engage not only the person owning the device, but the device and applications themselves. Brands must understand the technology and wherever possible align themselves with technology designers to insert and evolve the brand within the technology's functioning. So the game doesn't just have the brand as a sponsor. It has the brand functioning as a credit for a free level up when a player purchases the brand. It has the brand embedded as a digital base or storefront within the gameplay. In a calendaring application, the brand inserts itself to show when the product should be repurchased or drunk or replaced. A food brand could populate the calendar with a daily menu item featuring the brand as an ingredient. Any number of creative methods are employable when the nature of the application environment is considered.



Engagement is key

Attention span is dead. When location and time relevance are coupled with social networking we as mobile people no longer have patience for something as passive a measure as attention. We need to be engaged or left alone - our cognitive space gets greedy for other engagement opportunities. Indeed, we now have engagement spans. One study I read recently from Ground Truth Inc suggested social networking sites gathered more than an hour a day on average for mobile phone internet users, and that 60% of all mobile internet use was directed at social networking sites/applications. That's a tremendous opportunity for brands to engage consumers and vice versa; mobile engagement has become social entertainment. So when brands engage through mobile environments, they are fulfilling the role of enterainer of the moment, with the social engagement further promoting ownership of the brand through conversation. The role of time and place relevancy in the brand communication is to increase the mobile engagement - its entertainment value, its social commentary value, its immediate usage value.

Grow the conversation or blink out
Consequent to the rise of social networking, a brand does not exist until its is commented on and shared. Now, that's a bold statement, one that flips traditional conceptions of advertising over. Brand image is one of the most closely held resources of a company or product. Relinquishing even a small amount of control is the antithesis of what marketers are taught. But I believe that control in the mobile social networked environment is an illusion. Besides, the only detrimental situation for a brand is to be ignored. For brands to be successful, they need to move to the center of the conversation. To do that, they must acknowledge and encourage the public discussion of the brand, its attributes, its doings, and the interactions the more social members of society have with the brand. In a mobile campaign, a brand can encourage discussions about the brand, but social networking can take it a step further and push out trusted commentary within social networks that are both outside the realm of corporate brand capability and outside the scope of corporate brand trustworthiness. See, all voices are equal within a social networked environment with the exception of one attribute: trust. Closely networked social relations engender trust more than corporations. Even though it is the company's brand, the commentary of a trusted person is more influential to a potential customer. Brands want to encourage this type of social conversation, without interference. Now, where brands can make a difference is in the mobile environment. Engagement through mobile advertising can result in better social networking conversations. Companies can feed their brands narrowly through influencers so as to empower social connectedness around the defining process for the brand. It's all about creating meaning for the brand and allowing others to have a hand in crafting that meaning.

It is not my intent to confuse the unique characteristics of social networking marketing and mobile marketing. The two can be considered unique channels, but that would be a mistake, in my opinion. The combination of the two when the focus of attention is on a brand is powerful at driving engagement. More so, than separately. And my personal belief (good opportunity for testing) is that the combo is better for sales. Now, there are two key differences between traditional influencer communications and mobile influencer communications. The first is that within a mobile environment, context is everything. Location and time of delivery, access to product, immediacy of joining the conversation - thesea are all key differences. Brands can light the spark at the right time and place to engage influencers. Influencer research goes back a ways and I am a fan of Paco Underhill's work in understanding influencers by gender, by age, by demographic/psychographic, by following them around in stores and other measures. Mobile adds a second new wrinkle to the mix. The influencers can be socially-connected people, mobile applications that interact with the mobile device, and/or the mobile devices themselves. The applications and the device help determine whether or not a brand is presented at all to mobile prospect, and further helps define the context in which the brand conversation commences. In our calendaring example, an application link that allows the calendar to be shared with a person's social network sets up all sorts of brand conversations. Imagine the daily recipe spreads across calendars, with clickable links to map of nearest store location to pick up the product, a coupon for the product, a review link to add your voice to the conversation about your experience around the menu item (purchase, packaging, taste, cookability, etc), and the ability to send back recipes using the product. In this instance, the brand has sponsored a conversation, created an interest point about positive brand attributes, crafted a space through which to collect market research, and further engage current customers and prospects for the evolution of the product through suggested recipes. Whether they twitter it, facebook it, myspace it, text it or communicate it in some other fashion, people are engaging the brand and can do it in real time on location, thereby heightening the entertainment value of the interaction. Now your food item becomes branded entertainment.

How your Brand Wins in Mobile Advertising
Three keys here: support consistent engagement, develop pinpoint relevancy, and control the social currency. Let's take these one at a time. Brands exist only to the degree that they invite participation and commentary (ownership). Consistent engagement through the mobile environment primes people to continue to talk about what is new with your brand. Whether it's the latest coupon, the highlighted experience of a satisfied customer, a contest or some other relevant communication, brands can encourage the thoughts, ideas and stories about the brand to continue flowing. Secondly, brands need to communicate to hit the time, location and engagement sweet spots that drive participation with the brand. No, this is not tautological; people engage because there is relevancy in the situation and opportunity to communicate to others their important understanding of the experience. Brands can set up these windows of opportunity with the brand sitting center focus. Third, brands can focus mobile communications by controlling the social currency. Participation is the new coin of the mobile realm; when consumer participation is achieved, brands can encourage more buzz by recognizing and rewarding it.

From Tactical to Practical
Companies can jump start the conversation about their brand by offering creative that is entertaining, location-relevant and worthy of being passed around for social commentary. Once the brand message is exported (in the public realm), nurture the conversation by engaging, rewarding and empowering responders. These become your influencers. Then give influencer customers reasons and tools to share with other potential customers so they can experience and comment on the brand for themselves in a time and location relevant engagement. Finally, evolve the brand message for new mobile campaigns in participation with engaged social influencers. These folks are beyond being customers; they're members of your marketing team and have helped to develop the brand right along with you.