May the Best Ad Win – Period.

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article called “Giving Mobile Ads a Makeover.”  The gist of it being that with all the hubbub surrounding the iPad, on-the-go advertising may soon become a mainstream advertising technology.

Haven’t we heard this before?  With this new different ad sizes, interactivity options, CPC/CPA/CPM, etc., all of our mobile ad prayers will be answered. Here’s my question.  Does this same story deserve all of the hype it’s been getting over the last few months?  The iPad may well mean a renaissance for mobile advertising – which would be fantastic.  But, is a new ad type of size/shape really the nirvana that deserves this much ink?

Reaching your customers and prospects in this fragmented multichannel on-the-go world is what we should be talking about.  Let’s spend our cycles discussing and solving those problems for the industry rather than looking/expecting to find a silver bullet in the ad space. The variety of channels marketers now have to address to reach consumers presents a huge challenge and I would love to see more press and op-ed articles helping us solve that business issue.  Not only do marketers need to craft messaging that works in the context of each individual channel, they also need to keep an eye on ROI and track user engagement within each technology vertical.

It’s no longer a world of the Internet and email only.  Now mobile, social media and portable gaming devices are a part of the daily fabric of people’s lives.  Even my refrigerator is a connected device…  How best to insert brand messaging into that web of technology and habits?  And what types of messages, in what permutations, will actually stick – and be effective? Look for some interesting announcements in the coming quarters from Waterfall as we take these issues head on!

It’s no secret that the big guys, as well as the start-ups, have been nipping at the heels of marketers in the technology space, hoping to be the company/technology/app that takes mobile advertising from “small banner ads and spammy texts” into the big leagues.

What the news media has failed to recognize is that with all of these new technologies, there has to be a unified sense of consistency and brand unity, whatever the media.  It’s also worth pointing out that not every mobile user actually has access to the mobile internet, let alone the iPhone, or the latest gadget of the moment, the iPad.  A diverse digital messaging strategy that doesn’t alienate potential customers is sound policy in this fast-moving situation.

Let me step off my soapbox and get back to the original point of this post. Bottom line,: yes, mobile advertising will fully mature, and it will do so in line with market demand.  Relevance needs to go hand-in-hand with media and creative.  In short, may the best ad win and let’s get back to work.

Q&A with Mickey Alam Khan

It’s a new year, and today we’re debuting a new feature at Mobile Demystified: Guest Bloggers!

First up is our friend Mickey Alam Khan, editor-in-chief of Mobile Marketer. We wanted to get Mickey’s take on the mobile marketing space, and this email Q&A ensued.

WATERFALL MOBILE: Have any products or brands used mobile in a way that you’ve found to be especially smart or effective?

MICKEY ALAM KHAN: We find most brands in the apparel, travel, media, entertainment, retail and consumer packaged goods sectors get mobile. Their use of mobile banner ads for brand-building and engagement, SMS for loyalty programs, store drives and discounts, and applications for everything from information to shopping and transactions is transforming the use of mobile. The triumvirate of mobile Web, SMS and applications are ideal for brands with a decent mobile budget.

WM: Waterfall Mobile noticed a lot more major consumer brands activating their traditional media (TV, radio, print) with mobile calls to action in the second half of 2009. Have you observed this trend? What do you make of it?

MICKEY: The major trend we noticed last year was how mobile calls to action were increasingly integrated with other media such as television, radio, print and out-of-home. It indicates that marketers are wise to the chief benefit of mobile: driving traffic to other channels, or giving legs to other media. No medium can succeed on its own, and mobile is no different in this regard. SMS is the best tool to drive traffic to stores for discounts or sales. Similarly, applications are the perfect vehicles to deliver the latest deals or offers from the brand. And mobile Web sites are perfect for store locations, search and price-comparisons while out and about.

WM: Mobile applications get a lot of ink right now, but statistically far more people are using SMS. Do you think brands are buying into the hubbub (having an iPhone app for the sake of having an iPhone app) at the expense of more effective mobile messaging options?

MICKEY: Each mobile channel has its use. To convince a consumer to not only download the application but also regularly use it means that the loyalty battle has been won in that case. But there is no disputing that SMS is the most ubiquitous form of mobile advertising and marketing. It is low-tech and affordable, and is a language that every consumer understands. SMS is ideal for driving consumers to stores, and for delivering alerts, discounts, coupons and news of store openings and sales. Also, SMS is available on 99 percent of mobile phones in the marketplace.

WM: Mobile marketing ROI is an evergreen topic of discussion. How far do you think the industry is from uniform ROI metrics? Do the benefits of mobile outweigh any lingering questions of how to exactly calculate ROI?

MICKEY: We are on our way to getting uniform mobile metrics.

The Mobile Marketing Association has made great strides in this area. Besides, there shouldn’t be much trouble tracking mobile performance. Response to SMS is easily tracked at point of sale or via interactions, mobile Web banner click-throughs are recorded and application use data is easily accessible. So it is a myth that mobile can’t be measured for its ROI. Why isn’t the same question asked of television or print? Who knows how many people actually saw a commercial or read an ad? Mobile is way more measurable than the guesswork passing for metrics in TV and print.

The Rules of The Road

Waterfall’s own Matt Silk outlines best practices for mobile marketing in an exclusive opinion essay for DMNews that posted today.

DMNews, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, is acknowledged as one of the top trade publications in the direct marketing space. This is Matt’s second post for DMNews’ “InDirectly” blog.

You can check out Matt’s post here.

The Dos and Don’ts of Holiday Mobile Marketing

“Make it Fun”
The Dos and Don’ts of Holiday Mobile Marketing

Giselle Tsirulnik over at Mobile Marketer recently posted a great list of the dos and don’ts of holiday season mobile marketing.

In case you missed them before Thanksgiving, I wanted to repost Giselle’s list here. It’s a must read for anyone pondering a holiday-timed mobile marketing program.

Drumroll, please…

1. Consider that these purchases are primarily for other people, so make sure to orient mobile offerings to that context.
2. Because it’s the holiday, if a brand doesn’t already have an established mobile market, it will need to do in-store tie-ins – “Can’t find that perfect gift? Text GIFT to 123456 for a link to our holiday gift finder!”
3. Consumers during the holiday season are typically tight on both time and money, so anything that can be done to help them save in either department is a nearly always a winner.
4. Allocate placements to on-the-go, “time saving” categories such bite-sized news, information, entertainment or even communications channels like mobile IM or email – all categories that are endemic to mobile.
5. Use tactics like store locators, discounts or just key product information or tips made mobile – basically anything that can make the lives of consumers a little bit easier will always be a hit during the holidays.
6. Make sure if you are launching or have a mobile marketing application, it is compatible with the full range of devices out there (no flash).
7. Think of the least common denominator in screen size and browser capability and make it work. Remember, in aggregate, BlackBerry has a larger penetration than the iPhone and it doesn’t do flash at all.
8. Keep your mobile marketing application lightweight. Not every area has 3G coverage.
9. Make sure messaging is consistent with other channels and information is accurate.
10. Make it fun.

Giselle makes an excellent point in her article – one that is not only important during the holiday season, but year round.  Keep the shopper in mind! The more brands integrate consumers’ interests and behavior into marketing plans, the easier it will be keep them engaged (and buying stuff) year round.

Here’s to an outstanding, and profitable, holiday season for all.

MediaPost’s Email Insider Summit

December: there is no better time of year to visit Park City, Utah.

And what better reason to go than for MediaPost’s Email Insider Summit.

The conference runs from December 6-9, and on Tuesday, December 8^th I’ll be part of the “Mobile Marketing of the Future” panel. My esteemed panelists and I will be discussing the benefits of mobile, specifically as it relates to email marketing communications.

Representatives from Microsoft, Razorfish, Turner Broadcasting, General Mills and many other great companies will be in attendance. Should be a fantastic event.

You can find the full agenda for the conference here and register here.

And PS: if any Mobile Demystified readers will be in attendance, I’d love to meet up.  You can reach me at msilk@waterfallmobile.com.

See you on the mountain!

Four Ways Pizza is Dominating Restaurant Mobile Marketing

And how you could be too!

I wrote an op-ed for RestaurantReport.com which has been picked up. It calls out how the big pizza chains have been doing mobile marketing right (and serves as a good reminder for other chains to get in the game).

Read it here.

Activating Your Traditional Media, Part 2

Validation: it always feels good.

For many months now, I’ve been advocating that brands activate their traditional media through mobile marketing. I.e. enhance your content and ads in print, radio, television, and outdoor with a text call-to-action to build your mobile  channel.

Well the new Audit Bureau of Circulations report would appear to validate what I’ve been saying…

The key takeaways from the Bureau’s survey are:

1. Publishers are giving mobile more attention than ever before.
2. Mobile will drive web traffic to struggling newspaper and magazine operations.

(The ABC is legit, by the way. From the organization’s web site:

With more than 4,000 members in North America, ABC is a forum of the world’s leading magazine and newspaper publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies. The organization provides credible, verified information essential to the media buying and selling process. ABC maintains the world’s foremost electronic database of audited-circulation information and an array of verified readership, subscriber demographics and online activity data.)

The Bureau and its ABC Interactive arm conducted a comprehensive survey of ABC print publisher members to learn more about their current and future plans for the mobile market. Among other findings, researchers discovered that

• 70 percent of publishers agreed their publication paid more attention to mobile this year than last year.
• 80 percent of those surveyed believe that people will rely more heavily on mobile as their primary source for information over the next 3 years.
• 40 percent of those that tracked mobile’s impact on their website found it increased web traffic by five to 25 percent.
• Nearly a third of those surveyed think mobile will have a significant impact on their publication’s revenue in just three years.

One respondent said, “At this point, reader demand for mobile-friendly editorial content is stronger than advertiser demand. I believe advertiser demand will follow reader demand and will follow growth of smartphone adoption.”

For the newspaper business, this is sorely needed good news. For brands, it’s proof that mobile engagement via so-called “old media” can provide an eye-popping ROI.

Who says you can’t ever find good news in the paper?

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points

I was driving the other day and saw a billboard for an event in Vegas called “Singles in Sin City.”

The amazing thing about this billboard? The entire call to action was mobile. It featured an SMS short code – and nothing else.

No web site, no 800 number – just text. Check it out:

It got me thinking about how far mobile marketing has come in the last several years, and specifically how natural mobile commerce feels to the young men this event was clearly trying to reach.

Out-of-home (OOH) plays like this billboard are no-brainers for marketers trying to create targeted, precise, personalized brand impressions. Think about it. You’re single, you’re sitting at a traffic light, you like Vegas, you see this thing – hell, why not? Tap out a quick text, then continue on your way.

(Note: Waterfall Mobile does not advocate the practice of texting while driving, which might soon be outlawed by federal statute. And we’ve certainly never been guilty of that ourselves. Ahem.)

Some other examples of campaigns where SMS was the principal call to action:

• Earlier this year, Hawaiian Airlines gave away trips to Hawaii as part of a promotion with the San Diego Padres – and the opt-in was mobile.
• Our client Nokia ran an extremely smart campaign for Unilever in Brazil targeted at teens; this one featured a custom-edition phone called the Nokia 5200 Pink.
• MTV + Axe + mobile = “Hair Crisis Relief.”

Marketers have woken up to the fact that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line: a line that runs directly from your brand message into your target customer’s pocket.

The Fire Hose vs. The Sniper Rifle

Twitter has proven itself to be a fantastic social networking tool, but for brand marketers it presents some head-scratchers.

Sure, it’s attractive to build a following for your business. And I’m all for it. Nobody knows if this service will be the next GeoCities or the next Google, or land somewhere in the middle, but there are millions of free eyeballs out there; might as well make them yours.

That said, consider this episode, the rise of porn spam on Twitter, and, going back to March of this year (ancient history in social media terms) the Skittles experiment.

As you may recall, on March 2nd, 2009 Skittles made its Twitter page the brand’s official “comments section,” and;

Just two days after its launch, Skittles was forced to rethink its social media strategy after users deluged the site with inane and often profane “tweets,” the messages sent by Twitter users.

I am as interested in marketing experiments as the next guy, but if it was my billion-dollar brand on the line I would be hesitant before putting all of my eggs into this particular basket.

Just like with personal finance and investing, diversification is key. Using Twitter makes sense, but it needs to mesh with all of a brand’s other marketing efforts, be they directed towards TVs, computer screens, or on mobile phones.

And hey, while we’re on the subject: some musings on mobile marketing (and why it’s a lot more targeted than Twitter).

With Twitter, you can put your message out there and let people react to it as they will. The much-maligned Twitter search function will give you a rough estimate of how many Twitter users are talking about your product or brand. And that’s essentially it.

In a mobile marketing campaign:

• You control the messaging that goes to your list. That means no chance of a bogus ad or random solicitation from Ukrainian escorts.
• You control the content that can get posted on your list.
• You control the distribution of that content, and where and how it can get posted or syndicated.
• You can engage in interactive campaigns (interactive menus of multiple features, voting and polling, text-to-screen, etc.).
• You can sell mobile content directly.
• You can integrate with your CRM system to do targeted messaging to your list.
• You can analyze usage and see what features and functionality your subscribers are using.
• You have both push and pull capabilities with all of the above features.
• You can tag all of your current media with a mobile call-to-action to add accountability to your media spend, and track which channels are most effective.

One final thought.

Coca-Cola: 2,714 followers on Twitter.
MC Hammer: 1,012,348 followers on Twitter.

Nothing against Hammer, but when there’s a run on tulips it generally means something is out of whack, don’t you think?

KITS-FM LIVE 105 Mobile Campaign

Every month, the campaigns that we power at Waterfall Mobile range from small test promotions to massive ongoing programs, and we often encounter marketers new to the mobile industry that are surprised at how effective targeted regional mobile promotions can be at building mobile subscriber lists and extending brand awareness.

One recent example that demonstrates the power of a targeted local promotion was a mobile campaign for KITS-FM LIVE 105, an alternative/modern rock radio station based in San Francisco. The campaign was conducted over five days as part of a give-away promotion that offered five weekend getaways stays at The Resort at Squaw Creek in North Lake Tahoe.

KITS-FM wanted to grow its mobile subscriber list and engage listeners with the brand on alternative platforms – in this case via its growing mobile marketing efforts.  Squaw Valley USA & The Resort at Squaw Creek hoped to get information on North Lake Tahoe out to listeners and encourage them to visit the area.

Together, the companies prompted listeners via on-air call-outs to text in the keyword of the day for a chance to win the “Woody Show Field Trip Package.” Each text received a reply with information on North Lake Tahoe and Squaw Valley and was enrolled into the radio station’s mobile subscriber list to receive further information from the station.

After the winner was selected each day, a text message was sent notifying other entrants they did not win and a second text offered additional information about North Lake Tahoe.

By the end of the campaign, KITS-FM’s recorded its largest-ever response to an on-air mobile promotion: nearly 200,000 texts received over the course of the five-day program. Listeners engaged each day with the radio station, which was able to further build its opportunity to interact with avid fans in the future (over 14,000 unique users were added to their subscription list), and KITS found a convenient way around typical phone contests that often greet callers with a non-interactive busy signal. The station’s partner, The Resort at Squaw Creek in North Lake Tahoe, also received a significant number of impressions and drove wide awareness of its brand across a major metropolitan market area.