Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

Everyone is doing it. Geeks, creatives, flacks, bloggers, everyone is getting an iPhone. They are your friends, your colleagues, perhaps your customers. But none of them are using a “branded iPhone app.” Why? Because branded apps suck.

No offense to brands. We live in a world where buzz travels faster than you can say blog. So when Apple announced their software development kit, everyone was asking: “What is your iPhone strategy?” As developers began churning them out, marketers joined in. There were almost 900 at launch and an additional 400 by the week’s end.

But branded iPhone apps represent the essential problem with mobile campaigns right now. They are usually one-off, un-integrated, stand-alone efforts. A quick way to say, “Are we doing mobile? Check.” But mobile will only succeed if it’s done right. If it is, it is an incredibly powerful way to reach virtually all consumers.

Confusion

The potential of the iPhone app is powerful. “Engagement is about 3:30 to 5 minutes on a typical app. That’s a lot of face time that you aren’t getting from TV spots,” says Eric Litman of Medialets, an iPhone-focused mobile ad network. Still, “there haven’t been any truly successful branded apps so far.” Why? Well, the mobile space is confusing…

Every year in the last five was the year for mobile. Is this really it? Or is it just another year filled with press releases hoping to coax brands into the space? The landscape is incredibly fragmented, with different statistics coming from many sources. Where does one even start?

This confusion is what leads to one-off campaigns. A brand or agency is unsure of the space and the players in it, so they just do something to test it. The same thing happened when Facebook opened its API. Every brand needed a “Facebook strategy,” which too often included a branded app that wasn’t integrated into a larger social media plan.

Integration and Simplicity

How can mobile campaigns get stronger? Our research and conversations with mobile experts revealed two dominant themes: integration and simplicity. We’ve established a simple set of filters around these themes to test whether your idea makes sense. They can be applied to any channel, but are especially important with mobile given the nature of the medium:

1) Sustained Presence
Consider that most people have their mobile devices within ten feet at any given time. With a sustained presence, you are putting your brand within their reach—24/7. Stake your ground with a WAP site and think of it as your mobile home. Short-term promotions are like party invitations, but you should let people drop for a visit any time they want.

2) Entertainment and Utility
Advertising is moving from a distraction model towards an engagement model. 30-second spots and banner ads are giving way to enduring experiences, as budgets shift from media buys to content production. This convergence is blurring the lines between awareness and engagement, promotion and product. The content, e.g. an iPhone app, needs to be compelling in it of itself. Good content is the best advertising.

3) Relevance
One of the biggest advantages of mobile is three-point targeting: time, location, and demographics. Use these! The more personal and contextual your marketing is, the more likely it is that people will respond to it. The main question one should strive to answer here is, “why do I need to view this on my mobile device and not on my desktop or TV?”

4) Control
If you create something entertaining and/or useful, people will want it. Do not force it on them using push tactics. Phones are considered to be a personal, filtered space, so put the consumer in control. Always allow people to opt-in and opt-out at any time and be very clear about what people are signing up for.

5) Interaction
Give people something they’d be interested in and promote interaction with others. Remember to merge any feedback into product development and customer service initiatives lest you lose the valuable two-way conversation altogether. Remind consumers that you are listening by thanking them for their comments and responding to them directly.

6) Integration
You can’t create an iPhone app “Field of Dreams”-style: build it and they will come. “Your strategy needs to combine multiple media to get the word out, whether it is TV, social networks, print, radio…” says Litman. So instead of asking, “What should my mobile strategy be,” the question is rather, “how do I extend my marketing strategy in the mobile channel?” This means that agencies—advertising, media, mobile—need to work together from the outset to ensure cohesiveness from conception to execution.

Putting a Campaign to the Test

There haven’t been many mobile campaigns that have successfully satisfied all of the above filters, but one recent app we really liked was Sit or Squat, sponsored by Charmin. Similar to the mobile site Mizpee, the branded application gives you GPS directions to the nearest public restroom (utility and relevance). Users are also able to submit their own (interaction) and everything operates on a pull basis (control). It's always available through the iPhone, Blackberry and SMS (sustained presence) and is prominently featured on their wired website (integration).

Back to Basics

There are many possibilities in the mobile space, and it can be an extremely effective tool for brands to provide value to the consumer as well as capturing important consumer feedback. What’s exciting is that mobile is still a relatively uncluttered space with a lot of untapped “white space” to work with. But, for now, take a step back, forget about what’s hot, and go back to the basics of marketing with the consumer at the centerpiece of mobile campaigns.

- Allison Mooney and Christina Lin

Allison Mooney is the Director of Trends & Insights at MobileBehavior and Editor of Next Great Thing

Christina Lin is in the Omnicom Resident rotational program, and has worked at PHD, TBWA\Chiat\Day, and Tribal DDB