Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

To help users overcome information overload, Altoids has created Tune Out, a Facebook app available for Android, iPhone, and desktop computers.

According to Big Spaceship:

Using Tune Out, fans select their favorite friends they want to receive Facebook and Twitter updates from, opting out of updates from old high school classmates and the other contacts they’d rather not hear from on a daily basis. The functionality speaks to the conviction that defines Altoids mints. You know who your real friends are. Ignore the rest.

This reminds us of T-Mobile's myFaves (Fav 5) and is relevant to anyone trying to survive today's hyper-connected world. Increasingly, people are looking for ways to more efficiently consume information. Twine founder Nova Spivack recently stated that “with the real time web, the amount of information we have to handle is changing the Now... Now is becoming a lot denser. There is a lot more information in per unit of Now.” Because of this, we are learning to optimize intake through filters and lists, following only those that provide value. With Tune Out, Altoids hopes that users will "ignore the noise" using their branded utility.

Wrigley's Juicy Fruit now has its own iPhone app. Sweet Talk, essentially a mobile soundboard, comes with a simple twist -- videos of talking mouths accompany voices. The brand encourages users to "spread their sweet" by letting the app talk for them.

To use it, you simply pick from a bank of five mouthy characters with 25 sweet sayings, hold your iPhone under your nose, and let the sweetness fly. Users can share messages via email or Facebook or create their own videos.

It's simple, and we've definitely seen this before. MouthOff, Hardee's Parisian Pick Up, and Emirates iLingual all provide iPhone users the same quirky entertainment. That being said, the app is already seeing success. This week it reached number one free entertainment app in the iTunes store and number five overall. This goes to show that a brand can provide value through frivolous fun, not just practical utility. Execution is also key. Wrigley's managed to make an old idea seem fresh and funny.

See Sweet Talk in action here:

Best Buy is attempting to shame customers into upgrading to a new smart phone. With the help of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, their latest effort includes a "Phone Shame Eliminator."

ReadWriteWeb says:

The campaign tells people too poor or otherwise disinclined to have smart phones that they are sexually unattractive, going nowhere at work and not very bright. Some of the ads are also funny, even if they are classist, tasteless, obnoxious and cruel.

People consider their mobile phone an extension of themselves, naturally tied to their identity. Best Buy's tactics may be questionable but they are hitting a nerve. According to an April 2010 ExactTarget study, 58% of all US internet users ages 15 and older still use a feature phone. With all the hype around apps, we're sure a good number of them are eyeing their friend's iPhone or Droid with envy. A recent Piper Jaffray survey points out that 31% of teens plan on purchasing the iPhone alone. Could this help influence others to make the switch?

Watch the ad here:

Truth in Advertising is a running series of advertisements that portray consumers using mobile technology in their everyday life. They take a look at how brands are demonstrating our want and need for mobility. Click here to view previous entries.

Last week we attended The #Promise, a conference during New York's Internet Week that convened thought leaders and innovative brands to discuss how social and mobile media can create a better world. Each company was asked to present original social responsibility commitments called “promises.” Panels were curated by GOOD, TED, and Fast Company; speakers included everyone from Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes to actor Edward Norton. It was a day of inspired thinking and projection into a future where digital tools enable the masses. Some of the major themes and takeaways included:

At the very core of social change is a shift in how we connect, and mobile and social communications are the reason for transformation across industries. Nokia Futures Specialist Ville Tikka urged people to consider systems and social links affecting health, learning, advocacy, resilience, and livelihood.

We are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, cooperate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations.
- Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody

Corporations must rethink their offerings according to tomorrow's rules. Brands are positioning themselves around social movements and doing good; their hegemonic nature is evolving, opening up for an increasingly participatory culture. As Ogilvy planning director Evan Slater stated, "smart companies are being forced from policy makers to social enablers."

Large brands are evolving and preparing for the future. Pepsi's efforts are probably best publicized, the Pepsi Refresh Project looks to "scale good ideas" and "do good while selling product." With PepsiCo10, they demonstrate how giving away money is easy, but strategically allocating it for maximum impact is much harder. Timberland is planting trees in China, tying storytelling to their core logo. MTV educates viewers about sexting. In every effort there is the balance to be made between long-term thinking and instant shareholder gratification.

Companies are embracing mobile tools as a way to enable improvement on personal, local and global levels. Morsel, an iPhone application, promotes a healthier lifestyle through suggesting small achievable goals. GE's Linda Boff described this as "stealth health" and a simple way to change behavior for the better. Vscan is a pocket-sized ultrasound that opens up opportunities for rural doctors. FrontlineSMS simply enables two-way communication on a large scale, which has been particularly useful for NGOs in developing countries. The list goes on...

Of the many ideas discussed throughout The #Promise, the general consensus was that big change is underway, powered by personal technology. Andrew Rasiej expressed that through mobile technologies, humanity is being reshaped. "Humanity is going to ignore governments and think about solving problems on their own." We are in the process of filtering out the unacceptable and inefficient. Observing changing connections and adapting to the new rules is what will keep today's organizations around for tomorrow.

While we wait for QR codes to take off, there is a huge opportunity for brands to use the barcodes that are already on products and turn them into social media.

One way to do this is through an app called Stickybits, which we wrote about back in April after its launch at SXSW. The app lets users scan and attach media to barcodes, creating a path from physical product to digital media. People connect around objects and often share stories about them, which is essentially what Stickybits enables. You can add a digital picture, a video, or text to a product's barcode, which other people can see when they scan the same barcode with the app on their phone.

Advertising is all about stories as well, so why not attach a brand's stories to a barcode? To demonstrate this idea, we took a can of Diet Pepsi and attached branded wallpapers, nutritional facts, and information on their Pepsi Refresh campaign through Stickybits. (Note: we didn't attach things twice, the app is a bit buggy.)

This weekend we got a number of emails from informing us that "pepsico attached a new bit" to the 'Pepsi 12 oz can' we were using. This turned out to be an "official bit" from the brand -- a video about the storytelling power of barcodes.

Stickybits founder Seth Goldstein announced these “official bits” at the Conversational Marketing Summit in New York City, and that Pepsi is signed up as the first sponsor. Similar to the paid search model, Pepsi paid for their bits to get the "official" stamp and appear on the top of results pages.

According to Techcrunch, Goldstein described the progression of media on the Internet at the conference:

In 1996, Webpages became media. In 2001, search became media. In 2005, people became media. In 2007, status updates became media. Last year, places became media. And in 2010, he predicts, objects will become media.

This is part of the trend we've been following known as the "Internet of Things," wherein physical objects are connected to the web. Digital is now freeing up physical media to play a different role than it ever has before, and mobile phones are an important piece of this puzzle, enabling users – and brands -- to annotate the world around them.

Lately we've been seeing a number of marketing programs though location-based services like Foursquare, but few published results. The metrics for these programs seem more in line with PR (media hits, impressions) than marketing (sales, conversion).

A new case study published today by Vayner Media on a recent campaign through location-based service Gowalla provides some concrete results: 76 more people went to a New Jersey Nets game.

While this might seem modest, think about the challenge: no one wants to go to Nets games. The team had the lowest attendance in the NBA this season, and those 76 tickets would have gone unused without the campaign. The Nets were also able to monetize on parking, concessions and merchandise.

Here is how the campaign worked: Vayner Media distributed 250 pairs of tickets as Gowalla virtual items in targeted locations in New York City and New Jersey (sports bars, outdoor parks, gyms) for the New Jersey Nets last home game of the season on April 12th. Users that found these virtual tickets were able to redeem them for actual Nets tickets at the arena’s box office. Out of the 500 tickets that were given out, 76 were used.

"We decided to run this program as a test run since we were concerned that the factors of the Nets being the worst team in the NBA, the game being a Tuesday night, and that the Nets stadium is about an hour's commute from NYC would be a bit much for users to attend the game,"  AJ Vaynerchuck from Vayner Media told us. "We were truly excited [about the results]."

This campaign gives a glimpse of the opportunities available for brands with unused/expiring inventory through mobile. By tapping into real-time, location-based networks, a retailer that wants to move product--be it tickets, merchandise, food, hotel rooms--can do so on the fly to potential consumers that are actually nearby.

Full case study can be downloaded here

For those without an iPad, the magazine experience will still be interactive. Entertainment Weekly is using Microsoft 2D tags to bring its summer movie preview issue to life. Readers will be able to use the Tag application to view  trailers for 16 featured films. Codes will be scattered throughout the magazine's print edition, directing users' mobile browser to YouTube previews for movies like "Sex and the City 2" and "Iron Man 2."

“Our goal was to bring the summer movie preview to life, allowing readers to view video and therefore enhance their reading experience and to also create a site, sound, and motion experience throughout our edit content and advertiser messaging,” said Barrie Gordon, senior manager of public relations at Entertainment Weekly, New York.

The tags aren't limited to movie trailers; print ads for brands like HBO and Absolut will now include a multimedia component thanks to Microsoft's path to mobile presence.

[via mobilemarketer]