The wireless industry simply won’t shut up about mobile marketing. And the biggest brands in the United States are listening.
Mega-corporations across the country are scrambling to approach Americans on their wireless phones. Subway restaurants in Buffalo, N.Y., have teamed with MobileLime to send mobile coupons to customers who submit a message to a short code. Starbucks is running a campaign that sends users on a wireless scavenger hunt, rewarding those who send in text messages or photos in response to clues. McDonald’s outlets in Oklahoma are encouraging customers to submit photos of themselves in exchange for mobile content.
Other companies are moving beyond simple advertising campaigns. Anheuser-Busch is building an in-house film and TV production company, according to a story in Advertising Age, that will develop short comedy clips and programs to be broadcast over the Internet and to mobile phones. The company has tapped two key executives to help lead the effort, which is believed to be A-B’s most ambitious content play.
While most Americans still don’t know a short code from a ZIP code, the moves illustrate the willingness of U.S. businesses to invest heavily in the wireless platform, said Louis Gump, vice president of mobile for The Weather Channel Interactive and chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association.
“The fact is, we’re younger than other platforms; we’re still growing up,” said Gump. “But it’s very clear that we’re entering into a new stage of maturity. Before, in 2004, if (a marketing company) would have said they wanted to include mobile, they’d have gotten a lot of eye-rolling.”
Gump declined to discuss specific personnel numbers, but TWCI is among the most aggressive traditional content companies moving into mobile. The company offers a variety of content and applications from its Web site and on carrier decks, and TWCI recently hired a director of mobile ad sales.
Even some of the world’s biggest-and often least nimble-companies are embracing wireless. While mobile marketing budgets aren’t likely to remind anyone of the heyday of the dot-com era, big brands seem to be eagerly, but thoughtfully, embracing wireless.
“There was a point in time where the interactive marketing community really had to fight for attention. Frankly, I don’t see that in the mobile space,” said Tom Daly, group manager of strategy and planning for The Coca-Cola Co. Daly, who was recently named honorary director of the Mobile Marketing Association, said that while Coca-Cola doesn’t have an in-house mobile marketing department, the platform is considered a crucial part of Coca-Cola’s overall marketing strategy.
“It’s in the planning cycle; mobile is part of the planning discussion. It’s clearly an important channel in our important markets,” Daly said. “It is an absolutely essential ingredient in some of our Asian markets.”
In fact, Coke’s efforts in Asia and Europe move beyond marketing and into the worlds of content and m-commerce. The company works with publishers to market Coca-Cola-branded games, and has launched a program in Japan dubbed C-mode-a play on NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode name-that allows users to pay for vending-machine sodas with their mobile phones.
Advertising executives say that while mobile generally should be viewed as an integral part of any large, cross-platform campaign, firms must be careful not to ask too much of either users or their phones. Content should be easy to consume, and would-be customers won’t spend much time triple-tapping just to participate in a promotional sweepstakes.
“In Turkey, mobile is a very important part of (our cap-code) redemptions,” Daly noted. “We find a very high number of cap codes being redeemed via mobile, but we don’t see registration happening. It would be fair, even though we have the ability,” to ask users to type in registration information on their phones.
Coca-Cola has relationships with numerous mobile marketing companies, Daly said, as well as agencies that deploy campaigns across platforms. And while there’s no shortage of mobile advertising firms, larger, more traditional agencies are moving quickly to bring wireless experts onboard. Advertising giants including New York’s Ogilvy Group and London’s Starcom MediaVest Group have moved aggressively into wireless, competing against-and sometimes partnering with-smaller, mobile-exclusive firms.
The Weather Channel Interactive earlier this year launched its first clickable advertising campaign, teaming with Third Screen Media Inc. to place banner ads for Aruba Tourism on its mobile Internet pages. Gump said that while TWCI may be moving into wireless more aggressively than other content players, the demand for mobile marketing campaigns is already justifying early investments.
“We’re probably a little ahead of the market in some ways, but in other ways you’d be surprised,” TWCI’s Gump said. “We’re very close to a sellout situation in (fourth quarter of 2006). I am really bowled over by the response.”
