• by Christine Champagne , October 14, 2009

Mobile could be the next step in connecting ads to actions

Thanks to the rise of smartphones, mobile has gone way beyond talk and text and is poised to become the primary means of reaching consumers. Yet the use of mobile in cross-platform advertising campaigns is in its infancy at the moment, according to Michael Hanley, director of the Institute for Mobile Media Research at Ball State University, where he also serves as an assistant professor of advertising.

While the top 100 brands have tested the waters in the last two years, they have yet to fully dive into the channel, Hanley says, noting, "There's a lot of experimenting going on. Some of it will work great, and some of it will fail miserably, but that's how we build things."

Safe to Go Back in the Water
New York's Campfire used mobile to initiate a feeding frenzy of sorts this past summer, making it a key component in the Frenzied Waters game promoting Discovery Channel's 22nd annual Shark Week. It all started rather mysteriously when members of Discovery's Facebook fan page were given GPS coordinates with no guidance as to what they were for.

Savvy fans input those coordinates into their phones and used Google Maps to track down capsules hidden in eleven U.S. cities, including New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. "The nature of GPS coordinates is that they're not exact," Campfire creative director Sean Ganann notes, "so people really did have to use their mobile phones to go out and find the final location of the capsules."

The capsules contained the personal effects of a person who had been the victim of a fictional shark attack - for example, one capsule had a piece of a life vest with the U.S. Navy stamp on it, a bloody sailor's hat and a pin-up photo. On the outside of this capsule, as well as the others, a copper plate was hand-engraved with the URL to the Frenzied Waters Web site and a code that, once entered, would unlock that particular shark-attack story for all to see.

Those hunting for the capsules could share their progress via a Twitter account set up specifically for the game.
"Mobile gave us a way to drive the feeding, drive the hunt for the capsules in a way that could reach people no matter where they were," Ganann says.

Knowing Is Half the Battle
Mediaedge:cia, New York, relied on mobile to recruit moviegoers to see Paramount Pictures' G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. "Mobile is an important part of the consumer's life. They're making it a part of their daily media consumption, so we need to make sure we are getting in front of them on that device," says Mediaedge:cia media supervisor Courtney Renaud.

"Especially in the right way, and in a way that's complementary to the rest of the media mix, because none of it stands alone," adds Mediaedge:cia senior partner and digital practice lead Adam Shlachter.

In the mobile realm, Mediaedge:cia created a banner campaign for the flick that ran on Greystripe's ad-supported mobile games and apps, Flixster's mobile app, and Millennial Media's mobile ad network, with the goal of reaching all moviegoers, but men ages 18 to 24 in particular.

Concurrently, Crisp Wireless and Fandango launched a mobile advertising campaign to promote G.I. Joe. Targeting iPhone users, the campaign featured Fandango's first-ever mobile home page takeover ad unit, which directed fans to take the Joe v. Cobra Challenge quiz for the opportunity to win a cash prize. The ad exceeded a 25 percent CTR.

Mobile is the step in the purchasing process that's always been missing with other advertising," Hanley points out. "The only way to get to somebody now before they make a decision to buy something is through mobile."

In addition to Fandango's ad being an effective sales and awareness tool, Tom Foran, chief revenue officer of New York's Crisp Wireless, points out that it didn't require any extra work on Mediaedge:cia's part because it was actually repurposed from the agency's desktop buy. "Mobile doesn't have to be a complete reinvention of something that already exists," Foran says. "There's really a seamless way to include mobile in every desktop media buy, and one way to do that is to leverage approved creative so there's not a lot of extra work that has to go into it."

Body Movin'
Mobile can be instrumental in fostering a movement, as evidenced by its use in the Nelson Mandela Day campaign. Created by New York's Gotham for the 46664 organization and its parent nonprofit, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the effort sought to establish Mandela's birthday, July 18, as an official day of recognition for the revered anti-apartheid activist and South Africa's first black president, celebrating the ability of an individual to make a difference.

While Mandela spent 67 years fighting apartheid, the campaign, which was aimed primarily at culturally in-tune adults ages 25-34, asked people to do their part by committing 67 minutes of volunteer time to causes related to the areas of social injustice, education and poverty.

Gotham incorporated short codes into all of its communications, giving individuals a mobile opt-in mechanism. The more than 50,000 people who did opt-in could text in their 67 minute commitments to the number 46664 (Mandela's prison number) and see them displayed on a digital wall at MandelaDay.com. Additionally, those who opted in received mobile communications from the campaign informing them of volunteer efforts in their area, as well as inspirational quotes from Mandela.

Gotham managing partner and group account director Sadie Marcello says mobile kept participants truly invested in the cause. "When you're trying to create a movement, you need to garner participation and foster that community," Marcello maintains. "You can't ask people to opt-in and then drop off the face of the earth. So mobile is a great means for connecting with people on an ongoing basis."

Hanley concurs. "Mobile is valuable to nonprofits because it can make people subconsciously feel part of a community," he says.

While New York was the center of this year's Mandela Day, Madrid will be the hub of next year's efforts. "We're going to raise the bar when we go to Spain - mobile is going to play even more of a role there," says Gotham chairman and CEO Peter McGuinness, noting that those who opt-in via mobile in the next iteration of the campaign will have exclusive access to video and music content.

Swift advances in technology are opening up exciting possibilities, according to Jason Yim, president and executive creative director of Trigger. (Incidentally, Trigger LA produced an iPhone game for G.I. Joe, separate from the aforementioned campaign for the film.) For his part, Yim sees augmented reality as the next big thing in mobile. "We're waiting on some technology in prototype right now that's going to be on the iPhone, but basically what it will allow you to do is take your iPhone with a video camera and walk up to, say, a Spider-Man 4 poster, point the video camera at the poster and see a superimposed Spidey climbing out of the poster or shooting his web."

Marcello agrees that augmented reality has potential. "We just want to make sure that whether it's augmented reality or qr codes or Bluetooth or whatever technology we utilize, that mobile is a platform for pulling people in to participate in our mission," Marcello stresses, referring specifically to the ongoing Nelson Mandela Day campaign. "We don't want to do a splashy effort just to do it - everything needs to be about our cause."