• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, October 10, 2012

About six months ago Google rolled out an education program around erecting post-PC strategies it dubbed the “Mobile Playbook.” In fact, our own OMMA Mobile event at Internet Week in May was where their head of mobile and social solutions Tim Reis first walked through the concept live.

After months of taking the plan on the road and speaking with marketers and agencies, the Googlers say they have some revisions and amendments to the original playbook. Writing on the Google Ad blog, Jason Spero, head of global mobile sales and strategy, says they wanted to include some of the novel ways in which companies are making the most of the mobile palette creatively and also proving the platform’s value on their businesses. “These are two areas that have been top of mind for the thousands of marketers that we’ve talked with and we’re excited to expand the playbook to delve deeper into these topics,” Spero writes.

In several recent reports, agency executives have voiced misgivings with the literal scale of mobile screens for getting across brand messages. The microscopic banner has been blamed by some for the microscopic size of mobile spend relative to other channels. A new section of the Playbook titled Mobile Creativity shows off campaigns from Chevy, Toyota, Nike and eMart to demonstrate unique mobile marketing properties.

The Chevy Game Time app for the Super Bowl illustrates the use of multi-screen context, for instance. The now famous “Back Seat Driver” app aimed at kids illustrates the use of location awareness and tracking. And a clever tablet ad from Brazilian financial services company Bradesco has the user inadvertently swipe a car in a fake ad and push it into a wall. 

A new Full Value of Mobile section is a series of ROI case studies involving brands such as T-Mobile, Adidas and Fab.com. For design showroom Fab.com, 30% of their sales now come from mobile less than a year after launching their app. Off of a search ad with click-to-call functionality, T-Mobile drove over 20,000 calls in a month and saw a 13% click-through rate to its mobile site. Adidas did the math on finding that 20% of store locator users converted to buyers with an average order value of $80. Each store locator look-up was worth $3.20.

Spero says the Playbook is designed to highlight illustrative mobile marketing wins and offers from them Google’s tips for others to follow. International editions of the Playbook have been rolled out for Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, France and the UK, with more coming for Japan, Austria and Italy in the upcoming weeks.