• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, August 19, 2013

Giving the final presentation of the day at the Mobile Insider conference are David Ervin, Director, Integrated Marketing, Hillshire Farms and Liz Ross, President, BPN North America. Both concede that the CPG industry has lagged in mobile, befitting its historically risk-averse nature. Hillshire Farms, for its part, is trying to overcome that reticence to connect with customers via mobile. Location is a big part of that effort.

Ervin points out, for instance, that the company uses apps like Pandora to target consumers with dinner-related ads at 4:00 p.m. because that’s when people are more receptive to those kind of messages. Because it can track people where they’re using Pandora, Hillshire Farms also runs ads when people are listening to Pandora while driving home, so they know where they can pick up food products locally.

“Location is king,” said Ervin. But he acknowledged the company, which sells sausage, lunch meat and hot dog brands, is still early in experimenting with location-based technologies like geo-targeting and geo-fencing as well as local solutions from providers like AT&T AdWorks.