• by Doug Chavez , Columnist, December 12, 2013

Oz: You can have a nice pile of bananas!

Finley: Oh, I see, because I’m a monkey, I must love bananas!

Oz: You don’t love bananas?

Finely: Of course I love bananas, I’m a monkey! Don’t be ridiculous! 

That dialog between Oz and Finley from one of the top grossing films of 2013, “Oz The Great and Powerful” hits home in many ways. It reminds us that sometimes some of the most obvious things that are always in front of us and we are accustomed, nay, habituated to doing the same tasks every day and throughout the day. In Finley’s case, it’s eating a steady diet of bananas. For us, it’s understanding what motivates us an insights into our daily routines. 

Our smartphones, and checking the Facebook newsfeed, are as irresistible for us as bananas to Finley. A recent study by eMarketer revealed that people are checking their Facebook newsfeed an average of 14 times each day. Combine that data point with the fact that our phones are never more than 10 feet from us 24 hours a day and that nearly 50% of Facebook’s traffic is mobile and you start to have a great story about how and when to reach your target audience. I use Facebook simply as an example vs. a single solution. Below are four tools and insights you should be using today to attract your Finleys:

Location Based Targeting

Targeting consumers on the go moved from experimental budgets to standard media buying. With access to the Internet in our hands and low-cost smartphones with big screens, we are using our devices to pre-shop, in the aisle and at checkout. And in many cases for entertainment marketers, decisions to go to a movie are made on the go and within a short time before the show. Having your messaging at the right person and in the right geography can help you drive ticket sales. Don’t get caught up in the ticket ecommerce; instead, deliver great creative for the device and get them excited about the movie. There are myriad players in the market. Two companies I like are xAd and PlaceIQ.

Curated User-Generated Pictures

Over 55 million photos are uploaded to Instagram, and Facebook sees over 350 million photos uploaded each day. Social sharing is growing at a logarithmic rate. Tap into this sharing activity and be part of the dialog. Photos are atomic content and get shared at explosive rates – think of the power of one great photo. Just look how fast the selfie photo of President Obama, Prime Ministers Cameron and Thorning-Schmidt took during Mandela’s memorial event spread across the globe. Launching a photo campaign on Instagram is easy but why lock in your photos to just one platform? Get users to upload photos to Instagram and use a company such as Pixlee to curate in real time and syndicate your photos to banner ads, your site or other places that make sense. 

Dynamic Creative

Creative testing and optimization is well beyond the days of simple A/B testing and waiting until mid-campaign to optimize. Consumers are fickle, and sometimes messaging needs to adjust in real-time drive a different result than when a campaign launches. Companies like Spongecell have made it incredibly easy for you or your agency to change creative from their dashboard and get a new message in front of your audiences within minutes. 

FBX

Back to the stat of how many times people are checking their newsfeed. As a reminder, it was 14 times per day. Facebook knows this better than anyone and is constantly tweaking the capabilities of their newsfeed and sponsored stories. As such, FBX is just for the right rail anymore. Through FBX, you can now reach into the newsfeed and get great targeting and re-targeting results using great stories within. 

All of these tools are at your disposal today and are incredibly easy to get up-and-running – it’s not one vs. the other; rather think about how you can use these in conjunction to drive the results you need to deliver. Obvious? Perhaps, but you sometimes have to be creative to get the Finleys of the world to grab the bananas!