• by Karl Greenberg , December 2, 2014

The smartphone is less a phone than smart: communications activity is being supplanted by personalized information, commerce and other functions. And the Internet of things is making the thing with a screen the intermediary and interface. It is a seismic change that marketers and brands must stay ahead of with applications that consumers can really use. Ads need not apply.

Walmart is a good example of the value-add equation. The company's VP of media, digital and partnership marketing Wanda Young -- speaking at the Association of National Advertisers’ Mobile First, Mobile Everywhere conference Presented By MediaVest on Tuesday -- dissected the retail giant's Savings Catcher, a digital extension of an in-store policy of meeting or beating the competitor's price, and a program that took a few years to develop. 

To oversimplify, the Savings Catcher lets users compare prices between Walmart and a local competitor. If the competitor is cheaper, the consumer gets the difference in store credit. All you have to do is scan the Walmart receipt from your purchase. "It was huge because it let us go beyond static display. It's easy, and savings are guaranteed and it requires little or no work. 

"The challenge is building loyalty with customers in an age of transparency, of showrooming. The customer has been saying 'I want to be recognized.' Our evolution is making that promise come true by making it more tangible."

The digital promotional push was also huge. Walmart promoted the app with paid and owned media including outreach to social influencers and bloggers, social media (Walmart has something like 40 million fans on Facebook), TV and online video, native advertising and geo-targeting. 

Shawn DuBravac, chief economist and director of research and the Consumer Electronics Association, noted during the conference, that about 67% of households have smartphones, and 65% of the time people are doing things other than communicating. 

He pointed out that as more and more personal devices become connected, the phone is becoming the maypole, the visual connection via screen. "We are at a period where we are moving from about 2 billion smartphones to 50 billion connected objects. So the smartphone is becoming a viewfinder of your digital life. We are now really starting to push limits on what smart means."  

And the shift is toward digital data as a driver of personalized functionality. "It's data doing things on our behalf. Walmart is a great example. You don't have to [physically] go shop and compare because digital data is shopping for you. And it's a concrete example of how digitized information is changing retail."

Per DuBravac, the majority of consumers using mobile devices in-store prefer mobile devices to a salesperson and feel that the information they get from their smart mobile devices is better than what they get from a sales associate. "So retailers need to know how to digitize the in-store experience. And retailers are pushing in that direction." 

But what of digital, connected devices without direct interfaces, for which the smartphone is intermediary? He showed a few of these, eliciting some chuckles: a  basketball that transmits to your phone showing visuals of how you are shooting and how you can improve; a digital fork that measures the speed of your eating and lets you know; and a connected toothbrush.

"Slowly, we will digitize around activities so digital will not be a separate experience," he said. “There's no reason Zappos can't look at how you walk, or notice you have walked 100 miles in your shoes. But if the data [whether it comes from a connected toothbrush or a pair of shoes] doesn't prompt consumers to do something to change their environment, it will go away; no reason to digitize it."