Commentary

Mobile and Place-based Media: Two Great Tastes

The panel discussion at MediaPost’s OMMA Mobile conference on Thursday morning touched on one of the most interesting trends in digital media: the integration of mobile and out-of-home place-based marketing campaigns (not to mention experiential elements). Bryon Morrison, the president of IPSH!, recounted a campaign for Doritos that placed mysterious black bags labeled X13-D in stores, asking consumers to send text messages guessing what the new flavor was. In addition to selling out the product, this spurred Internet discussion, propagating buzz to the Internet at large. Morrison also described a package IPSH! put together for a conference of 5,000 top GameStop store managers, which highlighted the possibilities for integrating mobile marketing with digital signage and big-screen entertainment in a public setting.

Similarly, Derek Handley, the CEO of the Hyperfactory, said his company has launched a number of successful mobile campaigns for soccer (er, football) fans in Europe and Latin America, for example sending out messages to groups of friends when their team scores and allowing them to celebrate communally, even if they’re in different places. Alternatively, Handley said Hyperfactory has experimented with mobile content and advertising programs in sports arenas during the events. However Handley cautioned that some of these fell flat, depending on the sport, emphasizing the degree of sensitivity and familiarity marketers need to have with the immediate context of these campaigns. For example, mobile programs that relied on jumbotron screens tended to succeed less at soccer games than with other sports, as spectators at soccer games tend not to look at the screens.

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