by Mark Walsh on May 12, 12:00 PM
To build or buy is one of the questions the agency panel today is tackling, and it seems sponsoring an app rather than starting from scratch is getting strong support from the group assembled. Hooking into another app, especially one moving up the App Store charts has the benefit of being less risky and less costly than building a branded app that could cost into six figures at the high end. "There won't be an app for every movie" said Courtney Renaud, supervisor at mec:interaction, but a new movie can be promoted via third-part app sponsorship or ads within an …
by Joe Mandese on May 12, 11:56 AM
Mobile Media Principal Jordan Green discussed a bank client that developed a mobile app that literally transformed the way its customers do business. The app, he said, allows consumers to take a photo of the front and bank of a check, and to automatically have it deposited "without ever having to step foot in a bank." Pretty cool. But fellow Agency Roundtable panelist Patrick Collins of 5th Finger, quipped, "Do they send back a photo of the money?"
by Joe Mandese on May 12, 11:44 AM
Hopfer, the mobile marketing manager at Mobext says his clients are all obsessed with developing mobile apps, but they don't always know why, or more importantly, what the consumer benefit is. And perhaps most importantly of all, what the end benefit might be for their brands. "We always have to calm them down, and ask if the functionality that you'd get is something that you couldn't get from another marketing experience," he said during the Agency Roundtable session at OMMA Mobile this morning. To answer that question, Hopfer said, you must first answer two separate questions: 1) Will …
by Joe Mandese on May 12, 11:13 AM
That was the wrap-up point following AKQA Mobile chief Dan Rosen's presentation. When an audience member pointed out that the mobile case studies Rosen presented were all great, but that they weren't "advertising," Rosen rejoined: "In our view, the best advertising, isn't advertising." As such, OMMA Mobile has effectively progressed in the course of an hour from the Hindu concept of karma to the Buddhist concept of Zen. More or less. And if that wasn't Zen-like enough for you, Rosen elaborated that while AKQA does plenty of conventional advertising and search marketing, but it really specializes in, …
by Mark Walsh on May 12, 11:07 AM
Discussing branded apps, AKQA's Dan Rosen pointed out that promotional apps involving gaming had become overused and trivialized. So it created a gaming app to launch the GTI late last year for VW--but with a more sophisticated approach geared to the targeted affluent audience looking for "innovation, performance and style". The GTI Real Racing app, which allowed users to test their race-driving skills on a virtual track and gauge results against friends and others via a leaderboard and Facebook, led to real world results. Rosen said within days after the app launched VW dealers saw increased foot traffic and …
by Joe Mandese on May 12, 10:54 AM
AKQA Mobile Managing Director Dan Rosen was alluding to the term coined earlier this year -- the Splinternet -- by the coin-worthy researchers at Forrester. The Splinternet, of course, is a term used to describe the fact that the Internet is actually fragmenting, or "splintering," into gazillions of little fragments. And nothing embodies that like mobile, Rosen said. And it's not going to get any less fragmented anytime soon.
by Joe Mandese on May 12, 10:41 AM
That's the way AKQA Mobile Managing Director Dan Rosen described the state of mobile brand media, alluding to the fact that it's all becoming about the software behind the utilities. "As ads become software brands are now finding themselves as software developers whether they like that or not," he said.
by Mark Walsh on May 12, 10:33 AM
When will bigger budgets emerge for apps and mobile advertising overall? The perennial question. It's a bit of a conundrum because more funding requires standard metrics in mobile to prove its efficacy in terms of brand awareness or purchase intent or any other traditional brand measure. But there aren't such mobile metrics yet to show results, according to Tara Scarlett, Senior Manager, CRM and Precision Marketing at Coca-Cola. She emphasized the importance of maintaining an innovation budget to keep refining new marketing techniques including mobile to get to the point where standard metrics eventually evolve and the value of mobile …
by Mark Walsh on May 12, 10:18 AM
The panelists highlight the two basic schools of app creation: utility or fun and entertainment. Kraft's ifood app would clearly be on the utility side while Coca-Cola's Spin the Bottle app and Zippo's Lighter app would be purely novelty and entertainment apps. Right? While the Zippo app has become something of a cultural phenomenon at concerts, Brent Tyler, Promotions Manager at Zipp, explained there's also a practical, test marketing aspect to the app. Depending on which different designs or "skins" for a virtual lighter turn out to be most downloaded the company could then create actual lighters with the most …
by Joe Mandese on May 12, 10:15 AM
That's what Kraft's Ed Kaczmarek suggested when asked to react to a stat that mobile marketing is "four to five times as effective" as online marketing. "I'm going to say that most brand marketers will tell you that you are smoking something," he said, adding that the incredulity isn't because mobile isn't working better, but because it takes a while for big marketing organizations to assimilate new media platforms, even if they are more effective. He cited how long it took for big marketers to embrace [online] media, but he sees a ray of hope in the fact …