Q. Wireless did the chicken cross the road?
A. To unwire the coop
If this week’s best practice is anything like that joke, you should probably stop reading right now. The good news is that it’s not, but the bad news is that the sum total of thought leadership in this space for the longest time has been tantamount to the number of laughs associated with struggling comics on Improv Night.
Hey, did you hear the one about the guy who walked past a Starbucks only to have his cell phone offer him a quarter off a latte? At least it wasn’t for any kind of organ enlargement!
The fact remains: Until recently, the caliber of case studies, level of validation or amount of endorsement was not nearly sufficient to even insinuate the possibility of wireless being a best practice. But, if you’ve been following Sara Wilson’s weekly column on wireless, it becomes readily apparent that good things are happening in the validation department.
Intel’s Centrino launch (see tomorrow’s Creative Showcase) created a huge turning point for the wireless industry through its Corona-like (change your whole latitude) message: Wireless = No wires. By doing so, it helped expand the realm associated with wireless far beyond the button-sized screen of a cell phone to encompass the entire world of wire-free hardware.
For too long, wireless was limited to cellular telephones, which had limited functionality, capacity and messaging richness.
And speaking of which, the next monumental shot in the arm for wireless has been the steady increased dimensions and quality of the screen and therefore a vastly improved user experience. I recently purchased a Palm Tungsten W, using AT&T’s mLife service. The Web browser blew me away. For the first time, I experienced the real “wireless Web”. In fact, I was so excited I even clicked on a banner! I urge you to view this yourself to get a “first-look” at the new and improved future of wireless communications.
Another major selling point for wireless has been the power of Context, against which a wireless or mobile interface can stake a pretty unique claim. The marketing communications mantra of reaching the right person in the right place at the right time with the right message has arguably never been delivered on as conclusively as in the case of wireless.
“Wireless creates an entirely new touch point for the advertiser,” says Carrie Himelfarb, VP of Sales at Vindigo. “The mobile consumer is not passively taking in content but on the street at a point of purchase. In this case, the best practices come from the advertisers who take advantage of this new context.”
Take the well-known campaign for ABSOLUT using Vindigo. Called “Absolut Insights”, the campaign involved serving up bite-sized nuggets of “conversation starters” every time a searcher was looking up information for a restaurant or bar in a very specific category.
So if someone was en route to sample some Sushi, he might learn that in Japan, a black cat is a sign of good luck; or if searching for Italian, he would find out the Mona Lisa had no eyebrows.
Who knew? Well now, you would know. And while the day might never arrive when this piece of trivia would be just what the doctor ordered at the $1,000,000 question level in “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”, it certainly could come in handy during a pregnant pause in a blind date.
To be sure, we haven’t begun to fully understand the power of GPS or GPRS as a new form of targeting. Unlike the Starbucks example and like the ABSOLUT case, many feel the answer lies in the camp of another best practice – pull-based marketing. When the consumer identifies his or her position – either overtly or implicitly – there are unquestionably levels of permissions that may very well help realize the 25c Latte offer.
In addition, two-way SMPP (as opposed to one-way SMTP) text messaging, Bluetooth and wi-fi networks and communities will shed even more light and expand countless more possibilities and opportunities in terms of what is possible and how marketers can connect with their elusive consumers.
Anyone see “American Idol” last week? Clay started off rather shakily and even though he bounced back strongly, I felt it was my civic duty to answer the call to Save My Singer. Three SMSs or votes later, Clay was breathing a little easier.
I wasn’t alone. From data corresponding to an episode of Idol from early April, more than 2.5 Million Text Messages were registered, including well over a million text votes.
At its peak, almost one thousand text messages per second were being received during the voting period after each show.
“The biggest obstacle standing in the way of wireless success has been consumer adoption,” explains Brian Hill, COO of Mobliss (the company that powered the AT&T tie-in with “American Idol”.) “However, with shows like “American Idol”, a significant number of consumers now understand what it means when you see "text to <some_short_code>" similar to when consumers started seeing URLs in advertisements. At first it was new, now its commonplace.”
What I find even more fascinating is the fact that AT&T designed a series of 30-second education-focused commercials exclusively aimed at calling out the Idol voting feature. There are too many wonderfully interesting aspects of this particular campaign to mention in a single article, but arguably AT&T is doing what Ford and even Coke aren’t – at a fraction of the price. Furthermore, it is certainly worth noting that this example demonstrates not only how wireless fits into an integrated mix, but more importantly how it is actually capable of leading it.
And as my wife astutely pointed out to me, isn’t that (referring to the television ad) what you call interactivity or involvement?
I hate it when she’s right.
