Analysis: Where's the marketing value?
Eric Perez, the group creative director at Blitz Agency, says there are plenty of opportunities for brands to achieve marketing objectives with an iPhone application. What's particularly interesting about the platform, he says, is that brands can anchor themselves onto a device that stays with consumers almost every waking minute (and sometimes the sleeping minutes) of their life.
"I think it gets into the actual brand and what's the perception that they want to have when someone downloads the app," Perez says.
Take the Kraft iFood application, for example. "Ideally, it was tying back into some Kraft products, but not overtly. It isn't sell, sell, sell," Perez says. "There's a nice utility there." Yet, Perez notes, there's also a subtle reminder to users that the app was created by Kraft.
Although it hasn't come to pass yet, Perez anticipates that entertainment companies will make an especially powerful iPhone play in the future. After all, theatrical releases could make use of iPhone apps by teasing fans with key aspects of a film's story line, while targeting the demographics they covet the most.
Still, not everything that makes its way onto the iPhone will reap the marketing rewards offered by the platform, Perez says. There is a flipside. Some apps appear to be more of a joke than anything, he notes -- and they tend to overlook the brand almost entirely.
For example, Carling built an application for the iPhone that was essentially a virtual pint glass, but Perez sees very little marketing value in the application. "The brand sort of falls to the background," he says. Regardless, the Carling application is no longer available through the App Store. A drawn-out legal battle forced the company to pull the application because a company had already developed a strikingly similar application at a $2 price point. Like most branded iPhone applications, the Carling application was free.
