If there's one thing we've learned lately, it's that people will be interacting with your brand over multiple digital channels. Gone are the days when you could think in terms of "or." You shouldn't be asking, "Is our audience more likely to be on a website or social network or smartphone?" Going forward, people want to interact with brands through the multiple devices and platforms they use, whenever they need them.
With Nielsen projecting smartphones penetration over 50 percent in the U.S. next year, now's the time for brands to figure out exactly what their smartphone audience wants.
To that end, here are a few brands to use as metaphors in thinking about how to get smartphone users engaged on a regular basis.
L'Oreal: Mirror, mirror on my phone
I've talked before about how much engagement sits latent in the makeup category. Especially as retail environments like Walgreens and CVS are redesigning to look more and more like department store beauty sections, the beauty brands themselves need to start engaging and getting awareness before anyone sets foot in a store. There's simply too much choice at shelf to shift behavior with shelf-talkers and endcaps alone.
When I think of a brand like L'Oreal, the first thing that comes to mind is the behavioral beauty that is the front-facing camera. Sure, it has been promoted as Face Time in the iPhone, and you can bet that many more handset makers will be integrating the front-facing camera for chat and profile pics. But what about the simple use of it being a compact in disguise?
So if we just take that feature of having a L'Oreal app that uses a front-facing camera just as a mirror, how much valuable top-of-mind awareness is that? It's you, sponsored by L'Oreal.
When we begin to build this concept further, it gets really interesting: Take your picture and be able to test out different makeup looks in minutes. When you've tested your look and find something that you like, add a function that MMS-sends it to your friends for the final approval. If you really like your look, you're one tap from making it your Facebook profile pic.
Even more, the app can give you a shopping list ready to take directly to the retail shelf you need to make it happen.
Lancome does have an iPhone app in play, but it's just dipping its toe in the water with a limited color palette and one cartoon face to choose from. The industry seems wide open for innovation and captivation of share while this communication form is still maturing.
Visa: Leap ahead by supporting coupon culture
The credit card companies seem to be competing on which can have the most apps. MasterCard and American Express are leading the pack, and it looks a lot more like their own corporate cultures are being reflected rather than accentuating the user's experience. You can download apps to see your account and pay your bill, as well as apps for time-based sales and reading articles in the American Express Forum.
Visa has but one app in the iTunes store right now, and it serves up promotional partner offers based on preference and location. Sounds nice, but it doesn't accommodate for the behavior that really drives coupon use. Coupons might not feel social because of the way brands think in terms of redemption, but have you ever seen a group of people talk about couponing? What they found, how much they saved. For a majority of the country, coupons are a kind of social currency game.
Thanks to Facebook Connect, you can support that game with technology. Compare coupons with your friends privately through the app and be able to track shares and redemptions for points in a game between that group of -- what I'm guessing based on experience -- is three to five people. Another option is playing off the scarcity game that MasterCard and Amex are trying, and make sharing limited.
As we just saw with the RockMelt browser, there's something powerful to seeing who in your friend group doesn't have an offer while only being able to share the offer with, say, three of them.
What this kind of scarcity does is force you pick the people who matter most between you and that brand offer to share with -- the kind of metrics that can immediately help a brand understand not only who redeems the offer, but what the consensus group is for that product.
