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A handful of opportunity...

Mick Rigby, Chief Executive of UK mobile advertising business Yodel is exited about the prospects for mobile advertising. Here he tells iSM why...

HAVING worked in the wonderful world of advertising and media for nearly 18 years I’ve seen the whole marketplace change beyond all recognition.

Today’s media world, with digital online advertising that reaches a global audience, campaign results viewed at the touch of a button and money being spent on search (I ask you?) is a far cry from days of old.

The weekly BARB TV Data books that were the size of a phone book (I kid you not) arriving on my desk, the need to spend the last half of the week spot-matching my TV ads onto a big A5 piece of paper, with the ratings printed in this TV buying bible, only to have to do it all again the following week – those were the days.

In short, rather a lot has changed. The sheer scale and scope of the communication tools now available and the level of engagement that the new media world brings to both user and advertiser really blows the mind.

But the biggest mind melt out there – bigger than the internet, or TV you can pause and rewind (both of which are pretty mental if you really think about it), is that latest piece of beautifully packaged electronics from Nokia or Samsung or BlackBerry sitting in your jacket pocket; the little communications miracle called the mobile phone.

Mobiles have become so central to many people’s lives that losing one is deemed worse than losing your wallet or keys. Remember when your mum or dad said they’d never get one? And now the most regular contact you have with them is through text messages?

I was at a Paulo Nutini concert recently. As the auditorium lights when down
and the band came on stage, the stalls lit up with a thousand 18-20 year olds, all holding up their phones to video the first chords.

The mobile phone has not only changed the way we communicate with each other, it has also changed the way that people see the world. And the change has only just started as some of the new developments in technology are filtering through to make life easier by allowing people to pay for things using their mobile phone with the integration of Oyster card technology, how they get around through GPS on their handset and where their office is via handset compatible email technology.

For our industry, the impact the mobile phone has had, and continues to have, on our lives is just the beginning. For us, it is the medium that completes the marketing circle.
There has always been a disjoint between advertising in mainstream media and the required purchase. There is a problematic disconnect, primarily due to time, between advertising and purchase.

For example, you could see an ad in Coronation Street on Monday night for a soap powder and, by the time you go shopping on Friday, you’ve forgotten the name and the branding. Erwin Ephron is often referred to as the father of the advertising ‘recency’ theory and is taken very seriously. This theory, by my interpretation, is that an advertising message is likely to have a considerably stronger impact the closer it is to the
act of the desired action. In short, the closer your message is to the point of purchase, the more effective your advertising will be.

This really does put the cat amongst the pigeons when you consider how much money is spent every night across the key prime-time TV slots. Arguably, by the time the individual visits the shop, or logs on to the internet at the weekend to make the transaction, the ad has become significantly less memorable and, consequently, lost both some of its impact and its effectiveness.

The way around this has been to ensure that the advertising has a sufficient frequency of messages to make it memorable, thus covering the ‘recency gap’. But this has a serious cost implication, especially if you are using ‘mainstream’ media to build that frequency.

Mr Ephron believes that a window of opportunity exists between the predisposition to purchase and the purchase itself. And I believe this is where the mobile phone, like the cavalry riding over the hill to the rescue of the poor beleaguered advertiser, enters the frame. Finally, this gap can be effectively bridged, and at minimal cost.

The simplest way of using the mobile space is to extend mainstream advertising into the mobile advertising environment, through the adoption of your above-the-line message, so it sits in the right environment at the right time. For instance mobile phone internet beer ads on a Thursday or Friday evening are an obvious but little-used placement.

However, if you wanted to take greater advantage of the technology you could then motivate viewers to click-through for a free pint voucher, which they can download to their phones to be scanned in the pub. If you wanted to extend the service further, you could also throw in a geo-locator to tell them the location of their nearest voucher-friendly pub.

You could then have them enter their mates’ phone numbers, enabling the beer brand to send them a map to the pub and more vouchers for themselves. They could even get a list of the music played in the pub that night from a Bluetooth pod, and links through to a promotional WAP site to buy it. If they leave their phone numbers you could also keep them informed, via SMS or MMS, of other promotions that the brewery or the pub chain were undertaking, and let them know when the new TV ad is due to air (or link then to the WAP site to see a sneak preview).

As I write, turmoil has descended on the banking world. Each day I’ve been out of the office travelling and have been keeping up to date with the developments using the Reuters WAP site. There has been a fantastic opportunity for tactical ads by lenders to help their businesses. For existing HBOS customers there could have been a simple banner stating “Want to know how things are, then click here” with a click-to-call function going straight to a phone centre to reassure callers.

For potential new customers, Abbey could flag up its rate and a ‘safe pair of hands’ message. It could offer a click-through to a brochure request and have an application form sent out that day.

The mobile functionality that really excites me though is the advent of location based advertising – where
you get served an ad either to your phone directly, via SMS or as you move through a location-specific mobile cell.
It could be a Clinique ad as you pass Boots, or a Wii ad as you pass a game shop. Bluetooth allows a level of functionality here and, as a further advantage, with no data costs. I’m surprised that it’s not utilised more often. Although I think it soon will be.

Probably the most interesting and useful phone application for the individual to embrace will be search. It is going to be huge on mobile, and the intelligent search tools being developed, like Yahoo OneSearch, will offer relevant information based on the time, day and potentially even location. For instance if you type in Wimbledon during the Championships you’ll get scores and a match schedule, rather than a list of shops in the village or a news article from the local paper. When this facility develops and the technology is in place to tie it into the advertising and behavioural search, the marketing potential is enormous. I envisage this will be tied into mainstream advertising through SMS and MMS technology for individuals to log their interest when an advertisement or service is promoted.

Then, when they are out and about
using the mobile internet, the search
and location based facilities, coupled with couponing technology, will
create brilliantly integrated and successful campaigns.

Many advertisers are already starting to use mobile to complete the marketing circle. Guinness and Strongbow have recently undertaken free pint voucher campaigns on the mobile internet space. Others are already embracing the location-finder facilities, and the government has recently used Bluetooth as part of its ‘Drink Aware’ campaign.

I have no doubt whatsoever that, if the unique opportunities that the mobile phone can supply to the advertiser are integrated into the marketing and advertising plan – a significant shift upwards in terms of campaign success, at potentially a reduced spend – is well within our reach.