Mele’s Musings

Mobile: Think Time and Space

About a year ago, I wrote a post on mobile that I still think is mostly right. My main argument in the article was that advertisers miss the opportunity on mobile precisely because they think of it as an advertising medium.

That is still correct. I do think that iAd and the coming onslaught of better mobile ads will help transform mobile devices into more ad friendly mediums, but to me the iAd-type solutions are probably more for mobile devices like the iPad – which have large displays – than for the cell phone which will continue to be limited by its small form factor.

The real revolution in mobile, I think, is location. The rise of services like Foursquare which leverage both social and location have the potential to transform the landscape of mobile advertising on the handset. They allow marketers to not only live in the consumer’s pocket or purse, they allow marketers to reach out to them in extremely relevant ways – when the consumer is in a store, or close to a place of business, or at a restaurant and about to order.

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This seems to be a POV gaining traction with brands all over the country. A number of articles in brandweek, the Pittsburgh Post, and ClickZ last week alone reported on what brands are doing. Some really interesting stuff.

For mobile advertising to work we need to think about location, and to consider it in 3D - in terms of time and space. The limits of most advertising is that it does not really have to consider place most of the time. When advertising on the web, on TV, in a magazine, we are not really thinking about where the consumer is consuming the content most of the time. Instead, we think only about the context of the content – what show, website, or magazine it is in.

Mobile changes that relationship. If we can think of mobile marketing as a time and space medium, we start to think differently about the tactics we use. And we can start to think more holistically about how we communicate with consumers.

Consider the following thought experiment. Let’s say we are marketing for a national fast food restaurant. If we think broadly about mobile opportunities, we might do some of the following:
• We offer consumers a texting program that alerts consumers when there are specials and new products. When users are sent texts, they have the ability to adjust what messages they receive and when they receive them. For instance, we give them the option of just receiving coupons for special offers, and we give them the option of only receiving these offers on specific days of the week when they can actually take advantage of them. That way, we limit the annoyance of texting and send messages relevant to time and space.
• We create a foursquare offering in which consumers are given a special offer when they are close to a restaurant. Instead of just waiting for the next text, then, a consumer can get an offer based on where they actually are.
• When the consumer is in the store, we can set up QR code or bar code programs that offer consumers content and information relevant to their store visit and product purchase. If a consumer is a regular chicken sandwich buyer, we can ask them questions about products, get their feedback, ask them to be part of product testing, etc.
• If we can combine all of this information – and we should be able to if we can tie all consumer activity to an email address – we can start collecting really valuable information on them, and provide them even more relevant messaging – whether they are on a mobile device or not. With a properly sophisticated system, we can use the data collected to send targeted emails or online ads, and better understand their buying and shopping patterns.

If we start thinking more holistically and more broadly about mobile, and consider it as a real time and space medium, we can start creating truly meaningful communications for our clients.

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