The end of traditional advertising

IBM Institute for Business Value has published a report on advertising market till 2010. The title itself is significant: The end of advertising as we know it. It is not actually surprising. But let’s see some details.

The key issue for development in the branch is using interactive formats – state authors. Traditional marketing channels (advertising banners, TV commercials) have a low growth potential, which is assessed at a few percent. At the same time the average year growth of interactive formats (internet, mobile advertising, interactive TV or advergaming) is assessed at over 20%. The only ‘traditional’ marketing tool remains a product placement.

The report has been created according to interviews with consumers (2400) and experts (80). Most of the experts predicts significant transfer of planned outlays to mobile marketing, IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), VOD (Video On Demand) and internet video. They predict those who stay in ‘traditional’ marketing channels will be soon out of the game.

The authors point out that those who contact with clients through the Internet or mobile telephony are in better position for acquiring data about their clients. Such companies can create precise profiled client databases and then exactly match the content to send; hence the effectiveness of the campaign can be much improved.

The report describes also social and cultural changes – replacing ‘consumer’ with ‘prosumer’ (is a hybrid created from words ‘consumer’ and ‘producer’) and necessity of detailed segmentation of target group and personalization of offers.

Rabbit fever…

London agency Fix Marketing organized a mobile campaign of a British comedy called Rabbit Fever last year. The title rabbit is a kind of mascot but with one reservation – it’s a model of …. vibrator. The Rabbit is the most selling and the most satisfying vibrator all over the world. There are even associations of Anonym Rabbits, where women try to cope with unusual addiction.

The goal of the campaign was to promote the film, increase the web traffic and of course visits in cinemas. The producers wanted the advertisement to become maximally established in public consciousness. That’s why they decided to use an interactive element. On printed posters there was a prompt: Send SMS with RABBIT to number…. As a reply clients got a link for WAP site, with detailed information on film (trailers, cinema addresses, schedule, wallpapers and of course a ticket-winning contest). Campaign lasted for 3 weeks, and there was only about 20 playbills in cinemas.

The effects confirm weakness of the human nature – curiosity always wins . With only 20 playbills 1200 people sent SMS. They downloaded over 2200 files (wallpapers, movies). Almost 90% took part in the contest. About 67 % of those who reacted to the campaign went to see the movie. Of course the level of ticket sale was satisfying.

The Snow is Snowing

Because of a big blizzard during one of winter weekends some of American airports were stuck. Passengers had to spent hours waiting for their planes. One of big American companies noticed that at this time the number of visits on their WAP site increased a lot.

Such situation was confirmed by some other companies as well – WAP sites become more popular than WWW sites at times of blizzards.

According to previous statistics they found that it was not just a coincidence. During previous blizzards the results were the same! So, the conclusion is that people who get bored on closed airports much often use mobile phones to surf the net and visit WAP sites. What can we do about it? Wait for the blizzard and then place the information we want to be widespread on a WAP site…

Mobile literature

Apparently novels written especially for distribution on mobile phones have become very popular in Japan. In this unconventional way Japanese could read even a few best-sellers. So called shosetsu consist of short paragraphs (160 characters, which is exactly as much as can be seen on a single screen). It’s no use wasting the space for landscape descriptions so there are mostly dialogs in shosetsu. If a character is in a deep thought for a while it is represented by a space sign. Most of the authors is before 30…

Oyayubi zoku (jap. thumb-using tribe…) get successive parts of the books in the tube or during school breaks. The most persistent users are school girls and young women.

The novels which are especially eagerly read are then published in traditional, paper version. The most popular Koizora (Heaven of Love) has been printed in huge 1.3 mln edition after it has been downloaded by 10 mln mobile readers. Eventually it has become been even screened.

It’s an interesting idea for promotion books. We can imagine a promotion of a premiere novel by sending some fragments directly on your mobiles. Or – the author writes the first chapter, and the readers will decide whether to continue writing or not… Or, on the other hand, maybe the readers could make the ending?

SMS for alergy

Novartis – pharmacology company from Great Britain, has set up a mobile application for allergics called Pollen-Count Alert. Registered patietns get short messages on their mobile phones every day (every working-day at 7 a.m., during weekend at 10 a.m.). The messages contain information about pollen count but the communicates are personalized – every registered patient fills in a form and then gets adequate informations about his specific allergic pollens. The company sends also advices how to decrease the distress.

The aim of the action is to help with the marketing campaign for spray and nasal drops against hay-fever. The program was free of charge for the first month, for first 5000 users. Then those who wanted to get the messages had to paid 1 £ for every 10 SMS. The new application was promoted in pharmacology press, at chemist’s shops and on public transports tickets. The company used existing client database as well. The efect of the campaign was very satisfacotry – 61 % of users could easily point the sponsor and 71 % of them marked the application as ‘4’ or ‘5’ (in 5-degree scale).