Will Super Bowl Advertisers Take Another Pass On Mobile?

In the X’s and O’s game of Super Bowl advertising, marketers have consistently taken a pass on mobile.

Sure, we’ve seen spots with Shazam calls to action and others that have asked viewers to download a mobile app, but I can’t point to one meaningful attempt to engage tens of millions or more after the Big Game is done.

The missed opportunities have been many, including this one that goes back seven years:

Some, probably many, may have had too good a time to remember, but a great deal of us among the 95 million who watched the Super Bowl in February 2009 remember the television spots run by restaurant chain Denny’s to promote free Grand Slam breakfasts. The campaign’s elements were easy to follow—all viewers needed to do was to go to a Denny’s the following Tuesday for free eggs along with toast with hash browns or grits.

Denny’s reported that approximately 2 million took advantage of the offer. Although many might view that as a success, Denny’s was left with egg on its face when quick service restaurant Arby’s did it one better two months later by building in a way to remarket to patrons through a high-profile, national television campaign.

Here’s how it worked:

To start out, for the launch of its Roastburger product, Arby’s had comedian/entertainer Jimmy Kimmel create, eat, and promote the new sandwich on Jimmy Kimmel Live, a late-night nationally broadcast TV program airing on ABC.

Viewers were urged to text the word Roastburger to short code 27297 to receive a free sandwich with the purchase of any drink. After texting, customers were asked to respond with their zip code to be entered into a local database and to receive additional offers from Arby’s. By doing this, the restaurant gained a valuable remarketable database.

As a result of the one segment:

- Arby’s received 177,745 total entries from 152,280 unique participants

- Approximately 65,000 people opted in to join the mobile loyalty club

- The restaurant created 172 local databases to cater to the opted-in customers on a hyperlocal level

Two years ago, I asked Sean Bartlett, then director of mobile strategy and platforms at Lowe's, for some perspective on the lack of mobile calls to action on Super Bowl telecasts.

“I'm going with preserving creative integrity,” Bartlett, now Worldwide Industry Lead for Retail at Apple, told me.

But can we not have “creative integrity” that includes a mobile call to action?

“Yes, though most are brand anthems, not direct response,” he said.

Last year, on a scale of 1-100, the risk that the Seattle Seahawks took at the end of Super Bowl XLIX by throwing instead of giving the ball to Marshawn Lynch at the 1 sat at 379. And we know how that turned out (the New England Patriots intercepted a pass and won the championship).

On the same scale, on the risk that the telecast advertisers chose when it comes to mobilizing their marketing messages, the number rested squarely at 0.

My belief is that with the right trigger, a Super Bowl spot lives on well beyond the stench of putrid play-calling and uneaten nachos.

It is not hard to imagine some of that from many of the commercials.

What if last year in the last seconds of an ad that was instantly beloved, Budweiser urged touched viewers to save a dog and provided a keyword and short code to be contacted after the game? Do you not think the emotional string pulled would have resulted in pet adoptions?

To me, it gets back to the question of risk.

Just what would advertisers lose if they took the last three seconds of a commercial to add a call to action for viewers to use their phones? What is the worst that could happen? No one would respond.

Will the Super Bowl 50 telecast mark a mobile milestone? On a day when more money will be wagered than any other in 2016, I’m not betting on it.

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(article first appeared on imediaconnection.com - http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2016/01/31/will-super-bowl-advertisers-take-another-pass-on-mobile/)

Five Words To Describe Ineffective Mobile Marketers

Google’s Jason Spero refers to consumer actions on mobile devices as signals, rich with information that tells marketers a great deal if they are on the lookout for them.

“I have more marketers that I'm convincing to be curious about those signals than marketers who are overusing those signals to the point of abuse (like invading privacy),” Spero, Google Vice President of Performance Media, told me in an exclusive interview for my new book, The Art of Mobile Persuasion.

“My problem isn't that marketers are afraid to use those signals because they over-respect them or think the consumers don't want it. My bigger problem is marketers that still don't know how to action the most basic capabilities in mobile. We have all the signals we need to deliver a great UX (user experience). But we've got a heck of a lot of work to do to get there.”

Beyond inattentive, there are four additional words to slap on ineffective mobile marketers.

Impulsive

Another highly successful marketer on the global stage chides those who go to such conferences as South By Southwest and unilaterally seek to determine which products and services will matter.

 “The consumer is going to decide,” said Sean Lyons, Global Chief Digital Officer at Havas told me. “A lot of these early thoughts about how things will be used are often wrong. And it's not because people aren't intelligent. It's because we haven't really found what the behaviors are yet.

“Just think about how long it took for something like the video phone call which was introduced in the ‘60s to actually come into use. Even now, we're Skyping (and only using a voice capability). Other people might be doing FaceTime. But it's not our main method of communication. What's envisioned is often not what happens. To me that's the fun part, especially for brands.”

So what is a marketer to do?

“Once you realize that you are not going to be expected to have the answer, and you just kind of feel your way through it, the better you will be,” Lyons said. “That's going to allow you to not have the pressure of solving the problem. You should be simply observing.”

Selfish

Much like the ill-advised race in 2007 to build an iPhone app, many marketers have taken on Big Data more to check a box than to get closer to a business outcome.

The wise ones know better.

“There needs to be a specific need that benefits the customer,” Jonathan Stephen, who drove innovative mobile programs at JetBlue, said to me. “We should not be selfish in our endeavors to reach customers. I think we get very greedy with big data.

“If possible, we want to know what our customer had for breakfast. We want to know how many sugars that they put in their coffee and if they used Splenda or Truvia or whatever.  There’s this grasp for data and the funny thing is people (marketers) find out that they don’t even know what to do with that data.”

Timid

Several of the leaders who I spoke to said that sitting back and doing nothing about the migration of customers to mobile devices could be even more harmful to your business than making the wrong choices in these relatively early days.

Coca-Cola, one of the world’s most recognizable, beloved, and successful brands, isn’t being passive. Instead, it is fulfilling its long-established mission in an increasingly-large part through the use of wireless devices.

“Our mobile strategy was really articulated in the 1920s when Robert Woodruff described the role of The Coca-Cola Company as putting our brands within the arm’s reach of desire,” Tom Daly, Group Director, Global Director, Mobile and Search, told me. “The only thing that is different today is that at the end of that arm, between it and desire, is a mobile device.

“To the degree that strategy is a choice, the choice that we are making is to have mobile enable desire. The alternative is to do nothing and have mobile become a barrier. That doesn’t sound smart.”

Illogical

In this mobile era, there are two essential questions to ask and answer. One, would a particular mobile initiative enable me to reach or get closer to my business goal? Two, what is in it for my customer or prospect?

“In determining new capabilities, whether it's technology, design or overall customer experience, we really are look for a customer benefit,” Sean Bartlett, Director of Digital Experience, Product, & Omni-channel Integration for Lowe’s, revealed to me. “We saw this recently with Touch ID (a fingerprint recognition feature designed and released by Apple) where there was a clear customer benefit to allowing people to log into their account using their fingerprint.  Passwords are an archaic way of authenticating, or validating, someone's ID and people still have trouble with them. They use various email addresses.

“We look for clear customer benefit, not a huge technical hurdle, and the value that it could bring to the customer and the business.”

I’ll offer one more word to describe the commonality in the more than dozen business leaders who I interviewed for The Art of Mobile Persuasion. Pragmatic.

Doing anything less will make you ineffective or even out of work.

(article first appeared at http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/5-words-describe-ineffective-mobile-marketers-166097)

Highs and Lowe's At MMA Forum San Francisco

At the MMA Forum San Francisco Jan. 28-30 in the city where the coach with a mindset of “Never Stop Improving” replaced the successful quarterback and reached the Super Bowl, we heard from brands with the same attitude using mobile to sell more stuff.

Sean Bartlett of home improvement retail chain Lowe’s is one such example. Never Stop Improving is actually his company’s mantra, but that hardly gave Bartlett a blank check to bring mobile innovation into the 65-year-old retailer’s 1,700 plus stores.

Bartlett, who is director of mobile strategy and platforms, convinced senior management that Lowe’s would be better off if it could differentiate via the integration of mobile throughout the customer journey.

Unlike 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh, he did not replace anything or anyone – he supplemented his company’s sales and marketing programs with mobile products, services and technology smarts.

Bartlett led an effort to get iPhones in the hands of 42,000 sales associates so they could deliver a level of customer service that would combat showrooming – the employees share information with shoppers via the smartphones.

The executive built a mobile application with such transparency that it actually shows competitors’ pricing. He uses Wi-Fi in the 1,700-plus Lowe’s locations to give shoppers what they desire – easy and free access to product reviews and social networks.

And Bartlett is seeing business results that are justifying even more effort and dollars in mobile.

Bartlett’s insights were among the highlights at the two-day event where we moved past the maddening question of whether this is the Year of Mobile – I am rich with a dollar for every time I have heard it since 2005 – and spoke of innovation and issues that face us in 2013.

Here is more of what I remember from the show:

Chase, one of the nation’s leading banks, is not resting on its significant mobile laurels. It is continuing to build capabilities, including the ability for consumers to open checking and credit card accounts through mobile products.

An executive also talked about the customer experience and Chase’s need to move at the speed of now. 

“Mobile gives us a rapid, immediate view if something is going wrong and we address it immediately," said Russ Eisenman, head of mobile product marketing and partnerships at Chase, San Francisco.

For its part, Mercedes has gesture control and the full windshield used for connected contextual content on its roadmap.

In an era of distracted drivers, the German carmaker faced questions about whether more mobile activity in the car is wise. It sought to assure those in attendance that while new connected services in the car are coming, safety is Mercedes’ primary concern.

Another session by Google executives introduced the search giant’s enhanced ability to gather data from cross-platform users. Then, they were hit with a series of questions about privacy and whether the data will be sold to marketers. It will not happen, they said.

Meanwhile, an advertising panelist from 4D complained about the lack of transparency in mobile advertising, saying that too often buying mobile ads is like buying “mystery meat.” Happily, that comment came after lunch.

An executive from Mindshare also encouraged the hundreds in the crowd to “fail smart, fail fast."

There was significant time and attention paid to messaging with surprisingly large crowds that included major brand representatives attending Mobile Marketing Association messaging committee meetings.

Left unanswered were whether the majority of marketers are ready to deal with big data, commit to engage with a customer or prospect after a click or other mobile interaction, and spend significantly more on mobile this year than last.

We will not get there in one day or one year.

But it was gratifying to hear the unified sentiment that we would leave San Francisco with a promise of Never Stop Improving.

(article first appeared on Mobile Marketer - http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/opinion/columns/14700.html)