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Our Love Hate Relationship with Mobile

Everybody has one. You’d never think of leaving home without it. And when you’re without it, you feel anxious, incomplete, like a part of you is missing. And yet as marketers, we largely shun it or in the best case relegate it to the “emerging media” group or the “experimental channel” budget.

What is this love hate relationship we have with mobile phones?

My colleague Thom Kennon gave a thought-provoking presentation yesterday about the role of mobile marketing. He argues that a mobile should be the center of a marketing plan, not simply thought of as another touch point.

When you think of it, mobile isn’t just a channel, it’s the glue that can tie all your channels together.  Wherever your message is, a mobile device is nearby -- driving past the highway billboard, watching TV at home, reading the newspaper at work, the shelf-talker in the store and anywhere there's Internet access.

His challenge to us and mine to you – start your next campaign plan with mobile and see where it takes you.

Flashback Friday: Mountain King

Look closely.  Can you guess who that guy is playing Mountain King?

You got it, that's our very own Ed Subitzky!  In 1983, we created this ad for the Mountain King video game.  It does a lovely job of demonstrating how much fun Ed was having while attempting to locate and retrieve the crown in the diamond mine.

A New Kanye Meme

It started Sunday night when Kanye West had an outburst  during Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards.  The pop culture event began a chain reaction of mash-ups and memes on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube across the globe.   From interrupting President Obama to Serena Williams' melt down this has become the new Rick Roll.

Today one of our Wunderman mates, Tom Gibby, created this one.  Funny how it works almost anywhere. 

Since Tom posted this version it seems to have inspired a few others.

Facebook's Mobile Growth

Last week I wrote on Facebook's lost youth.  Just as the NYTimes and every social blogger from Silicon Alley to the Silicon Valley is proclaiming Facebook's web death, I think we have missed a growth trend.  25% of Facebook's usage, which is one in four users, approximately 65 million people are engaging via their mobile phones.

Facebook has two mobile web sites: m.facebook.com, which works on any mobile browser, and x.facebook.com, which is designed specifically for touch screen phones like Android, Palm, iPhone and Nokia. These sites have been translated into more than 60 languages and allow you to update your status, browse your news feed and your friends' profiles, comment or "like" stories, and view or update your Facebook Page.

In addition, the recent launch of the Facebook 3.0 iPhone app has renewed interest as the functionality goes far beyond the old browser based functions.

I remember the first mobile version of Facebook, which launched in 2006, was merely a status update (like twitter) and photo upload tool.  Eight months ago, Facebook mobile had climbed to 20 million active users, thanks to the explosion of smart and touch screen phones like the MyTouch 3G, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Nokia, HTC,  Sidekick, and countless other handsets.

Could Facebook's future lie somewhere in between revitalizing the oldest social tool on earth (the phone) and becoming the largest mobile computing platform?

Sources: Facebook Blog, Silicon Alley Insider & AOL Tech

The Latest Social Direct Response Ad Format

Which came first the chicken offer or the direct response ad format on Facebook? 

For the longest time Facebook spent all of its time using ads to drive people to a web or fan page where a user could get lost in the experience of it all.  The newest of Facebook ad format seems to adopt some of our direct response best practices.

This ad for Chick-fil-A's free chicken biscuit samples is the most integrated lead gen-style home page ad unit I’ve seen on Facebook.   What I love about this ad is that it does not take me to a page where I have to read about your beleaguered brand.

The new DR ad unit, gives me a quick fill response form presented as a modal window over my News Feed.

(image source InsideFacebook.com)

A user can easily redeem the offer by filling in the form, and with one click post it to their to their profile and share the offer with friends.  The user experience is fantastic.

According to InsideFacebook.com, Facebook has added new targeting features, including connection targeting, multi-country targeting, and birthday targeting.  This test seems to fall in line with many of the new direct response driven ad formats that big brand advertisers are demanding.

As CPG and foodservice marketers look for new ways of creating lift in sales, drive new offer redemption and connect social media to in store traffic this new DR ad unit could easily be used for all types of free offer based subscription services.

Nokia World Video 2009

This video was created for Nokia World 2009 by our NYC creative team. This sizzle reel was made to highlight the past years award winning digital campaigns across the globe.

Nokia World - Always On Marketing from Joanna Pena-Bickley on Vimeo.

New York Creative Team:

• EVP, Chief Creative Officer: Nick Moore
• SVP, Group Creative Director: Joanna Peña-Bickley
• Assoc. Creative Director / Writer: Jennifer Leuzzi
• Art Director: Chris Loccisano
• Producer: Susan Lekanides
• Video Production: Eyeball

Who has an iPhone? The numbers.

The decision of whether or not to create an iPhone app is coming up with increasing frequency. One of the first questions that comes up is "What percent of our target has an iPhone?" And the answer is...

US iPhone Ownership by Age

We compiled the table above from recent stats published by AdMob and recent Census numbers. This table doesn't include stats on the iPod Touch.

Reading across, 6% of the 13.2 million total iPhone owners in the US are 13-17 years old. Of all 13 to 17 year olds, 3.9% own an iPhone. That is, if your target audience is 13-17 year olds and you create the Killer-iPhone-App-Of-All-Time with 100% download rate, you will have reached 3.9% of your targeted customers. 

When looking at these numbers, a couple of things become pretty clear (but also make the decision of whether or not to create an app more difficult).

1. iPhone Users Span Every Age Range. The question is less about whether an iPhone app is right for your customers. As you can see, there are iPhone users in every age group. There's no easy go/no go decision here. (I can even make a case for the 65+ in that these are likely to be the influencers and opinion leaders in the community)

2. The Addressable Market is Not Large. Even with the largest group of adopters (25-34 year olds), over 90% of that audience do not own an iPhone. An iPhone app is not going to be a "reach" vehicle and regardless of popularity, will not be accessible to a significant percentage of your target.

With these numbers and your estimates of response, you can put together amodel that will help you answer the To App or Not to App question. 

Has Facebook Lost Its Youth?

Just as Facebook launches its latest iPhone app (3.0), the NY Times is reporting a Facebook exodus.  When you see the recent jumps in the site’s overall numbers, an exodus is not immediately evident. According to comScore, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the United States in July.  

In Mobile apps, we are finding that users have a core set of utilities and other apps including social networking sites are more disposable.  The average length varies based on entertainment and connectivity factors.  Mobile app user behavior seems to apply to the web based social apps as well.  Once the novelty runs its course, users will move on to something else.

When I first established my Facebook account, it was the place I could connect the brands I worked for to college students and other bloggers.  Today, it resembles the MySpace of 2007.  A personal repository for images, video, text and superfluous applications. In last year's Facebook hype tour, Mark Zuckerberg claimed it was the one stop shop platform for all social interaction.  In January, the numbers were impressive. The 35-54 year old demo was the fastest growing segment, with a 276.4% growth rate over an approximate 6 months. The 55+ demo was not far behind with a 194.3% growth rate.  With those rates of growth, it is hard to see the exodus.

The numbers above only reflect people joining, and nothing more.  The exodus seems to be happening amongst the Facebook early adopters and its core user base, college students.  Many in this demographic have fled to new social software platforms that are less intrusive, more mobile and that have an auto connect to Facebook. (i.e. four square, loopt, friend feed, flickr, friendster, buddy cloud etc.)

Heffernan article outlined seven people who have left the site. She hardly highlights or proves a mass exodus.  After a bit of research, the numbers reflect a significant drop in Facebook's college and youth demographic. In Jan of 09 its largest demographic concentration was amongst the 18-24 year olds, 40.8% which was a significant drop from 53.8% six months prior. (Download 2009 Facebook Demographics and Statistics as an Excel spreadsheet)

By no means do I see this trend as the demise of Facebook. If it can sustain the older demographic it could be a rich place to target, reach and engage with a demo that has been slow to adopt the social net in the past.  The demographics are changing rapidly and seem to reflect a mass market media tool.

If you are looking for the youth population, Facebook is not the one stop social shop.  It is merely a small fragment of the media consumed by youth today.  The combination of mobile and television seem to be the best bet as their world revolves around entertaining content, location based connectivity, the search for fame and personal expression.

A new way to look at design

Social design ain't your daddy's web design.  It differs in many ways from the old school study of pure omnibus interactions.  Social Design begins with sociological trends of tribes (your audience), then takes into account their behavior and more importantly their passions.  Most successful social brands are finding direct responses when they facilitate a tribal passion through pretty basic functionality. 

Think you can do it without a tribes passion?  Think again. 
If you are not ready to be passionate about what a tribe is passionate about, this is a waste of time and money for your brand.  How do you expect to have a meaningful conversation within a tribe if you have nothing in common with them? When you listen to your audience and unlock their passions then and only then can you have a place in their conversations. (This is where I typically do the message is the medium dance.  I promise you it's a whole dance.)

As I was working on a conversation starter for one of our clients, I stumbled upon this fantastic presentation.  This is one of the most behavioral based, tribal-centric presentations I have seen on developing social software.  Each part focuses on a specific problem in developing social media platforms.  This sociological and behavioral approach takes on the major hurdles in a usage life cycle, which are the stages people go through as they use and adopt software over time.

Designing For Social Traction

View more documents from Joshua Porter.

This methodology can be used in many aspects of the things we create for our clients. The tribal insights dispel many digital design and marketing myths.

@jojobickley