IMJ Interview with Donald Douglas, MD, RETURN2SENDER - September 2009
- Is it possible to quantify the size of the mobile marketing industry in Ireland like one can quantify the size of the press/TV/radio industry? Even a rough estimate would do.
- What are the key trends, in your opinion that are driving the growth of the mobile marketing industry in Ireland?
- How does a brand/brand owner who has no experience in mobile, go about developing a mobile campaign? What kind of objectives/expectations should they set and what kind of returns should they be looking at?
- Much has been made of the transparency and accountability of mobile as a marketing tool – elaborate please.
- What are the key considerations to be made when developing "creative" content for a mobile campaign?
- SMS-based campaigns – do they account for the lion's share of the mobile marketing campaigns at the moment?
- How will SMS develop in the future?
- The impact of new technology – in particular the arrival of smartphones like Blackberrys and iPhones and their associated applications. How much of an impact have they had on the mobile marketing industry?
- What other technology related developments are coming down the line that will drive the growth of the industry in Ireland?
- Clever/funny branded applications on an iPhone are all very fine but are they enough when it comes to building databases and engaging with customers on an ongoing basis ?
- Where does mobile sit in the marketing food chain at the moment? How difficult is it for (a) marketing directors and (b) marketing and advertising agencies to "buy into it" ?
- Mobile advertising in Ireland has yet to take off like it has in,say, the USA or Asia. Does it have a future in Ireland and how will it evolve?
- What are the challenges facing the mobile marketing industry at the moment?
1. Is it possible to quantify the size of the mobile marketing industry in Ireland like one can quantify the size of the press/TV/radio industry? Even a rough estimate would do.
I'd say the value of the market in terms of the amount of money spent on pure mobile media and services is about 10 million maximum.
2. What are the key trends, in your opinion that are driving the growth of the mobile marketing industry in Ireland?
I'd say the key trends that are driving mobile in Ireland are the ubiquity of rich media handsets coupled with the amount of mobile applications out there which enable brands to build emotional connections with mobile consumers. The advertisers that are experienced in mobile are also seeing that there is a genuine appetite for mobile stuff from their consumers and are starting to be a bit more strategic about mobile.
3. How does a brand/brand owner who has no experience in mobile, go about developing a mobile campaign? What kind of objectives/expectations should they set and what kind of returns should they be looking at?
Brands that have never done mobile before should very simply assign a role to mobile; either customer acquisition, retention or brand affinity / differentiation. Benchmarking say mobile advertising click through is probably best done against online banners or search. Retention could be benchmarked against paper DM or online. On the differentiation side PR is a good place to dig – we got on the 6' O Clock news with Carlsberg CatNAV- just look at how many press releases are about XYZ's brands new iphone app. In general we're seeing click through rates of anywhere between 1 and 6% for mobile banners and acquisition costs that are comparable with online search so mobile is very good value right now for the innovators brands that are doing it.
4. Much has been made of the transparency and accountability of mobile as a marketing tool – elaborate please.
Yes, we sell a heady concoction of accountability and interactivity. The mobile number, unlike say an IP address is a unique identifier and basically if you put a text number on your TV ad or a click to call link on your mobile banner ad you can see how many clicks you got and when they came in. You can also see where the person texted in from. We're aggregating lots of stats on this but may favourite for this is on pack and with mobile you can see if someone say clicked on a mobile banner ad supporting an on pack promotion and then went on to make a purchase ( if they texted on via on pack). We've lots of interesting stats on this for instance every time we do on pack promotions for convenience channels you see the spikes at lunch time. We did a promotion for HB 3 years ago during that hot summer we had and literally you'd have a really hot weekend and on the Monday we'd send over 2 big spikes of participation – brand managers love this. While we're on the subject of promotions we recently did a deep dive of our master database which re-enforces the commonly held belief that people who like promotions aren't really that brand loyal and they really do move around from promotion to promotion. Again for on-pack promotions you can also see traffic pick up on the bell curve when the advertising support kicks in (advertising works!). There still lots of anomalies though and just because they didn't text the number on your outdoor doesn't mean it didn't get noticed it just means that your call to action wasn't strong enough. You may see lots of clicks and no one gave you their details – this could mean that you didn't get their trust to get their details. Once of our favourite pieces of data right now is handset type – this can say a lot about your customer. Imagine having 50,000 iphone users on your RM database; now there's a channel!
5. What are the key considerations to be made when developing "creative" content for a mobile campaign?
I think the first thing to acknowledge before getting creative with mobile is that everyone has one so you need to have some sort of mobile element otherwise you're ruling out 4 million mobile consumers. Secondly you need a usability checklist to adapt your content for all of the different devices and channels– you can have an SMS element, a WAP version, a mobile application and or an iphone version. Generally though it's a case of understanding the unique and special 'personal' relationship that consumers have with their mobiles and how they use their phones – that's where the real points are to be scored – Carling iPINT is the best example I've seen of this. Every Valentines Day we send mobile valentines cards to all our clients – this gets us noticed and talked about in the pub after work and that works for us on lots of levels. It's no different for advertisers too and I think because mobile is so instant and portable building a mobile element around brand occasions works really well. Apart from being entertaining I think the other big one is to try and be useful. Look at the amount of branded iphone apps getting talked about right now. I got a text last night from Panda, my bin company reminding me to but my bins out – the right message to the right person at the right time. We recently did an application for The Galway Races where you could get the inside track from what was happening at the event and watch a few 'headshot' videos from Baz Ashmawy. Headshots work really well. In general though if there's nothing in it for consumers then they're not interested. Free, funny and useful stuff works really well – and think small! I bought two books about badge and stamp design recently to help us understand what works well in an area 200x200 pixels wide. Make it small enough so that people can share it with ease over Bluetooth or MMS.
6. SMS-based campaigns – do they account for the lion's share of the mobile marketing campaigns at the moment?
We still do lots an lost of SMS and in terms or participation I'd say that the lions share of our 'hits' are coming from SMS but all of a sudden in 2009 we're doing lots of WAP, iphone and mobile applications which means that our business is fast becoming much more like online. This presents much more creative and strategic opportunities and challenges for us as a business. It also means that mobile demands much bigger digital type budgets.
7. How will SMS develop in the future?
I think SMS is here to stay and it's even more relevant today than previously – look at Twitter; it's basically joined up SMS. When we were in AMV in London they used to say that if you can't express it on a post it then it wont work so I guess SMS is a good stress tester. We use SMS a lot for mobile DM – you put a link to the WAP site or application in there and out it goes (for 4cent per contact which is cheap as chips!).
8. The impact of new technology – in particular the arrival of smartphones like Blackberrys and iPhones and their associated applications. How much of an impact have they had on the mobile marketing industry?
The real impact of iphone is that it has proved everything is going mobile. It's a brilliant example of a near perfect mobile ecosystem. I heard Omar Hamoui of Ad mob (the worlds biggest mobile advertising marketplace) refer to the iphone as The Jesus phone because it has made Madison Avenue re-evaluate mobile. I'd say every marketing director in the land wants an iphone version of their website. It's all happened so fast as well so all of the advertisers who haven't even got their online story on track are probably looking on in bewilderment at augmented reality enabled iphone apps. From my perspective LOCATION is the real power of iphone – you can build so much more relevance when you know where your customer is.
9. What other technology related developments are coming down the line that will drive the growth of the industry in Ireland?
I think flat rate billing, data profiling, location targeting and personalisation will drive the market. More Iphones too and Google Android devices.
10. Clever/funny branded applications on an iPhone are all very fine but are they enough when it comes to building databases and engaging with customers on an ongoing basis ?
I think one of the greatest challenges for any advertiser is keeping consumers attention on any platform. It becomes more magnified on mobile because avoidance is much higher on mobile. I think apps still have a huge role to play though if they are part of an integrated contact strategy. We are constantly telling our clients to move from campaigns to conversation and I think if you have a decent application at the heart of your conversation then that can act as a great point of reference or hub for the campaign. But, apps don't work for every consumers so its important to have SMS or even WAP in there to keep it usable and keep your consumers warm.
11. Where does mobile sit in the marketing food chain at the moment? How difficult is it for (a) marketing directors and (b) marketing and advertising agencies to "buy into it" ?
A lot of tactical mobile stuff is being driven by below the line agencies – we see most of the innovation coming from there. But for the more integrated stuff the pull needs to come from Marketing Directors directly. I don't think agencies would say that they (agencies) are the best people to talk to about mobile. Clients get the best results when they bring us to the table or introduce us to their media and creative agencies.
12. Mobile advertising in Ireland has yet to take off like it has in,say, the USA or Asia. Does it have a future in Ireland and how will it evolve ?
I think that mobile in Ireland has actually really taken off and we're punching way above our weight here as an industry. I think mobile advertising or media has been slow to take off and this is probably down to the same experiences that online has had!
13. What are the challenges facing the mobile marketing industry at the moment?
I think the challenges that we have are education – there are not enough clients using the technology themselves. This is getting better. There are also needs to be much more research into mobile consumers, who they are and what they want. Plus real evaluation…I still think though that advertisers need to just get on and do it as digital is moving so fast these days that if you don't have that culture of innovation and above all staying relevant then you're finished. We're no different as a company – it's innovate or die! And we've a few exciting launches ourselves – watch this space!
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