Category: In the News

 Analysis of 450 award-winning and leading brand mobile campaigns uncovers five crucial creative insights.

An interactive creative framework on how to build and execute the most effective mobile campaigns has been released by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA).

The insights included are the result of an in-depth analysis of more than 450 global mobile campaigns, including the winners in the MMA’s annual Smarties Global Mobile Awards Program. The study explored a number of marquis brands and local innovators with highly successful mobile campaigns from around the world, including campaigns from marketers such as Delta, Dunkin’ Brands, Mercedes-Benz, Nike, O2, Samsung, Range Rover, Ray Ban, The Coca-Cola Company, Zyrtec and more.

The analysis examined the innovative mobile creative approaches of successful brands across some of mobile’s unique attributes, uncovering key commonalities and differences and revealing five key benchmarks:

1. The “Brand Activation Remote”

Mobile is the consumer’s remote control to activate engagement with your brand. Using mobile as a brand campaign unifier, bringing access, experience and commerce together, is an unbeatable combination to keep consumers constantly connected along the path to purchase. The unique opportunity here is for advertisers to use devices and campaigns to close the loop on prospects and leads, drive conversion, commerce and loyalty and bring brand experiences closest to their consumers.

2. There is no time like the present

It is said that timing is everything – and mobile brings that to life with the ability to engage and motivate consumers in the present moment and on their terms. From real-time shared experiences to native executions, location-based incentives and dynamic ad serving, mobile’s power is that it’s personal – (one or more phones per person, it’s a personal device); pervasive – (it’s with you all day, from first thing in am till last thing at night and at every opportunity for content, information, utility and transaction all day); and proximity (it’s always with you and marketers can use location as a predictor of human behaviour).

3. Content rules

Across a number of the highly successful mobile campaigns, compelling content was at the heart. Marketers gave consumers unique, shareable and first access content, games, music, stories and collectables. The common thread among all of these was a desired and immersive set of interactions that put the consumer at the centre of the brand story. In some cases, the mobile device was actually the unifier across all of a brand’s communication platforms, allowing consumers to move freely across and among a brand’s assets according to their requirements and on their own terms.

4. Enable bespoke consumer experiences

When consumers personally connect to some aspect of the brand and tailor that experience to their needs, preferences and tastes, everybody wins. Clearly, some brands are better able to customise than others, but again, results show that the ability to personalise brand communications with relevancy delivers a more meaningful response and depth of interaction. Brands can invite consumers in, make them feel heard and achieve significant impact when consumers can exert their preferences to create their own unique experience with your brand.

5. A toolkit to get things done!

Brands that can deploy tools on mobile devices that provide utility and save time can win in a big way. The big winners here used tools or calculators (some that learned what consumers liked), tech integrations that provide unique brand interactions or leveraged an ability to transact on the spot. All these enhance the consumer brand experience in a unique and useful way.

Greg Stuart, MMA CEO, said: “Creativity and innovation are fundamental to brands being successful with mobile. These benchmarks provide marketers and their agencies with a concise framework on how to think more strategically about mobile across the purchase funnel as well as how to leverage uniqueness that only mobile can provide.

“We hope this will stimulate new ideas and help the industry continue to raise the bar on mobile creativity, effectiveness and further innovation.”

Thirty-nine per cent of offline sales are influenced by online browsing, case studies showcased at a recent fashion event have showed.

Multichannel marketing firm, Solocal Group UK, revealed the top trends in digital strategy being leveraged by major fashion and luxury retailers to convert online researchers to in-store customers. http://www.solocalgroup.com/en>

Showcasing presentations and case studies from L’Oréal, Fendi, Clarks and Tag Heuer, the recent Solocal UK event demonstrated the current gap between online and offline purchasers. It also highlighted the power that digital strategies, including SEO, online store locators, data capture and social media have to influence in-store purchases, and the success that Solocal’s solutions have achieved for clients.

Former chief digital officer at L’Oréal and current chief strategy officer at QuantStreams, Georges-Edouard Dias highlighted that only 7% of total sales are made online, while 39% of offline sales are influenced by online browsing: “On and offline sales must complement each other. E-Commerce needs and fuels traditional commerce, while social and mobile channels are building a demand-based neighbourhood commerce community.

“Customers are now in control of the retailer relationship – they are the creator, producer and consumer of products and services. It is therefore not a matter of online sales taking over from physical shops, but of retailers reinventing their business mindset and format in order to connect, collaborate and collectively deliver in a way that suits the consumer’s new approach.”

Benoît Delporte, international e-commerce and digital marketing manager for L’Oréal brand Kérastase and Solocal Group customer, revealed that 70% of customers use search engines to locate their nearest store; 25% more than those going straight to the brand website. Highlighting the importance of effective SEO to capture customers, he also demonstrated how crucial store locator integration into websites was. The assimilation of social media and mobile channels to ensure seamless consumer journeys also featured highly in Kérastase’s strategy to convert online interest into in-salon custom, together with online contact forms and customer acquisition tools such as coupons and vouchers.

“We have benefited enormously from the integration of Solocal’s solutions into our digital strategy,” said Delporte. “Our web-to-store visits have increased by nearly four times in the 11 months since using the Leadformance store locator solution and we will shortly be implementing the Timendo real-time appointment booking facility to provide customers with a personalised online experience; booking the right service and hairdresser at the most convenient salon whenever they need to. This will continue to ensure our online traffic is being effectively converted into salon use.”

Solocal Group UK country manager, Bruno Berthezene, said: “While the Internet has made brand and retailer information globally available, one in four Google searches and one in three mobile searches are actually for local information. The key focus of our brands is therefore on helping retailers harness the benefits that digital media influence has on in-store sales, closing the gap between what consumers are expecting and what brand websites are offering and allowing retailers to transform online traffic to offline results.”

The event gathered more than 20 guests from brands such as Bell & Ross, Diesel, Net à Porter and Stella McCartney. The presentations can be found here.

Marketers need to focus on the individual in order to grow a rival client base, round-table speakers agree.

Businesses who use a scattergun approach to marketing are set to lose out to those who harness the power of individuals, according to a panel of marketing experts at a round table debate in Glasgow.
 
The development and growth of the internet has created unlimited opportunities for businesses to target new customers but brands must filter this down to the individual to avoid being lost in the crowd.
 
Lawrence Jones, founder and CEO of hosting and colocation firm UKFast, said: “We’ve had a privileged position at the heart of the internet watching how it has grown over the past 15 years. The opportunities for brands to reach their target market are infinite now. The internet is expanding every day, but it’s important to distil that down. The web has created so many awesome prospects, it’s mind-blowing. How any business can ignore them is beyond me.”

Alistair Macneil, managing director at Healthy Websites, is a firm believer of using social media to gain this personal edge.
 
Macneil said: “When you are using something like Facebook, you can actually specifically target the ads to your profile customer. You’re always happy to take a call from someone when it’s something you are interested in and social media is a great way of providing that personal touch to potential clients.

“When you get to that personal design touch – that’s when it starts to become really effective.”
 
However, it’s not only social platforms that provide opportunities for brands to get personal. Stephanie Roxburgh, managing director of Database Direct, argues it can be implemented across all traditional marketing channels too.
 
Roxburgh said: “When you create a targeted piece of mail, whether it’s direct or digital, the response rate is significantly higher if it’s personalised.

“Any element of marketing where there is the ability to filter, we need to filter better – who we send to, what message we send and when we send it. The message needs to be tailored to get a better response.”
 
Matthew Whiteford, managing director at Higher Than Digital Marketing, believes there is great power in SEO when it comes to transferring key messages across to clients.
 
He said: “Companies need to realise how important SEO is and how important it is to shape your key messages to your clients. Right now, SEO is just as important as ever.”
 
The marketing experts gathered at a round table debate held by hosting and colocation firm UKFast in its Glasgow office.
 
Here are their top tips for targeting lead generation:
 

• Capture leads through building new pages and promoting these pages through social media.
• Learn who your customers are and how they want to communicate with you.
• Don’t forget about the marketing mix.
• In 2014, content is still king. We’re calling it education based marketing now. Think long term about your content and what it is you want to present to your potential customers.

Two of the data world’s biggest stars are to be recognised for their outstanding contribution to the profession,

Edwina Dunn and Clive Humby – founders of DunnHumby, the firm that ‘wrote the book’ on supermarket loyalty, now a blueprint for ‘Big Data’ success – are to receive the Professor Derek Holder Lifetime Achievement Award at the IQ Talent Awards on June 18.

Edwina and Clive founded DunnHumby in 1999 and sold it to Tesco in 2011, having developed its world famous Clubcard programme during that time. Under their leadership, DunnHumby grew to more than 1,500 staff working across around 30 countries, ‘touching’ more than 350million consumers globally.

They enabled major brands to engage more meaningfully with their customers and delivered much greater understanding of their audiences. Their new commercial models helped many leading retailers build and drive enormous value from major data assets.

The Second IQ Talent Awards organised by DataIQ, are in association with the Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing (IDM) with all profits going to the IDM Charitable Trust to encourage more numerate graduates into the fast growing world of Big Data. The DataIQ programme of publications, events, research and online aims to meet the need for help, advice and insight from business professionals on all matters data, technology, analytics and governance. Launched in 2011, it now supports a community of more than 4,300 data-driven business professionals from most leading brands.

DataIQ CEO Adrian Gregory said: “Big Data really is big box office and Edwina and Clive are truly A-list stars of the show. Much is being made of how organisations are transforming business performance from the intelligent use of data. It’s really the people behind the scenes making sense of data who are making the difference. I can think of no-one who has made a bigger contribution to the world of data than Edwina and Clive.

“We are delighted they are accepting this important lifetime achievement award in honour of the late Professor Derek Holder, founder of the IDM.”

IDM CEO, Mike Cornwell F IDM added: “At the IDM, we truly believe that excellence and expertise should be publicly recognised, which is why we’re thrilled to support the IQ Talent Awards and to learn that true luminaries of the data world are to be honoured with the coveted Derek Holder Lifetime Achievement Award.”

The IQ Talent Awards gala dinner on board a luxury Thames Liner on June 18 are nearly sold out. A number of premium places on the boat have been reserved for friends of Clive and Edwina so they can join the celebration at close hand. To reserve one of these premium places, click here. http://www.dataiq.co.uk/talent2014/tickets and enter the code priorityvip