Mobile for ME Time... How Smartphone Usage in North America is all about ME

BBDO in collaboration with AOL recently released a study called Seven Shades of Mobile about usage patterns of mobile in North America.  Not surprisingly, as the penetration levels continue to move towards 100%, usage is starting to reflect normal media consumption behaviors.

What was once considered a platform for people on the move (insert media programs involving SMS and QR codes here) has undeniably become a platform for people with time on their hands (often, at home).   Almost 50% of Smartphone usage can be attributed to ME time.  This time is defined as “relaxation and entertainment in order to indulge oneself or pass the time”.

A staggering 864 Minutes per month per user of “ME” time is being spent on smartphones by people who are looking to relax and be entertained as opposed to accomplishing tasks.

When adding mobile to the marketing mix - a growing priority across all categories, it’s important to consider that ME time is not to be disrupted.  ME time needs to be enhanced, sponsored, celebrated and gifted. 

For advertisers, this means exploring sponsored experiences, testing new apps and aligning with the ME time experiences that make sense for you brand.  Mobile ads work, but try to find a balance to avoid disrupting your target while they are engaged in ME time experiences.
Cast a wide net, create some structure to your testing and consider your brand's purpose - are you a developer of apps or are you the best at something else?  You might find that leaning towards partnering with committed developers allows you to better focus on what your brand is needs to communicate.

Building Online Communities in a Tribal Universe

There's been a lot of demand lately for community building in all categories. This is for a reason, the thought of having a community that rallies around your product or service is very attractive. Heck, it's like shooting fish in a barrel from a CRM stand point.

But I think we're kidding ourselves to think that we can continue to lure consumers into "community environments" without getting financially soaked and forever struggling to retain the..well...retention platform.

Community implies a wrapper and a place. The thought of creating "sticky" environments and sending media to see what sticks is no longer the game. We've evolved...

Some important observations on communities online:

• Communities are fleeting. They assemble and disband sometimes within a few minutes.
• Communities are pull-based and non-committal. Needs based on search queries. With so much information available for free, your proposition needs to be attractive, achievable (in the case of a contest) and without strings attached.
• Consumers want instant gratification. If your community proposition means they need to sign up for something, then the value proposition needs to represent an instant value exchange.

It's our job to work within this transient behavior. It's also important to seriously consider what you are trying to achieve and whether the cost involved in building a potential ghost town is worth the risk. In many cases we're smarter to leverage existing communities, the ones that live and die by the principals of community - not product.

Applying the concept of editorial calendars to your media strategy is one way to succeed in this newer "tribal" marketing game.

Re-thinking the role of community in retention strategies is necessary to stay on top of the moving herds.

Micro-Liking - Facebook's Ownership of Like...

It's been a while since I've posted. Watching the social media landscape unfold can be quite distracting. It’s been dizzying to read about the innovations and failures from our thought leaders in the space. I’m alarmed by a few developments that have taken place over the past months online in general but some of them actually fascinate me.

The landscape’s plot lines are shockingly similar to those of a good soap opera. Around the time of my last post, people were just starting to forget about Facebook’s beacon debacle. As I dust off the keyboard again, it’s remarkable to see how the same technology was re-shuffled, sweetened and made-up to look like well… like “like”.

Facebook’s ownership of “like”, is a massive shift in the world of communications as a whole. Facebook has taken liking something to a different level. In many cases it has diluted its meaning to a commodity.

Our likes and dislikes make up our character. Friends, family and others identify us by our musical taste, our culinary preferences, our reading lists and our sense of humour. Our likes and dislikes make us unique and speak of our ethical and moral fibre. Before Facebook, we have not experienced this mass call to express our likes so frequently and across so many levels. We have become micro-likers and Facebook is the single most driving factor of this shift in like-itude (I am fully aware of my made up vocabulary – I “like” it).

Liking something on Facebook does the following:

• Generates publicity for the liker – any activity on Facebook draws attention through the wall posts
• Satisfies egos - the exhibitionist in all of us that want to say “align me with this joke, piece of art, brilliant thought, brand or philosophy"
• Commits the Liker to a string of conversation that may or may not interest
• Gives props to the author, poster, contributor or friend

So liking something out loud has become a value proposition of sorts. But here’s my question... If I like Obama’s inaugural speech, do I like it as much as Nutella’s Facebook page? Does bringing a smile to my face warrant the “like” action EVERY time? Due to its one-dimensional meaning on Facebook, are we changing the fundamental meaning of like?

From an online media perspective, there's obvious value in targeting against "like portfolios" but will this go back to a view thru/click thru argument at some point, where we scratch our heads at the holes in effectiveness of targeting this way? Just because someone doesn't click “like” x or y does that mean they are not valuable targets?

We throw so much faith into the user’s “actions”. It would probably be a good idea to understand what motivates them before we base assumptions, large budgets and product innovations on them.

It reminds me yet again, of one of my favourite lines in The Incredibles…

Media Innovation - C Squared's Festival of Creativity at Marketing Week 2009

Charlie Crowe, CEO of C Squared, a company that celebrates global media innovation could have (and would have) spent the entire day showcasing brilliant work from every corner of the globe at Marketing Week's Media Day last Thursday in Toronto. The presentation was bursting at the seams with award winning creative executions from C Squared's 2009 Festival of Media Event in Valencia, Spain.

Crowe inspired the 400+ attendees by demonstrating how creativity is the currency for breathing life into traditional media and that fueling this new currency is critical to the new era of marketing.

I caught up with Charlie later to delve deeper into the subject of innovation and into the trends that are emerging in the media landscape.

Because the day had been peppered with publishers highlighting the increasing thought leadership and flexibility they are providing marketers, our discussion started with the obvious trend towards disintermediation of agencies as publishers continue to develop their full service strengths.

Cathie Black, President of Hearst Magazines presented a great example of this. Black told a story of how Cosmopolitan Magazine the world’s top selling women’s magazine was able to provide P&G with a valuable research platform. The publisher recognized its strength in having unique access to the minds of women and was able to serve as more than just a media vehicle. By surveying its readers, the publisher delivered an unparalleled caliber of qualitative data directly to P&G.

Charlie said that he’s not met a single publisher whose strategy did not include a plan to target clients directly. Disintermediation has been a long-standing issue for agencies as they struggle to maintain their relevance and prove their value.

There are a number of reasons why publishers have developed their sales teams to become more innovative in their service to marketers:

• Dealing with agencies can be time consuming. Presenting ideas to creative teams as well as media planners and in some cases, account managers can create confusion a lengthy sales cycle.
• Direct communication with the clients allows the publishers to get a better understanding of the marketing challenges and gives them a chance to prepare more innovative solutions that sometimes bend the publisher's agency rules.
• Customization of content is much more readily achieved when the clients are in direct contact with he publishers. This is specifically true in magazines and other print.

Adding to the pressure on agencies was Crowe’s observation of a whole new breed of publishers. As brands begin to get a better grasp of their own reach and markets, they too are seeing opportunities to sell media. Crowe gave the examples of a well-known European ice cream company selling advertising on popsicle sticks and of a company that sells ads on their packages of cigarette rolling papers. Earlier in his presentation, there was an example of advertising through airport security bins. The point here is that fragmentation is much deeper and wider than the proliferation of TiVos and online media we’ve been analyzing to death and that the fight for consumer attention is truly relentless. The competition is lurking in a much higher volume and through much smaller channels.

When I asked Charlie to share some ideas on how marketers can stimulate innovative initiatives within their organizations, his advice was simply to attach a budget to innovation. Taking at least 10% of an annual marketing budget and using it for innovation with a back-up budget to support any run-away hits is the ideal scenario.

Charlie also touched upon the notion that brands need to be fully developed and understood before they can afford to flex their big ideas. When a brand attains self-awareness, its natural self-confidence shines through and earns the right to give consumers the gift of entertaining and engaging experiences that often fall outside of the conventional means of advertising.

Talking to Charlie about innovation in media left me feeling inspired and positive about the industry. Too often, we feel a sense of urgency that pushes us into a dark creative corner. Charlie echoes the sentiments of his company's Festival of Media event - to celebrate innovation and to ignite a global wave of creativity that will bring the media industry to new heights.