Busy
Signals
March 19,
2007
By KAMAU
HIGH
Mark Wahlberg, dressed in
military fatigues and toting a sniper weapon, is running
across a phone screen. After several quick cuts, he's at a
table and looking pensively at a computer. Another cut, and he
loads a large bullet into a gun and a politician is shot.
This action-packed clip is a trailer
for the new Paramount film Shooter, but it's not the movie
studio's version. It's one of the top-rated remixes of scenes
from the official trailer on Eyespot.com, a video editing and
distribution Web site. Movie companies such as Paramount and
LionsGate and record labels like Jive are working with the Web
site to post content like trailers and music videos, allowing
users to remix them and then send them using their cell
phones.
At
the end of each video is an Eyespot house ad, but the company
plans to introduce creative from other brands as well, most
likely in the next quarter.
"Many of the advertisers are taking a wait-and-see
approach," says David Dudas, co-founder and CTO of San
Diego-based Eyespot. "Eventually they will realize this is
where the eyeballs are and that they still need to reach those
kids."
This type of mobile
creative has been the norm in Europe and Asia for the past
several years. But until recently the mobile work in the U.S.,
due mostly to a lack of bandwidth and the high price of
state-of-the-art cell phones, has revolved mainly around text
messaging, personalized voice mails and experiments with
sending coupons. But as advanced options become more common in
cell phones sold in this country, the U.S. is playing
catch-up. Now, marketers, with increasing frequency, have
begun to utilize cell phones to distribute branded
entertainment including movie trailers, music videos,
MySpace-like communities and games.
In addition, Internet companies such as Eyespot and
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Mywaves are providing technical
solutions that promise new opportunities for advertisers.
Mywaves, for example, plans to announce by summer Send to
Mobile software that will send Web site videos to cell phones
via the click of a button. Currently, the company allows users
to organize video content on its Web site and then watch it on
their own phones. No ads have been incorporated into the video
clips yet, but the company plans to introduce interstitials
and short ads before content plays in the third quarter of
this year. "We want to pick a handful of advertisers we can
brainstorm new ideas with," says Rajeev Raman, CEO and founder
of Mywaves.
While advertisers
have been slow to take advantage of the creative
possibilities, experts say that is changing. According to New
York-based eMarketer, while companies spent $421 million on
mobile marketing in 2006 in the U.S.—a relatively small 2.5
percent of the $16.4 billion total spent on online
advertising—it projects that number will jump to $903 million,
or 4.6 percent, this year. Online as a whole is expected to
rise to $19.5 billion in 2007.
"There was some excitement but a little bit of hype
in 2005. Brands were excited and wanted to learn more,"
explains Debra Bluman, vp, product marketing at New York-based
Crisp Wireless, a mobile Web site builder for brands and
publishers. "In 2006 we saw that momentum grow, and in 2007
mobile advertising is set to break through previous
boundaries."
"The relevant
marketers are asking for mobile marketing," adds Peter Kang,
cd, interactive and emerging media, Saatchi & Saatchi,
Torrance, Calif. "Mobile is as ubiquitous as gaming and the
Internet. Most people just don't understand how to take video
assets and transfer them properly."
The U.S. has been gaining ground with Europe and
Asia, where companies made large investments in 3G—short for
third generation (or broadband)—technology years before the
U.S. (Japan in 2001, Europe in 2003.) In this country,
broadband speeds on phones—each carrier must build its own
broadband pipeline—are only now becoming widely available.
Price has also been a limiting
factor. State-of-the-art phones capable of viewing video can
cost as much as $600, plus there's a monthly fee of between
$15 and $20 just to use the video options. And while videos
generally only take a few seconds to download, compared to the
speed of a home computer, the wait can seem interminable. In
addition, videos, once downloaded, are still of fairly poor
quality, especially when compared to those found in Europe and
Asia.
The "time-consuming" nature
of mobile video is one reason, according to Jeff Goodby,
co-chairman, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San
Francisco, that the agency decided to use personalized voice
messages for a recent Bud Light campaign, "Apology-Bot 3000."
(In it consumers can go to the brand's Web site and send to
cell phones a message from a "robot.") "The idea of sending
along a message that says check out this video and having
people go do it, it's kind of an arduous experience," he says.
(Story Worldwide, based in
Norwalk, Conn., just completed a similar viral advertisement
for Unilever's I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, in which,
users, after typing in a few personal details, can have the
model Fabio call someone to spread the word about the
product.)
But as the experience
improves, so, too, does the creative. Some U.S. marketers, for
instance, are finding success with creating sponsored mobile
communities similar to Web sites like MySpace.com, but
designed to be accessed via phone.
Vancouver, British Columbia-based airG , which
builds mobile online communities for companies such as Boost
Mobile, a pay-as-you-go wireless service, created a
multi-pronged campaign for users. In it, consumers can win a
car tailored by West Coast Customs, the car shop made famous
by MTV's Pimp My Ride. Of the 1.5 million entries received
between Oct. 15, 2006 and Jan. 15, 2007, 98 percent came from
Boost Hookt, the mobile community on Boost Mobile phones,
according to the company. The rest of the entries came through
banners on Web sites such as MySpace.com.
Mobile marketers are also trying to reach groups of
people gathered in one place, such as a bar. For instance,
later this summer, Soapbox Mobile, a mobile marketing agency
in Carlsbad, Calif., plans to roll out a game called Ice
Breaker for Harrah's Voodoo Lounge in St. Louis. To play,
customers would text the word "ice" to a short code number and
get a random image in return. They would then have to match
their picture with other players' in the area for a chance to
win a prize.
Vlad Edelman, CEO
of Soapbox, says mobile creative's slow growth is due, in
part, to a chicken-and-egg type of scenario. While many users
of high-end phones don't know how to access the various bells
and whistles, creatives "need to understand how to use mobile
in an interesting way. There haven't been enough creative uses
to spur consumer demand. [You can't expect consumers] to go
from SMS and text messaging to 3-D virtual worlds," he
says.
Adds Fred Ghahramani,
founder of airG : "For us to move mobile to every marketing
aspect, customers have to be taught how to use all the
features on their phones."
Some
marketers are utilizing avatars to engage consumers. During
the 2006 World Cup, The Hyperfactory, a New York-based mobile
marketing company, created a video, designed for the Hispanic
market, of a dancing soccer player outfitted in a
Tylenol-branded shirt that people could send to their friends.
In Europe, these types of
sophisticated rich-media efforts have been done by phone
carriers themselves as a way to encourage people to upgrade,
says Mike Bell, CEO of Enpocket in Boston, a mobile phone
agency. The company did a popular viral effort for
London-based Vodafone in late 2005, in which people could
record their own audio track over a video clip of a hyper
monkey and then be able to forward that to their friends.
"The purpose was to promote the
multimedia nature of the phone and the operator itself," says
Bell.
Kevin Swanepoel, president
of The One Club in New York, whose One Show Interactive Awards
are May 9, claims that Europe is still way ahead creatively.
He cited agencies and their work such as Interone Worldwide
GmbH for Mini in Germany, which created a virtual car for cell
phones that rotated 360 degrees as the user turned around, and
Neue Digitale for adidas Y-3, which put virtual clothes models
on users' cell phones. "I can't think of anything in the U.S.
that has stood out," he says.
Which is not to say that some of the work hasn't
been innovative—even some of the "older" campaigns. For the
Toyota Yaris,launched last April, Saatchi & Saatchi,
Torrance, Calif., created eight 10-second humorous spots
paying homage to Mad magazine's Spy vs. Spy comic book
character that book-ended mobile episodes of Fox's Prison
Break. In "Magnet," for instance, a Yaris produces a large
magnet from its engine that drags another car towards it; the
first car then releases an anvil. The spot ends just as
collision is about to happen. (The Future Marketing Awards,
held in New York earlier this month—Adweek was a sponsor—gave
three awards to Saatchi & Saatchi for the work, including
best branded entertainment.)
One
company that has been interested in mobile is Visa, which has
been working in the medium since 2001, when it partnered with
Starbucks. The promotion allowed people to click on a banner
and locate a nearby Starbucks using their PDAs. Starbucks on
March 1 announced it was offering the same capability on cell
phones. And last summer, Visa sponsored a giant billboard in
New York's Times Square where passersby could play a game on
the billboard using their phones.
"When you can interact with outdoor with your
mobile it adds to the ability to engage with the customer,"
says Jon Raj, vp, online and emerging media, Visa. "Nobody
knows how effective it is now. It's not about reach at this
point, it's about looking forward and prepping for the
future."
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