Adopt a Lean Approach to Mobile Strategy

(This article was originally published by MarketingProfs)

As mobile has become the primary interface via which human beings experience an increasingly digitally optimized world, brands are being forced to adapt at an accelerated rate of change to create and maintain competitive advantage.

Increasing pressures from the executive suite force tactical decisions. Siloed efforts in mobile across rogue business units create unmanageable assets and unnecessary support issues. User demands accelerate by the day, forcing organizations to adopt reactionary tactics counter to corporate directives.

All of this mobility disruption to pre-existing models has created significant digital friction. Existing models for defining strategy are highly complex, time consuming, and based on methodologies designed for addressing an audience of stationary targets. The mobile experience is often initiated by moving targets and is defined not only by the message and the medium but also by the context of the user experience.

As a result, the complexity and associated analysis paralysis involved with developing strategies lead to organizational confusion and indecision. In this age of mobility, brands are faced with the dilemma of how best to manage ever-increasing complexities and prioritize efforts that add measurable value to the user and provide immediate impact for the business. The question is, more often than not, a fundamental one: Where do we start?

Lean Strategy: An Alternative to Existing Strategic Thinking

Successful strategies for mobility require a significant overhaul in approach. Success relies on quickly identifying and prioritizing mobility investments to create alignment and foster continuous innovation.

Brands need to gain clarity for mobile efforts. They need to stop thinking about large projects or big releases and embrace a decision-making framework executed in a series of short, informed, prioritized, and iterative cycles. A focus on deconstructing complexities is required to improve manageability, increase flexibility, and accelerate informed decisions measured by value to the user, value to the business, and ability to execute.

Systematically and intelligently prioritizing all of the initiatives proposed within and across lines of business poses considerable challenges. To simplify the prioritization process, focus needs to be on the identification and rapid formulation of informed project activation plans designed to quickly address mobility efforts.

When evaluated through the lenses of value to the user audience, value in alignment with business objectives, and organizational ability to execute, ideas transform into opportunities that take shape as highly valuable, immediately executable initiatives prioritized and poised for activation.

Agile Strategy Drives Actionable Insights and Informed Planning

When executed effectively, this lean framework approach to strategy should focus on three distinct yet interrelated steps designed to provide an informed road map to achieve more immediate success: investigation, formulation, and activation.

• Investigation begins with an understanding of current trends in the marketplace as well as the competitive landscape facing the organization. This analysis should be evaluated against an audit of the brand’s existing in-market mobile experiences. An understanding of user personas and their engagement journey, coupled with key stakeholders interviews within the organization, begins to form the key prioritization criteria of the value of a prospective effort to the user as well as its alignment with the objectives of the business.
• Formulation involves exploration into existing current and future mobility efforts and harnessing market trends, mobile experiences audit, and competitive analysis to identify unconsidered opportunities. In addition, a high-level assessment of the organization’s level of mobile maturity from the perspectives of people, process, and technology forms the basis for an understanding of the organization’s ability to execute.
• Activation combines all initiatives that have passed the litmus test of alignment with business strategy to be defined as opportunities. These opportunities should then be evaluated through the lenses of value to the user audience, value to the business, and organizational ability to execute to be assigned a prioritized ranking.

The prioritized opportunities deemed highest value form the basis for the lean activation plan, with the business case developed for the top initiatives, including cost and required resource models, technological dependencies, prospective ROI, and multi-phase road map for ongoing solution innovation.

Addressing the Need for Revised Strategic Models

Strategy is too often focused on technology, where the fascination with shiny objects often undermines the objectives of the organization. With mobility, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and the brand requires an understanding of the delicate balance between the art of possible and the art of pragmatism.

Adopting lean principles for strategy ensures that complexity, rigidity, and friction are replaced with simplicity, adaptability, and speed. Accelerating market demands can only be combated through accelerated road-mapping developed through actionable insights and informed planning.

Assuming the lead in driving innovation is the challenge ahead. Is your organization prepared for leadership?

Key Takeaways

• Success relies on iteratively identifying and prioritizing mobility investments to create alignment and foster continuous innovation.
• Embrace a lean strategy framework executed in a series of short, informed, prioritized and iterative cycles.
• Adopting lean principles for strategy ensures that complexity, rigidity, and friction are replaced with simplicity, adaptability, and speed.

 

Addressing Shiny Object Syndrome: Three Considerations for Humanizing Mobile Advertising

The connected consumer has little patience for clutter or noise. The device is the compass with which we engage the world, the persistent interface that guides us through an ever-evolving digital landscape. How then, as marketers, do we evolve in order to not only keep pace with the mobile revolution, but also to utilize it as intended?

The smartphone is intensely personal, intimately integrated into our social graphs, superior in its contextual awareness of time and space, hyper-connected and nearly always within arm’s reach. The smartphone has, in essence, become a very natural extension of our human selves.

Yet, despite the newfound wealth of opportunities available to mobile marketers, we have been consistently and fundamentally flawed in both strategy and execution. The opportunity lost at the intersection of mobility and digital marketing is a failure of flawed prioritization and fascination with shiny objects. Simply put, we’ve been doing it all wrong. 

How do we address a fundamental, user-driven shift from technology-focused, reach and frequency-driven ads models to one focused on user experience-centricity? The fundamental question is, how do we make mobile advertising more human?

 Consideration One: Stop Insulting the Audience

Effective consumer engagement can no longer assume a one size fits all, spray and pray mindset. The connected consumer is constantly barraged with a dizzyingly irrelevant and intrusive array of branded digital touchpoints. 

The first step in the humanization of mobile advertising involves integrating the brand into the daily experiences of the mobile user by being additive, not intrusive. It’s not enough to simply know where your audience is and present the same brand messaging. 

For example, if a coffee brand chooses to run an ad on a weather app where high audience volume exists during peak morning hours, the call to action when selected should include GPS coordinate recognition for store location, a redeemable promotional offer, and potentially add local traffic or public transportation information based on location, or a song download for a morning pick me up.

Consideration Two: Stop Marketing At People and Start Marketing To Context

The mobility user experience is the primary consideration and that experience is, by its nature, transitional. The success or failure of any future mobility marketing effort will be defined in the execution of strategies focused on addressing user transitions – the transitions from medium to medium, dialogue to dialogue, and from context to context.

 Brands must move beyond simply marketing at people but, instead, must master marketing to a context that is determined by device or platform. They must consider the specific medium with which they choose to engage and execute experiences that accentuate its differentiated elements.

Accessibility is the foundational concern addressed by mobile sites, tablet apps and optimized campaign microsites, but the key to successful transitional marketing is anticipation. Anticipating that a consumer is on her tablet device when your commercial airs. Anticipating that the needs of consumers before 8:00 a.m. and after 5 p.m. are more time sensitive and experiential in nature.

 Accessibility requires an understanding of connectivity and content. Anticipation requires an understanding of character and context.

 Consideration Three: Provide Value in Exchange for Value

Regardless of the strategies or technologies employed, successful mobile marketing relies heavily on a fair and evenly balanced value exchange between consumer and brand. Given the intensely personal nature of smart devices, coupled with the fact that the device is nearly always within arm’s reach, it becomes extremely important that mobile marketing avoids being intrusive and irrelevant.

A mobile ad unit that directs the consumer to an optimized landing page or microsite featuring content or product exclusive to the ad engages the audience with exclusivity. Tactics such as these create a successful value exchange whereby an attention commitment is made by the consumer in exchange for priority access to the brand and the reward associated with exclusive ownership.

It is important to remember that experience is not a product of technology – it is a product of emotion. From positive emotions come connections, and from connections come relationships. And isn’t building relationships with consumers the end goal anyway?

(r)Evolution Mobility: Three Evolutionary Mobility Trends Guiding Mobile Marketing Strategies

 

5 Lessons Learned in Mobility Marketing: a 2012 Retrospective

2012 was a year of tremendous evolutionary shift in consumer behavior and brand engagement. This shift was enabled primarily by the mobile device, offering unparalleled instantaneous consumer access to brands and fueling a (r)evolution that has toppled traditional B2C marketing and ushered in a new world order C2B model of consumer brand engagement.

As we enter 2013, it is important to retrospectively digest learnings from the maturation of mobility over the course of the past twelve months. The following is intended to clearly articulate the fundamental lessons learned from current state mobility and to serve as a guidepost for the continued advancement of the medium as the primary interface for brand and consumer marketing engagement:

Lesson 1.    It’s No Longer About Mobile, It’s About Mobility

There is no first, second or third screen – there are only screens.

Regardless of their uniqueness in form factor or function, connected screens are simply humanized interfaces allowing us to communicate with and experience a digitally optimized world.

How do we address a fundamental shift from technology-focused marketing models to one of experience-centricity?

We must begin with an understanding that any technology is, at best, merely an enabler of a much greater objective – the creation of superior, additive user experiences for consumers that offer the ability to move or be moved freely and easily by removing barriers of time and space.

Lesson 2.    Mobility Blurs the Lines of Medium Demarcation

In ignoring the experience-driven revolution led by mobility, marketers and technologists alike have chosen a path of least resistance and created additional siloed channels for consumer engagement, dismissing the subtly nuanced gray matter that exists between disparate channels made up of situational determinants and connected consumer behavior.

Each device sojourns the journey between consumer and brand, but this momentary device-specific engagement does not define the experience.

Marketers in this new order of constant connectivity must devise strategies for a multi-screen consumer experience, allowing for the narrative of the brand to be transported from touchpoint to touchpoint in a transmedia engagement model where the technologies used are no longer the focal point.

Lesson 3.   The Goal is to be Additive to Personal Experience

The smartphone is intensely personal, intimately integrated into our social graphs, superior in its contextual awareness of time and space, hyper-connected and nearly always within arm’s reach. As such, the smartphone has, in essence, become a very natural extension of our human selves.

An increased focus on solving for use cases unique to mobility, providing additive functional utility that increases efficiencies, must be the primary emphasis in effective, sustainable mobility strategy.

The user experience is defined by the utility it provides. Technologies and products can be commoditized, experiences cannot.

Lesson 4.    Mobility Exists in Context

The mobile medium represents the most powerful mechanism for delivering contextually relevant consumer-brand communications yet experienced in marketing.  Marketers who effectively solve the complexities associated with the mobility will provide unique experiences for consumers, irrespective of the constraints of time or space, in ways differentiated, highly relevant, and intensely personal.

To flourish in this new environment, marketers must be constantly accessible as well as prepared to anticipate – prepared to provide the tools to allow consumers to pull information from them when required, but they must also be prepared to initiate engagement with contextual relevance and personalization.

Lesson 5.   Mobility is Transitional

The consumer experience is the primary consideration and that experience is, by its nature, transitional. The success or failure of any future marketing effort will be defined in the execution of transitions – the transitions from medium to medium, dialogue to dialogue, and from context to context.

Anticipating transitions and communicating with consideration of context is where the battle for consumer hearts and minds will be won.

It is important to remember that experience is not a product of technology – it is a product of emotion. From positive emotions come connections, and from connections come relationships. And isn’t building relationships with consumers the objective anyway?

Seducing Moving Targets: Four Rules for Luxury Brand Mobile Content Marketing

The essence of any coveted brand is the story it conveys. The effective generational articulation of heritage, craftsmanship, and creative innovation combine with a vision of an aspirational lifestyle to seduce a highly desirable audience and inspire desire for association.

Historically, the articulation of this vision was realized on a print canvas, where artistic vision is artfully staged with aesthetic precision. The rise of digital created new opportunities for luxury brands to message the brand narrative as highly produced video vignettes of similar aspirational effect provide added dimensionality to classical still imagery.

Through video and other forms of brand content, luxury brands have become media companies and content marketers selling a vision of an exclusive lifestyle attainable only by a select few. Product placement is subtle and sophisticated. If leveraged properly, video can provide a unique glimpse into the brand and allow intimacy while adhering to the value exchange by providing equivalent or greater value in exchange for time and attention.

Designed entirely for a captive audience, unobstructed and intently engaged, both print and digital representations of brand identity have effectively conveyed the brand narrative for this stationary state. This new media has not, however, been effectively translated for a new breed of digital audience – an audience in motion.

The strategic dilemma of how best to convey the luxury brand story and experience to a mobile audience has not been successfully solved. The mobile device, as a platform for brand communications, is unique, requiring brand marketers to rethink engagement strategies and devise innovative campaigns that leverage the medium as it is intended for effective mobile content marketing. The challenge lies in seducing moving targets.

Rule of Seduction One: Produce Content Episodically

Resist the temptation to unveil the entire story in a single instance. By deconstructing the narrative into episodes, the engagement teases the audience and creates desire to continue following the unfolding of the story.

Rule of Seduction Two: Communicate Cryptically

Regardless of the communication mechanism employed, be it a mobile ad, SMS or MMS, in-app push notifications, QR code, or augmented reality, messaging should be intriguing and subtle. Be cryptic about what awaits the audience if they choose to participate. Creating mystery through veiled communications fuels desire to see what is on the other side.

Rule of Seduction Three: Make the Theater Participatory

Take the consumer on a journey with the narrative. Provide sophisticated clues to challenge the audience by using the outside world as your canvas. Clues could exist on billboards, on buildings, on bus shelters, in taxis – adding a sophisticated element of game mechanics to engagement and allowing the audience to become players in the theatricality of the campaign.

Rule of Seduction Four: Reward with Exclusivity

The luxury consumer seeks priority access to, and deeper levels of intimacy with, the brands they most covet. The lure of exclusivity is the most effective mechanism for playing marionette with the heartstrings of this highly sought consumer and forming greater connections. The reward of prerelease viewing accessible only to a select group of participants creates desire for brand association through exclusivity.

The seduction of moving targets requires precision planning and careful orchestration. Traditionally the brand narrative has been told in a unidirectional fashion through artfully produced photography and film, but the consumer was only capable of experiencing the story in a disconnected way. Mobile, as a medium, is innately transitive in nature, serving as a persistent interface for consumers to navigate an ever-evolving digital ecosystem of retail touchpoints and become, themselves, players in the storytelling experience. Strategically dissecting the brand narrative to take on an episodic form allows the brand to engage audiences in the on-going drama, create desire to see where the story will lead, and create deeper emotional connections in the process.

5 Flaws in Your Mobile Marketing Strategy

(This article was originally published in Mashable)

The hyper-connected consumer of today has little patience for clutter or noise. His smartphone is the compass with which he engages the world, the persistent interface that guides him through the ever-evolving digital landscape. How then, as marketers, do we evolve in order to not only keep pace with the mobile revolution, but also to utilize it as intended?

The smartphone is intensely personal, intimately integrated into our social graphs, superior in its contextual awareness of time and space, hyper-connected and nearly always within arm’s reach. The smartphone has, in essence, become a natural extension of our human selves.

Yet, despite the newfound wealth of opportunities available to mobile marketers, we have been consistently and fundamentally flawed in both strategy and execution. Quite simply put, we’re doing it all wrong.

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1. Flaw: De-Emphasizing the Unique Nature of the Medium

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Although they share a common infrastructure, mobile is not the traditional web. In fact, the two have few equivalents in the stationary web world. The stationary web is exactly that – inactive. With that said, why would mobile design, which should be focused on creating an experience unique to those who are actively on-the-go, be constructed with an inactive model in mind?

Mobile events are inherently transitive in nature. The different elements of the medium — constant connectivity, location awareness, personalization and social connection — add affinity to consumer/brand interactions and empower the medium uniquely as an events-driven interface. These features form the foundation for consumer interaction — a tight, relevant orchestration of branded communications among increasingly interconnected brand advocates.

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2. Flaw: Treating Connected Consumers as Stationary Targets

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Mobile consumers are moving targets; therefore, marketers must consider the variability of exchange. Where is the consumer right now? What is she interested in? How can I compel her to visit my store location? What can I reward her with to increase her loyalty to the brand? What can I do to make her feel included? How can I use the medium to make her encounter the brand more efficiently? What experience can I provide to her that she would feel compelled to share? When viewed through this lens, the possibilities for engaging consumers are limited only to the imagination and ingenuity of the brand.

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3. Flaw: Ignoring the Power of Contextual Relevance

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The mobile medium represents the most powerful mechanism for delivering contextually relevant, consumer-brand marketing communications. To take advantage of its unique capabilities, however, successful marketing strategies must evolve alongside these communicating customers. The digital natives of today’s hyper-connected world seek contextual relevance when engaging with brands. Their experiences are defined not only by the message itself, but by the context in which the message is presented.

Marketers who effectively tackle today’s mobile variables will provide consumers with unique experiences that are differentiated, highly relevant and intensely personal. Only then will we collectively realize the power and influence of marketing in the moment.

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4. Flaw: Employing Old World, Unidirectional Strategies

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Effective consumer engagement can no longer take an unidirectional mindset. Today’s digital natives are constantly presented with a dizzying array of branded digital touchpoints. They are expecting consistent yet unique communication and brand message.

Brands are now challenged to become adept transmedia storytellers, to create a message that syncs with the communication medium in which it’s delivered. Brands must move beyond simply marketing to people but, instead, must master marketing to a context that is determined by device or platform. They must consider the specific medium which they choose to engage.

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5. Flaw: Not Offering Value in Exchange for Value

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Establishing consumer relationships through mobile marketing, as with any successful relationship, inherently requires a mutual exchange of value. Whether consumers are opting-in for brand communications via SMS or engaging with the brand in a single instance by scanning a QR code, the onus is on the brand to deliver value in return for customers’ time and information.

Without the perception that value is mutual, the relationship becomes essentially one-sided and unrequited. The customer may attempt to end the relationship — perhaps permanently. Regardless of the strategies or technologies employed, successful mobile marketing relies heavily on a fair and evenly balanced value exchange between consumer and brand. Given the intensely personal nature of smart devices, coupled with the fact that the device is nearly always within arm’s reach, it becomes extremely important that mobile marketing avoids being intrusive and irrelevant.

Conventional marketing wisdom advocates a right audience + right message + right time methodology, designed to entice a stationary audience. In mobile, the same principles don’t necessarily apply. Rather than marketing at the target with brand-centric storytelling, wherever and however she may encounter you, allow the tale to travel along with her as she goes. Communicate the narrative, allow the mobile medium to reveal ensuing chapters in a continuum of branded engagements.

mobi.luxe Top Ten Posts for 2011

 

At long last, 2011 has been a year of reckoning for the mobile marketplace. We have all been witness to tremendous advancements in the field and anxiously look forward to 2012 and the continued innovations that the new year will undoubtedly bring.

When I first began this blog, the first piece I crafted was entitled “An Obsolescence Missive.” As I look back on 2011, I also look back at the words I wrote at this project’s inception and find that they have proven true:

The mobile revolution is upon us.  There, I’ve said it.  Analysts from such venerable firms as Morgan Stanley, Gartner, and Jupiter Research have all confirmed it.  The question is …”where do we go from here?”

It’s an interesting proposition to attempt to define and document some semblance of a manifesto or mission statement that accurately reflects the spirit of my venturing out into the blogosphere to tackle a subject like mobile and, in turn, it’s implications for luxury and “masstige” retail brands.  In such a rapidly-evolving and highly fragmented market, how can one in good conscience attempt to relay anything revolutionary while said revolution is taking form all around us?  The overarching point here being that as soon as this first post is published, another momentous step in this burgeoning space will have been taken and much of what is discussed here will be rendered obsolete.

Thank being said, I commit to any who take the time to listen to provide fresh insights into the effects (either positive or negative) of mobile on luxury retail.  That’s it … as simple as that.  Fresh and honest and, hopefully, somewhat insightful insomuch as one flying blind into a storm can provide a ray of knowledge.

With this in mind, I will push the Publish button and my missive of obsolescence will commence with its self-fulfilling prophecy.

My Best,

Scott Forshay aka mobi.luxe

October 11, 2010

In celebration of all those who have been so kind as to read the contents herein whose support and encouragement have provided immeasurable inspiration and kept this humble project going, I offer the following Top Ten Posts of 2011 as voted on by you. I thank you all for your support and promise to strive to provide innovative thinking and practical perspective as we enter 2012. I hope you enjoy.

#10: A Floor Plan for the Mobile-Optimized Brick & Mortar

#9:  The Mobile Marketing Value Exchange

#8:  The Added Mobile Dimension in Luxury Print Advertising

#7:  The Medium is the Message: Mobility and the Art of Contextual Relevance

#6:  Sophisticated Game Mechanics for Luxury Mobile Marketing

#5:  Mobile Integration for Pop-Up Marketing Strategies

#4:  Why the Mobile Web is not the Traditional Web

#3:  Leveraging Mobile to Market in the Moment

#2:  The Role of Mobile in the Transmedia Brand Narrative

#1:  Intelligent Mobile Retail Design: the Concierge Layer

Thank you to you all and I wish you a very happy, safe, and prosperous 2012.

New Year’s Resolutions for Mobile Marketers

As the mobile marketplace continues its rapid evolution to becoming the primary digital screen with which consumers engage with the world, the stakes for mobile marketers have become much higher. The mobile device has become the persistent interface that guides the connected consumer through the rapidly-evolving landscape of the digital-optimized world. How then, as marketers, do we evolve in order to not only keep pace with this emergent medium, but to utilize it as it was intended?

Given that the device is so intensely personal, so intimately integrated into our social graphs, is superior to any other medium in its contextual awareness of time and space, its hyper-connectivity, and the reality that is nearly always within arm’s reach, the smartphone has, in essence, become a natural extension of our human selves. Yet, with all the newfound wealth of opportunities available to marketers associated with this new medium, we have continuously failed to utilize it effectively to engage consumers in innovative ways. Quite simply put, we’re doing it all wrong.

As is customary this time of the year, many of us resolve to take proactive steps to improve areas in our lives that we feel could use refinement. Often these resolutions are ultimately doomed for failure from being overly ambitious or unrealistic but, more often than not, our resolve simply fails us and we sink back into our cycles of destructive habits. In the case of mobile marketing, however, the areas of improvement are too many and the stakes have now become too high to fail. Unlike our secret resolutions to whom we have no one but ourselves to answer, in this case the world is watching.

With these inarguable truths in mind, I offer the following New Year’s resolutions for mobile marketing with the hope that we will all look back on our innovations achieved at the end of 2012 with collective pride and knowledge that we have been integral players in a special time in history.

Resolution One: We Will Treat the Mobile Medium as Unique

Mobile consumers are moving targets, therefore engaging with them requires consideration be given to the variability of exchange.  Where is the consumer right now?  What is she interested in?  How can I compel her to visit my store location? What can I reward her with to increase her loyalty to the brand?  What can I do to make her feel included?  How can I use the medium to make her encounter with the brand more efficient?  What experience can I provide to her that she would feel compelled to share?   When viewed through this lens, the possibilities for engaging consumers are limited only to the imagination and ingenuity of the brand.

Resolution Two: We Will Be Increasingly Contextually Relevant

The mobile medium represents the most powerful mechanism for delivering contextually relevant consumer-brand communications yet experienced in marketing.  To take advantage of its unique capabilities, however, successful marketing strategies must evolve beyond the employment of a unidirectional approach to communicating with customers.  The digital natives of today’s hyper-connected world seek contextual relevance in their engagements with brands.  Their experience is defined not only by the message itself, but the context in which the message was presented.  Marketers who effectively solve the variables associated with the mobile medium will provide unique experiences for consumers, irrespective of the constraints of time or space, in ways differentiated, highly relevant, and intensely personal.  Only then will we collectively realize the power and influence of marketing in the moment.

Resolution Three: We Will Become a More Collaborative Storytellers

The essence of any brand is the story it conveys. This essence must be infused with creative vision and continuous innovation as its underlying narrative unfolds across a widening array of mediums to engage consumers and create a vision of a lifestyle to be desired. Traditionally the consumer has only been capable of experiencing the story in a disconnected way. Mobile, as a medium, is innately transitive in nature, serving as a persistent interface for consumers to navigate an ever-evolving digital ecosystem of retail touchpoints and become, themselves, players in the storytelling experience. Strategically dissecting the brand narrative to take on an episodic form allows the brand to engage audiences in the on-going drama, create desire to see where the story will lead, and establish emotional connections in the process. We will become more effective storytellers to inspire deeper levels of involvement and engagement with the brand.

Resolution Four: We Will Always Offer Value in Exchange for Value

Establishing consumer relationships through mobile marketing, as with any successful, productive relationship, inherently requires a mutual exchange of value. Whether consumers are opting-in for brand communications via SMS or engaging with the brand in a single instance through scanning a QR code, the onus is on the brand to deliver value in return for customers’ valuable time and information. Without the perception that value has been exchanged for value, the relationship becomes essentially one-sided and unrequited attempts at interaction on the part of the consumer will spell the end of the relationship – perhaps permanently.

Regardless the strategies or technologies employed, successful mobile marketing relies heavily on a fair and evenly balanced value exchange between consumer and brand. Given the intensely personal nature of smart devices, coupled with the fact that the device is nearly always within arm’s reach, it is more important in mobile marketing to avoid being intrusive and irrelevant. Consumers will not give up their valuable information in exchange for clutter or noise. We will focus with an understanding of the currency of mobile marketing and utilize it to create an exchange that delights both our audience and the brands that value them.

Too often, in the infancy developmental stages of mobile marketing, we have settled for simply scaling down traditional strategies to fit within a four inch form factor. Not only have these strategies proven ineffective, they are counter to the differentiated elements that define the smartphone as unique and powerful. As we near year’s end and look forward to a new beginning in 2012, we will strive to keep at the forefront of our minds exactly why the mobile medium presents such an incredible opportunity to engage consumers in ways revolutionary and previously unexperienced.

We resolve to focus our attention on an awareness of time and location and the implications of context in the consumer experience. We resolve to focus with an awareness that mobile devices have become natural extensions of our human selves and why this necessitates personalization of the experience. We will strive to engage consumers in innovative and creative ways that reinforce the strengths of the mobile medium and we resolve to consistently provide value in exchange for value.

As T.S. Eliot once wrote, “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.” For all of our self-congratulatory accomplishments of 2011, they belong categorically with the uninspired. With strict resolve and an innovative spirit, the voice of 2012 will be the voice of inspiration and advancement.

the mobile marketing value exchange

This article was originally written for, and appeared in, Fashion’s Collective (www.fashionscollective.com)

Establishing consumer relationships through mobile marketing, as with any successful, productive relationship, inherently requires a mutual exchange of value. Whether consumers are opting-in for brand communications via SMS or engaging with the brand in a single instance through scanning a QR code, the onus is on the brand to deliver value in return for customers’ valuable time and information. Without the perception that value has been exchanged for value, the relationship becomes essentially one-sided and unrequited attempts at interaction on the part of the consumer will spell the end of the relationship – perhaps permanently.

In the early stages of mobile marketing, the value exchange was almost exclusively defined through promotional-based marketing. Consumers were asked to share their mobile numbers in exchange for coupons. While seemingly primitive by today’s standards, text back couponing remains an effective behavior stimulus for many brands and retailers, but for luxury brands discounting flies in the face of the intrinsic value of the brand. The challenge for innovative prestige brands is defining how best to create a true value exchange with their most loyal advocates while remaining true to themselves and not cheapening the brand in the process of attempting to deepen relationships.

Any value exchange requires the exchange of currency. Whether the currency is monetary, emotional, or informational, it establishes the parameters necessary to define a successful exchange and secures a commitment to future exchanges. With this in mind, an analysis of the efficacy of any value exchange must be measured by the mutually beneficial exchange of mobile currency.

Affluent loyalists of prestigious brands seek greater intimacy with, and priority access to, the brands they most covet. In exchange for priority access, the affluent consumer will exchange premium monetary currency. A mobile campaign touchpoint that directs the consumer to an optimized landing page or microsite featuring a product exclusive to mobile subscribers effectively plays marionette with the heartstrings of affluent consumers by exclusively engaging a prestigious audience with exclusivity and access to product available only to a select audience. Tactics such as these create a successful value exchange whereby a monetary commitment is made by the consumer in exchange for priority access to the brand and the prestige associated with exclusive ownership.

The essence of any coveted brand is the story it conveys. The rich heritage and tradition of the brand is infused with creative vision and continued innovation as the brand narrative unfolds across mediums to engage consumers and create a vision of a lifestyle to be aspired to and desired. Traditionally the brand narrative has been told in a unidirectional fashion through artfully produced photography and film, but the consumer was only capable of experiencing the story in a disconnected way. Mobile, as a medium, is innately transitive in nature, serving as a persistent interface for consumers to navigate an ever-evolving digital ecosystem of retail touchpoints and become, themselves, players in the storytelling experience. Strategically dissecting the brand narrative to take on an episodic form allows the brand to engage audiences in the on-going drama, create desire to see where the story will lead, and create deeper emotional connections in the process. Whether bringing still imagery to digital life through QR codes or augmented reality, targeting desired audiences and engaging them with rich mobile display advertising, or consistently communicating emotional currency via SMS marketing, the mobile value exchange is successful in the exchange of permission to communicate with highly-valued consumers in return for deeper levels of involvement and engagement with the brand.

Regardless the strategies or technologies employed, successful mobile marketing relies heavily on a fair and evenly balanced value exchange between consumer and brand. Given the intensely personal nature of smart devices, coupled with the fact that the device is nearly always within arm’s reach, it is more important in mobile marketing to avoid being intrusive and irrelevant. Consumers will not give up their valuable information in exchange for clutter or noise. Focus on an understanding of the currency of mobile marketing and utilize it to create an exchange that delights both the audience and the brand that value them.

the added mobile dimension in luxury print advertising

This article was originally written for, and appeared in, Fashion’s Collective (www.fashionscollective.com)

The visual mystery, sensuality, and intrigue elicited through still image artistry provide the de facto two-dimensional canvas of choice for luxury brands.  The artistic vision of the Creative Director is meticulously staged and captured for the world to marvel at in the glossed pages of the style guides of our times.  Each year, luxury brand marketers invest enormous percentages of marketing budgets in print advertising. Vast libraries of visual content collect dust, as the artistry of each new season’s collection is re-envisioned, making way for the evolving stylistic viewpoint of the house.

This accelerated march to antiquity for such valuable assets represents tremendous sunk costs for brands.  If digital life could be breathed into these traditionally passive assets, print advertising could be resuscitated with added dimensionality, and provide additional layers of complexity and personality to the consumer experience.  The technologies required for this revitalization exist today and are in use by some of the most creative minds in digital fashion marketing.  The opportunities are significant, yet the proper application and execution of the technologies in ways on-brand for luxury adds a layer of complication.

QR Codes and the Luxury Brand Dilemma

In the infancy stages of mobile marketing, many luxury brands have successfully experimented with QR codes as actionable triggers to launch added dimensions of brand engagement with consumers.  However, the QR code represents a dilemma for luxury brands. A vast majority of labels are unwilling to risk altering the artistic impact of their print advertising by including the awkward appearance of tiny, futuristic-looking blocks.

While advances in the production of more aesthetically on-brand vanity QR codes are evident in recent campaigns from prestige brands like Ralph Lauren, luxury brands will continue to be slow to adopt. Because of the contrarian nature of QR codes and brand aesthetic, labels opt instead to pursue less creatively intrusive technologies represented by augmented reality and image recognition.

The Curious Case of Augmented Reality for Luxury Fashion

Certainly, augmented reality provides an intriguing new wrinkle of added dimensionality to 2D print, but the function is faced with its own set of significant challenges.  Early adopters of AR technologies in the luxury arena have been predominantly in the timepieces and fine jewelry sectors. However, fashion brands such as Dunhill have taken progressive approaches to the utilization of the technology to add layers to their print campaigns.

The very technologically progressive effort by Dunhill in support of The Voice campaign provides an excellent example of how the mobile medium can breathe digital life into traditional brand assets, allowing them to take on an entirely new and more engaging identity. The Voice campaign, which highlights distinguished men from varying walks of life who exhibit the refinement of the brand, provides an exceptional environment for enthusiasts to connect with Dunhill through their connected devices.

The one drawback to the initiative is the primary barrier to entry for many retailers experimenting with AR or image recognition technologies: there is no universal reader or standard for it.  This arena is highly fragmented and siloed by application platforms, requiring a certain app – in this case Aurasma – to be downloaded in order to view the video content behind the print.  Consumers must have the Aurasma app downloaded and open in order to view this otherwise flawless execution by Dunhill.  AR technology can be a valuable addition to the digital marketer’s arsenal, but, until standards are solidified and AR can be leveraged regardless of application, its immediate value may be hindered.

The mobile medium is uniquely suited to revitalizing traditional print for luxury brands and allowing the consumer to experience a three-dimensional engagement with them.  The ability to breathe digital life into traditionally passive assets opens numerous compelling interactive opportunities for brands and their legions of loyalists.