What have brands figured out about mobile? Plenty—which partly explains the meteoric growth of the platform, and everything that implies in terms of sales, said the panelists at a SXSW session on mobile marketing Friday.
Successful mobile campaigns happen when they are part of a seamless, cohesive strategy that extends across tablet, laptop, and other platforms, said Scott Carlis, Vice President of digital and social media for AEG Global Partnerships, the largest owner of sports teams in the world. But it’s not just content, but also context that is critical, he pointed out. One of the brand’s franchises, the Los Angeles Kings, takes fragmented conversation and aggregates it into a single site by launching Twitter battles and social-ranking contests during games, among other strategies, to extend second-screen usage and engagement. “We want to keep [people] in our eco-system,” he said, adding that mobile naturally becomes an eCommerce solution in that context.
Keith Nyhouse, VP of digital and international marketing for Dish Network, said he now drives significantly more sales via mobile search than he does using other methods.
When creating its first mobile campaign, Bolthouse Farms wanted to ensure there was an online-offline convergence. The idea was to find a new way to deliver coupons, because buyers of the brand’s juices typically don’t take freestanding inserts when shopping at grocery stores. Director of Brand Engagement Pamela Naumes said the plan began to coalesce around the fact that Bolthouse bottles were appearing in thousands of images on Instagram. The brand reached out to the social site, which allowed the juice manufacturer to take the hashtag #CarrotFarmers—and every time a user posted a photo using the tag, she received a coupon for a $1.50. As part of the partnership, Instagram sent responses automatically. “We also extended this to Times Square billboards, or our website,” said Naumes.
The campaign accomplished three things: driving awareness (with 16,000 hashtags), engagement (people talking with the brand, commenting on Instagram) and getting people to try Bolthouse’s juices.
