View the video on Blinx/BBC website

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Mobile advertising is a brave new space with new rules and new rewards. As publishers and advertisers, we should be conscious that our efforts to achieve our business objectives can be compared to a marathon with no finish line. (Peggy Ann Salz)

The analysts are almost universally bullish about mobile advertising. Gartner for one says that worldwide the market will be worth in excess of $2.7 billion this year, up from $1.7 billion in 2007.

Following on from our Mobile Youth Advertising Report, and the featured 7 laws of youth marketing, there’s a lot of talk about mobile advertising these days (more info on mobile advertising over at Wikipedia)

A lot to cover, particularly when you get this kind of research (and another white paper on mobile advertising) telling you that mobile will be “the most prominent” form of advertising by 2013 (by Intomobile).

When brands such as D&G can demonstrate a 10% CTR on their campaigns, investors buy it, Admob recently secured $15m in further funding (no credit crunch there)

I’m curious. Is this hype or reality? Interesting post over at the Youth Marketing Blog about Blyk’s business, Either way it certainly grabs headlines.

Let’s start with this excellent presentation

We see that mobile advertising might work with teens according to this blog and there are no shortage of marketing efforts right under their noses (at concerts for example) and operators are gearing up their mobile advertising offerings (Gomonews). In terms of growth potential, you can see from this latest youth research that mobile is now a global youth phenomena (data from Pakistan and China amongst others).

So what are the challenges?

Challenge #1 - Do youth trust mobile advertising?

Seems trust is key in building relationships with young consumers. Here are real views from young consumers on mobile advertising from our on-the-street video series

Also check out the post over at Youth Trends report regarding the importance of trust in viral marketing.

Challenge #2 - Will the advertising model work on social networks?

Best answered studying this presentation by David Cushman

Challenge #3 - Will the pricing hold up?

Even online is suffering from falling display prices (research). So is this inevitably going to come to mobile? Well, according to Jupiter, it may just be already happening.

Technorati Tags: mobile advertising, youth advertising, mobile research, data, youth statistics, mobile marketing, youth marketing, blyk

Mobile advertising is just one area where Blyk’s approach pays off. In fact, Leif and I mused that the real money may be in Blyk’s ability to reality-check brands’ preconceived notions about what youth thinks, likes/dislikes, …

A report put out recently by UK OpCo Telefonica O2 suggests that mobile marketing could become the most prominent form of advertising for many businesses within the next five years. Though not surprising for anyone following the industry, the stats in the report are still promising.

O2 commissioned Vanson Bourne to conduct a survey of IT and marketing directors in 100 leading brands about their current and future plans for mobile marketing.?? Here’s what the survey revealed:

The mobile push will become even more important in the financial services, retail, and manufacturing sectors with two thirds of the major brands in those industries stating that mobile marketing campaigns have consistently generated a higher response rate than traditional methods, due to the personalization/targeting element.

88% of marketing directors anticipate that behavourial targeting will most likely be the most prominent new element of mobile marketing by 2010.?? Even though it’s not a new method for mobile, many think it will be very important in the near future to solidify mobile marketing’s continued success.

The most interesting aspect of the survey was that it revealved that many brands are skeptic to use SMS becuase of the SPAM aspect.?? I guess they think they’ll scare away more people than they attract, though I think that’s a wide-spread misconception.?? Sounds to me like many marketing directors need to brush up on the right way to conduct SMS campaigns.?? Leaving it out could be detrimental to the success of any full-scale mobile marketing campaign.

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Not all execs use methods they deem best.

James Myring, Head of Internet and Telecoms Research at Continental Research reveals the findings of research into the impact of the credit crunch on consumer’s mobile phone spending habits

The price of old fashioned ‘boring’ essentials like food, heating and
petrol has gone through the roof recently. For the first time in many
years disposable income is falling as pay rises fail to keep up with
inflation. The spectres of recession and rising unemployment hang over
the country. The mobile industry has matured during a period of
continuous economic growth. New technologies were paid for from a
growing disposal income - buying a new mobile phone did not necessarily
mean that people had to make savings elsewhere. But now that the credit
crunch is biting income, we wanted to understand how a more challenging
economy is affecting people’s expenditure on mobile phones. It’s
impossible to survive without food and heating, but even those of us
who might wonder how we would live without our mobile will acknowledge,
perhaps grudgingly, that once we did just that.
This doesn’t mean that we’ll suddenly go back to communicating with
landlines – mobiles are seen as essentials - but our research indicates
that the way people will use them will change as belts tighten.
Mindsets are changing – and this will impact the mobile industry.

Cutting costs
Two fifths of all mobile owners plan to reduce their bill in the next
12 months According to our survey of 972 mobile phone owners in August
this year, 41% expect to do something to reduce their mobile spend in
the coming 12 months due to worries about an economic downturn. A
concern for networks will be that the desire to make economies is
concentrated amongst the highest ARPU groups - 63% amongst 25-34 years
olds compared to only 12% of mobile owners aged over 65. Similarly, it
is 56% among the more valuable contract customers, compared to 32% of
pre-pay mobile users.
The particular worry for the mobile industry is that expenditure is
fairly discretionary – as a result of concerns about the economy, 21%
of pre-pay customers expect to reduce the volume of calls they make to
reduce bills. This will be less effective for those on a monthly
contract, but 24% of contract customers expect to downgrade to a
cheaper deal in the next year. Handset manufacturers could also be
threatened, with 13% of contract and 10% of pre-pay customers saying
they are likely to put off buying or upgrading to a new handset in the
next 12 months.

Forget the extras
Indeed, there will be some downward pressure on usage of ‘extra’
services. As a result of a possible economic downturn, 14% of 16-24
year olds and 11% of 25-34 year olds expect to use fewer additional
‘premium’ services such as mobile Internet and TV, ad text message
updates. In other words, if newer services such as mobile Internet and
Moile TV are to grow strongly, they will need to drop significantly in
cost. Advertising revenue can help to reduce the price to mobile users,
but at a time when advertising budgets are also under pressure, it
would be naïve to expect advertisers to invest significant funds
without the guarantee of a large audience. Now, more than ever, there
is a need for technological advances to help bring down the price of
advanced mobile services.

Opportunity from adversity
Furthermore, unlike the Internet, which can offer the opportunity to
make savings by buying online, the mobile industry is one that does not
generally offer cost savings – calls cost more than landlines, mobile
Internet is expensive and an inferior substitute to the ‘real’ Internet
and the same can be said for Mobile TV. The ‘only’ advantage (and it is
of course a massive one) is that with a mobile phone you can do these
things wherever you want.
How will the relatively new and inexperienced mobile industry adapt to
a situation that looks threatening? Many of the relatively youthful
senior managers at mobile companies will have no experience of running
a business during a sharp downturn in consumer spending. 
The answer is that the industry has to adapt to a different economic
climate – and fast. The companies that will succeed look likely to be
those that acknowledge the reality of the situation and work with
mobile users to reduce bills. Innovation will be as important as ever,
but the focus must be on using technological advances as a means to
reduce costs to consumers, rather than generate additional revenue
streams.

by Graham Brown

Part of the feature series: The 7 Laws of Youth Marketing by Graham Brown

<Back to Introduction

The Rise and Fall of Youth Brands

What better to illustrate the failure of a youth brand than the prospects of Levi’s?

You may remember the Nick Kamen adverts by BBDO in 1985/6 - he strolls into the laundrette, removes his 501s to remove just a pair of boxer shorts - to the delight of the joint’s customers. All set to the theme of Marvin Gaye’s “I heard it through the grapevine”. In 1986, Levi’s was the original jeans - an iconic youth brand that embodied all the qualities youth aspired to - edgy, sexy, daring, original, different and having the ability to walk into a room and turn heads.

The very same year Levi’s sold 50% of the world’s jeans - a remarkable achievement.

Fast forward to the 21st century and 2006. From being #1 in the world, Levi’s has declined to #7, well behind market leader Diesel. Market share has also diminished from 50% to 9%. As the CEO said “We took our eye off the ball” (read: “we forgot the basics and forgot that what’s good for the consumer is good for the company - source)

By comparison, consider Nike’s prospects. 1986 - the year Air Jordan was literally flying and the brand eclipsed Reebok as world #1. By 2006, Nike is still #1 and has branched out into multiple categories - from women’s sportswear to golf clubs.

It’s all about doing it

If you consider the Nike/Levis story and understand what they respective did right/wrong you get an insight into what makes youth brands work. Nike’s story was one of constant innovation - but not in terms of technological advance - but relevance. True to their slogan of “just do it”, Nike stopped talking about being good and got out their and started doing - doing what was necessary in the youth community to stay relevant.

So can good marketing rescue a failing brand? Quite possibly as it can certainly rescue an ailing industry, albeit thanks to the content owners not the distributors. In this video excerpt interview I look at how the festival community is key in reviving the fortunes of flagging music sales:

Youth marketing is no longer about saying you are for youth (as in this Vodafone example) - it’s all about proving it. Look, for example, the extent to which political pundits go to build a dialogue with young voters. It’s a lot easier to say “we’re cool”, but does it work anymore?

Find out next in What makes a great Youth Brand?

Some of the points I discussed in my presentation to Vodafone about the MobileYouth Report include:

* How to build trust through relevance by drawing down on the insight from how brands such as Toyota (through Scion) have already achieved this. Also how brands can use simple metrics such as net promoter score and customer lifetime value to measure progress.
* How to be a remarkable youth brand (see Jones Soda)
* How to communicate directly with youth through their own channels (eg using Youtube rather than mass media and press releases (in this example we look at EA and the recent Tiger Woods “Jesus Shot” fiasco - which is also very funny).

Presented by Graham Brown author mobileYouth.org

Technorati Tags: mobile youth, youth, vodafone, youth marketing, net promoter score, loyalty, trust, churn, mobile youth report, youth research, youth mobile