Are marketers mobile-ready?

BY IMPACT Staff

...If not, you are missing the marketing bus of the future, going by findings of the Mobile Marketing Association-exchange4media report

Television, Print, Radio and OOH are all great platforms that many companies utilize to build brands. Sometimes, the messaging is just TV or Print-driven, or even Radio and OOH-focused; but in most instances these days, the intent is to take the message across media to ensure that it does not miss the consumer, whose attention is fragmenting a bit more every day. Amidst all this, mobile has emerged as an opportunity hitherto unseen. This is one medium that stays with the consumer all through his waking hours. The one channel, where one call or text alert can take the user’s attention away from his favourite show or his morning newspaper; or perhaps enhance the experience by being the second screen, discussing a show while watching it, or interacting through SMS or QR codes designed to take the conversation forward. And yes, the medium travels to the bedroom and for some, the bathroom too.

For the last few years, mobile also has had the kind of numbers a marketer cannot ignore. In India, there are over 900 million active mobile connections as per the latest Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) report of July, 2012. India is set to be the second largest mobile handset market globally, just behind China with over 800 million handsets, according to reports. The best part is that a Nielsen study indicates that of the total number of handsets in India, smartphone penetration is at 9% in the urban populace and in the rural areas, it is 6%, which is a growing and encouraging number for marketers. “Indian consumers are maturing. They are moving onto their second and third devices, spurring the growth of smart devices and solutions,” says Viral Oza, Marketing Director, Nokia India.

A CHANGED CONSUMER

Oza’s comment brings forth another aspect about the mobile marketing industry. The conversation is not just about the market numbers and statistics – it is about the changing consumer behaviour towards mobile. “Consumers want solutions that help them network, play games, read news, surf on the Internet, listen to music, chat instantly with friends and families and even check their mails on their devices,” says Oza.

“The scale of smartphone users in India is reaching almost 27 million,” informs Piyush Mathur, President, Nielsen India Region, adding, “In a typical Indian household, there is one television set and three mobile phones.” The obvious inference, therefore, being that there is immense exposure to content through the three screens. Mathur elaborates that on an average, an Indian consumer spends 2.5 hours on his or her smartphone every day. In comparison to this, the time spent in the United States on smartphones is almost half. The driving force behind this is that in India, people have leapfrogged from using home Internet directly to smartphones. “The basic hygiene value of the phone is slowly being rendered irrelevant. Only a quarter of the total time spent on a phone is dedicated to Voice and SMS,” states Mathur.

For around 41% of Indian users, mobile has enabled the first internet experience. “By 2015, 70% of all TV viewers will also be internet users. The estimated TV households in India would be 780 million, of which 550 million would be internet users and of this, 70% would be mobile, taking the mobile internet users number to 350 million,” points out Abhiroop Chuckarbutty, Media Director – South Asia, Unilever.

For Unilever, mobile has already become a medium to reckon with but once again not because of the statistics but the changing user behaviour. “Mobile solutions can even take you successfully to media dark areas such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar,” says Chuckarbutty, quoting a recent exercise of Unilever detergent brand Wheel, where post a mobile marketing campaign, the brand’s awareness scores went up by 25% and there was a significant increase in benefit association of the brands (‘fragrance’ and ‘cleans well’ in the case of Wheel). He says that by July 2012, Unilever had already spent more on mobile than it had in the whole of 2011. The MMA-e4m report on mobile advertising spends in India suggests that mobile advertising growth would be over 40% in the next year. Referring to the number, Chuckarbutty says that for Unilever, mobile advertising is already growing ahead of expected industry growth number.

MARKETER ALWAYS SLOWER THAN THE CONSUMER?

For some industry observers such as Anupam Mukerjee, better known as the fake IPL Player and also the founder of Pitch Invasion, marketers have not spent enough in understanding mobile as a medium. “Mobile gives us a 100% reach in a market like India,” observes Jonathan Bill, SVP, Innovation and Business, Vodafone India.

Bringing more of a service provider view point here, Bill says, “The numbers for mobile are here, but monetizing is very important and we should be able to do it in a number of ways.” For Bill, the monetization loop begins with users, where operators make money from the traffic leading to targeted advertising, where money is made by selling or shifting traffic. The next peg is to ensure user interest through creating content or a message that can also engage the user further, at which stage monetization can come in by making websites. The stage following this should be able to make a proposition that would lead to a transaction where money can be made by selling things. “In India, the loop does not close for transaction models,” informs Bill.

However, he points out that traditionally, in any kind of new media, a precedent of which is seen in the case of Digital, conventional marketers join the race 12-15 years later. He says, “We saw that in Digital too, when the first to advertise on portals were other Digital companies because they understood the medium, they knew its benefits and potential. The pioneers for mobile too would be other businesses and content owners in the space, not the big brands.”

MOBILE: THE NUCLEUS OF A MARKETING PLAN

Some big brands, such as Unilever, have already diverted their attention to mobile. Hindustan Unilever in fact has set aside an amount that equates their overall Digital spends of 2010, as a pool that HUL’s brand owners can experiment with to look for solutions in the mobile medium. The idea is to fail and learn, if need be, rather than miss the bus. But for some other marketers, mobile marketing still needs to be “marketed”. “Mobile is one part of the toolkit and not the toolkit itself. It is important and not in isolation. Most mobile agencies try and sell technology, but how do I get people to buy my brands is what I would like to know better,” says Venkat Nettimi, Director, Marketing, Global Payment Options, American Express.

But the one thing that mobile seems to achieve is that it can be the nucleus point of a marketing strategy that traverses across touchpoints. Jonathan Ellis, CEO, The TMS Way explains that mobile is about people, and not devices. He says, “The consumer is in charge. The mobile device does not have the big screen, lean-backwards advantages of the laptop or PC. It has different constraints of network, display, varied operating system, navigation, etc., but it is a communication device in your hand.”

Ellis believes that the real revolution of mobile will come from traditional media, which command 85% of advertisers’ budgets. Mobile will allow mass communication to be mass personalization. It brings the advantage of real time, allowing the consumer to interact with a brand message then and there. The role of mobile specialists, hence, which appeared to be endangered with the growing focus of mobile expertise within traditional media and creative agencies, will continue to be important. A major problem with mobile at the moment is lack of measurement and data. Nonetheless, the key to the future would be placing mobile at the heart of a marketing plan, since that is what can create magic.

MOBILE WILL ALWAYS BE UNIQUE

Another reason for a need for specialists is that mobile will always be a unique medium. Arthur Policarpio, CEO, Mobext APAC of Havas Media, asserts that the transformation of mobile would be of a different kind, not akin to the Digital medium. While Digital is broadly broken into display, search, social and mobile, mobile as a medium too will become access points for social and search and in the process leverage from display advertising. SMS marketing itself is unique and once the problem of spamming is addressed, intelligent SMS marketing will bring newer challenges and a marketer would need special skillsets to make the most of that as a medium. Apps, popular with young and old consumers alike, are an emerging medium to look out for and mobile again is the platform that houses this medium. When the growth of mobile takes off, its trajectory and pace would be difficult to predict.

Gauging advertising spends and marketing nature of mobile have been difficult so far because of the complicated nature of the medium, where even service providers are engaging in advertising and marketing. One of the first steps to bring a benchmark to the industry has come from the Mobile Marketing Association, which has published the first report on the mobile industry, along with exchange4media. While the report brings out different numbers that reiterate the need for marketers to look at this medium closely, the one thing that stands out is that very few people understand the true potential and the scale that mobile as a medium will achieve going forward. The game changer would not be a mobile strategy, but a mobilized marketing strategy.

MOBILE AD SPENDS IN INDIA TO GROW @40%

As the mobile screen becomes more and more important for advertisers, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), together with exchange4media, has released the first ever mobile advertising spends report for India. The report estimates current spends at Rs 180 crore, and expects this to increase by 40% to Rs 250 crore in the next 12 months.

Over the last five years, the mobile landscape in India has transformed from voice and text-based handsets penetrating the remotest corners of the country to a market that is talking apps, augmented reality, different kinds of OS and versions of Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and the like. India is one of the hottest mobile markets at present, given the sheer number of handsets and subscribers. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has declared the number of active mobile connections at 913.49 million in July, 2012. This makes mobile one of the most tempting mediums for any marketer in India.

However, one of the first challenges that mobile faces in becoming a marketing medium to reckon with, is the absence of a measuring mechanism that can gauge how the medium has delivered for those who have invested in it. The report says even a sense of overall ad spends in the medium is lacking, which leads marketers to hold back spending on this front. Most advertisers and agency heads who helped generate this report believe that mobile is yet a miniscule portion of total ad spends – hence measuring it is difficult. But like anything Digital, it is set to grow at a trailblazing pace.

According to various forecasts and firsthand observation of spends in the Digital domain, the overall Digital ad spends in India are pegged in the vicinity of Rs 1,800 crore-Rs 1,900 crore. For many large advertisers, Digital still is 10-25% of their overall ad budgets, given that traditional media still continue to deliver, and most importantly, there are measurement metrics for these media. Industry leaders including brands and agencies put mobile advertising at 10% of overall Digital advertising spends in India. Therefore, mobile advertising will be in the vicinity of Rs 180 crore.

Havas Media’s APAC CEO, Vishnu Mohan observes that much of the adoption of the space has taken place in the last year or so. People are realistically getting to see the value of mobile only now. But it is the percentage growth of mobile that makes all the difference. All industry stakeholders reiterate that 2013 would take the mobile medium a big step forward. Ashish Bhasin, Chairman and CEO, Aegis Media South Asia explains that not only in India, but globally, mobile has been a tough medium to monetize. “Marketers are bullish on the medium, but they are not putting money on the table yet. So the spends are still much lower than what can be expected from a medium as widespread and highly used as mobile. But this scenario is set to change,” he says.

Where will the growth come from?

The first point about mobile is that it would no longer remain a subset to Digital. In fact, the three legs that would push mobile advertising in 2013 would be Display, Search and SMS. Numbers also show that search and SMS (measured and opt-in) are already the largest contributors to mobile advertising spends in India, and will play a vital role in taking the medium’s ad spends to greater than Rs 250 crore in 2013. They allow targeted advertising, which for most marketers is the ideal situation where no advertising dollar is ever wasted. However, with the government getting strict with ‘Do Not Disturb (DND), SMS marketing is now becoming more relevant. Shashi Sinha, CEO, Lodestar UM points out that the power of mobile would be seen in what lies ahead. The evolving infrastructure in India is the second point that will bring a drastic growth to mobile. First on this list is the availability of cheaper smartphones. The second contributor to this would be wider prevalence of 3G and the advent of 4G. Once these dynamics kick in, mobile would become a full-blown media in its own right, with its own subsets.

The emergence of the SoLoMo (social, local and mobility) will be the third vital point towards the growth of mobile. No other medium would have the ability to bring this triumvirate together in this fashion. This empowers a marketer to not only communicate a relevant message in the right context at the right time but also eventually drive the consumer into action.

Feedback: impact@exchange4media.com

Tags : Impact Feature