2010 – the year of the brand app
By Wayde Bull, Planning Director at Principals.
For many marketers, memories of the past decade will be dominated by the global financial meltdown that marked the end of ‘the noughties’ in a savage fashion. But the GFC clouds a more profound and lasting game-changer, in the form of mainstream digital media.
To date, digital marketing has largely meant engaging customers via websites on their desktop computers, complemented by rudimentary ‘on the move’ channels like mobile text messaging.
But we are now on the cusp of a new phase, in which seriously large numbers of Australians will be reachable via mobile, internet-enabled devices, offering rich content and user utility. The web is being liberated from our desktops and is being placed, quite literally, into the palms of our hands.
The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) estimate that one in four Australian mobile users now visit websites on their phone weekly. One in three check emails. Close to one in five access video, images or audio podcasts.
Of course, the Apple iPhone tribe are instrumental in driving these new higher-order behaviours. While AIMIA estimate local iPhone penetration in the single digits, it’s the intensity of the phone’s usage amongst its fans that’s a bellwether for the future. AdMob/ComScore found that 80% of US iPhone users access the web on their phones and nearly half access it more often via their iPhone than their PCs or laptops. Like Blackberry before it, Apple is helping the mobile industry to shake off its status as a second best way to access the web.
While the battle royal for smartphone market share between Apple iPhone, Google Android, Nokia Ovi, Blackberry and Microsoft Mobile is only just getting started, one thing is for certain. Elegantly simple, application-driven interfaces like the iPhone – and the iPad to come – will sit at the heart of these devices.
These gadgets, so rarely an arms-length away from their owners day and night, offer an enticing new opportunity for brand managers to get up close and personal with their most avid customers. While most traditional brand messaging is fleeting in nature, a branded app, if valued by its ‘owner’, has the capacity to ‘stick’ with the customer, potentially for years.
While the discretionary content downloaded by mobile users in the past tended to focus on entertainment, games and ringtones, apps focus on serious user utility. The first Australian marketers into the app pool are, not surprisingly, iconic service brands such as banks, airlines and telcos, who can deliver considerable value to their customers via real-time information, like account balances and service schedules.
The NSW motoring organisation, NRMA had developed a 21st Century service channel; an app that enables members to request roadside assistance from their iPhone; the phone’s GPS capabilities pinpointing the exact location of the breakdown in a highly reassuring fashion.
Old world media brands are experimenting widely with free content readers, paid iPhone editions (such as the UK Guardian and US GQ magazine) and special event apps (such as Vanity Fair at the Oscars), in an anxious search for incremental audiences and revenue streams. While born-digital brands like Foxtel seek to stretch the brand experience through an app that enables subscribers to record programs on the run.
While the bulk of brand apps are free, a few brave businesses are piloting paid models. Hurley have developed a service for avid surfers that aggregates surf reports nationally, including real-time ‘on the sand’ reports, webcam video and ‘closest to you’ beach conditions.
As more and more brands enter the apps space, higher levels of ingenuity will be required to stand out and to penetrate the ‘most popular apps’ listings, so critical to uptake. Brand apps in future will need to harness the full cleverness of the phones; their cameras, GPS functionality, movement sensing and social networking capabilities – perhaps all at once – in order to really stand out.
While many brands will simply view apps as an equity building exercise, the truly innovative will find ways to drive incremental purchases. Tesco have a playful app that allows the wine lover to photograph a favourite bottle. A review of the wine is generally offered, along with the opportunity to purchase it. Isn’t that a great example of a thoroughly modern category-killer?
First published on AFR (www.afr.com) - 25th February 2010
