It’s time for everyday innovation

This post was extracted from an article that appeared in the 2010 Outlook Report, which was recently released by Razorfish. It has been modified in part to make it more relevent for the Headlightblog.com audience.

Too often, marketers take a schizophrenic approach to emerging media like digital out-of-home or mobility: On the one hand, dismissing the “emerging stuff” until they see it achieve a scale measured by reach or aggregate ad spend and, on the other hand, treating emerging media like an experimental toy — fun to play with in one’s spare time but not taken seriously.

In our view, emerging channels are so important that CMOs must treat them as a strategic part of their marketing mix — even possibly the core of their marketing plan — on an everyday basis, regardless of what metrics like reach or total line spend indicate. Leading automakers, such as Mercedes-Benz (a Razorfish client), demonstrate three principles of making emerging media rewarding.

In last year’s Digital Outlook Report, we discussed how digital media had outgrown the PC, amping up the magnitude and pace of change in the media ecosystem. A year later, the pace of change in the ecosystem refuses to slow. The global mobile phone subscriber base has reached 4.6 billion. By comparison, the worldwide market owns a mere 800 million cars, 1.1 billion PCs and 1.5 billion TV sets. Already, there are nearly 84 million American mobile web users who spend, on average, 2.7 hours per day using the mobile Internet.

When the Motor Trend application is launched, as it is loading, a full-page interstitial ad appears featuring the Mercedes-Benz E-Class. When users tap the ad, an embedded page within the application opens, letting them access a photo gallery of Mercedes-Benz E-Class vehicles. The Mercedes-Benz sponsorship of the app runs through early August.

Incorporating emerging media into the plan
Whether leveraging mobile, digital out-of-home or broadband video, some Razorfish clients are demonstrating how strategically important and effective it can be to make emerging media a core part of the planning process, instead of merely being an add-on. Here is a look at how Mercedes-Benz is doing this:

Brand: Mercedes-Benz
Program: Exclusive sponsorship of Motor Trend’s iPhone app
Beginning with the app’s Feb. 4, 2010 launch, Mercedes-Benz secured the only advertising presence on the app for the first six months. This included both a full welcome ad as the app loaded and a fixed homepage logo that allowed users to find a dealer. The app gave the brand 100 percent share-of-voice and a full interactive experience during key flight dates.

Assessment of program’s value: At one point,the Motor Trend iPhone app surpassed The New York Times as the No. 1 free news app. Because of its popularity, Mercedes-Benz got access to a large segment of its target audience. The sponsorship also had two other major benefits: It allowed users to access content wherever they were in a device-friendly format, and gave them the ability to juxtapose the brand against respected third-party content. Reviews and ratings have a significant impact on auto purchase decisions, and Motor Trend news and reviews on the app were enhanced with a vast library of videos and photos that interactively demonstrated the value proposition of Mercedes-Benz cars.

Do small dollars equal missed opportunities?
As the usage of new platforms by consumers explodes, it’s easy to see why old metrics to
evaluate them lead marketers astray. Tools such as financial analysis underestimate their actual
importance. According to Kantar Media, U.S. ad spending was more than $125 billion in 2009. With only $3.8 billion spent on mobile ads, per JP Morgan, and a mere $1.6 billion spent on online video, per Piper Jaffray & Co., it’s not hard to ask: And you’re saying these platforms should be central to the planning process?

But looking at those sorts of numbers misses the point. We’re not talking about a line item on a budget here. We’re talking about dramatic shifts in consumer media consumption, which requires a significant shift in planning, strategies and objectives. Obviously, even if the mobile web doesn’t command the money that the PC-bound web does, those 2.7 hours a day Americans are spending with it should be significant to marketers. And that’s just one example. Consumers have leapt well past the tipping point in terms of adoption of new platforms, but marketers have not. True, some marketers are already shifting huge portions of their budgets (e.g., Pepsi bowing out of the Super Bowl in favor of its social program, “Refresh Everything”). However, that’s more the exception than the rule. The point is this — whether or not large buckets of dollars are getting reallocated, new digital touchpoints demand to be an everyday consideration in the minds of CMOs.

To read the rest of this article, go to the Razorfish 2010 Outlook Report.

Related links:

• Razorfish 2010 Outlook Report
• Razorfish 2009 Digital Outlook Report (pdf)
• The Big Picture “All the Stats” Total View to Mobile Industry, 2010 Edition; Communities Dominate Brands, 2.05.10
• RF’s New Study Reveals ‘Intent’ Behind Mobile Internet Use; Ruder Finn Public Relations press release, 2.12.10
• Mercedes-Benz sponsors new Motor Trend app; Mobile Marketer, 2.04.10
• $3.8B on Mobile Ads This Year Can’t Keep Up With Usage; GigaOM, 6.04.10
• Pepsi’s refreshing new approach to marketing; The Vancouver Sun, 5.14.10