I’ve had this conversation with many after recent announcements have come out on the mobile marketing front. I’m very cautious when talking about mobile and where it will go and how we need to be cautious in its introduction into the culture and execution of digital OOH’s success.

Case in point? Look at the Internet.  While Internet advertising has grown by leaps and bounds and makes lots of people very rich, the fact of the matter is, because it went to a “success is a click-through” model (aka direct response) as fast as it did, it leaves 100s of millions of dollars on the table as click throughs rarely actually lead to the execution of a “sale” that is trackable.  As today’s Ad Age article from Hernan Lopez details on a statement from Randall Rothenberg:

Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, has called for a “creative renaissance” on the internet, which he said has been “an unthinking hostage to a direct-marketing culture and tradition that devalues creativity and its long-term effect on brands.”

While I’m a big proponent of Mobile in digital OOH -warning: registration required- (actually I’m a proponent of its use in many places with the right solution and thought process behind it), I’m very hard on the idea that it be used for any form of true “measurement” in the space.  This is for a couple of reasons:

1.    It takes the all of the onus off the need for a quality product and brand strategy around the product and puts it on the digital OOH medium.
2.    It takes all of the onus off of creative agencies to understand how to use our medium and execute quality creative strategies that attracts consumers in the first place
3.    Calls to action and value to the consumer are typically terribly weak even when #1 and #2 ARE addressed, further putting the onus on digital OOH to perform better for potentially crappy products with bad creative AND add no value to the consumer experience
4.    I’ve already seen this happen in the Internet ad business who decided to move to click based measurement ALONE and they never got out of that funk and it is now affecting their ability to be considered anything but “DR”

Don’t get me wrong.  Mobile can be used as an INDICATOR of success, it’s just that it should never be considered the SOLE test of a digital OOH’s campaign’s success if we value long term growth of a successful new medium. i.e. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

ADCENTRICITY, was actually founded on many of Erwin Ephron’s theories and comments – hence our approach towards Path-2-Purchase and Point-of-Purchase based continuity programs and strategies.  Erwin is considered the founder of recency theory who, as Hernan stated in the article in answering an advertising paradox:

Consumers act on ads for products they’re ready to buy and ignore the rest. That called for a shift in scheduling, from flighting to continuity; being off the air was “like being off the shelf.

Basically, you never know when someone is going to be ready to buy your new tube of toothpaste so you have to have continued, targeted advertising in order to best support ongoing sales and profits as consumers become more receptive as they become more prepared to make a purchase.  In the digital OOH world, this also means that if a consumer is not ready to buy a product and the call to action is weak then they definitely won’t engage with you via mobile, further downward skewing mobile measurement.

I especially liked one of Hernan’s supporting comments on this front:

Advertising can work in subtle ways. It can boost profitability, even for large brands in developed markets, which are normally sluggish and rarely see sustained sales increases. Advertising is not as weak as it seems, just difficult to measure.

Unfortunately, in today’s world to many, something that’s difficult to measure, is too difficult to sell to the new CMO…the CFO – the guy who is willing to pay for something he can see today – not down the road.

Fortunately, there are studies like those referenced in the article from comScore, that are showing display ads online (not clicked) with real world purchases.

We as an industry are not quite there yet.  Much more research has yet to be done on this front to prove this type of behavior, although we’re already seeing these forms of results.  What I will say, however, is don’t be so quick to abandon all of the other forms of success measurement (3rd party brand/recall based studies, sales lift, campaign activity lift, etc, and most importantly CASE STUDIES) in favor of a medium measurement solution that could significantly harm your agency or network efforts going forward.

Mobile will be a very important part of our medium going forward and help shepherd in an era of consumer behavioral grooming and brand loyalty and connectedness, you just have to know how to use it and when in order to effect the results – both short and long term – that you want.

Last point that Hernan referenced in his article was one on the creative front to make ads in mediums work for you best.  I wanted to address these in lieu of my earlier comments on creative and strategy in the medium:

1.    They are entertaining and amusing;
2.    They are visual rather than verbal; and
3.    They say something important and meaningful about the brand being advertised

More recently, he added the expression “rational arguments enclosed in emotional envelopes”

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