Brands and their agencies have certainly raised the bar when it comes to mobile advertising and video ads this holiday season. Take a look at our pick of 5 of the best mobile marketing strategies this season and how you can apply them to your brand or business.
As December approaches, the sound of Coca Cola’s annual “Holidays Are Coming” ad campaign will herald the arrival of the holidays. This long-running brand building campaign has become part of pop culture and has become synonymous with the idea of “Christmas Time”. As each year goes by, brands are increasing the amount of time and budget spent on their holiday season marketing efforts. With more people than ever using the mobile web and smartphone applications, how are brands adjusting their strategy to make the most of holiday shopping sales? We take a look at 5 brands who have created remarkable mobile marketing strategies. Let’s find out more about them and how you can adjust them to meet your business objectives…
1. John Lewis Bear and Hare Viral Video
Source: John Lewis
John Lewis is a brand that consistently (and successfully) focuses its marketing campaigns on emotionally charged video advertising. The latest campaign from the retail giant is no exception and has succeeded in melting the hearts of the nation in the UK.
Featuring an adorable hare and a large, somewhat cuddly bear, John Lewis’s Christmas campaign was an instant hit with the public, so much so that it has led to an official range of merchandise for the advert’s protagonists: Bear and Hare. Much like the Coca Cola advert mentioned earlier, John Lewis are becoming known for their annual Christmas campaigns and it seems Bear and Hare certainly didn’t disappoint. Bear and Hare showed the power of social, mobile and video combined. After being uploaded to YouTube, the video has now received nearly 7,500,000 views and over 7,000 comments. The ad’s musical backdrop featuring Lily Allen’s “Somewhere Only We Know” has now been released into the charts and after one week it’s sitting nicely at number 2. Perhaps one of the reasons Bear and Hare is so popular is because of the style of animation. Similar in style to the Disney movies of the old days such as Bambi, the animatic style resonates with adults, putting them in touch with their inner child.
The campaign also made great use of social media, heavily promoting their official hashtag #BearandHare, successfully getting it as a trending topic on Twitter as well as promoting fictitious Twitter accounts for the Bear and Hare characters as well as a joint twitter account for the increasingly popular furry stars..
Takeaway Tip: Create an emotional response. Research your audience thoroughly: Find out who your audience are and what they like. Think about how your video campaign will translate to social: Is it short? Does it provoke an emotional response from the viewer? Can you think of a hashtag that is memorable for the viewer and which you can use to promote and track mentions of your campaign across social platforms?
2. Boots Christmas Shopping App
The Boots Christmas Shopping App is every organised gift shopper’s dream. Designed to make gift shopping easier, it has a variety of functions including a Gift List which users can match-up with contacts in their phone, a search function for users that know what they want, a Barcode Scanner which enables users to keep track of how much they are spending/saving (on 3 for 2 offers for example) and also a Gift Ideas function for when users are simply stumped for gift ideas. However, the creme de la creme of the app’s features and functions are the personalised QR video gift tags. Using innovative technology, UK customers using the Boots Christmas app can scan the QR code on a special gift tag available for free in Boots store and can film a video personal greeting on their smartphone. When their greeting is recorded, the tag can be attached to the gift and given to someone special. When the recipient receives the gift, they’ll be able to play the personalised video by scanning the QR code with their smartphone, delivering a more meaningful and special festive message. Double brownie points to Boots for combining mobile and video into their strategy!
Takeaway Tip: Let’s face it, lots of people like to make lists and organise their plan of action for Christmas shopping before they leave the house and descend into the throngs of people doing exactly the same thing on Black Friday. Most people also always carry their mobile device with them. These two statements alone already put Boots in a strong position to win shoppers into their stores. Using the Boots app, users can make a detailed shopping list of all the gifts they need to buy and for whom, complete with budgetary information. Boots have made Christmas shopping at their store easy and for many Christmas shopping is not the highlight of their year so they want to get it done as quickly and as easily as possible. Learn from Boots by ensuring that you have a mobile application or mobile website. Prepare content for the holiday season including gift ideas and enable your website with a search function and categorise your products for different markets e.g. Children, Men, Women, Cooking Enthusiasts, Car Enthusiasts – you get the picture. Your ultimate aim is to make buying your products as accessible and as simple as possible and mobile is the perfect platform for doing so because it’s the one screen that consumers take everywhere with them.
3. Kohl’s Mobile Payments
Kohl’s has had an iPhone application available for some time now but recently they’ve made some interesting updates in time for the holiday season. The app will now be enabled with a savings wallet that allows users to top up their account with credit. This is a great incentive to carry out large shops at the retailer – instead of using third party companies to save a little for Christmas each month, consumers can now add funds directly to their account easily and from anywhere on their mobile device. Not only does the wallet allow users to top it up, it also allows them to earn points that add up to rewards with every purchase that they make. The mobile payment strategy is part of a more complex mobile marketing plan in place at Kohl’s. During the holiday season they’ll also be promoting in-store experiences with mobile devices by encouraging consumers to download their Pictures with Santa app (enables consumers to take photos and overlay them with festive background and frames etc). When consumers use this app they’ll get $20 off of a greeting cards purchase from Shutterfly.
Takeaway Tip: Make buying on mobile easy and ensure that there are no more steps in the payment process than there need to be. Mobile is also a great platform to offer consumers incentives to shop at your store, by using location-based social services like FourSquare to reward your shoppers and build their loyalty to your brand by sending them offers and alerts when they are in the vicinity of your store.
4. Asda’s Mobile Search Display Ads
I don’t know about you but when I search Google for “Buy Christmas Gifts” the brand I see time and time again is Asda. Whilst Asda might not be the first to spring to mind for purchasing gifts for loved ones, it appears that they are certainly working hard to position themselves this way in the minds of consumers. By being in the right place at the right time Asda has put themselves in the forefront of the consumer’s mind. As Asda’s search-based ads are targeting mobile devices, it ensures that Asda are reaching people who may be on their way out shopping and are seeking inspiration for places to go, perhaps it will even remind them that they can get their Christmas shopping done whilst they do their grocery shopping and save time, or perhaps it will result in instant click-throughs to Asda’s mobile website resulting in m-commerce and lots of online sales.
Takeaway Tip: Your Christmas campaign doesn’t have to be gimmicky. Asda demonstrates an effective campaign by being in the right place at the right time. Setting up PPC ads has become easier than ever with a multitude of guides available on the topic. Ensure that you research your keywords well – what are people who are likely to buy your products going to search for online? Ensure you A/B test your ads by writing variations and analysing which receives not just more clicks but ultimately more sales. Pause ads which under-perform and improve on the variations which have worked well. Before you start it’s a good idea to determine how much you want to pay per sale generated from the ads. For example, you may have your CPC set at 0.50p. But if you get 100 clicks and only one of those clicks generates a sale and the sale is only £10 – you’ll have spent £50 to achieve that income. If you exceed your allocated cost per sale, you’ll need to re-evaluate your keywords and the copy of your adverts.
5. Coke Zero’s Sweater Generator Mobile Website
Coke Zero have created a campaign which is perfect for the festive season. The Coke Zero Sweater Generator allows you to “get your grandma on” and design your own knitted Christmas jumper. With a variety of shapes, colours, design and patterns to choose from, each user can submit up to 10 designs. After submitting a design, users can share it to their social media spaces and encourage their friends to vote for their design. As the campaign draws to a close the top 100 designs that have received the most votes will be made and shipped to their designers in time for Christmas. What we think is great about this campaign in particular is that they have optimised the website for use on mobile devices – which is perfect as this is exactly the type of campaign you want to share with your friends and mobile phones are the perfect way to do just that. Much like John Lewis’s Bear and Hare campaign, there is a big social element to Coke Zero’s campaign. As a test to see the limits of its social capacity I created a design and shared it to my Facebook page. This post was then promoted by Coke Zero so more of my friends would see it, increasing interaction further as the post received likes and comments from my connections.
Takeaway Tip: If you’re planning a very creative holiday campaign, ensure it transcends for viewing or interaction on mobile devices. As I mentioned earlier, mobile is a very social platform so you should ensure that your campaign is optimised with social sharing features to encourage brand lift. Similar to making payments on a mobile device, you need your campaign to operate with as few steps as possible because when consumers use mobile devices they tend to use them for short (but frequent) bursts of time of around 5 to 10 minutes. By ensuring that users can interact with your brand with as little effort as possible, you should increase the percentage of users willing to make that engagement. Coke Zero’s campaign is more of a brand building exercise – the copy and the actual activity itself has helped position Coke Zero as a young, fun and creative brand therefore making it more appealing to an audience who have or admire these characteristics.
Conclusion
There are so many ways in which brands can utilise the mobile platform to engage their audiences and drive sales over the holiday season; there are a variety of video ad formats alone to choose from. Whichever strategy you choose for your brand, remember it’s often part of a more holistic approach. For example whilst part of Kohl’s strategy has been to update their app, they’ve also worked with mobile push notifications to drive footfall to their stores and they also have a mobile website on which they offer sales and promotions to shoppers to increase m-commerce. Many brands choose to work with companies like AdSpruce to advertise products across the mobile landscape using video – a strategy which many more brands have had success with for their Christmas campaigns. If you want to know more about mobile advertising and why the mobile market audience is so important you can find all the information you need right here.
