Tag archives: interactivity

Mobiles of the others

Back after a long break, I really don’t know where to start from… There are so many projects I should catch up with! So bear with me if I will post about something that is a few weeks old. If it’s good, it’s worth keeping track of it anyway. Let’s start with this website for mobile obsessed launched by Nokia to promote its 7610 model. I can’t help dubbing the site the “mobiles of the others”, because it is all mobile voyeurism.

Confess it, how many times have you looked (or wished to look) at your partner or friend’s mobile phone to discover some segret or simply because you are damn curious??? Well, on Somebody Else’s Phone, your wish become real, as you can “spy” the life of three young characters by viewing content within their Nokia handsets.

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MTV UK, another step towards interactivity

New Media Age reports MTV Networks UK & Ireland is about to launch an interactive service that will allow viewers to interact with the program MTV Hits using their mobile phone. With an SMS music fans will be able to text their questions to Mr Know It All, who will answer to best ones live during the show. The idea behind this initiative is to put viewers in “collective control” of MTV’s content, a move which appears perfectly in line with the brand image MTV always worked on.

Dear agency, wake up!

Is the Golden Age of advertising over? Reading today’s article by Stuart Elliott on The New York Times, I guess the answer is YES and I should probably look for a job in another industry. To tell the truth, the situation is not yet dramatic, but agencies need to wake-up and understand they need to develop a new approach. Clients have smaller budgets and look for new, better ideas. Certainly not the best situation for an advertising agency, but this is it: adapt or die. The article reports the opinions of several advertising experts, more or less complaining about the changes in the industry (I liked Linda Kaplan Thaler, saying that “Creativity used to be, ‘Think inside the box.’ Then it was, ‘Think outside the box.’ Now, there’s no box“). But there is also something positive to read: it’s the BBDO experience with the GE account. They understood (and GE explicitly told them) that something was going wrong, so they changed their approach (and also their senior creative leader) and adapted to General Electrics was looking for: interactive campaigns.

The (Audi) A4 sum of the parts challenge

While visiting Reuter’s website, I’ve found out of Audi’s “A4 Sum of the parts challenge“. It’s an online competition challenging users to find and collect nine different banners that compose the new A4. There are two ways to play: you can heavily surf the Web trying to bump into one of them or you can decode all of the clues to collect the banners. The competition ends on May 15. The top prize is a two year lease on all new 2005 Audi A4 2.0 T, but you can also win PalmOne smartphones and Bose’s stereos. This competition idea by Audi USA is really cool and innovative. It’s a perfect example of online marketing taking advantage of interactivity. As the pay-off on the Audi site says “Never Follow“, a concept we can apply to Audi’s marketing approach also.

High interactivity for Adidas

New Media Age reports today of an highly interactive campaign launched by Adidas to promote its F50+ football shoes. The creativity includes tv spots, video ads, email marketing and “mobisodes”, short video episodes especially designed for mobile phones.

What industry are we in?

Should we call it “digital”? Or “interactive” sounds better? On Mediapost Cory Treffiletti tries to give a definition to the online marketing industry, looking at its recent evolution. I would say interactive is the right term, because what we do (or, at least, what we try to do) with the Internet and mobile phones is to interact with customers. We’re trying to build a 1to1 relationship taking advantage of the new means provided by the new media. … then maybe I should say new media marketing

The Barbarians land on mobile phones

The combination tv + mobile is one of the most attractive to marketers. Usually it has been approached using tv programs driving people to interact wireless, this time the situation works the otherway around. The History Channel is running a mobile marketing campaign to build awareness and loyalty to a new tv program, The Barbarians. The campaign has been enabled by Enpocket which targeted a profiled list of opt-in 25-54 year old men with a text message that was delivered to their mobile phones the evening before the show.

Keep it interactive!

Joseph Jaffe is one of my favourite authors since he often focus on interactivity between brands and customers and on pull-based advertising. On Monday on iMediaConnection he wrote Inviting Interaction which I think is a very good collection of useful examples to look at. Online marketing is evolving and it’s moving towards consolidation by stressing the key aspect of Internet communication in comparison to other media: interactivity. Of course this doesn’t sound new to most of you but, again, I believe it’s good to go through best practices to keep it in mind.