Behavioural Targeting

Creating a buzz
Platform: Mobile Author: Alex Farber Source: nma.co.uk Published: 05.06.08

A wake-up call for the mobile creative advertising industry fell out of a clear blue sky this week via Honda's live skydiving TV ad. Mobile agencies need to start matching this creatively rather than just helping brands tick a mobile box and time-based campaigns offer a real opportunity. Aside from location-based awareness, which is regularly held up as a unique selling point for mobile marketing, phones also offer guaranteed immediacy for communications.

Brands can issue time-based calls-to-action and start to innovate in a new direction. Flash-mobbing where groups of people gather randomly for parties relies on instant and viral communication.

Mobile is in a prime position to pull off more brand-led live marketing campaigns. When you send a text message to a friend it's pretty certain it will arrive within seconds. The same is true of mass text-outs albeit with a slightly longer delay. And generally consumers can't resist reading an SMS message the moment it arrives.
The vision and chutzpah of Honda's advert, which showed a team of skydivers spelling out the word Honda while in freefall, was engaging, exhilarating and innovative. Even watching it for the first time a few days later on YouTube I found myself worried that the skydivers wouldn't manage to pull it off.

If the same sort of buzz can be invoked around a mobile campaign then the medium is really starting to prove how original it can be.