Abstract
Despite the fact that the mobile phone is a perfectly suited advertising medium also for brand campaigns a creative perspective is not only desirable but also necessary. Because: Without creativity, the latest mass medium would be swiftly rendered desolate. In the creative conceptual design of brand campaigns it is important above all to carry out advertising not only on the mobile phone but with it. On the basis of five theses it is illustrated how the mobile phone becomes the essential building block within commercial multi-channel concepts. One key issue being the telling of ‘brand stories’, told across various media or ‘stages’. If the stories being told are compelling enough one can convert brand supporters into brand addicts, who in the best case scenario wouldn’t want to miss a single performance of their favorite brand.
TopIntroduction
To call the market for mobile marketing a large one would be an understatement. It is gigantic – a statement not only maintained by advertising people – a creed known for their notorious exaggerations. Let’s compare this to another very popular medium – the Internet: Around 1 billion people worldwide were online at the end of 2007 (ITU, “Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2007 – The road to Next-Generation Networks (NGN) Summary”, September 2007, pp 8/9). However, pundits ‘Informa’ found out that far more people – around 3.3 billion – have contact to mobile services (http://www.spielplatz.cc/presse/wordpress/?cat=7).
Key Terms in this Chapter
BRAND STRORIES: To tell a “brand story” means to dramatize a story suitable to transport and elaborate on the core contents of a brand’s message. At the same time, a “brand story” puts the story’s components in order across all campaign channels. Ideally, a good “brand story” threads itself through multiple promotional media and completes itself to a whole experience. Alternatively, a “brand story” can be told in time and location-independent climaxes. It is not to be considered a scientific term but rather an auxiliary construct for those involved in the creation of multi-channel campaigns
Consumer generated content: “Consumer generated content” (CGC) is also known as “user generated content” (UGC) or “consumer generated media” (CGM) or “user created content (UCC). The term refers to various kinds of media content, publicly available, that are produced by end-users. It entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in new media content production circles and it is used for a wide range of applications including problem processing, news, gossip and research. All digital media technologies are included, such as question-answer databases, digital video, blogging, podcasting, mobile phone photography and wikis
WIBRO: WiBro (Wireless Broadband) is a wireless broadband Internet technology being developed by the South Korean telecoms industry. WiBro is the South Korean service name for IEEE 802.16e (mobile WiMAX) international standard. WiBro base stations will offer an aggregate data throughput of 30 to 50 Mbit/s and cover a radius of 1-5 km allowing for the use of portable internet usage. The technology will also offer Quality of Service that allows for WiBro to stream video content and other loss-sensitive data in a reliable manner. Two South Korean Telco (KT, SKT) launched commercial service in June 2006
OPEN SOURCE MARKETING: Open source is a development methodology, which offers practical accessibility to a product’s source (goods and knowledge). Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical strategic element of their operations. Before open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept
BRAND CAMPAIGN: A brand campaign has the purpose of developing a brand with the aid of communication. It is the part of brand management that is visible to the consumer (’branding”). The main goal of a brand campaign is to differentiate the own product of those proffered by the competition or to differentialte the own company from its competitors. Behind all this is the insight that a brand has a higher value of recognition and that the consumer connects certain attributes, features and achievements with it. Thereby the brand is supposed to aid the consumer’s orientation amongst the offerings and radiate trust
Widget: A widget is a small computer program that does not operate as an independent application but is tied into a graphical user interface (GUI) or a web site. Mainly these are utility or helper applications. In parallel to the development of widgets for operating systems, widgets in the shape of web applications started to evolve. Many of those widgets do not offer complex functionality but simply display information gathered from other sources (syndication) Apple introduced widgets in April 2005 with the integration of “Dashboard” into its latest version of Mac OS X
ARG: An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions. An ARG is a game which deliberately blurs the line between the game and the real world. Players investigate the world of the game using the same tools with which they interact with the real world such as websites, email, telephone conversations and even in-person discussions with actors playing game characters. ARGs are now being recognized by the mainstream entertainment world: e.g. “I love bees” was a promotion for Halo 2 and the “Lost Experience”
PERVASIVE GAME: A pervasive games are multi-player games that take place in an urban setting – on city streets and built up urban environments. Pervasive games almost support some kind of localization technology, for example by using satellite positioning like GPS. Current research trends are looking to other embedded mobile technologies such as Bluetooth or mobile tagging
Creativity: Creativity is a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts. An alternative conception of creativness is that it is simply the act of making something new. From a scientific point of view, the products of creative thought are usually considered to have both originality and appropriateness. It is often useful to explicitly distinguish between creativity and innovation. Creativity is typically used to refer to the act of producing new ideas, approaches or actions, while innovation is the process of both generating and applying such creative ideas in some specific context: Innovation begins with creative ideas
Location Based Services: A location-based service (LBS) is an information and entertainment service, accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device. LBS include services to identify a location of a person or object, such as discovering the nearest banking cash machine or the whereabouts of a friend or employee. LBS include personalized weather services and even location-based games. They are an example of telecommunication convergence