I saw an article last week talking about how British Airways was offering a London guide application for mobile phones as part of its latest campaign to get people to visit London. I downloaded the application to check it out, and the content, as you might expect, isn’t great. But I really like this concept.
If nothing else, it’s an attempt at mobile marketing that understands users must be offered something of value in exchange for placement on their mobile device. The application’s got British Airways branding on it, but it’s not obnoxious. The content (as bad as it may be) takes center stage — and that’s the way it should be. A consumer inviting a brand onto their mobile device is a pretty significant step, and mobile marketers need to respect that. If your mobile marketing campaign eschews this in favor of just cramming something down people’s throats, it will fail. It’s that simple. Ask yourself, what benefit does this offer my user? How does it make their life better? And is does that benefit justify intruding on their device? If you don’t have good answers to those questions, you need to do some more work.
I’m sort of fascinated by this mini-app. I can’t imagine it’s the first one — is anybody familiar with any others? I saw a story on Textually about an SMS style service Topshop is running in the UK, which is a similar idea but with a service angle. The common theme here is that they’re offering something to users beyond some rather pointless SMS giving them 50 cents off a hamburger or letting them know t-shirts are on sale. It’s all about that user benefit — it’s not something traditional advertising has to deal with, but it’s paramount when it comes to mobile.
There are lots of trials out there but I don’t know any huge successes. This is mainly because of the handset fragmentation and carrier-propriotary services like Cingular’s and TeliaSonera’s.. The platform that I’ve seen most implementations on is S60.
Here’s a few companies who’ve made similar apps:
http://www.surfkitchen.com
http://www.silkmobile.com
http://www.actionengine.com
http://www.amplefuture.com
http://www.sendandsee.com
http://www.maxdox.com
http://www.nellymoser.com (BillBoard etc.)
I’ve been checked all this technologies, there is a plenty of them. I like some much one called Microeditions (www.microeditions.com).
They’re doing encapsulated content in Java Applications like newspapers, magazines, brochures, etc. I’m suscribed to Marca (Sports Newspaper) and it looks very nice and easy to use.
The problem is that the GPRS fares are very expensive, but its something that is going to get lower.
MobHappy on: Marketing Through Mini Applications
So, make a really cool UI to some useful info that folks want and use it also as a marketing tool. Nothing wrong with that, except that, a Symbian app is very expensive to make - in the 10s of
Hi Carlo.
As pointed out by others, limited coverage due to handset fragmentation, and the cost of creating and distributing content (cost is obviously affected partially by fragmentation) are hurdles that an advertiser will face.
Go Test Go has approached these issues in an atypical fashion. We have created a Java MIDP 1.0, single codebase, 64k Jar file (read it runs on virtually every Java enabled phone) quiz engine that maintains visual appeal and is rich in functionality. We are concentrating on mobile learning (test preparation) applications. However, our engine, which includes easy navigation, answer or question level detailed feedback, text/graphic exhibits, scoring and analysis can also be used successfully in the presentation of trivia, personality, IQ and other general knowledge tests. Advertisers that wish to brand such content, and make it available to users globally via http://gtg.mp or http://4my.mp (a generic portal) can do so for as little as $500US per month, plus a $500 creation fee.
There are some free samples available, and I would be more than happy to push others to your for your review.
All the best.