Written By: Nicholas Gill
For years marketing has been like a scene from Ghostbusters.
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad.
<source: IMBD.com>
So we didn’t cross streams. And the marketing MIX became silos.
Here's the thing though; technology changes, people don't. They like to disrupt. To change. To do new things. To blend. And new things don't have a history of past performance so we don’t know what will happen.
This is why brands have been slow to embrace technology and are behind the curve on mobile. It's perhaps the most exciting thing to happen in marketing yet it's being largely ignored.
Mobile devices were predicted to outsell PC shipments in 2015. This already happened in the last quarter of this year.
Mobile represents as big a shift as TV did. Because you always have it with you. 35% of women under 30 check their Facebook news feed BEFORE they get up.
It’s exciting because we know your location, the context (contextual ads based on mobile search terms have 6x greater impact than banner ads on the web) and it is real-time. And if you can combine the data you have unleashed form silos, imagine how powerful that is?
The opportunity for brands in simultaneous viewing, aka social TV, is huge. In the US, 60% of TV viewers are simultaneously using their mobile device at the same time. Because contrary to popular belief, TV is not dead. It’s evolving. We spend more time watching TV than anything else. We just do it in different ways. We are time and place-shifting our viewing. Appointment to view TV gets saturated and expensive. You need to think and behave differently to light the fires a great TV ad can start. Think about how your audience is crossing their streams.
Understand how your audience is using mobile and how best you can add value to them either through utility, monetary value or entertainment. Can you blend mobile with your other channels to make a bigger impact? Above all, be brave, have budget and cross your streams.
Nicholas Gill is Planning Director at DCH, leading the strategic development of integrated marketing experiences to improve business performance.He has over 15 years experience as a strategic lead and client partner working with brands including Fiat Group, Ford, Unilever, Shell and Activision for leading agencies including Ogilvy, Digitas, Wunderman and TMW. He is a contributor to the European IAB Interact Congress blog and regular speaker and thought leader in digital industry events and publications.
