Mobile Advertising

Introduction

Mobile advertising is a rapidly growing sector providing brands, agencies and marketers the opportunity to connect with consumers beyond traditional and digital media directly on their mobile phones.  This document is an overview on the mobile media channels available to advertisers today, including the benefits offered by each, and considerations to use in selecting and optimizing mobile advertising campaigns.

This document is adjunct to the Advertising Guidelines, which provide technical specifications, global formats, guidelines and best practices for each mobile channel.

Today, mobile phones can be utilized for much more than just making and receiving calls.  Besides voice services, mobile users have access to data services such Short Message Service (SMS), also known as text messaging, picture messaging, content downloads and the Mobile Web.  These media channels carry both

content and advertising.

The mobile phone is an extremely personal device.  One mobile phone typically has one unique user.  This makes the mobile phone a precisely targeted communication channel, where users are highly engaged with content.  As a result, the mobile channel delivers excellent campaign effectiveness and response

levels compared to other media.

Mobile is valuable as a stand-alone medium for advertising, but it’s also well suited for a vital role in fully integrated cross-media campaign plans, including TV, print, radio, outdoor, cinema, online and direct mail.  These examples illustrate the ways brands and marketers use the mobile channel to engage and interact

with consumers:

• Click to call (users place an outgoing call to the content provider or advertiser)

• Click to locate (users find, for example, the closest car dealer or movie theatre, enabled by location-based services)

• Click to order brochure (users receive marketing materials by supplying their postal addresses)

• Click to enter competition (users enter text or sweepstake to win prizes)

• Click to receive email (users receive an email and a link to online site by supplying their email address)

• Click to receive mobile coupon (users receive an electronic coupon on their mobile phone that can be redeemed immediately at a participating merchant)

• Click to buy (users make a purchase paid for with a credit card, added to their monthly mobile bill or using some other form of mobile payment)

• Click to download content (users download content, including logos, wallpapers or ring tones, onto their mobile phones)

• Click to enter branded Mobile Web site (users click a banner to get connected to standing or campaign-specific Mobile Web site)

• Click to forward content (users forward relevant content

to friends, creating a viral campaign effect)

• Click to video (users click a banner to view an advertiser’s commercial for a product or service)

• Click to vote (users reply message ballot or poll from their mobile phone and provide marketers and brands with valuable research insights)

When designing a mobile advertising campaign, there are multiple channels available to reach the consumer.  Those include Mobile Web sites, mobile applications, mobile messaging and mobile video, all of which can be integrated into the interactive campaigns previously described.  Each channel can link to additional mobile content or channels, as well as to complementing traditional media.  Mobile provides a powerful instant and

interactive response path, such as consumers sending a keyword to a short code via SMS, or registering on a Mobile Web site.

by mma glo

The General Electric Business Screen

The General Electric Business Screen was originally developed to help marketing managers overcome the problems that are commonly associated with the Boston Matrix (BCG), such as the problems with the lack of credible business information, the fact that BCG deals primarily with commodities not brands or Strategic Business Units (SBU's), and that cashflow if often a more reliable indicator of position as opposed to market growth/share.

The GE Business Screen introduces a three by three matrix, which now includes a medium category. It utilizes industry attractivenessas a more inclusive measure than BCG's market growth and substitutes competitive position for the original's market share.

So in come Strategic Business Units (SBU's). A large corporation may have many SBU's, which essentially operate under the same strategic umbrella, but are distinctive and individual. A loose example would refer to Microsoft, with SBU's for operating systems, business software, consumer software and mobile and Internet technologies.

Growth/share are replaced by competitive position and market attractiveness. The point is that successful SBU's will go and do well in attractive markets because they add value that customers will pay for. So weak companies do badly for the opposite reasons. To help break down decision-making further, you then consider a number of sub-criteria:

For market attractiveness:

• Size of market.
• Market rate of growth.
• The nature of competition and its diversity.
• Profit margin.
• Impact of technology, the law, and energy efficiency.
• Environmental impact.

...and for competitive position:

• Market share.
• Management profile.
• R & D.
• Quality of products and services.
• Branding and promotions success.
• Place (or distribution).
• Efficiency.
• Cost reduction.

At this stage the marketing manager adapts the list above to the needs of his strategy. The GE matrix has 5 steps:

• One - Identify your products, brands, experiences, solutions, or SBU's.
• Two - Answer the question, What makes this market so attractive?
• Three - Decide on the factors that position the business on the GE matrix.
• Four - Determine the best ways to measure attractiveness and business position.
• Five - Finally rank each SBU as either low, medium or high for business strength, and low, medium and high in relation to market attractiveness.

Now follow the usual words of caution that go with all boxes, models and matrices. Yes the GE matrix is superior to the Boston Matrix since it uses several dimensions, as opposed to BCG's two. However, problems or limitations include:

• There is no research to prove that there is a relationship between market attractiveness and business position.
• The interrelationships between SBU's, products, brands, experiences or solutions is not taken into account.
• This approach does require extensive data gathering.
• Scoring is personal and subjective.
• There is no hard and fast rule on how to weight elements.
• The GE matrix offers a broad strategy and does not indicate how best to implement it.

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Core Competences

Marketing and Core Competences

A core competence is the result of a specific unique set of skills or production techniques that deliver value to the customer. Such competences give an organization access to a wide variety of markets. Hamel and Prahalad (1990) refer to a number of organizations and their products to support their concept including NEC, Honda and Canon.

Core competences are interesting from a traditional marketing point of view since it could be argued that they take a product orproduction orientation rather than a market orientation. If you focus on production techniques and skills then aren't you looking at your business from an internal point of view? The answer is yes. However, the core competences give a business a competitive advantage in a number of markets, markets where customers perceive a benefit from the product. So if needs are being met better than the competition, there is an argument that core competences are indeed market-oriented. There are at least three tests of a core competence.

Three tests of core competence.

• Provides potential access to a wide variety of markets.
• Should make a significant contribution to the perceived customer benefits of the end product.
• Should be difficult for competitors to imitate.

For example, Microsoft has expertise in many IT-based innovations and technologies. Customers perceive many benefits in relation to Microsoft's products. For a variety of reasons including unique skills, it is difficult for competitors to imitate Microsoft's core competences.

When trying to identify a core competence, it is often easy to mistake them for scarce or unique resources i.e. resources rather than skills or production technologies. Also often skills and production technologies do not amount to a core competence or resource because they do not comply with one or more of the three tests. They are the thresholds that the organization must achieve to remain competitive. Threshold competences and scarce resources may not provide access to a variety of markets, may not be so significant to customers and may be less difficult to imitate.

In summary there are core competences and scarce resources, and threshold competences and threshold resources.

In order to be competitive an organization needs material resources such as premises, a factory or offices - depending on the nature of business of course. Material resources tend to be the most straightforward to achieve. Then an organization needs to achieve the right balance between Human Resources, training and recruitment. This state is more difficult to achieve. Intangible resources, including core competences are the most difficult and challenging to achieve. This is depicted in the diagram above. In fact they drive competitive advantage.

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Bowman's Strategy Clock

The Strategy Clock: Bowman's Competitive Strategy Options

The 'Strategy Clock' is based upon the work of Cliff Bowman (see C. Bowman and D. Faulkner 'Competitve and Corporate Strategy - Irwin - 1996). It's another suitable way to analyze a company's competitive position in comparison to the offerings of competitors. As with Porter's Generic Strategies, Bowman considers competitive advantage in relation to cost advantage or differentiation advantage. There are six core strategic options:

Option one - low price/low added value

• likely to be segment specific.

Option two - low price

• risk of price war and low margins/need to be a 'cost leader'.

Option three - hybrid

• low cost base and reinvestment in low price and differentiation.

Option four - differentiation

(a)without a price premium:

• perceived added value by user, yielding market share benefits.

(b)with a price premium:

• perceived added value sufficient to to bear price premium.

Option five - focussed differentiation

• perceived added value to a 'particular segment' warranting a premium price.

Option six - increased price/standard

• higher margins if competitors do not value follow/risk of losing market share.

Option seven - increased price/low values

• only feasible in a monopoly situation.

Option eight - low value/standard price

• loss of market share.

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