Paying More Attention to Mobile
I have had two new client meetings this week and both asked the same question. Where do I think things are going to move to in the next 12 to 24 months? As my expertise comes from a business and strategic perspective, and as I am not a technical architect (but an avid student of digital and new media as it relates to brand strategy and marketing) my answer to both was mobile.
In our presentations for digital tactics, which always include a strategy of integration from offline to online and in-store, we are talking about the possibilities that can be gained from looking at mobile applications. Incidentally, and of course timely enough, today I saw two articles (one right after the other) that speak to big companies taking on mobile. Charmin and Yahoo are both looking to mobile. In particular, I love the Charmin application called SitorSquat. The premise is to use this application to find restrooms all around the globe. You can rate them as well and find the ones that are the most pleasing. How GREAT is that!! From a woman’s perspective, a clean restroom is at the top of my priority list when I am away from home—whether down the block or in another country.
Better than that is the fact that Charmin is not selling restrooms. They are engaging customers by providing a creative way to share vital information that is needed by everyone at some point in time.
Food for thought. How are you using innovation to engage your customer?
Best Nicole
Charmain Shows Blackberry, Iphone Users Where to Go When They Gotta Go!
BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — After nearly a decade of providing free, clean public restrooms everywhere from state fairs to Times Square, Procter & Gamble Co.’s Charmin wants consumers to find their own — via a free mobile social-networking utility, SitOrSquat.
The wiki — housed on the web at SitOrSquat.com and available as a mobile application for BlackBerry and iPhone — launched in December with the goal of turning the digital masses into a mobile army of restroom reviewers. It both helps locate public restrooms and provides star ratings based on their cleanliness and other amenities.
Charmin can’t be accused of just trying to sell toilet paper: Unlike major rivals, it doesn’t have a commercial-bathroom business. Rather, it’s just another effort at nontraditional branding, a la the Times Square restrooms the brand has provided the past three holiday seasons; the mobile Pottypalooza program it ran from 2003 to 2005; or the “Charminizing” program in which it cleaned up public restrooms at state fairs starting in 2000.
As of last month, SitOrSquat had logged more than 52,000 toilets in 10 countries, more than half a million unique visitors and more than 1,600 downloads of its mobile apps. All those numbers are growing rapidly, and Charmin hopes publicity regarding its sponsorship helps them grow faster, said P&G spokesman Dewayne Guy.
As of today, a bottom-wagging Charmin cartoon bear graces the home page of SitOrSquat.com, though the brand image hasn’t been incorporated into the app.
‘Same experience away from home’
“We’ve been doing this idea of trying to give consumers the same experience away from home as they get at home for years,” Mr. Guy said. “This fits into that whole concept that you’re on the go, there’s some tension there; Charmin is playing hero.”It’s not always easy to find a public restroom, he noted, particularly in New York, and particularly in Times Square at holiday time.
Indeed, with Starbucks starting to close stores, it’s getting a little harder.
This is the first time a toilet-paper brand has partnered with a downloadable mobile application, P&G said in its release. Other relevant potential mobile applications may not immediately spring to mind, other than perhaps text alerts when the roll is running low at home. But the technology doesn’t exist yet for that.
Carol Bartz’s Yahoo Paying More Attention to Mobile
One of many changes at Yahoo since Carol Bartz took over as CEO: Its mobile unit is working closer with other business units as the company makes mobile a bigger priority than it was under Jerry Yang.
We hear that under Jerry and former mobile boss Marco Boerries, the mobile unit worked more like an isolated startup. Now, under Carol and new mobile boss David Ko, the mobile team is working more closely with product teams as mobile becomes a stronger focal area for Yahoo.
The first new products will roll out soon:
- Yahoo’s new mobile homepage: Accessible on phones with HTML-capable Web browsers, ranging from Apple iPhones and RIM BlackBerry devices to other, less-smart phones — will launch at the end of this month. Like Yahoo’s Web portal, its mobile portal is designed as a start page, and will hook into third-party email services including Google’s GMail. It includes banner ads and sponsored search, brokered by Yahoo.
- Yahoo’s new iPhone app: Essentially an app version of its mobile homepage, with some extra features — will launch early next month. (Not on its way, much to our dismay — a Yahoo Fantasy Baseball stat-tracker app.)
- Yahoo’s new Java-based smartphone app: Including voice search — for Symbian, RIM, Google Android, and other Java-capable smartphones, will launch in May.
Yahoo is smart to invest more in mobile — where the Web is still in its infancy — now. Especially in the U.S., where Google is off to a quick 60%-to-30% lead over Yahoo in mobile search brand reach, according to Bernstein’s Jeff Lindsay.
Why bother? Beyond the search/portal/platform land grab, analysts still have high hopes that mobile advertising will someday become a big market. Lindsay predicts it will become a $7.2 billion market worldwide by 2012, up from $700 million last year.
