Imagine you’re on an airplane flying to a business meeting, using your cell phone. After catching up on a couple of your favorite TV shows and checking your email, you summon the flight attendant by text message, order a meal, and pay for it with your online account.
You may not realize it, but there’s a whole industry out there making this vision of the future a reality. Not in ten years. In two.
Entertainment, wireless, and handset providers are feverishly developing programming and applications they know consumers will love. There is no doubt we’ll be able to watch television from our mobile devices very shortly. But will consumers actually pay to watch television programming on their wireless devices for a per-view fee, or even a monthly fee, in addition to their service fee?
For advertisers, this is the billion-dollar question. Our industry is banking on the fact that consumers like advertising to defray the cost of their content. They’d rather have free programming and “endure” the ads, versus ad-free high-cost transmissions.
Some sources have proclaimed that the 30-second TV spot is dead. We believe the 30-second spot will find new life on mobile devices. At NYCA, we believe it’s entirely possible that the nature and composition of filmed advertising will change, and that inspired ideas will be needed to grow businesses. For one thing, because mobile media is 100% opt-in, consumers will most likely expect film on their phones to be pure branded entertainment. Also, consumer tastes may be migrating toward faster-moving, hard-driving quick snippets as “impact units” on mobile devices. So spots will need to be shorter and more intense.
The best news in all of this is that the mobile platform may be the first to truly connect branding and buying. For years, we’ve been talking about interactive television: the ability to buy the product straight from the set during the commercial. But TVs haven’t evolved fast enough to realize this vision. Mobile is already showing signs of life in this area. The fact that 41 million votes were cast on American Idol via text message last season is proof enough.
This is the time to experiment, claim territory, and be first. It’s a brave new world out there… again.
Michelle Edelman is vice president/director of planning at NYCA, a full-service marketing agency that grows businesses with inspired ideas. NYCA has grown business for clients like TaylorMade Golf, San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau, Rossa Putters, Maxfli Golf, ViewSonic Corp., The San Diego Union-Tribune, SignOnSanDiego.com, The EastLake Company, Kyocera Wireless, DIRECTV, Penta Water, National City Mile of Cars, AutoAnything, First Dental Health, TaylorMade Performance Labs, and others. To find out how NYCA can grow your business, log on to www.nyca.com. |
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