Chapter One

The Mobile Universe

Getting On The Same Page

First, a level set.

More people on Earth have a mobile phone than a toothbrush or a toilet. Wireless penetration in the United States exceeds 100 percent; meaning, there is more than one mobile phone for every person.

The cellphone has changed the way we communicate (or don’t communicate). It’s transformed the way we buy, how we share news and insight and opinion. How we perform the functions of everyday life: deposit a check, take a photo, make a call, listen to a song. It’s forever modified how we learn a skill. How we gauge our health. How we create and compose.

In developing countries, the mobile phone is a literal lifeline, leading to cleaner water, more diagnosis and treatment of disease, and banking for the unbanked.

Look at it in numbers. But look only for a moment: these statistics are merely directional—mobile morphs that fast.

• Smartphone usage in the United States reached 77 percent or approximately 250 million people in the winter of 2015.¹
• At the same, time, a milestone was reached across the pond with more mobile users taking to smartphones than less-capable feature phones in Europe’s top five markets—France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK—for the first time in history.
• Eight out of ten Americans text on a regular basis.
• Six in ten access the web on a mobile device.
• In excess of 50 percent read and send email, a near identical number to those who download apps.
• Time spent in digital media has swung in mobile’s favor, with PCs often being left at home or downstairs: we view the Internet more on a wireless device than a computer.
• U.S. adults over 18 spent an average of 43 hours and 31 minutes per month connecting with mobile content via an app or web browser during the second quarter of 2014.² That’s almost a 10-hour per month increase, year over year.
• Nearly four of five Millennials spend more than two hours a day using their smartphones.³
• Wireless usage spans generations: 84 percent of teenagers own a mobile phone. And 83 percent of 6-9 year olds use a tablet.⁴ Conversely, nearly eight in ten seniors own a cellphone.
• Approximately one trillion photos were taken in 2014, with a huge number being snapped with mobile devices. Nearly two million pictures are shared daily on social media networks and other platforms.
• One more stat for now: 84 percent of U.S. mobile phone owners use their device while watching television.

This all means what? Simple: If we as marketers fail to adapt to this radical transition, our customers and prospects will be someone else’s customers and prospects. And the early scorecard on our efforts shows us behind.

Forrester’s Julie Ask tells us that 62 percent of marketers still treat devices as simply smaller PCs.⁵ More damning: in many cases marketers have been ill-equipped or unwilling to take time to read the signals. According to Ask, 89 percent of companies have a mobile strategy to have consumers come to them.⁶

What’s wrong with that? Consumers expect brands to engage with them where they are.

The mobile user is sophisticated and deserves more credit. Those who carry these devices are picking sides, and they’re doing so with more intelligence than consumers have ever possessed.

Increased Expectations

The next time that you reach into the nightstand—or that drawer that you swore wouldn’t become a collection of junk—pull out the BlackBerry that’s gathering dust as quickly as it’s fading into your memory.

Remember the experience. You didn’t fully understand the extent of its impact, but deep down you knew: that Blackberry was life-changing. Like never before, you were connected. Empowered. And inescapable from your boss. It came with the good and the bad.

Speaking of the bad, think about the web experience on that device. Buffering entered our vocabulary rapidly. The expletives came faster than the load times.

We expected more. And in 2007, our expectations were met. Apple introduced the iPhone. We could surf, engage with apps, watch videos, take pictures, and post instantly to websites like Facebook and Twitter.

That advancement, and others that followed, literally changed our lives. And only increased our expectations just as rapidly.

Consider:

• Twenty-one percent of U.S. consumers have the expectation of anything, anywhere, anytime, Forrester says. Another 29 percent are transitioning there.⁷
• Two-thirds of U.S smartphone users check their phone within fifteen minutes of waking up and within fifteen minutes of going to bed.⁸ They must be in the know.
• More than 85 percent of consumers delete an email immediately if it doesn’t render properly on their mobile device.⁹
• Four in ten Americans abandon a mobile shopping site that won’t load in three seconds or less.¹⁰ In fact, Amazon determined that a page load slowdown of only one second could cost the company $1.6 billion in sales each year.¹¹

I could go on.

“Where we are with marketers?” Google’s Spero, Vice President of Performance Media, said to me, repeating my question. “There are different points of the crawl, walk, run continuum. Many marketers are working on the most basic mobile experiences. The first generation of mobile experiences was cut and paste desktop experiences with smaller weight images. No video, no Flash.

“Where we’ve gotten to: (some) marketers have come to understand that I want a different experience when I’m on this”—he holds up a mobile device—“than when I’m on this.” He points to a personal computer. “Now you’ve built a mobile-specific experience if you are any good. You start to ask questions about signals. You start to be able to say, ‘How do I want that mobile experience to change if I’m within a mile of a Pizza Hut and am looking for pizza?’ Marketers are trying to find which of those signals are relevant.”

Enabling Desire

The first three words in my 2002 Mobilized Marketing book are: Sell more beer. The opening chapter connects current-day MillerCoors marketer Steve Mura with his predecessors, who go all the way back to 1855.

The bond? At the end of the day, each had to move product. The fact is, with mobile, everything has changed – and nothing has. We still have the same objective. It’s the how that is different.

MillerCoors is hardly an anomaly. Coca-Cola, one of the world’s most recognizable, beloved, and successful brands is another fulfilling its long-established mission in an increasingly-large part through the use of wireless devices.

“Our mobile strategy was really articulated in the 1920s when Robert Woodruff described the role of The Coca-Cola Company as putting our brands within the arm’s reach of desire,” Tom Daly, Group Director, Mobile and Search, told me. “The only thing that is different today is that at the end of that arm, between it and desire, is a mobile device.

“To the degree that strategy is a choice, the choice that we are making is to have mobile enable desire. The alternative is to do nothing and have mobile become a barrier. That doesn’t sound smart.”

Daly is a hands-down, first-ballot entrant in any mobile hall of fame. He is responsible for The Coca-Cola Company’s global strategy for mobile marketing. Additionally, he has long been one of the most influential evangelists for the channel, often speaking around the world and serving in difference-making roles on the Mobile Marketing Association’s board of directors.

As you might expect, Coca-Cola is no newbie when it comes to innovation.

The company’s website says that the first marketing efforts in Coca-Cola history were executed in 1887 through coupons that promoted free samples. At the time, that was ground-breaking.

The initial servings of Coca‑Cola were sold in 1886 for 5 cents a glass. Sales in year one averaged nine servings per day in Atlanta, the company’s headquarters then and now. Today, daily servings of Coca‑Cola beverages are estimated at 1.9 billion globally.¹²

Where projected sales are heading is as much of a secret as the product’s formula. What isn’t hidden is Coca-Cola’s embracing of mobile, which does in fact sound smart. Much of its international customer base is far more connected via wireless devices than computers.

“The course that we are looking to set connects our stories to everybody in the world around them, wherever they may be, on every occasion, by enabling desire—and the instant before—while making the world better for it,” Daly said.

Aligned with its broader mission, Coca-Cola has inclusiveness as a core mobile tenet. Throughout the world, it has utilized text messaging to reach not just smartphone users, but those who have carried – and continue to use – the simplest devices.

While the mobile mix varies country to country, Coke marketers remain consistently true to Daly’s directive of spending the majority of time and resources – Daly has mentioned 70 percent — on core wireless products and services. Another twenty percent go toward other mobile efforts that have more recently proved their worth. The final 10 percent are for what Daly calls “new things.”

“Seventy-twenty-ten isn’t in stone,” Daly told me. “It wasn’t established from the mountain. It’s a point of view that governs a way of prioritizing your activity, energy and resources. The idea is to spend more time on the things that you know work. You spend a smaller amount of your time, 20 percent, to make the things that you know work, work better. And then you spend 10 percent on new things. Is it a formula? No. It it a construct? Yes.”

All of the efforts have enablement and sales as goals.

“They say that you can identify a Coca Cola bottle with your eyes closed,” he said. “You’ll recognize it broken on the floor. How do you keep that fresh? When we do things like ‘Share a Coke’, when we do things like aluminum bottles, the real magic of Coke is the ability to keep what is very familiar, what people want, but also to make it fresh, innovative, and exciting at the very same time.”

TOM DALY

Tom Daly, global group director for mobile at Coca-Cola Co., has entered the Mobile Hall of Fame for outstanding leadership in evangelizing mobile within the world’s largest soft drinks market and also to forums across industry sectors. Tom has been tireless and enduring in his efforts to push best practice in mobile and weave the medium into marketing across channels. As a member of Coca-Cola’s global connections team for the past 10 years, he currently leads the company’s strategy for mobile marketing, collaborating with internal and external teams worldwide to deliver many of the marketer’s highest profile online initiatives.