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| Erica Kahler |
Media agencies are tasked with finding the newest, most innovative ways to reach consumers. Clients need to be visible in order to remain top of mind. Think about it this way, if a brand only advertised in newspapers, which was innovative at one time, they would me missing a huge segment of the population today (internet news readers).
Mobile is a new, but growing media vehicle. Right now, it isn’t extremely clear what the most effective way to use mobile is. Apps? WAPS? Location based services? But, clients are becoming increasingly interested in playing in the space, including the client I work for.
Even my experienced digital strategy/activation team wasn’t sure how to incorporate mobile into 2012 planning. Luckily for me, the team passed the challenge on to me. One of my many summer projects became learning about mobile. It is a pretty vague task, isn’t it?
A media associate on my team and I met with Phonevalley. Phonevalley is a mobile communication group owned by the same holding company as Starcom (Publicis Groupe). Allison, from Phonevalley, gave us an overview of what’s happening in the mobile space and who the big partners are. She also gave me a contact list of reps that would be able to give me insight about each partner.
My plan was to request the same information from each partner, and build it into a deck to send out to my team. I reached out to about 10 partners. It was important to stay on top of what information I had, and what was missing. I did so by creating a status sheet on Excel. The sheet listed the partner, the rep’s name and contact information, and whether or not I had their mobile information. If I didn’t hear back from a partner within a reasonable time, I sent follow emails and reminders.
I created a template for a PowerPoint deck. The goal was to create a “cheat sheet” for my team to help build consideration sets based on brand needs and existing assets. To clarify, a consideration set is a preliminary list of partners, publications, websites, and TV stations that Starcom recommends the client buy inventory with. We then send RFPs (request for proposal) and narrow the list based on the returned proposals.
As partners provided the necessary information, I began assimilating it into a deck. I sorted the partners by specialty (e.g. rich media, video, display) and created a summary slide for each. After I had all the information, I reformatted the slides. Starcom has a guide for how to format decks. The format is called Space For Ideas, SFI for short.
I sent the completed deck to both my team and the Phonevalley team. My team members seemed to like the deck and used it to build consideration sets. A few days later, Allison from Phonevalley reached back out to me. She said she shared my deck with her boss, who liked it and wanted to use it as a platform to educate on the basics of mobile.
In building the deck, I left out a few partners because they were not a good fit for our client. Allison asked if I had time to add those partners back into the deck for broader use. Of course I took the opportunity! It was great to feel like I had created something valuable, which would outlast my short time here.
After finishing all that research, my team saw me as a source of information in mobile. I earned the opportunity to create a mobile consideration set for one of our brands, which was exciting!
I don’t claim to know where mobile is heading next, but I do know it is becoming a more important form of advertising. It is crucial for brands to stay ahead of the curve. Mobile is a huge touch point because it is so close to the consumer and there are a rapidly increasing number of users. Had I not worked on the mobile partner project, I would have never learned about an important media vehicle. I am so fascinated by the industry and plan to continue working with mobile in some capacity after college.
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