SnapTell is in glitzy company this week. Us Weekly, a celebrity and entertainment news magazine, has used SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing platform to mobilize select ads in its current issue.
Readers use their camera phones to Snap any of the interactive ads in the issue, Send the image to [email protected], will Get a chance to win a trip to attend an Us Weekly celebrity luncheon. Each Snap.Send.Get-enabled ad also offers readers free goodies -- including exclusive ringtones, and chances to win holiday gift baskets and gift certificates from leading retailers.
To find out more about SnapTell’s mobile marketing platform, and how it
enables brand owners, marketers and publishers to easily mobilize
existing advertising collateral, please email us and/or visit our website.
Here at SnapTell we spend a lot of time thinking and talking about what we call the GET -- the content that a brand offers to consumers as part of an interactive image-recognition based marketing campaign. Here’s what we’ve learned about the type of content that tends to spark a consumer’s interest, inspiring them to reach out to an advertiser and initiate a conversation.
The GET Has To Be Good This seems painfully obvious, but it’s sometimes overlooked: if the GET isn’t appealing consumers won’t bother to connect. Conversely if the GET is interesting, amusing or unique, consumers will not only engage they’ll also likely share the GET with others and become evangelists for the brand.
Design The GET For The Lowest Common Denominator There’s nothing more frustrating to an interested consumer than a GET that they can’t get. Tailor GETs to the broadest possible audience by making SMS, available on over 98% of the world’s phones, a standard initial response. While mobile delivery of video content is clearly the future it is not yet accessible to all users on all networks on all phones, so resist the temptation to offer video as the only GET option.
Offer Multiple Engagement Options In The GET Targeting the GET to the lowest common denominator does not mean offering boring text-only content. For example The Weinstein Company’s recent full length feature film release of Morgan Spurlock’s “Where in the World is Osama Bin Linden?” asked consumers to snap a picture of the movie poster at the theater, in local newspaper print ads or from one of the thousands of flyers distributed in five major cities. Consumers then received multiple GET options including a simple short text synopsis of the movie with links to view the theater preview of the release, links to Yahoo movie reviews, and geo-specific content for local movie theater times with the option to purchase tickets via Fandango. In addition, every consumer who participated in the campaign was instantly entered into a sweepstakes in the local market. Over 40% of consumers who snapped a picture of the movie poster drilled multiple layers down to seek out more information about the content and the movie -- far better than the average .02% click through rates achieved by online banner ads.
SnapTell’s first European campaign has just gone live in “My Life” a German health-centered publication from the Burda publishing group. The magazine covers Sports and Fitness, Food and Entertainment, Beauty and Spa, and the environment.
Selected ads in the current issue of My Life have been made interactive with SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get
mobile marketing platform. Readers can look for the SnapTell logo in
ads throughout the issue, and then use their camera phones to Snap a picture of the ads that interest them, Send the picture to SnapTell, and Get special promotional offers and/or content. They will also have a chance to win one of 50 subscriptions to My Life magazine.
To find out more about SnapTell’s mobile marketing platform, and how it
enables brand owners, marketers and publishers to easily mobilize
existing advertising collateral, please email us and/or visit our website.
I am an iPhone Apps junkie. I download the things on a whim,
impressed by the capabilities, only to discover weeks later that they
have almost no practical application what so ever. However, I happened
upon one today, that just might prove useful.
SnapTell is a free iPhone app that… Well here’s the description:
Snap a picture of the cover of any Book, DVD, CD, or
Video game and within seconds see a rating, description and links to
Amazon, Wikipedia, IMDb and more. If you like the item, click on a
link to buy it right away.
CogDogBlog reviewed the app, and added some interesting thoughts on image recognition app use in educational/museum settings:
I’ve been playing a little with the QRCode readers like NeoReader on the iPhone, especially in Japan, where there where QR codes in the newspaper, on stores, on public signs,
but its a challenge because you have to get a square on framed shot,
it’s hard to get a good photos of the small ones. It takes too much
effort.
So I gave SnapTell a quick test last night, taking a picture of a
paperback that has been traveling with me, so its front page is curled
and torn, and I took this photo under room light, what I would call
non-optimal photo conditions. So I took the image in the SnapTell app, clicked “use photo” and within 5 seconds it correctly identified it. 100% correct as Anything for Billy by Larry McMurtry. More than linking to Amazon, it ferrets a relevant link in Wikipedia to the author plus a link to a preset Google search (and Yahoo) for more information.
Thanks, everyone! And if you haven't tried SnapTell's Explorer for the iPhone yet you can download it for free here, from the app store.
Harley-Davidson is launching its 2009 V-Rod Muscle bike with
an innovative marketing campaign featuring American super model Marisa Miller and
SnapTell’s Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing platform.
The campaign went live on October 13th in magazines
such as GQ, Esquire, Playboy,Complex, Road & Track and Trader,
with ads featuring Miller reclining on a sleek, black V-Rod Muscle. Snap a
picture of the ad with your camera phone, send the picture in an MMS to the
number cited in the ad, and you get access to exclusive content from Harley
Davidson.
The campaign was pre-launched on Oct. 6 on Harley-Davidson’s
official YouTube channel, with a “making of” video that takes viewers behind
the scenes at the Marisa Miller V-Rod Muscle photo shoot . Motorcycle bloggers and
Harley-Davidson fans and friends on Facebook and MySpace were exclusively
tipped off to the campaign.
SnapTell is pleased to be part of this iconic brand's marketing campaign. For more information on the new V-Rod Muscle visit Harley Davidson's website. To find out more about SnapTell’s Snap.
Send. Get mobile marketing solution, please email us and/or visit our website.
ESPN The Magazine partnered with SnapTell to
create an interactive magazine packed full of sports-themed free rewards. To reap the bounty readers simply explore the pages of the ESPN The Magazine’s NFL Preview Issue (September 2008),
use their camera phones to snap a picture of ads that offer the rewards they are
interested in, send the picture to SnapTell via MMS, and they'll get their goodies immediately.
The rewards offered include:
SportsCenter ringtone
Breaking sports news, scoring and fantasy team alerts
NFL Live ringtone
Vodka Recipe from Absolut Los Angeles
Free standard shipping on purchases
College Football ringtone
Free Can of Campbell’s Chunky Soup
Converse One Star Ringtone
Plus, every reader who snaps and sends a picture of any SnapTell-activated ad in the NFL Preview Issue is automatically has a chance to win a trip for two to Tampa, Florida for the ESPN The Magazine Next ’09 Big
Weekend Event, starting Friday, January 30 2009.
Brands participating include Progressive, Sony, GMC Sierra, Absolut Los Angeles, Under Armour, Toyota, Wolverine, Campbell’s, Converse, Target, HBO, Mobil, and Champs.
Advertisers get significant benefits as well, including real-time, personalized, interactive on-demand brand communication with their target audience and additional exposure in the magazine.
To find out more about SnapTell’s mobile marketing platform, and how it enables brand owners, marketers and publishers to easily mobilize existing advertising collateral, please email us and/or visit our website.
SnapTell-activated ads are returning to the pages of Rolling Stone, after our successful debut in the magazine last May.
Selected ads in Rolling Stone issue #1062, now on newsstands, have been made interactive with SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing platform. Readers can look for the SnapTell logo in ads throughout the issue, and then use their camera phones to Snap a picture of the ads that interest them, Send the picture to SnapTell, and Get special promotional offers and/or content such as:
A chance to win a Pulsar watch
Exclusive wallpaper or video clip from Sci Fi
A killer pick-up line from Pentel
Free Deep Cleaning Shampoo sample from Gillette
A chance to win a $50 voucher from Greyhound
Exclusive ringtone from Energizer ® Advanced Lithium
But wait; there’s more! Everyone who snaps and sends a picture of any of the SnapTell-enabled ads in the magazine is also automatically entered to win a trip to an upcoming Rolling Stone Live concert.
Readers of Rolling Stone aren't the only ones to benefit of course. SnapTell's "Snap.Send.Get" mobile marking solution transforms static print ads -- or any existing marketing collateral -- into a measurable,
two-way communication tool for brand owners.
For more information on our Snap.Send. Get mobile marketing platform, please visit our website or email us.
Attention adrenaline addicts: the Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers show will be returning to a TV near you in mid-October! The coming season features new high-tech
tricked-out vehicles, new teams and new strategies for delving into the heart
of Mother Nature’s most intense experiences without getting your face and/or assorted appendages ripped
off in the process.
And to soothe your Storm Chaser needs until the new season premiers on October 19th (Sundays at 10 p.m), pick up a copy of Wired Magazine’s October issue (on sale now). There’s a great ad from Discovery Channel with information on one of the coolest Storm Chaser trucks, a dictionary of weird weather terms (do you know what a “Wedge” is? Animal Precipitation? Anvil Zits? If not, you will after you read the insert).
And there’s also a terrific bonus offer that will totally blow you away: Snap a picture of the ad using your phone’s camera, Send it in an MMS to [email protected], and you’ll almost instantly Get an exclusive
Storm Chasers clip on your mobile phone.
The Discovery channel used SnapTell’s Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing platform to power their Storm Chaser clip offering. Snap.Send.Get can turn any image associated with a brand into a dynamic mobile marketing campaign. 100% permission-based, Snaptell’s Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing solution enables brand owners and retailers to communicate directly with consumers, within seconds of the consumer's request for information. For more information, please email SnapTell.
The Los Angeles Times ran an article yesterday on a new mobile marketing study researching whether people were comfortable receiving ads on their mobile phones.
The study, conducted by Local Mobile Search (an advisory
service of Opus Research) states that about 43% of people interviewed were amenable to
receiving "offers or deals" on their phones, but only if they could
select which merchants send them offers.
This shows a great deal of possibility around mobile advertising," said Greg Sterling, a senior analyst with Local Mobile Search. "A lot of surveys have been done that show that people are just not really interested in mobile advertising. But if you give people assurances that they have some measure of control, then they
become much more interested.
"We're at a tipping point. The best days for mobile ads are in front of us." Advertising has to be relevant, meaningful and creative, Sterling said. If it gives people something of value to them, he said, they're not opposed to it.
It’s not hard to grasp why permission-based mobile marketing is the way to go for a number of reasons, most important among them that you run no risk of infuriating a potential customer by stuffing their
mobile phone full of unsolicited ads.
SnapTell’s Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing platform takes the idea of permission-based marketing one step further and makes it
request-based, people see only the marketing content that they implicitly ask
to receive.
IPG's Interpublic Media Lab focuses on analyzing (and, as they say, "rigorously testing") emerging technology
and discovering the ways it can best be leveraged by brands. In a post on the Lab's blog about Men’s Health magazine's recent use of SnapTell's Snap.Send.Get mobile marketing platform, Michael Ball wrote:
In Japan, using your cameraphone to engage with advertising is old hat. They have been placing quick response codes (QR) in their out-of-home and print pieces for a few years now–which are basically barcode-looking things that can hold a ton of information.
But the U.S. is now in a position to potentially leapfrog this technology altogether, and go straight to snapping a shot of the very thing you want to know more about.
Michael Ball went on to raise some interesting points:
Almost two-thirds of all U.S. mobile subscribers have
cameraphones–and the mélange of dog and child wallpapers show we
certainly love using them–so the reach and the behavior are there. What
this means for your print, out-of-home, radio, and even broadcast
campaigns, then, is that it’s time to start thinking about how you can
layer in mobile as an engagement tool.
Nobody’s saying you abandon your URL call-to-action. But if a
potential customer is sitting in a doctor’s office with a magazine,
odds are they’re going to forget your ad the second they get called in
for that tetanus shot. But if there’s a mechanism to immediately opt-in
via mobile, especially in a fun and engaging way, then you’ve captured
a qualified lead–while they’re out in the world.
