The article walks through five best practices mobile marketers thinking about March Madness should learn from the Super Bowl’s mobile ads. These are:

1. Use mobile to extend engagement beyond the TV spot
2. Optimize for a mobile-specific experience
3. Broadcast calls to action for a sufficient amount of time
4. Test calls to action for scalability
5. Make a compelling first impression

The article references a few specific Super Bowl ads, which you can find if you’re interested @:

• Go Daddy Internet Cloud
• Pepsi King’s Court
• NFL Million Dollar Fan
• Anheuser Busch Platinum
• Obama midgame SMS message (image)

So head on over and thanks to Mediapost to read the full article.

And, of course, Go <insertyourfavoriteteamhere>!

To refresh your memory, buzz is tracked in the form of “Notes,” which are reposts or likes of each call to action. This means that Notes can denote both positive and negative feedback from the Art of the Call to Action viewers.

Here are the top five calls to action right now according to “buzz”:

• Text Times From MTA Subway (94 Notes)
• Dallas Fort Worth ATM And Guest Services (43 Notes)
• John Deere Mobile/Email Online Sign Up (24 Notes)
• Text Say Aah To Get a Ringtone (22 Notes)
• Obama Mobile (20 Notes)

Again, we see transportation-related calls to action occupying the top two spots. It’s a testament to mobile’s usefulness for those people on-the-go.

Stay tuned next month to see which calls to action receive the most buzz, as we now have a new leader for Notes upon our monthly check-in: almost 100 for text times from MTA subway. As always, new calls to action are added to the site every single day.

We encourage you to check out artofthecta.com to buzz about your favorite (or least favorite) calls to action. Please leave any comments or Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down on those posts which you think are particularly effective or ineffective. In addition, if you have or have seen calls to action that you want to see hit the buzz awards, please submit them!

At a high level, the pocketspammers website is a petition to end Political Text Spam Fraud. At present, the FCC’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act doesn’t apply to companies that run internet-to-phone text messaging programs. By submitting your name to the site, you can urge the Federal Communications Commission to quickly put a stop to text message spam, as it poses a significant cost to consumers.

As we’ve mentioned before, an opt-in should be an integral part of any SMS program. I would even go so far as to say that an opt-in should be a part of any online program, considering the amount of information being shared (in many cases unbeknownst to consumers).

There’s a video with more information on the pocketspammers.com website for those interested.

That said, living in and being from San Francisco, these past two weeks could have been so much cooler. Luckily, I have been able to take solace in something, which a recent Mashable article summed up pretty effectively:

Giants? Patriots? Mobile and Social to Win Super Bowl XLVI

The article goes on to mention a couple of stats, which I think are pretty cool in and of themselves, but extremely so for today’s marketers:

• 61% of Super Bowl fans posted Facebook status updates in 2011
• Last year’s Super Bowl generated more than 4.5 million tweets in 6 hours
• U.S. Twitter traffic increased 50% from Saturday to Gameday
• 2011 Super Bowl ads have been viewed 360+ million times online
• 39% of Super Bowl related mobile searches came on Gameday
• Yahoo‘s mobile homepage traffic increased 34% during breaks in the action
• Yahoo sports-focused mobile traffic jumped as much as 387% during commercial breaks

And the hits just keep coming. Another Super Bowl study, this one from Harris Interactive, tells the same story:

• 60% of mobile users plan to use their mobile during the Super Bowl
• 83% of mobile users say they’ll use their mobile as much or more than last year
• 30% of viewers under 45 will have their mobile in hand all game
• 47% of viewers 18+ will check their phone up to ten times during the game
• 22% of mobile users 18-34 will check their device an average of 19 times
• 97% of people will be watching with another person, with 47% of those expecting other people to use their mobile while they do
• 13% plan to use their mobile device during actual game action

Even Nielsen got in on the Mobile Super Bowl stats action, finding that 70% of tablet users and 68% of smartphone users watch television with their devices in hand.

So, with my team out of the game till next year, I for one will be watching how marketers take advantage of this mobile opportunity during the Super Bowl. Check back next week and we’ll take a look at any mobile hits and misses. If you see any other Super Bowl stats you would like to share, please share them to the comments.

Enjoy the game.

Given SMS’s ubiquity, direct marketers are seizing an opportunity. Using SMS, brands can engage consumers with practically an infinite type of text and cross-channel media. SMS provides a vast set of benefits applicable for all industries, including low cost messaging, high ROI, instant feedback and a vast set of trackable analytics.

Capturing these benefits, however, comes down to one thing (just like anything in marketing): execution. Waterfall’s SMS Marketing eBook, from the Quick6 eBook Series, explains this execution in detail and how marketers can build a road map that leads toward success.

Download the entire SMS Marketing eBook here.

• He saw a beautifully branded QR code on an in-store display promoting the purchase of Starbucks bags of coffee. Scanning the QR code was stellar: it connected to a mobile optimized page where he could vote for his favorite roast, watch a movie, post to social networks, make comments, i.e. everything he could ever want.

• As my colleague held up his phone to scan the code, he heard an authoritative outburst from behind the counter: “Sir! Are you interested in buying a bag of coffee!?” (my colleague: “No thank you”). “Well then why are you taking pictures of the coffee bags?!?!?”

Here’s the rub (in case it’s not already obvious). Starbucks corporate has a firm grasp on the intricacies of mobile marketing. Starbucks local, in this case, had a mere finger’s touch on the same concept.

Just to be clear, the issue goes far beyond QR codes. Take SMS marketing, for example, in particular mobile coupons: Those businesses running coupon campaigns might have to ask store clerks to check phones to verify a code’s validity. If the coupon has the brand’s short code as a sender? Great, the coupon is legit. But without a short code sender (for example another phone number or long code), you’ve got a cut and pasted or forwarded message (of course you can overcome this risk using unique codes). Users having trouble pulling rebate information from an app? Local-level employees may have to be ready to give people a step-by-step on finding downloaded apps on the home screen.

And that, folks, is the sound of opportunity knocking. Corporate/local businesses are everywhere in the United States, from banks, to QSRs, electronics stores and fitness centers. Given mobile’s rapid rise to the top of the digital marketing ecosystem, intelligent marketers are going to have to find ways to educate their local constituencies in order to achieve maximum mobile success.

Of course, there are tons of ways to achieve this objective, especially considering that communicating corporate initiatives to the local branches has been on corporate/local businesses’ plate since their inception. Ideas include newsletters, company meetings, corporate social networks, internal mobile marketing, internal strategy wikis/websites, a dedicated team for communication, etc. Each company, of course, has to choose the approach that works best for its particular culture and brand.

What has been your experience with corporate/local mobile marketing? Any similar experiences? Any different ones? Please let us know by posting to the comments.

(Some background context for those that don’t follow these things: Starbucks is an innovator in mobile marketing, having launched everything from SMS campaigns to mobile apps and a comprehensive mobile payment system (one example). In addition, Starbucks is a corporate/local brand in that there is a corporate Starbucks based in Washington State that runs more than 5500 local branches located throughout the world).

in particular: making SMS conversational and integrating with external data inputs.

Conversational SMS

As we all know, SMS continues to run rampant in the U.S. One of the main reasons for this we can find out by talking to anyone who uses text messaging: it’s easy to have an interactive conversation, oftentimes even a better experience than calling up someone on the phone.

The challenge for brands then is to replicate this experience for their particular audience (shades of the Turing Test here). Fortunately, integrating dynamic data management with SMS allows for this type of functionality. Here’s one example: imagine that a brand wanted to engage folks during the holidays where long lines are the name of the game. Rather than making consumers wait without respite, what about offering them an interactive conversation that replicated the experience of texting back and forth with friends? Here’s an example message flow:

• (mo)  bored person texts BORED to 44144
• (mt)  You must be 21 or older to participate. Reply with your birthdate in the following format MMDDYYYY (e.g. 11051973)
• (mo)  02051973
• (mt)  Get Ready for The Waiting Game. Rply SKIP to get the next Q. HELP for help. Msg&Data Rates May Apply. More: URL.com
• (mt) What’s the funniest thing that someone is buying right now? Rply SKIP ToGetNextQ
• (mo)  I see my friend Kurt buying a Litter Robot, but he’s a freak!
• (mt)  What’s the weirdest thing that you bought today? Rply SKIP ToGetNextQ
• (mo) Deluxe Prism Glasses

As you might imagine, brands can offer as many questions as they see fit. It’s also easy to design the application so that a unique mobile number won’t receive the same question more than once.

But where it gets really interesting are the integration points. Each response can be written to an xml file to do with whatever a brand or agency wanted, whether it be post to a website, use for future product ideas, post to social networks, etc. Brands could even dynamically update users’ profiles with how many questions they answered and use this information to better engage subscribers with SMS messaging in the future. And it’s all possible because of the ability to customize data management with SMS.

External Action Integration

Similar in execution, SMS’s dynamic data management capabilities can be used not just in conjunction with an SMS conversation, but in conjunction with information pulled from other user actions. For example, imagine a product release that took place over the course of one month. Throughout the release, parts of the product could be unveiled each day online (e.g. through advanced searching) and offline (e.g. on billboards or signage). Participants in the campaign could try to find these product pieces wherever they might be hidden through a type of decoding system. Once decoded, people could then text in to see if they were successful. Here’s what the message flow might look like:

• (mo)  player texts CODE to 44144
• (mt)  You’re the 1st person to decode today’s product piece. Well done, you’re officially on top of your game. Txt Help for help. Txt Stop to end. Msg&Data rates may apply

Again, similar to above, this information could be added to each participant’s profile and used for future marketing purposes. For our example project, the success information could be aggregated over time, published to a website for consumers to view (updated in real time), and the sponsoring brand could offer incentives according to end of campaign results.

I guess where I am going with this is that SMS’s dynamic data management capabilities really allow for the creation of some amazing applications that go beyond a simple send an SMS message to a consumer. It’s up to creative minds to push SMS to its limits. Doing so will distinguish campaigns from others in terms of creativity, uniqueness and, ultimately, competitive advantage.

Have other ideas of cool dynamic data management campaigns? We’d love to hear about them in the comments.

The campaign is in support of TakePart and Participant Media’s latest film, Finding North. In a long line of brilliantly executed activist films, including Inconvenient Truth, The Cove and Waiting For “Superman”, Finding North focuses on the impact of hunger in the US. The film details how hunger poses serious economic, social and cultural implications for our nation, and how exactly it can be solved once and for all: the American public just has to decide – as it has in the past – that making healthy food available and affordable is in the country’s best interests.

The film’s mobile call to action, text NORTH to 77177, will be featured just before the film’s end credits. Those that text in will receive personalized stats on hunger in their state, making the film’s widespread message relevant to each specific individual at the local level. The initial call to action will also subscribe participants for ongoing updates, where they will have multiple options and opportunities to take the film’s message a step further and push its ideas into reality.

This interactive, customer lifetime value approach to mobile marketing, similar to successful and meaningful campaigns that Participant Media/TakePart have run in the past, is one of the big reasons why Participant Media and TakePart are such leaders in the space.

Showings at the Sundance Film Festival take place from January 22 to January 28 (seats are filling up fast so hurry to get tickets if you are going to be on location). If you do see the film, or any other examples of effective film making and marketing, we would love to hear from you via the comments below.

So what exactly are SOPA and PIPA?

In order to understand how these bills affect your mobile marketing initiatives, it’s important to have a bit of background on the issue first.

SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is an anti-piracy/censorship bill currently making its way through Congress. It gives law enforcement and content creators (i.e. the entertainment industry) the ability to seek court orders against websites they deem are enabling or facilitating the infringement of copyrighted material.

PIPA, the Protect IP Act, calls for curbing access to ”rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods”, giving the U.S. government and ISPs the power to block access to “infringing” domain names.

What’s the big deal?

In a nutshell, both pieces of legislation were introduced with the intent of giving law enforcement and content creators increased ability to protect their intellectual property rights (i.e. copyrights).

Sounds legitimate, right? However, as Reddit.com puts it, “The devil, as they say, is in the details. PROTECT IP and SOPA will cause too much collateral damage, have a high potential for abuse, and won’t even be that effective at stopping the crimes they target.”

Depending on who is suing, court orders could bar online advertising networks (e.g. Google AdSense) and online payment facilitators (e.g. PayPal) from doing business with “infringing” sites, as well as bar online search engines from linking to those sites. Sites such as Google, Facebook, eBay, YouTube, which offer an infinite amount of services and proliferation of content, are in danger of becoming virtually unable to function.

Goodbye, Social and SEO

Perhaps it’s difficult to see the effects this may directly have on SMS marketing. However, think of it as a domino effect. Mobile marketing has been all but married with online media in the recent years. It is a deeply seated relationship that continues to grow and is becoming crucial for the success of any company’s growth, big or small, in this day and age. Marketing initiatives that depend heavily on Facebook’s & Twitter’s viral sharing components, video hosting on YouTube, and search engine optimization (SEO) etc. will be threatened by SOPA and PIPA.

Copyright Protection Gone Rogue

With SOPA and PIPA, law enforcement will theoretically be given unchecked power to block any site they feel is infringing on copyright. There doesn’t appear to be due process once a claim has been made or an appeal process. This makes everyone a potential red target. Your site can be fine and dandy today, but tomorrow, it may no longer be accessible.

As both are ultimately censorship bills, potential lawsuits will also prompt many web site hosting services to move out of the U.S. This in turn leads to negative effects on venture capital, as entrepreneurs and investors will turn funds away from small business, startups, you name it, in fear of spending more money on legal issues than actual innovation and growth (read more @ http://www.marketingtechblog.com/what-is-sopa/).

I’m an interested party in the mobile marketing business, as I’m sure many of you are as well, and this development brings to mind the revised CTIA audit process that was launched last October. I remember when my inbox went from receiving 3 audits total to 30 in one day, and the corresponding industry outrage over the legitimacy of the audits.

In my opinion, outrage over SOPA and PIPA feels similar – if anything worse as they affect the internet as we know it on a much larger scale. Sure, people criticize SOPA and PIPA for being poorly written. In my opinion, however, not only will they both be ineffective in the goal of stopping piracy, but also far too overreaching to the point that they could disrupt the architecture of the internet by tampering with the registry of domain names (resulting in decreased security and stability).

I, for one, will be staying on top of the progress of these bills – I encourage others to do the same. And if you have any additional thoughts about SOPA and PIPA’s impact on mobile marketing, please feel free to post your comments below.

Further Reading:

• Everything Marketers Need to Know About SOPA
• Infographic: Understanding SOPA
• Protect IP Act Breaks the Internet
• How PIPA and SOPA Violate White House Principles Supporting Free Speech and Innovation

QR Codes:

eMarketer released stats on QR codes, their recognizability and why consumers are scanning them. The first, entitled “U.S. Internet Users’ Familiarity With QR Codes, October 2011,” breaks down a key difference between how consumers perceive QR Codes:

Percentage of consumers that have heard of QR codes:

Percentage of consumers that can identify a QR code when shown one:

I think what’s clear is that the term “QR Codes” might not be the most understandable thing in the world for consumers, but the opposite holds true for QR codes themselves. Can think of tons of parallels here, but for some reason the old “your epidermis is showing” joke comes to mind.

The eMarketer study goes on to list a number of impressive QR code stats, including:

• 90% of the top 100 magazines have featured at least one mobile barcode since May 2011, compared to 9% in November of 2010.
• Presently 5% of magazine ad pages have a 2D Bar Code
• This widespread magazine use “doesn’t even touch presence of QR codes on outdoor advertising, in-store signage and packaging, or business cards.”

The last figure from eMarketer breaks down the reasons U.S. Smartphone users have scanned QR codes as of October 2011:

One point to note before reading too much into this stat: it’s misleading. Two reasons why: (1) consumers can only scan QR codes that are promoted in a specific way and (2) the overwhelming majority of QR codes link to get more information (see the artofthecta.com for some examples). Thus, of course more people scan QR codes to get more information. That’s why I like the conclusion of the eMarketer article: “But as awareness develops, the novelty factor may be in danger of wearing off. Marketers will have to prove there is valuable information in store for QR code scanners—perhaps a coupon or exclusive content—or those who scan a few times out of curiosity may not develop a scanning habit.” That, folks, summarizes moving “beyond the Novelty of the New.”

Mobile Apps:

Apps are all the rage these days as marketers love the beautiful rich media experience they offer. However, marketers need to carefully evaluate their app strategy. According to data from Mashable, consumers don’t like shopping via branded apps:

As the study says, “consumers show a greater preference — by up to 20 times — for browsing the Web to shop rather than using branded apps.” I find this data interesting in that it proves something that I intuitively assumed, though this is the first time I have seen data around this “gut feeling.”

Bottom line: brands need to find ways to connect consumers to websites and mobile sites for commerce reasons, giving credence to the assertion that an effective SMS, mobile web, and mobile app strategy requires a cross-channel CRM approach. Not an over-reliance on one channel vs. the other.