Here’s everything you need to know about the popularity of WAP advertising: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter has a mobile Web site.
Fans of Unilever’s butter substitute can now download video content, view recipes and send friends “Fabio-grams” featuring the heartthrob-turned-pitchman. The offering, which is powered by Third Screen Media and came online earlier this month, “allows users to learn about the brand on their own time and … at their own discretion,” said Ryu Yokoi, a Unilever associate brand manager.
The effort underscores a major trend-or, more accurately, a resurgence-among some of the best-known brands in the United States to embrace WAP. Motor-oil companies, hair-care distributors and fast-food chains are once again warming to the much-denigrated technology in an effort to build name recognition and, sometimes, to encourage consumer interaction.
UPS and FedEx were two of the first major U.S. brands to try to exploit wireless, launching WAP and text services that allow their customers to track packages and find drop-off locations. Countless others followed suit, joining the rush to build WAP sites allowing users to manage their banking accounts, get sports scores or simply learn about specific products.
Then, nearly as quickly as they came online, many of those mobile Internet sites were pulled down, as the over-hyped technology was misunderstood by both consumers and corporations.
“There was very little understanding, I think, in the early going about what would count as a success” for a wireless Web site, said Dale Gonzalez, chief technology officer for Air2Web Inc., the company behind UPS’ consumer-facing wireless effort. It was difficult to track traffic, Gonzalez said, and nearly impossible to glean demographic information from users.
Air2Web also powers WAP sites and other mobile marketing efforts for customers including The Weather Channel, InterContinental Hotels Group and Hoover’s Online.
“I don’t think there were any that were particularly high-traffic sites,” Gonzalez continued. Companies “just said, `You know what? It’s not worth it.’ They quietly discontinued the sites; let them disappear.”
Some of those sites are reappearing, though, while other companies are quietly making their WAP debuts. Some build wireless sites as a simple branding effort, while others-financial service institutions and online media companies, for instance-are deploying wireless offerings to meet the demands of on-the-go customers.
Netflix recently launched a stripped-down version of their Internet site for wireless, allowing users to tweak their queues and recommend movies to friends. The company declined to discuss details of the service, but conceded that traffic has been “modest.”
“The main developmental challenge is keeping the interaction very simple so that it is both usable and quick to download,” a Netflix spokesman said. “There are also compatibility issues with different hardware and software combinations.”
Indeed, the splintered market of mobile phones and networks can be as big a headache for mobile marketers as it is for game-makers and other content developers. Those problems can grow exponentially as wireless Web sites get more complicated and interactive. Meantime, the handset market is growing more fragmented-not less-by the day. Firms looking to build a compelling, interactive wireless Web site that will attract users and score marketing points should have the resources to support the effort, Gonzalez said.
“The device space has actually gotten worse, and the user experience has also gotten worse,” he opined. “Some of these devices are quite high-end, and you can build complete microsites on them. Because of that, the bar has been raised, in my opinion. I don’t think it’s any easier at all.”
While I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter pushes Fabio-grams, others are building “brochure” sites that essentially serve as a one-page document offering information on a company or product. The sites have none of the bells and whistles of more intensive efforts, like click-through banners or eye-catching graphics, but they can serve as a first step into the world of WAP marketing.
Even more expensive sites might be bargains compared to other advertising platforms such as TV or print, particularly for companies looking to deploy a cross-platform marketing campaign. And mobile-phone ads can target a demographic that may be nearly unreachable in print or on some TV networks, according to Hans Henkes, general manager of MindMatics L.L.C.
“ `Generation M’ has never experienced the world without a mobile phone or the Internet,” said Henkes, whose company has executed mobile marketing efforts with McDonald’s, Jim Beam and Lufthansa. “(The cost is) a drop in the bucket for these advertising agencies, when they’re spending millions on TV ads.”
But just as the first wave of WAP ads resulted in countless casualties, Gonzalez said he expects many of today’s efforts to flounder. The mobile marketing space is still in its infancy, he warned, and the industry has much work to do before it figures out how to reach consumers on their phones. Companies that figure out compelling, innovative ways to get their customers to interact may thrive on the mobile marketing playground, but those that hastily throw a site up on the wireless Internet shouldn’t expect much interest.
“The whole space is being driven by, to some extent, the shrinking down of the wired Internet, and there is a fair amount of amnesia,” Gonzalez said. “People are forgetting that that didn’t work especially well. There were reasons for it-the carriers weren’t ready, the networks weren’t ready, both of those are true to some extent-but it also might not have worked because it was just a bad idea.”
