If you use your smartphone a lot, you should know this brand. For the first time, a cross-publisher survey, the “Kinnie Study 2011”, has measured the impact of a purely mobile campaign.
And the results are very positive.
The conclusion of the study summary reads: “The results clearly show where things are heading. Of the key advertising impact indicators measured, the effect on brand awareness, ad awareness and recognition can be proven with sufficient sample sizes. Overall, the indicators for recall, brand image and how much people like the mobile ads are all at a high level. So the conclusion is clear: mobile advertising works! Advertising on the mobile internet increases brand awareness, gets noticed, is liked and sticks in users’ minds.”
LEAD magazine sums up the study’s highly positive results like this: “If you rely on mobile alone, you have a good chance of reaching your marketing goals.”
There is no question that mobile devices and apps are booming. At the start of the year, the German Association for IT, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM) reported that 11.8 million smartphones were sold in 2011 in Germany alone. That is an increase of 31 percent on the previous year. Almost half of all mobile phones sold over the counter are smartphones. We see growing reach and growing advertising opportunities thanks to multifunctional devices with large screens and fast internet connections. Given these facts, the study’s result seems far less spectacular.
However, the study does not answer the question of whether its findings apply to other industries. Do mobile campaigns for financial products achieve results as good as those for Kinnie, the Maltese soft drink?
The study also covers only one form of mobile advertising. Yet the mobile marketing toolkit is far more varied: apps, gaming, ticketing, couponing, location-based services, cross-media approaches via Bluetooth, QR codes and infrared, augmented reality ideas and, not least, the vast field of social media. Campaigns work. But there is more to it than campaigns.
Our conclusion: we welcome the proof that mobile campaigns work. In principle, the same advice applies to them as to social media. The question is no longer “whether”, only “what”. Now is the time to gain experience in mobile advertising and lay the foundations for the mobile strategy of the future. So the last word, which we fully endorse, goes to the authors of the study:
“Mobile advertising works! Advertising on the mobile internet increases brand awareness, gets noticed, is liked and sticks in users’ minds.”
