Having a little time to digest the massive SXSW Interactive Conference upon my return from Austin, I have two observations that stand out among the many other nuggets I gleaned from the five days and nights of non-stop sessions and parties:
My.SXSW
- I wish more of the conferences I’ve attended over the years (125+ worldwide) were like this one – fun (the spirit, parties, live music, food and freebies), supported by some great planning and connecting (social) tools and jammed with content just like the interactive world itself. I’ll spare you the party pictures, but you can check out the “fast typer” that was blowing away all comers in the exhibit hall during my visit to the hall for some free beer and noshes (picture below).
- Though I already knew this, mobile and location marketing are going to be huge and will further disrupt “old” media, local advertising and even online display and search advertising aimed at the “second screen,” or PC (TV is the first screen and the mobile device the third in “three screen” research and analysis lingo). When combined with smartphone penetration and the recent onslaught of social media as the platform for communication, search, research, advertising and commerce, mobile and location marketing change everything.
Ad Age recently reported on the mobile report by Borrell Associates indicating that “location-based mobile spending will hit $4 billion in 2015, up from $34 million in 2009. Including ad spending with promotions, events and research, Borrell estimates mobile as a whole will dominate U.S. interactive marketing spending as soon as 2014 with 70% share, or $56 billion. While it’s difficult to imagine mobile advertising beating existing commitments to web development, banners and search, those commitments won’t be dedicated to PC browsers but increasingly to smartphones, Kindles, iPads, portable gaming devices and even cars.” Keep in mind that total interactive marketing spending today is at a run rate of around $25 billion so regardless of how much one discounts these projections, location-based mobile marketing is big.
Another way to think about the huge impact of mobile and location marketing is how it will open up opportunities for small business. Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite are among the innovators here, and while many still scratch their heads wondering why one would “check in” at every restaurant so that their friends know where they are, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Soon we’ll see more automated, location-based messages by brands and businesses (via consumer opt-in of course), triggered by the consumer’s proximity to a store, hotel or other place of business. These messages will provide new means of advertising, research, networking, commerce and more at the local business level. This will prompt many smaller, local advertisers to shift spending toward these forms of media in order to drive traffic and deals.
SXSW: Fastest Typer
We’re already beginning to see rewards for customers with the most “check-in’s” on Foursquare (the “Mayor” of the local deli, for example, is the customer with the most check-in’s at that restaurant), but much more is to come. Loyalty will be rewarded, referrals and party-size will be explicitly driven by location-aware promotions, and offers will be provided to individuals during their visits to participating businesses (as has been the case in Japan for years). Some of these location-based offers may be messages delivered to one’s mobile device, while others may be driven by a bar code (QR code or similar) affixed to a specific area of the store or individual item for sale. These codes, scanned by one’s smartphone, link immediately to specific information and offers to learn more about products and drive more sales. Beyond just offers at retail and restaurants, another example of how location-aware technologies change everything will be seen in hotels. They will offer automated check-in triggered by one’s arrival at the hotel, where the hotel brand’s mobile application (app) automatically pulls up the check-in details for immediate reference.
The spending shift toward mobile and location marketing will come at the expense of local media (newspapers, radio, etc.), but some may also come at the expense of online display ads on web sites that reside mainly on desktops (think Yahoo! or AOL). In other words, like social media, mobile and location marketing will begin to cannibalize other forms of digital media – the tables will turn on those digital players too slow to adapt.
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