Let’s say you go to a party – what’s the first thing you ask? Do you ask what there is to drink? Or do you ask what the wi-fi credentials are? Chances are it’s the latter.
In his session today, Alejandro Berman, Head of Media and Digital, Mexico at Heineken, shared some key principles to maximize the impacts that brands could have in a platform where consumers scroll though content in less than 2 seconds.
Back in the 50’s, the advertisers that believed in television earned the competition for their brands. Now we see that the same thing is happening with the disruption of the mobile device – if we understand the mobile, we can earn another 50 years of competitive advantage.
It wasn’t that long ago that we sat back on the couch to watch TV and advertisers had 30 seconds to show us to tell us about a product, knowing for certain that it would reach 72 million people. Now that doesn’t exist. By and large, many people don’t watch broadcast television anymore – if the Titanic sank at this very moment, you’d have people in the water holding up their phones trying to capture it for the world – it’s a trend that won’t be going away anytime soon. It has become a revolution.
Here are some interesting stats that Alejandro shared with the audience:
- 44 mobile phones are sold every second around the world. That number is larger than the number of babies that are being born.
- We check our mobile devices around 150 times a day within an 8 hour work day and 87% of people always have their phones at their side day and night.
- 1/3 of millennials polled said they would rather give up sex for a year than give up their phones.
We are seeing that 76% of the time that people in Mexico spend in digital is in mobile – people are skipping over setting up a computer or a laptop and going directly to mobile now. One of the main things we need to recognize is where our consumers are right now, and we need to understand how the mobile generation is eating up digital. In the past we’ve sat on the couch, leaned back and watched TV and we saw whatever the companies wanted us to see. Now in the mobile age we are more demanding of a device, we lean in and scroll, we have control over what we see, we can block ads, and we complain if we see something we don’t want.
We still see local ads on our phones and it’s exhausting for influencers let alone brands to keep up with all the different outlets and having to create content for all of them. The biggest enemy that advertisers face is our thumb. We are constantly scrolling for content and the mobile has inadvertently become the new cigarette. When you don’t have something to do, you look at your phone – waiting at the doctor’s office, you look at your phone.
Everyone is stressed out – advertisers are stressed that they aren’t making content fast enough and consumers are stressed that they are getting bombarded with too much content – it’s a collective neurosis. It takes us approximately 1.7 seconds to scroll down, with younger people scrolling faster than an average 50 year old – so where does that put us as advertisers?
Here are some tools that might help:
- Instant attention – Mobile is unstoppable. Be there.
- Short length of ads – Understand, design and create for mobile first and foremost
- Create with the sound off
- Put the brand as the first thing people see
- Make people play – VR, 360 etc.
- Frame for mobile
- Measure and improve upon what you are putting out there