Be on the lookout for some cool things happening with iAds. According to Hill Holiday's Blog, Liberty Mutual was one of the first companies to sign a deal with Time magazine to bring advertising to the iPad version of the magazine and it sounds incredible. The ad has has buttons that take users to various Liberty Mutual sites, where they can evaluate whether they have been responsible citizens, make commitments to perform charitable acts and spread the message through social networks.
They have one way of using the iAd to help people in their pursuit of responsibility that I absolutely love. They suggest random acts people can perform to make the world a better place. Shake the phone and people are given a number of acts to choose from, everything from signing up for a benefit run and adopting a pet to donating clothes to Goodwill and being a designated driver. Oooh maybe we could get libraries listed in that category!
Once people decide on what acts they’d like to do, they can tell the world by tweeting directly from the ad through a Twitter integration . Incorporating a #doingtherightthing hash tag with the tweets allowed us to extend the reach and relevance of this piece well beyond the iPhone. Using the iPhone’s GPS and mapping functionality, people can even find places in their area where they can do some good immediately. Is that too cool???
While in the iAd, people can also assess their own level of responsibility, get some inspiration from history’s greatest acts of responsibility and even crash a car to learn how Liberty Mutual helps get people back on their road.
The whole concept has me thinking of ways we could get our customers to interact with us. We could run a campaign about helping get people back to work and have people share messages of hope or tips that worked for them to get a job. If you had money for an iAd what would your ad include?
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2 comments:
I looked at the post you linked too. They refer to the iPhone's "unique functionality". There is no longer anything unique about the iPhone. Android phones have exceeded the iPhone in functionality, and an explosion of Windows 7 phones is on the horizon. The iPad is unique at the moment, but that will not be the case in just a few months, as iPad competitors appear all over the place. And none of them will use iAds.
Singling out iAds is short-sighted. There is also AdMob, owned by Google, which powers ads for non-iOS products. Analysts predict that Android will surpass iOS in market share by 2012. If a marketer is not aware of that, then he or she is not earning his/her money.
I can certainly appreciate the intention behind the ad. I mean, who wouldn't? But just because a company has a cool ad doesn't mean it's going to be effective. How many people actually click on the ads in their mobile device apps? I never, ever, click on mobile ads. I would guess not too many others do either.
I would also guess that the people who can afford iPads and high-tech smartphones with fully enabled web browsers (and the data plans required for them), are less likely to be library users. Would a mobile ad change that?
@Michael D - Thanks for commenting. I agree with you that the article is more of a promotional piece than an evaluative article of all the ad possibilities. What struck me was not so much the platform as the idea behind creating ads that can inspire our customers to want to engage with us through other social media platforms. -Nancy
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