Is this the mobile World Cup?

Is this the best we can do?

The World Cup: The worlds biggest sporting tournament, bringing together 32 teams from five continents and watched by billions of people across the globe. A time when advertisers up their game and release amazing TV ads showcasing their creativity and commitment to sport. Adidas have their parody of Star Wars and Nike have their “What if” ad showing Wayne Rooney as an entirely believable down and out. These ads are entertainment in themselves and garner hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube as well as word of mouth excitement. So what can the world of mobile marketing produce for this momentous occasion? Can mobile marketers step up and score a decisive goal that lets the world know they’ve arrived on the World Stage? I’ll let you decide.

First up to the spot is Kit Kat, that well known confectionary from Nestle, once famous for producing great TV ads with the strap line, “Have a break. Have a Kit Kat”. These ads had the same water cooler attraction as the Nike and Adidas ads I mentioned above, and, had YouTube been around back then, I’m sure they would have had the same online popularity. Their world cup iPhone app is called Red Card. In their own words, “Now every football fan can be a referee. Issue red cards with the KIT KAT Red Card iPhone app and take pleasure in sending people off with impunity.” Once downloaded the app allows you to choose whether to show a yellow or red card and then to choose one of a variety of reasons for showing the card, such as Diving, Abusive Language or Denying a goalscoring opportunity. Once you’ve chosen your card, and reason, the ref blows his whistle and sends you off with relevant words of wisdom. The app also has the ability for you to record your own words for dismissal as well as the obligatory option to share your cards on Twitter or Facebook.

Second up is the Pringoooals iPhone app from, you guessed it, Pringles. This app is a similar sound board to the Kit Kat Red Card app allowing you to select various sound effects from goal celebrations to The Great Escape (shame nobody predicted the popularity of the Vuvuzela, or updated the app to include it since the start of the tournament). A P&G representative spoke at the IAB’s Engage for Mobile event yesterday and mentioned the rationale behind this app, which made a certain amount of sense. People who download this app are most likely to use it in the pub when they are watching the game. Pringles are sold in a lot of pubs so using the app will remind you of Pringles and you can immediately act on that by buying some at the bar. My problem with this logic is twofold. First, if you need an iPhone app to add to the atmosphere in the pub whilst you are watching the football then you are in the wrong pub. Second, if you get your iPhone out to celebrate a goal, youre not involved enough in the match.

OK, so I said I’d let you decide but I couldn’t help letting my scepticism show through. Both of these brands are running mobile display ads, targeted to sports content, so they should see a fair number of downloads and I’m sure they will be deemed a success by the brand marketers. But you could run any old ad at half time in the World Cup final and have it be seen by millions of people, that doesn’t make it a good ad or mean that its going to improve your sales or brand image. You may get more brand awareness, but a lot of people will be saying how crap it was and that is reflected in the reviews on the AppStore. Here are some reviews for the Pringles app: “Gold award for “Most pointless waste of space”. Appalling application.” “Rubbish”, “Pointless”, ”Good but needs improvements. Be good if it had a VUVUZELA!”, “It’s alright but I only like the clapping and red card”. As of 14th June it has a 2 ½ star rating from 3,746 ratings. The mobile ads catapulted this app to 2nd in the Entertainment category in its first week but it has since dropped down to 99th.

How are these brands measuring the effectiveness of these apps? Do they have any link to sales or brand affinity? Is it enough to have an app downloaded x number of times? Let me know what you think.

The most downloaded branded app EVER – so far

Barclaycard can lay claim to having the worlds most downloaded, branded, iPhone app ever – at least according to AdAge. The Waterslide Extreme app has had ovr 4 million downloads in the 3 weeks since it launched in mid July. As of today (6th Aug 2009) it has 2 1/2 stars and 15,485 ratings in the App Store. This breaks the previous record that was held by VW for their New polo app that was released back in March.

So what’s the app actually like? Is it any good?

Well, it’s OK. The Baclaycard branding on it is very subtle, only appearing on the menu screens and not in the main game at all. It does however have a good assosciation with the current ads, which I guess is the idea. The game itself is simple, you choose your character, slide down the waterslide avoiding crabs and ducks and trying to hit bonus items. There are 9 levels and I got through the first 4 within 5 minutes when I got too bored to carry on. So it’s not the deepest of entertainment apps, nor is it going to bring anything useful to your life. Would you ever consider paying for it? No. Does it make me feel warm and fuzzy about BarclayCard? No. But it has reached over 4 million people, which is absolutely phenomenal and it has got quite a lot of people talking about BarclayCard and their ad campaign.

Given how much this app would’ve cost as a percentage of the campaign budget I’d say it was well worth it for BarclayCard and Dare, the agency that had the balls and nouse to see the potential. I just wish that more brands would come up with ideas like these and make them just a little bit more engaging.

 

Read the AdAge article here http://adage.com/globalnews/article?article_id=138293