How mobile raises the bar for brand communications
By TNS
1. How mobile raises the bar for brand communications Right here, right now, right for me
A place on a consumer's mobile phone is becoming a powerful opportunity for marketers to influence behaviour, build loyalty and drive purchase. It is also very challenging to achieve and very difficult to maintain. And while the mobile represents a major opportunity for brands that can earn a place on its home screen, it represents a significant challenge to those unable to adapt to mobile-powered consumer behaviour.
2. An evolving role: For mobile and for Mobile Life
Mobile Life, TNS's annual investigation into the behaviours, motivations and priorities of the world's mobile phone owners has been an essential source of insight for the technology and communications industries since it began in 2005. But the scope of Mobile Life has evolved with the role of the phone itself. The findings of the 2012 study confirm that a mobile strategy is a requirement for any brand, and that a proper understanding of consumers' relationship with their phones is essential if advertisers are to master the world's most ubiquitous communications platform.
3. Global overview
The mobile age is a worldwide phenomenon. Although different regions have their own patterns of mobile behaviour, their own stages of mobile development and their own preferences for handsets and operating systems, the centrality of the device to people's lives is absolutely universal.
4. From fashion to features to interactivity
The ways in which consumers choose and value their phone changes with that phone's capabilities. Once upon a time, consumers cared mainly about what their mobile looked like and whether it could carry out basic functions such as play music or take photos. Then their concern shifted to phone content such as social networking, Internet browsing, apps and gaming. As smartphones become increasingly common, consumers pay more attention to how the content on their mobiles is delivered. Operating system becomes an evermore important aspect of consumer choice through brands such as Android, Windows Phone and iOS. As smartphone devices increasingly present similar calibre offerings, the user experience and the way that the phone delivers content become more important.
5. Becoming a part of consumers' mobile world
The increasingly interactive user experience provided by mobile gives consumers the potential to empower and personalise their experience of the world. And this makes mobile hugely relevant to businesses across every category. Understanding consumer mobile behaviour and formulating a mobile strategy is now a business imperative.
6. Experience: Enrich my life
Consumers want to enhance their everyday experiences and improve their interaction with the world around them, and their mobile provides a premium means for doing this. Brands that can move beyond simple information and entertainment to deliver these enriching interactive experiences will be rewarded with greater affinity and a more secure place within consumers' mobile world.
7. Independence: Set me free
One of the most established benefits of mobile in the mind of the consumer is the ability to manage life on the go. This is a liberating technology that frees them from previous restrictive working practices and the frustrations of less flexible devices - and ensures that consumers are increasingly accustomed to immediate information access and feedback from the world. Brands and products can benefit by adding to mobile's valued capability for managing life on the go and by adapting their own brand activity to be constantly accessible through mobile devices.
8. Convenience: Save my time
People used to spend time saving money. Today, particularly in developed economies, they are prepared to spend money to save time. But thanks to the mobile, they don't always have to. As the pace of life increases, simple solutions that save time and effort hold increasing appeal - and mobile's innate immediacy and flexibility make it the device consumers increasingly turn to for these.
9. Relevance: Context is everything
Consumers value products and solutions far more when they are delivered at the right time, in the right place and in a relevant context. Mobile greatly enhances brands' ability to achieve this.
10. Reassurance: Give my decisions the green light
Growing financial pressures are combining with mobile capabilities to drive a new consumer demand for more informed purchase decisions. Consumers want to take the risk out of decision-making by assuring themselves of the value of the products they buy using trusted and often independent, sources. The Internet has fostered these capabilities and mobile is empowering consumers further by enabling them to access such information within the store environment. In this way, mobile introduces rival authorities to compete with sales assistants, in-store branding and Point of Sale information. In doing so, it is starting to alter radically the final stages of the path to purchase.
11. Opportunity or challenge: The choice is yours
Each of these areas of consumer mobile behaviour represents an opportunity for brands. However, in none of them can those brands assume control of information - or a captive audience. Experience, Independence, Convenience, Relevance and Reassurance are all driven by consumer need and consumer initiative. The mobile is shifting power to shoppers to access the information and services that they demand in these areas - and they have many potential suppliers in each. If brands are not able to engage consumers in the mobile space and earn a place in the mobile circle of trust then they may find competitors and third parties occupying such a place in their stead - undermining their engagement with consumers at key points in the path to purchase.
12. About Mobile Life
Mobile Life is an annual investigation into the behaviours, motivations and priorities of the world's mobile phone users. Now in its seventh year, Mobile Life is the most comprehensive view of how the world's consumers are using their phones today and the opportunities this presents for brands.
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About TNS
TNS advises clients on specific growth strategies around new market entry, innovation, brand switching and stakeholder management, based on long-established expertise and market-leading solutions. With a presence in over 80 countries, TNS has more conversations with the world's consumers than anyone else and understands individual human behaviours and attitudes across every cultural, economic and political region of the world. TNS is part of Kantar, one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy groups.