Agency Spy

Fact - ads are gonna happen on the subway, on your computer and your mobile phone, too. CBS is in the testing phase for its mobile ad strategy that delivers location-aware advertisements to mobile phones. Visitors to CBS Mobile News and CBS Mobile Sports Web will be served ads based on companies near their real time location.

So, you’re walking down the street on 7th avenue and 26th street checking the upcoming March Madness schedule. Low and behold! At the bottom of the page is a Starbucks Foods ad. As you look up to cross the street a block later, by golly! It’s a Starbucks! Right there! In front of you!

CBS is working with Loopt, a service which allows its subscribers to track participating friends and family on their mobile phones through GPS. Sprint Nextel and Boost Mobile are currently the only mobile service providers who have signed up for the program, though Loopt is in talks with all the majors. As a consumer, one must “opt-in” to the program to see the ads considering that your location data must be served up to the company for the program to work at all.

We’re wondering how many folks will willingly “opt-in” for such a program. Fact - there are many people who would rather see relevant, local advertising than plugs for national brands. If you’re going to get served, why not get served something that might be useful to you, right? Fact - people are lazy. The extra step of signing onto the CBS website via mobile and filling out an “opt-in” form may be the greatest deterrent to this scheme. Hopefully, the sign up form will be akin to buying a magazine subscription on the web. The box for automatic renewal is already checked for you. Sign up for mobile content on CBS and the “opt-in” is checked with a “yes.” Consumers love no brainers. Love ‘em.

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For those of you who love reality show Project Runway, Bravo has a new mobile campaign just for you. It’s a mobile fan club actually. By texting RUNWAY to 27286 (BRAVO), members can receive exclusive content including video, behind-the-scenes messages, interaction with designers and more. Blah, blah, blah… here’s where it gets interesting.

Bravo has partnered with Socialight, a location-based social platform that lets people create, share, and discover virtual sticky notes tied to real-world places. Fans will get a “Project Runway” guide to New York which encompasses the designers and judges favorite places in the city. Want to know where Heidi Klum gets her nails done? Easy. Want to know where Daniel Vosovic’s likes to buy his fabric? Done.

Dan Melinger, CEO of Socialight told us that: “Advertisers like reality television because it drops their brands right into a real-life situation the consumer can relate to. By bringing the experience from the TV screen into people’s real-world environments and activities, we’re making the brand-consumer relationship even more powerful.”

No agency was involved in this one naturally. Mobile isn’t most advertising agencies foray. Sigh. We did however, text to Bravo and start using the service. It’s pretty neat.

Every time we see advertising for Helio, we giggle just a bit. Not out of malice, but from nervous confusion at its wayward handling of what could have been a great brand.

Helio is one of the few phone makers to offer 3G service and GPS positioning, which is arguably very cool. However, the advertising for Helio never bothers to explain to the general public what 3G service is. Instead, they put up billboards featuring taglines such as, “Don’t call it a phone.” The brand also tries to get users to call it a “device” in its stores and print messages. Huh? Okay, so what the hell is a “device?” What is Helio - a cell phone maker, a service provider, a content service? And why should you make any sort of switch?

The work coming from their agency, Deutsch LA, addresses none of these issues. Instead, they employ the “irreverent, hipster” approach in such fare as their recent booklet on cell phone etiquette that does little to clear up consumer confusion. PSFK also wrote a short blog piece that said “-the brand has been off-message, off-style and just tried too hard to be seen as cool rather than try hard to be so good that the brand became cool.” If you want more info on Helio’s “This Is Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile” approach, check out an article written by Thomas Sherman in 2006 when the brand had a lot of buzz.

Deutsch might have focused on a different niche than the hipster marketplace. Hipsters everywhere have smart phones, but they’re all about the cheap. If Deutsch had done a little market research, they’d have known this. These kids are trying to be the next Yeah Yeah Yeahs and pay for their limited edition kicks, so whatever gets them their email at the lowest price, while making them look just a little cool is what they’re signing up for. Trust. Trio? Sidekick? Making out like bandits with those kids.

One of the brand’s backers, Earthlink, recently decided to halt funding leaving them with SK Telecom’s roughly 250M stake, but if you know anything about MVNOs - you’re aware they eat up cash like Pam Anderson does men. They’ve also been very much forced to lower the pricing for their handsets and their “Total Happiness Guarantee” to consumers has proved to be bollocks. See an example of that here. Then there’s the numbers. The company lost $30 million in the first quarter of 2007 despite revenues being up ($47 million in the quarter, versus $30 million in all of 2006). And get this - Helio gets around $100 in revenue per user, which is double the industry average.

From CNET: “After six months of aggressive marketing, it had only about 70,000 subscribers, as of December 31, 2006. That number is expected to increase to 100,000 by the second quarter of 2007. While these figures may be slightly better than other MVNOs, such as Amp’d, which signed up only 30,000 subscribers within eight months of full marketing, it’s much less than what bigger carriers are adding on a quarterly basis and what other MVNOs reported in their early days.”

Hunh… The big money losses seem to come from infrastructure costs and meanwhile, they’ve got a slow build in subscribers. So, bad management is to blame for empty stores, broken promises and confusing advertising? Sounds like it. Regardless, their recent deal with MySpace is a long shot if they’re looking for a savior.

From CNN Money: Burger King inked a licensing deal with mobile content provider Mobliss to create downloadable cell phone games that feature players vying for the role of the King; “by facing challenges and progressing in the virtual world of a Burger King-themed city, the company said.” BK is one of those brands that is totally unafraid of new media advertising and it has served them well. The success of their partnership with XBOX is just one great example. Applause for the King.

The Economist has a great piece up about the high expectations of mobile advertising both through text messages, as well as games. Worth a read.

Read More: Your Client’s Brand Might Be In Jail

You know how we’ve become fanatics of the advertising surrounding the upcoming rugby World Cup (see: Your Body No Longer Belongs To You or The Myth Of Adidas)? Our latest addition to the fray comes by way of a reader. Thanks! A new advergame allows you to have a staring contest with some tough looking rugby players. We couldn’t help, but challenge our eyeballs against these bad asses. Using your computer’s web cam, the system can tell when you blink or look away. Really. Talk about interactive. Sponsored by O2, a provider of mobile services to consumers and businesses in the UK, the game was not only fun, but we perused their entire website, too. We got curious. The marketing worked.

More: Inside Goodby, Silverstein 

AT&T is conducting a review to consolidate media planning and buying for both its landline and wireless services. It’s time to consolidate. The telecom giant will be issuing an RFP to its incumbent media agenices: GSD&M, Interpublic’s Initiative, Mediaedge:cia, OMD; and Publicis Groupe’s Digitas who has been handling their digital.

The RFP is set to go out in just a few weeks. This will be a fun one to watch. The company spent $2.3 billion media last year, so everyone is going to pull out the stops.

AT&T is pulling their “fewest dropped calls” campaign. The ad campaign, which launched last March, was based on a Telephia report that actually noted AT&T Wireless (then Cingular) did not have the most reliable network in several major US cities. A report from Consumer Reports placed Cingular/AT&T at the bottom of their rankings for reliability. This ditching of the slogan also comes about a California resident named Jonathan C. Kaltwasser sued the telecom company for false advertising. Kaltwasser claims that he and other consumers were duped into believing the slogan was actually true. AT&T reported an increase of 1.4 million new customers in the third quarter when the slogan was launched.

Right, so now the new tagline will be”More bars. More places.” Wired.com got this response from Mark Segal, a spokesman for AT&T’s wireless business: “or some time now we have been transitioning the overall messaging of our advertising to what we call ‘more bars in more places’ because that’s the number one reason cited by folks when they think about a high quality network. And more bars in more places translates into coverage — how much coverage does your network give you — and we have the largest digital wireless network in the country.”

So maybe they’re making the switch because they got caught lying or maybe, it’s really about some consumer feedback. Who knows? Either way, we’re not into the slogan “More bars. More places.”  It just can’t compete with “Fewest Dropped Calls” right?

We know how many ad folk are walking around showing off their brand spankin’ new iPhones. Yes, yes… you’re very cool, very hip. As such, we thought we should mention that naturally, someone has figured out how to set the damn thing free. A full software-enabled unlock has been achieved operating at the URL iphonesimfree.com. It’s been tested by the geeks over at Engadget, so it’s legit. Now, you can use that iPhone with any GSM carrier worldwide.

Sheesh. Took them long enough. The YouTube ad killer only took 24 hours.

UPDATE: JWT will be opening a London office out of which they will be running the account. From Brand Republic: “Deborah Huret, previously client service director on the Diamond Trading Company account, has been promoted to global business director, to run the business. Craig Davis and Guy Murphy will complete the core team on the Nokia account, with support from Keith Wilkins, Rob Alexander, Hilary Walton and core teams from each region.”

The win will allow JWT to expand beyond its key markets in the UK and US to markets where the agency has never had a major presence before, such as Russia, Nigeria, China and India.

16:45 UPDATE: DDB has been apppointed by Nokia to handle the global strategic and creative briefs in Brazil.

Nokia has hired JWT for distribution and adaptation efforts. Meanwhile, Wieden + Kennedy is running big dawg as the world wide creative agency on its mobile phones account. JWT beat down DDB and the incumbent, Grey to take the approximately $15 million account. JWT is a little superstar today, no?

Nokia SVP Pekka Rantala (pictured above) said the usual blah, blah, blah copy: “Working together with JWT will help us to align our marketing efforts. With one global marketing network partner, we believe we will be better positioned to reach our goal of becoming the most loved and admired brand by people in the world.”

Interpublic Group has formed a mobile marketing agency to service its existing clients. Whoa! Who knew they were even paying attention anymore? The new division is called Ansible, and is a joint venture between IPG and Velti, a London-based mobile marketing technology provider. Three cheers to Interpublic! Now, if only they could do something about that office of theirs… Hey! In case you didn’t know (and we didn’t until 30 seconds ago), an ansible is “a hypothetical machine, capable of superluminal communication, and used as a plot device in science fiction literature.” Doesn’t that sound like a name that the smarty-farty kids at W+K would of come up with?

Vladimir Edelman, formerly CEO of Soapbox Mobile, will lead the agency and Larry Harris founder of FCBi and the director of integrated marketing at DraftFCB, will serve as president. We bet Larry is glad to be the hell out of Draft.

More: Go Inside Grey Worldwide.
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