I had Queen Live Aid performance in my #netflix cue. So getting a little Monday morning inspiration.

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Nissan exec dishes on iAd launch campaign

By Dan Butcher

August 6, 2010

Nissan was among Apple's iAd launch advertisers

A Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. executive discussed his company’s ongoing iAd campaigns geared to drive awareness of its new automotive models among Apple’s desirable demographics.

The iAd campaign promoting the Nissan LEAF, which will be the first 100 percent electric car available in the United States, rolled out in early July with the launch of Apple’s iAd platform. The automaker’s initial push with the iAd Network will run through March of 2011.

“Nissan has always been at the forefront of innovation in marketing, as well as in our cars and trucks, so to be the first and only automotive brand on iAd was a natural extension of that approach,” said Jon Brancheau, vice president of marketing at Nissan North America, Franklin, TN.

“It also made perfect sense given that Nissan is the first to bring a 100 percent electric vehicle to mass market,” he said. “Both Apple and Nissan users are known for appreciating innovation, amazing design and rewarding user experiences—they’re leaders, adventurers and very emotionally connected to the brands they believe in.

“This mindset cuts across demographic lines of age, income or gender.”

Nissan showed off the LEAF's specs within the iAd

The Nissan LEAF, an acronym for Leading, Environmentally friendly, Affordable, Family car, is a compact five-door hatchback electric car. Sales are scheduled to begin in the U.S. and Japan in December.

Nissan revs up iAd campaign
The Nissan iAd campaign targeted applications for the iPhone and iPod touch that appeal to information seekers, sports enthusiasts and entertainment enthusiasts, among other categories.

Mr. Brancheau said that rather than have a traditional ad banner that takes the user out of the application when clicked on, the iAd creative keeps the user in the application, and then delivers a rich creative environment for people to interact with Nissan creative and become engaged with product information.

The expanded Nissan iAd includes a menu featuring images of the LEAF car, a page called “new specs” with information about the LEAF and a page called “the new MPG” with a chart showing how far the LEAF can drive on $1 of gas compared to other popular vehicles.

Here is a screen grab of "the new MPG" page:

In addition, the Nissan iAd has a call-to-action on “the new prize” page urging consumers to “enter the sweepstakes to win the new car.”

Users shake their iPhone to pick a color and then tap to enter to win a Nissan LEAF.

Here is a screen grab of the sweepstakes call-to-action:

“Apple provided great guidance to us in our approach to this unique creative on their platform,” Mr. Brancheau said.

“We learned a lot in this process about providing a Nissan Leaf brand experience within a mobile app in such a way that users would be inclined to engage deeply with the content,” he said.

“Apple certainly knows how to deliver the richest user interface experiences and we were very pleased to have this be a collaborative experience.”

This was not Nissan’s first foray into mobile advertising.

Last year, Nissan’s luxury car brand Infiniti advertised within publishers' SMS alerts as a centerpiece of a multichannel campaign to promote the launch of its latest G Convertible (see story).

Nissan also launched a campaign that used the mobile Web, an iPhone application and text messages to promote its then-new Cube car model (see story).

An upcoming campaign for the Nissan Juke will roll out on the iAd platform this fall and the new Nissan Quest minivan is in consideration for the winter.

“At the same time Apple was handpicking progressive, innovative brand partners that could deliver a compelling consumer experience, Nissan was looking for a way to provide the most engaging experiences possible over the mobile Web for the most innovative vehicles coming to mass market such as the 100 percent electric Nissan Leaf and the new sport cross, the Nissan Juke,” Mr. Brancheau said.

Final Take
Dan Butcher, associate editor, Mobile Marketer

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Associate Editor Dan Butcher covers content, carrier networks, manufacturers, and software and technology. Reach him at dan@mobilemarketer.com.

Zynga and Facebook. It's Complicated

The game company can keep growing as long as it stays in Facebook's good graces

By Douglas MacMillan

• "The next three years are a hell of a lot harder than the last three"

More than 120 million people play Zynga's online games. Employee headcount has almost quadrupled in the past year, to 775. Revenue for the three-year-old company should surpass $450 million in 2010, according to two people who have been briefed on its financials.

Mind you, Zynga's games are free. Revenue mostly comes from selling virtual hoes and machine guns and such to players of FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and other titles. "Only a few companies are so privileged to get the rocketship growth that Zynga has," says Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and a Zynga director and investor. As for an initial public offering, "All options are on the table," he says.

In an interview at Zynga's overflowing offices in San Francisco, Mark Pincus, the company's 44-year-old founder and CEO, seems giddy. "It's fun," he says, swiveling back and forth in a conference room chair. "It's adrenaline."

It's a sweet gig—although there's one big unknown: Facebook. Zynga's success depends on the good graces of the social network, where almost all of its games are played. "The single biggest challenge is managing growth in the face of total uncertainty," says Pincus. By all accounts he's on friendly terms with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg—who has shown a willingness to knock heads.

In March the social network stopped letting Zynga and other app creators promote games in the "notifications" menu users see each time they log on. Facebook said users were complaining about spam-like messages that appeared every time one of their game-playing friends found a baby duck or whacked a mobster. One protest group on Facebook with more than 5 million users called itself "I Don't Care About Your Farm, Or Your Fish, Or Your Park, Or Your Mafia!!!"

Pincus says the policy change has hurt his business in "the short term" by slowing traffic to his games in the first quarter of this year. Still, he says, Zynga and Facebook can help each other, since his company's wares increase the time and attention users spend on the social network. He compares the relationship to that of a cable company and a hit-making network: "I think it benefits Facebook's users if we can create the next Sopranos and if we can be a brand, like HBO, that their customers really want." (Pincus is a minority investor in Facebook. All he'll say about his stake is that it's "basis points.")

Facebook doesn't just get happier users, it also gets big checks from Zynga. Any time a game looks like a potential hit, Pincus says his company deploys millions of dollars on ads promoting it to members of the social network. In total, Zynga spends between $5 million and $8 million per month for banner ads on Facebook, according to NeXt Up! Research. The aggressive promotions make it difficult for rivals to copy an idea for a game and make it as successful as Zynga's version, says Lisa Marino, chief revenue officer of app startup RockYou. "Social gaming is a math equation," says Marino. "When you put millions of dollars down to protect [a franchise], you will win it."

Facebook could force Zynga to adjust its math. More than 90% of the company's revenues come from users converting real cash into proprietary virtual currency. FarmVille, for example, has Farm Coins. Say you buy a tractor for 5,000 Farm Coins, which equals about $3.30. Typically the company pays less than 10% of that to a third-party transaction handler such as PayPal and keeps the rest. (In March, PayPal said Zynga was its second-largest merchant after eBay.)

Facebook is testing a service called Facebook Credits that would offer a single virtual currency for use on many different apps. If the social network forces app makers to use Facebook Credits, as some developers expect will happen this year, Zynga would have to pay the company up to 30% of every transaction. "If Credits become pervasive, I don't think Pincus can stop it. It's going to hit the margin," says Peter Relan, executive chairman of CrowdStar, one of Zynga's many competitors.

"There's just going to be one currency that people use" on all apps, Zuckerberg told Bloomberg TV on Apr. 21. He didn't say when Credits might become mandatory. Pincus is trying out the currency as an option in FarmVille and other games. "There is definite value for users and developers in having the trusted Facebook brand associated with buying virtual goods," he says.

Pincus says he's eyeing other ways to get his games in front of the masses. Apple's (AAPL) announcement on Apr. 8 that it plans to include a program for connecting people in social games played on the iPhone and iPad caught his attention: "It would make a lot of sense for Apple to be interested in doing more to enable social gaming," he says.

For now, Zynga's mission is to keep cranking out those Facebook hits. Work is going on around the clock; Pincus is encouraging employees to develop pet projects during weekend-long programming marathons. And, of course, the company is hiring like crazy. To help fill 300 job openings, it's running an ad on a billboard in San Francisco and has bought local public-radio sponsorships.

Pincus will need all the intensity he can get. Electronic Arts (ERTS) upped the ante in November when it bought Zynga rival Playfish for $275 million. "Zynga is riding high," says Barry Cottle, general manager of EA's interactive unit. "But they may soon find out that the next three years are a hell of a lot harder than the last three."

The bottom line: As long as Zynga keeps supplying Facebook with hit games—and ad revenue—this could be a long and profitable partnership.

Douglas MacMillan is a staff writer for Bloomberg BusinessWeek in New York.

Rumor: "iAd" Mobile Advertising Platform Is Apple's Next Big Thing

MediaPost reports that Apple's next next big thing, after iPads invade the world next weekend, will be iAd, a mobile advertising platform to be debuted April 7. Coffee dates and patent suits aside, this could be the true Apple-Google battleground.

Of course, if you've been reading the tea leaves, Apple's move into mobile advertising is anything but surprising. In January, they bought mobile advertising company Quattro for a reported $275 million, after Google snatched AdMob out from under them months before.

More recently, we saw glimpses of Apple's mobile advertising future in an "App Store Tip" they published which discouraged developers from creating apps that "use location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location." Because that's exactly what they want to do themselves, of course.

MP's sources say that Steve Jobs has described iAd as "our next big thing" and "revolutionary," natch.

MediaPost's version of how this will unfold is a little weird. They're reporting that iAd will make it's debut April 7, which is only 4 days after iPads start making their way into the grubby hands of fanboys everywhere. Apple, a company that has hype down to a science, is surely cognizant that launching an iAd revolution on April 7 runs the risk of eclipsing the iPad revolution that potentially just got its legs days before. Such are your troubles when you deal in revolutions. Also, uh, iAd? Then again, we thought iPad was pretty dumb in December, too, so...

Regardless, it's been clear for a while now that Apple seeks to take control of mobile advertising the same way they did digital music. Google got search ads down pat, and now they're sitting on a boatload of cash. Their acquisition of AdMob got them a good foothold in the mobile advertising game, but that sizable slice of the pie is still very much up for grabs. And you can be sure that Apple's going to be grabbing for it, whether it's with something called iAd or not. [MediaPost via Boy Genius Report]

How to Survive Geolocation's Looming Apocalypse

Why the Industry's Most-Buzzed-About Tech Service Could Consume Us If We're Not Careful

Posted by Dave Curry on 03.29.10 @ 04:23 PM

Dave Curry

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that everyone is buzzing, blogging, tweeting, and talking about geolocation. Research firm Borrel forecasts that location-based mobile spending will hit $4 billion in 2015, an increase of nearly 12,000% from the $34 million spent in 2009. With highly anticipated location-centric announcements looming from both Facebook and Apple, the buzz over geolocation is not expected to diminish any time soon.

Leveraging location will drive the next wave of consumer marketing, but based on the current pace of services and apps going to market, we're setting ourselves up for geolocation apocalypse. In this scenario consumers gorge themselves on a plethora of location-based services and spam, gut-busting data profusion and promotional push acid-reflux. If we're not careful, the coming cataclysm could consume us with:

• Swarms of Geolocation Services. Already in full swing, new services are appearing with an alarming frequency. Ranging from the more popular/mainstream (Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter, Yelp, MyTown, Whrrl and Loopt) to the more obscure (PlacePop, BlockChalk, Bump, FoodSpotting and Graffiti), services are being piled high. Gauging by the more than 25 companies that made location-based announcements at SXSW, consumers will soon be choking on an overabundance of geolocation services.

Armies of Aimless Apps. Each service wants you to use their app, so can the marketplace sustain a massive rush of apps? Of course not. When I sit down for dinner at my favorite tapas place, how many apps can I "check-in" with before everyone else at the table starts throwing flatware at me? Most likely one, possibly two, if I snap a photo for upload when the entrees arrive. Check.in, by the team at Brightkite, is addressing this problem with their upcoming app (one checkin to rule them all). But how many apps (and features within each service) will they need to support to effectively fulfill consumer needs?

Drowning in a Deluge of Data. If you've seen SimpleGeo's Vicarious.ly, or the visualization video of geolocated data they collected during SXSW, you can see the potential for massive floods of personal geolocated information that may or may not be relevant to your consumers. Bing recently added Foursquare data results to their maps. Now imagine them adding results from a dozen other services, or maybe four dozen other services. As a user, I just wanted directions to the post office, now obscured by thousands of user notes, to pick up my bacon-of-the-month. Does it help to know that 600 of my closest friends also hate going to the post office?

Spates of Vexing Spam. Why should marketers care? Consider the consumer. An innocent trip to the mall might trigger an avalanche of promotional push notifications. You check in at Macy's, and because you just had tapas for dinner, Macy's offers you 30% off paella cookware. The Gap sees you and sends an SMS about its sale on Spanish red sleepwear, while Barnes & Noble (a few doors down and a bit confused) pushes you a coupon for Macy Gray's latest release. The consumer just turned off their phone...

Crime Cataclysm, Stalker Apps and Misrepresentation. With vase amounts of personal-location information being exposed, we're bound to see a rise in potentially damaging behavior. Ages ago (in 2009) a man tweeted about a family trip to Kansas City, only to return to a burgled home. What did he do? He blamed Twitter. On the flip side, I would be remiss if I didn't mention PleaseRobMe.com, a site that displayed Foursquare check-ins in real time, essentially listing "all those empty homes out there." The site is no longer active, but it caused quite a stir and fueled much debate when it launched in February of 2010. That sound you hear is consumer confidence gasping about the dangers of geolocation.

It Doesn't Have to Be That Way
This isn't the first time marketers have embraced disruptive technologies, nor will it be the last. As long as we keep one foot in the shoes of our consumers and follow some basic rules of road, you'll safely stay out of the wasteland:

• Respect and Delight Your Consumer. Service creators, application developers and marketers alike should have undying respect for consumers and the desire to make them fall in love with their brand by providing them with something special. If you undervalue your consumer by creating less than magical apps, treat privacy with little or no consideration or abuse your knowledge of their whereabouts, consumers will turn their backs on you and won't return.

Embrace Open APIs. Open APIs allow marketers and app developers to build on top of existing services. Facebook and Twitter owe no small portion of their success to having created open APIs early on. Remember reading about tweeting toasters, plants, dishwashers and even beds? Twitter's open API was not only great for developers, it was phenomenal PR. Why has Gowalla lagged behind Foursquare, even though many users report preferring the Gowalla experience? Maybe because their API is currently read only.

Choose Wisely. As part of your strategic approach, building upon a proven favorite that will likely NOT end up in a geolocation landfill makes sense. All signs indicate that Foursquare will be around for some time, especially given it raised $1.35 million in venture capital last year. Also of note, following SXSW, Foursquare tweeted that they experienced "2.4 million checkins !& about 90,000 new users (!!!) in the past 7 days. Every week bigger than week before."

We Can Prevent Geolocationitis
Geolocation isn't going away -- in fact, it may get a significant bump if Facebook turns location on for their 450 million users. Stay tuned; that news is expected to unfold at the upcoming F8 developer conference on April 21. In addition, Apple's appreciation of the impact of geolocation was acknowledged with their patent application for a social-networking app (named iGroups in the patent) that would allow users to securely share data with one another using a service like MobileMe. Apple is also rumored to be rolling out iAd, a location-based advertising service that leverages technology from their recent purchase of Quattro Wireless.

We've already taken our first few leaps into the geolocation deep end, but it's not too late to refine our approach. If we work hard to respect our consumers' needs and privacy, while taking every opportunity to provide them with brand experiences brimming with value and delight, we could turn a looming apocalypse into a land of geolocation milk and honey.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dave Curry is interactive director of POP, an independent digital agency, which has done work for Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Target. He plays daily word games on Twitter @DaveCurry.