Posted: February 14, 2007

In a recent article on the consumer-created Doritos Super Bowl Ads, Advertising Age’s Jonah Bloom declared “we’re entering a new ad era – the conversational marketing age.” This is not an entirely new sentiment, as he admits, but the realization of the potential behind consumer-advertiser partnerships is a more recent phenomenon.

Bloom continues, “Of course it is in part about consumers’ access to video-production and -distribution technologies, but it’s also about the increasing sway they hold over any product’s success. It’s about the honest insight and information they offer that can help a company identify problems and opportunities on corporate and brand levels. It’s even about their willingness to co-create with you the products they will later consume.”

Consumers are no longer willing to accept whatever products and services are offered to them. They want to be able to provide meaningful feedback and help steer the development of products that more closely fit their needs. Bloom states that the tech industry has been utilizing this relationship for years through beta-testers and other means of involving the consumer in product development, but today the strategy is beginning to be adopted by other industries as well.

Bloom continues, “This movement is changing media and the nature of advertising.” John Battelle, who coined the term “conversational marketing”, has “found that advertisers who used their ads ‘as invitations to conversation’ – or even turned live online conversations into ad messages – were outperforming those who viewed ads as unchanging packages to be posted next to content.” Advertisers who talk with their target audience, as opposed to at them, are in a much better position to offer consumers what they really want.

We here at Cellit Mobile Marketing could not be more excited by this trend. Cell phones are uniquely suited to this sort of conversational advertising due to their instant access to millions of consumers, as well as their interactive features, which have expanded greatly over the past few years to include voice, text-messaging, photos, videos, and much more. For example, Cellit recently entered into an agreement with a major toothpaste manufacturer to provide support for their new campaign in which they invite consumers to send in pictures of their smiles, which will be posted on a website, for a chance to win $1000 and a digital camera.

Mobile technology is the premiere gateway to “conversational marketing”, and it will be those companies which embrace mobile marketing that will thrive in the new interactive marketplace.

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Technorati