After I got my Samsung Galaxy S, I was remorselessly mocked here in the office for several weeks. “How’s the new girlfriend working out?” people would ask “are you two still happy together?” As it turns out, I’m not the only person in the world who feels an intimate connection with their mobile… Microsoft Ads has just release research that claims the mobile phone is the “lover” of the communications world.
What’s the story here?
Microsoft Ads co-operated with BBDO (one of the more successful agencies working for the staggeringly huge Omnicom Group) on research into how people connect emotionally with the most important communications devices in their lives: TV, PC and mobile phone. More than 1,500 consumers were studied in the US, the UK, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. The two advertising companies brought Ipsos, a global research company, to gather the information and crunch the numbers.
What did they find?
This entire survey was done with advertising and marketing in mind. By understanding how people relate to their devices on an emotional level, Microsoft and BBDO hope to provide marketers with the info they need to reach “the next billion customers”. In particular, they’re looking at multi-screen marketing – campaigns that hit TV screens, phone screens and computer screens at the same time. A lot of the cold, logical numbers are known here, but what this survey wanted to know is how people relate to those screens on an emotional level, as if the screens themselves were people (if you’re scoffing at this, skip down to What We Think? to get my thoughts on that). The study found:
- People treat TV like a friendly everyman – a reliable, funny old friend that hangs out in your house. Nostalgia is a big player in the TV relationship.
- PCs are treated like older siblings. Because you can choose your own content, and because you can do research and learning, the PC becomes something you can learn from. You can also compete on it and show off on it.
- Mobile phones are treated like new lovers. The mobile is the most personal of all devices. It’s with you all the time – any little thought that crosses your head can be accessed immediately on mobile.
Now, the above are all generalizations. It’s not the same around the world: in Russian and China, where TV is traditionally State-controlled, people tend to be somewhat wary of their TVs and feel closer to their PCs. In developing markets, the mobile is by far the screen of choice.
Based on this study, BBDO and Microsoft have a few recommendations. They say that advertising on PC can be effective if it’s challenging and offers the potential for learning. They say that marketers HAVE to recognize the personal nature of mobile, and be careful that their advertising is relevant, meaningful and useful. More importantly, they have to be unobtrusive.
Perhaps most interestingly, they claimed that there has NEVER been a better time to advertise on TV. Microsoft and BBDO claim that if advertisers are ready to reach out, entertain and humor their TV audience, they’ll find a very receptive audience.
What we think?
I think it can be easy to scoff at the idea of people having an emotional connection to these devices themselves. How personal a link can someone feel with an object of plastic and glass? Well, in my experience, quite a personal link. This is something you own, something you interact with, something you reach a world of entertainment and information through. People are experts at “humanizing” their devices, attributing human characteristics, moods and behaviors to their communications devices. Now, it’s nothing like the connection you have with an actual person. You can never feel as close to your phone as you can to a real person. But those feelings are there, even if they’re only faded reflections of the real thing. And I think that advertisers and marketers would be wise to pay heed to that, and take what Microsoft and BBDO are saying here seriously.
