2012 meaning of mobile whitepaper updated

7/30/2019 2012 Meaning of Mobile Whitepaper Updated

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The Meaningof MobileBy Jesse Haines and Abigail Posner


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The mobile phone might be theworlds most ubiquitous device, andyet the marketing community is justbeginning to understand how mobilecan and should factor into theiroverall strategies. Nine out of tenpeople on the planet own one1 ahigher percentage than cars, radios,

or television sets and nearly 500million smartphones shipped last yearalone. 2 We know what percentage ofBrazilian twentysomethings use theirsmart phones in restaurants (71%) andhow many Saudi women have ever usedtheirs to shop online (19%)3. We cantlive without apps, maps, and email onthe go, but what we dont know is why.

Why does the ringing of mobile phonestrigger the same brain waves as love,for example? And why do we feel themvibrating even when theyre missing?What do these devices mean to us thatthey make us lovesick? Remarkably,no one had thought to ask about howand why mobility is enabling us tocreate meaning in our lives. It turnsout neuroscience can explain bothour Pavlovian devotion and phantom

buzzing, but as marketers seek toconnect with their increasingly mobilecustomers, its hard to tell emotionallyresonant stories about brands in themobile space unless we understand theresonance of the mobile space itself.

As we discussed the mobile space

with countless creative directorsand strategic planners, we foundthe prevailing attitude to be that themobile screen is too small for creatingimmersive brand experiences. We hada hunch that there was a lot more tothis story, so we decided to explorethe deeper meaning of mobile in thesame way that a strategic plannerwould approach the task of unlockingthe meaning of the Cheeto we hiredan anthropologist to interview dozensof ordinary mobile device owners andobserve them as they interacted withtheir smartphones. The rst thing wefound is that the phones pocket size isanything but a aw in fact, its the keyto understanding what it really means.

1 International Telecommunication Union, 2011

2 International Data Corporation, February 2012

3 Our Mobile Planet, thinkwithgoogle.com/mobileplanet


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Anthropology teaches us that in everyculture, miniatures possess the powerto unlock imaginations. Whether its adollhouse, toy truck, or some other tinytalisman, miniatures look and feel real,but their size gives us the permission tosuspend disbelief, daydream, and play.Remember The Nutcracker? In betweenpirouettes, a toy nutcracker comesto life, defeats an evil mouse, andwhisks the heroine away to a magicalkingdom. That, in a nutshell, is the storywe implicitly tell ourselves about ourminiature computers one of youth,freedom, and possessing the key to amuch larger world.

Because its in my pocket I

somehow squeeze this timein for various things and only because I think it justsits in my pocket,

one of our subjects told us. The screensmay be small, but they serve as gate-ways to thegigantic.

We see this power manifest in insightsgleaned from the anthropologistsobservations. Our mobile devices helpus fully actualize our best self, or whatwe call the Quicksilver Self; they engageus to create a shared culture, the NewTribalism; and they help us to makesense of the physical world aroundus, an act we describe as Placemaking.Understanding the deeper levels atwhich individuals, customers, arending meaning in mobile will enablemarketers to put this powerful mediumto its best use.

Small...or gigantic?


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Through the rabbit hole of

the small screen, Heineken

brought rabid soccer fans from

their couches onto the eld.

Their Star Player app allowed

fans to interact in real time with

the nail-biting action of the UEFAChampions League. Fans were

given eight attempts to accurately

predict whether either team would

score in the next thirty seconds,

making them feel like they were

controlling the ow of the game,

with all the disappointment and

triumph that implies. Through

the small, they became part ofsomething gigantic.

Small...or Gigantic? Applied:Heineken Star Player

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Its 7 AM, the phone alarms ringing, andfor many of us, our rst groggy impulseisnt to press Snooze, but to reach overto see what the night has brought interms of Facebook updates, GoogleAlerts, Breaking Badrecaps, Groupondeals, and eBay auctions theovernight syncing of our digital selves.Later that day, a friend texts to oertickets to that nights Yankees game(something twenty minutes before Ihad no idea was going to happen, saidone of our subjects). Thats followed bya ping from OKCupid with a potentialmatch, and on and on it goes, aconstant stream of news, oers, andchoices. The mobile life is a real-timeChoose Your Own Adventure in which

we are constantly writing and rewritingthe stories we tell about ourselves.

For Americans, this might soundfamiliar. The American Dream ispremised on personal transformationand reinvention the promise of

becoming our best possible selves. Thisis what historian James Truslow Adamshad in mind when he popularized thephrase in 1931:

a dream of social order in whicheach man and each woman shallbe able to attain to the fullest

stature of which they are innatelycapable, and be recognized byothers for what they are.

This dream runs like an undergroundriver through American culture, whetherits The Great Gatsby, Jack Kerouac, orKim Kardashian (a lucrative act of selfinvention if there ever was one). Its alsomorphed over the past few decades

to the point where agility, uidity, andserendipity have become the ideals ofthe Quicksilver Self. Its the freedom tobe open to discovery and to make andremake ourselves, experimenting withdierent personas and experiences tosee which ts us best.

The Quicksilver Self


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Weve always looked to technology forhelp with this. For most of the 20thCentury, the ultimate mobile devicewas the car, not only because it couldferry us from point A to B, but alsobecause of the tantalizing prospectof discovering someone, something,

anything new. (Cue Springsteen:Well, the nights busting open, thesetwo lanes will take us anywhere.) Butthats ending. Less than half of potentialteenage drivers have a license, downfrom two-thirds a decade ago. Andtwentysomething Millennials the largest generation in U.S. history purchase barely a quarter of all cars.

We have to face the growing realitythat today young people dont seemto be as interested in cars as previousgenerations, the president of ToyotaUSA said last year. Many young peoplecare more about buying the latestsmartphone or gaming console thangetting their drivers license.

Indeed. Today, its smartphonesand their constant streams ofinformation that streamline, automate,and refresh our Quicksilver Selves which is why we cant get enough ofthem. You feel settled, you know? saidone of our subjects. Everything is here,

so you have that energy. They groundus in the here and now by reassuring usthat nothing will slip past us, allowingus to take advantage of whatever comesour way.

This is the explicit promise of a newgeneration of social discovery appssuch as Highlight and Sonar, whichmarry your phones GPS with yoursocial networks to notify you of friends and friends of friends nearby.Suddenly, our phones can lead uswith pinpoint accuracy to the potentialmate of our dreams or future businesspartner. Weve replaced the open roadwith the digital superhighway.


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In historically tribal societies,individuality takes a backseat to

kinship: who you are matters less thanwho you know (and whether yourea blood relation). The New Tribalism,by contrast, is the product of our newconnections: who you are is the sum ofwho you know. A network without linksisnt a network at all; we are increasinglymade of what connects us.

Obviously, mobile devices are

accelerating this. The smartphone isfundamentally a communication tool we can speak, text, chat, tweet, emailand video conference at a momentsnotice. Facebook may have started itslife on the desktop, but the phone hasbecome the real-time nexus of socialnetworking, whether its Google+,Instagram, or next-generation appslike Mobli, which literally allows us tosee the world through others eyes(or at least camera phones).

The result is that our personal storieshave begun to entwine. Were all sharingpieces of the larger story unfoldinginvisibly all around us, a story whoseedges are dened by our networksand accessed through our phones.

The technologist Adam Greeneld callsthis the Big Now the deepened

sense of time passing by seeing it(metaphorically) through so manyothers eyes.

A ten-minute interval may see reportsof friends experiencing rush-hourfrustrations in the Bay Area, dining outin New York, and late night dancing inLondon, he writes. For me, at least,its been dicult to see my New York

through quite the same eyes, whenevery time I get my phone out I feelthe entire planets deeper rhythmsworking themselves out.

Which isnt to say were passiveobservers of lifes rich pageant. TheNew Tribalism is dened by sharingand co-creating culture, whether itstweeting your favorite restaurant inManhattan, texting the password to the

hottest club in London... or sending aCoke to a stranger (see Project Re:Briefexample). We are essentially creatingor rearming a community of sharedinterests. A text or a tweet isnt just amessage; its a gift of knowledge, ideas,and opinions.

The New Tribalism


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Perhaps the most iconic Coca-Cola

ad ever is Hilltop. You know the

one Id like to teach the world

to sing, in perfect har-mo-neeee...

Less famous is the singers second

wish: to buy the world a Coke.

Last March, Google partneredwith Coca-Cola to belatedly

grant this wish as part of Project

Re:Brief, which re-imagined classic

campaigns for the digital era. The

re-imagined mobile ad enables

users to select a location, attach

a personal message, and then

watch as the Coke is delivered

to a specially-designed vendingmachine on the other side of the

world. In an instant, a mobile

phone user in New York City

and an unsuspecting stranger in

Capetown are part of a new tribe.

The New Tribalism Applied:Project Re:Brief and Coca-Cola

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Photographer John Butterill usesGoogle+ Hangouts to share hisphoto walks with the world. Byattaching a phone to his camera,he makes it possible for others tosee exactly what he sees throughhis viewnder: the rippling waters

beneath his canoe, the beautifulbark of an old tree, the perfectlylit sky. Almost immediately afterhe posted the video from his rstphoto walk, photographers aroundthe world began volunteering toshare their views of the world withpeople whose mobility was limited.

John, and the many photographers

he has inspired, share the freedomthey feel from going on a photo walk- whether it be in the woods by theirhomes or deep in the African plains- with members of the tribe whoarent able to do so themselves.

The New Tribalism Applied:Google+: John ButterillsVirtual Photo Walks

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Humans have an innate desire to makesense of their physical surroundings by

assigning meaning to them. This is whatanthropologists call placemaking.The places that surround us create,store, and bring back powerfulmemories. A favorite restaurant, forexample, might be the scene of pastrst dates, break-ups, celebrations,last-night meals, and conspiratorialdrinks at the bar. In our minds eye, allof these memories exist simultaneously,

with each occasion mapped to adierent table and booth. Its thereason we decorate our homes andwhy young lovers carve their initials intopark benches. The latest iteration ofInstagram the mobile photo-sharingapp with 80 million users has the same idea. Unveiled in August,Instagrams new Photo Map featuresorts geo-tagged photos onto maps,

stacking them according to the placeswhere they were taken.

The new Instagram is a perfect exampleof Placemaking, which describes usingour mobile devices to tell stories aboutand make meaning of our physicalworld our homes, streets, favorite

haunts. Another is Foursquare,which rewards users for checking in

to loactions with badges and the titleof mayor. Both apps remind us thatevery place has someones memoriesattached. Those memories in turnremind us of who we are (and who wewere) and orient us emotionally.We read and write meanings ontoplaces the same way we tell storiesabout ourselves only now we do thisusing our phones.

Real-time mapping and GPS are thefoundations of Placemaking but theybarely scratch the surface when itcomes to meaning. The ipside of theBig Now, Greeneld suggests, is theLong Here the ability to accrete andshare thoughts and memories of a placeover time. Whether we leave notes orcheck in, we are doing just that.

The science ction author WilliamGibson recently admitted he was wrongabout the Internet. We wont abandonthe real world for cyberspace(or Second Life), but will mapcyberspace onto the world. And wellnavigate them both with our phones.

Placemaking


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Red Bull recognized theircustomers anity for street artand utilized Googles Street Viewtechnology to create a mappedcollection of street art from allover the world. People were ableto contribute to the map by adding

markers tagging their favorite localartworks, helping to build a global,curated experience. They were alsoable to sift through the thousandsof submissions to view works fromunknowns to famous street artistslike Banksy and Keith Haring.Red Bull Street Art View linkedphysical spaces and pieces ofstreet art together, lending newmeanings to places around theglobe. This was a desktop initiative,but imagine how powerful itcould be on a mobile device where we are able to connectinstantaneously and in new wayswith our physical surroundings.

Placemaking Applied:Red Bull Street Art View

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As marketers, the notion that mobilephones are merely tools a screwdriver or socket wrench witha data plan is a strange one. After all,branding is about making sense of ourlives; brands wouldnt exist if we didntattach meaning to our surroundings.It turns out, of course, that our phonesare no dierent. Instead of lacking allmeaning, we use them to create newones for ourselves, our friends, and theplaces we live in and love. Their screensmay be small, but the worlds they openonto are gigantic.

Conclusion


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1. Start from the person up,rather than the brand down.

One reason mobile storytellinghasnt reached its potentialis because the content isfrequently repurposed fromother media, which have theirown meanings. A television spoton a smartphones screen wontresonate the same way and not only because of its size.

People are creating their ownstories around themselves, theirfriends, and their world so link your brands story totheir stories.

2. Be as quicksilver as they are.

Weve become serendipityaddicts, accustomed to a never

ending ow of oers, discounts,events, and invitations, eachmaking us more excited for thenext. The key for marketers isto join the ow in a mannerthats both unobtrusive(by oering something of value)and also on brand.

3. Help people tell storiesto their tribes.

Remember, they containmultitudes. Telling someonea story is one thing; the key tomaking it go viral is to give thema story they can share as theirown with their tribe.

4. Exploit the Long Hereand the Big Now.

Chance can be cultivated;opportunity can be orchestrated;serendipity can be engineered.Anchor your brands story in aparticular moment in place andtime and let them discover it in eect becoming part of theirstories as well.

5. The future is local.

On the one hand, this is obvious.But think beyond geo-targeting.Connect brands to local places,events, and landmarks, and oerto enliven and enrich them.

How To BeMeaningfully Mobile

2012 meaning of mobile whitepaper updated

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