I was reading about the presifact. Republican hopeful, Mitt Romney is on an advertising overdrive and his favourite medium of communication with the electorate is… guess what? The iPhone and iPad devices. It is the first time that a candidate has resorted to Apple’s smart devices for election propaganda. Political advertising, I assure you, is indeed dential elections in the US when I came across this interesting going smart!
Why should it be political ads alone? In fact, every form of advertising will change with the iPhone and iPad invading the market. As Saumya Chattopadhyay, Director, Strategic Planning, Ogilvy Africa says, “India has over 771 million mobile users and brands, big and small that are connecting with consumers over the mobile. The medium has proved a big way to advertise. Mobile marketing is set to crash all frontiers when iPhones and iPads become more popular.”
The iPhone/iPad will not only be the perfect marketing tool for companies to advertise but also a source of information to update people about new developments. Take for instance, Siri that acts as Apple iPhone’s voice-controlled assistant. Since you can do a lot of things like look for road directions, upload photos, personalise messages, it could be the perfect medium for advertising as well.
Apple promises to customise Siri in several languages like Korean, Chinese, Italian, Spanish, German and French. Once that is done, this could be the perfect mode of communication with consumers. “The two features of Siri that could be a marketeer’s delight will be its ability to connect with databases and launch applications. These are interesting and the marketeer can definitely customise that for his own purpose,” says M. Deb, an advertising professional.
All this, will definitely make iPhone and iPad ad-vertising extremely viable. M. Deb also observes, “The iPhone and iPad will definitely pull you out of the technological dark ages. There will be a plethora of marketing opportunities now. All you need to do is think out of the box and realise what your audience expects out of the message.”
Another trend that will be noticed is that companies that were so long in capitalising on the social media platform for their low maintenance costs will now switch over to tablet and mobile marketing. “Marketeers will now be able to interact with their customers through the app tool on these smart devices,” says S. Chatt-erjee, an advertising professional. Take, for instance, a US-based pest control company. It allows consumers to use the Pest ID on the smart phone to take photos of pests. When a customer opens the application, he is asked to fill certain basic information. When that is done, the user is asked to upload a photo of the pest and use the “ID My Bug” link to send the photo to the company. “This is definitely a unique way of establishing a connect with your customer,” smiles Chattopa-dhyay.
The only hiccup is that iPhones and iPads are expensive and it may indeed take a while for the marketeer to connect with his audience. Abroad, however, the trend is picking up well. In the US election, Romney is using Google’s network to reach out to Android users. According to data, mobile users constitute a large share of visitors to the website. The ad spend on the presidential campaign has increased by 600 per cent from that of 2008, although the amount being spent has not been revealed.
An important point to remember is that the message should be personal. “After all, a mobile phone is the most personal device you carry and connecting with the consumer on it can definitely lend the message a personal touch,” says Chatterjee. “We all understand when companies send across voice-based messaging services or bulk SMSes,” says Chattopadhyay. Mobile advertising will work best when it is non-intrusive. It could be a text advertisement that can be used by a user at his discretion. Of course, the field will evolve with time and companies will find even smarter ways to reach out to an increasingly global family.

The writer is a well-known industry watcher