Brandheld - MRG award winning presentation

NOTE: This is an amended transcript of the presentation given at the 2010 Media Research Group Conference, held in Malta from 3rd-5th November 2010. The paper is entitled Brandheld: Unlocking the potential value of the mobile internet, and it won the IPA/Simon Broadbent award for Best Paper, voted for by delegates at the conference. Amendments to the transcript are minor. Some of the bad jokes that are a little easier to get away with on stage than in print have been removed, while without the confines of a 20 minute slot a couple of points have been expanded upon. Do you have a phone such as an iPhone, HTC or BlackBerry? I have an iPhone and suspect you have some kind of smartphone. If you’re reading this you’re likely to work in the media, technology or marketing/communications industries where it’s necessary to know about these things. As such, we’re ahead of the pack. We’re on the bleeding edge. We are the beautiful people. However, this means our perspective of society as a whole can be skewed. Not everyone is really, really good-looking.

Being ahead of the pack means we’re used to things non-media folk aren’t. Some of these will eventually reach the mainstream, but not everything we know and love in our media bubble takes to the masses. The plight of the Segway isn’t that unusual. And can you honestly name a single person outside of the media or communications industries that has ever seen an episode of The Wire? It was this desire to leave the media bubble that prompted Brandheld - a self- funded, independent examination of who uses the mobile internet, why that is, why others don’t and how that can change. We developed the project in consultation with 23 organisations including media owners, networks, handsets and retailers (a full list of whom is in the full Brandheld report). We really appreciate their input. For those not familiar with Brandheld, this is what we did.

NOTE: Due to the terms and conditions that we gave our respondents, we aren’t able to show the three videos produced for the project in the public domain. Suffice to say, they are are awesome. The video that originally played in this slot showcased the methodologies that we incorporated into the research programme, which lasted six months and finished in December 2009. This included 10 8-10 week ethnographic studies with in-home visits, handset placement and video diaries; accompanied shops; in-store interviews with store assistants; qualitative discussion groups and a 2,018 person quantitative survey. The core survey was conducted online but a shorter face-to-face omnibus survey was used to weight the data demographically, attitudinally and behaviourally. Correlation analysis, driver analysis and segmentation analysis were all performed on the quant data set. So, it was a pretty hefty project. Before the findings are shown, a couple of caveats are required. Firstly, the exploration of the mobile internet is focused purely upon mobile phones. And secondly, although the data was collected in December 2009, we are confident that the themes and hypotheses developed still hold true.

There are two sides of the coin to be taken through separately. Firstly, current users.

This presentation contains six key points. This is the first. People that use the internet via their mobiles are still in the minority. Several people we’ve presented to over the past year have been surprised by this, but there are many people out there who haven’t heard of BlackBerry Messenger or Angry Birds in the same way they haven’t heard of Clay Davies or Poot and Bodie or any other character from the Wire. This is slide 5 of a research presentation, and there haven’t been any statistics yet. This shall now be rectified.

40% of phone owners claim to own an internet-enabled handset. Note the claim. We know what handsets our respondents claimed to own, and these pieces of information don’t stack up. We think the actual figure of internet- enabled handset ownership is around double this figure. But this lack of understanding of what the mobile internet is and does is something that will be returned to later in the presentation.

Filtering further, only 27% have ever accessed the internet via a mobile…

…And just 24% currently access it. Combining this figure with the 40% that own an internet enabled handset means that only 61% of people that know that they can use the mobile internet choose to use it. In any frequency

Regular users of the mobile internet are fewer still.

So, flipping these usage figures means that if 24% are using the mobile internet, 76% aren’t. This 76% are the mainstream. The mobile internet hasn’t got there it. It’s still largely with the early adopters. The beautiful people. Us.

The phrase “early adopter” segues nicely onto this man. This is Everett Rogers. When he wasn’t writing Tanzanian radio dramas – which, according to Wikipedia he actually did - he was popularising this:

The Diffusion of Innovations theory, which we indirectly applied this to our quant survey. The splits for type of person among mobile phone owners as a whole correspond to this model – it is a mainstream device after all. But daily mobile internet users skew further left than Trotsky – 54% are either innovators or early adopters. In other words, more than half. Even if we accept that adoption curves vary by sector and shape, a basic principle is that the people to the left of the diagram are fundamentally different to the people on the right

This is the second key point I want to make. These differences not only make early adopters more likely to experiment with the mobile internet but also mean they can benefit from it in greater and more varied ways. What has been successful in converting current users won’t necessarily work for the next tranches.

Rogers identified six personality traits more prevalent in early adopters – the top 2 rows on the slide. All six of these, plus three further traits, were true for the mobile internet. Mobile internet users are more likely to possess these traits. Many may seem obvious but to reiterate, these not only influence likelihood to trial, but also the scale of the benefit received.

Let’s take urbanity as one example. People are more likely to trial because, living in an urban area, they are likely to have better connectivity and a stronger infrastructure. But they are also more likely to benefit. Rural dwellers drive to work, urban dwellers tend to be passengers with “passive downtime” – something the mobile internet can fill. And say you’re on a night out and want to get some food. In a rural area, you’re going to be pretty familiar with the local takeaway. But what if you’re in EC1 and want some chicken? You’ve got quite the selection. So, not only more willing to try but also more likely to benefit.

Those currently accessing the mobile internet are primarily going to social networks, search, news and maps. This may not be too surprising, and corresponds to other data in the marketplace, but an important point to emphasise is that frequency and volume of usage does not equate to value. For instance, half of those accessing social networks via their mobile do so on a daily basis. Yet satisfaction with mobile social networking doesn’t correlate closely with satisfaction of the phone as a whole. The service with the strongest correlation to overall satisfaction is maps – it may not be the most frequently accessed service, but when it is used it really needs to work. And, fortunately, it usually does.

Underlying the usage trends are four key benefits for users – the 4 Cs. Choice – people have more power over the how, when and where of using services. Take communication – the phone is after all a communications device (though some marketing materials seem to describe it as just another app). If someone doesn’t want to call or text, they can email, tweet or BBM, to name just three other options. Curiosity – See something in a shop or on TV that you want to find out more about? Look it up your phone right then to sate that curiosity Convenience – mobile phones travel around with people and they are almost always turned on. This makes it the most convenient device for information retrieval, particularly when compared to a computer in another room that hasn’t yet booted up. Context – in traditional media, it might be argued that content is King. But on the mobile it is context that is King. The mobile is place and time sensitive and the meaning of content changes as it travels through space and time. Whether sport scores or nearby restaurant offers, information has greater relevance on the mobile. These 4 Cs represent some quite significant benefits for the beautiful people.

But when Marilyn Manson sang about the beautiful people, he said it was all relative to the size of your steeple. But we know rather than size, it’s how it can be used. In terms of the mobile internet, that means the handset and interface.

These Pacman charts show the skews in mobile internet use across types of handset. The left Pacman shows that smartphone owners represent 24% of all mobile phone owners but the right Pacman shows smartphone owners are 90% of all daily mobile internet users. But what’s the causation here? Is it that smartphones are owned by early adopters who are more likely to access these services anyway, or is it the phone itself that is influencing people’s behaviour?

In other words, does the phone make the user smart or does the user make the phone smart?

The answer can be demonstrated with the only bar chart (fortunately) in this presentation. The people within the two bars are almost identical – they are 25-44 year old non early adopters with a contract phone who have ever used the mobile internet. The only difference between the two bars is that the people on the left own a smartphone and the people on the right don’t. As you can see, the people on the left access the internet more frequently. This would suggest the handset does influence, and one model is particularly good at this - the iPhone

In our sample, only 3% of mobile phone owners had an iPhone, yet they represented 24% of all daily mobile internet users. In other words, iPhone users are eight times likelier than the average mobile phone owner to be daily users of the mobile. Undoubtedly, iPhone owners are going to skew towards early adopters but nevertheless it is iPhone users that were the most likely to have their expectations exceeded by their handset. 61% of iPhone owners had their expectations exceeded by their handset - not met but exceeded. The phone itself is influencing behaviour as despite all the hype, it delivers a great mobile internet experience and is showing people new ways of using the mobile internet.

NOTE: The second video - a montage of our ethnography participants having difficulties with their handsets would be shown here As mentioned earlier, our ethnography participants kept regular video diaries detailing how they were getting on with their new phones – five had bought their phones independently while five people were given handsets by us – 2 iPhones, a HTC Hero, a BlackBerry Bold and a Nokia E71. These are the types of emotions that were frequently conveyed in the diaries. Problems faced include - Connectivity – people couldn’t understand why the internet would work on their phones in some places but not in others, and were regularly frustrated with a loading screen that never progressed - Interfaces and navigation – adopting a smartphone for the first time can represent a steep learning curve, as the menus and navigation systems are unlike anything they are used to. Even simple functionality can cause problems. One participant spent her entire flight to Spain in mortal fear because she was unable to find the “off” button for her phone, and was afraid the signals would interfere with the flight control and cause the plane to crash - Language – space constraints mean that jargon or hard-to-understand phrases are used that confuse users. For instance, one participant was using the map function to navigate her journey. “Show traffic? What do you mean show traffic? I can see that there’s traffic” - Lack of support – several phones came with instructions on a CD or DVD rather than in print. These were ignored or overlooked, leading to a lot of frustration as participants struggled to grasp with even the basics of using their phone As technology improves and prices come down, it is likely that even the most basic handsets will represent current high-end phones. While it may be inevitable that everyone will own an internet- enabled phone, it is not inevitable that people will use it. The mobile internet is a completely different proposition to a cameraphone. In fact, the 5 people we placed handsets with were given the option of keeping the handset at the end of the trial (in lieu of a – smaller – cash incentive). Only one person took the phone. Rejection of the mobile internet is a real possibility among some people.

In order for the mobile internet to diffuse along the adoption curve to the mainstream, we have to first identify the barriers people face.

Everett Rogers says we can’t just jump in with both feet to adopt an innovation. There is a path to navigate, with problems at each step. To use the David Devant & His Spirit Wife lyric “You put your best foot forward but break a leg”. The path to adopting the mobile internet is similar to playing football against a certain Manchester City football player – each step carries the risk of getting a broken leg. The steps of most relevance for media and content organisations are the “interest” and “adoption” stages.

This might surprise some people. The mobile internet should be of interest to everyone since it combines two things people generally like – mobiles and the internet. It’s like Smokey bacon crisps or Angelina Jolie action film, the concept should just sell itself. Yet going back to those 76% not using the mobile internet, only 30% express an interest in the mobile internet. The reason for this disinterest is perhaps the most important point in the entire presentation – mainstream users aren’t interested in the mobile internet because they don’t fully understand what it is.

This is highlighted here on this scatter chart showing some correlation analysis. From left to right are the reasons people without internet-enabled handsets cite for not wanting them – the most popular answers revolve around cost. But this is an easy answer to give and we know our respondents’ relationship with truthiness is complex, so we ran a negative correlation with their claimed reasons against a likelihood to adopt. From bottom to top shows the size of the actual barriers. The further up the graph, the larger the actual barrier to adoption is. Mainstream users may not benefit to the same degree as early adopters, but those 4 Cs are still real for them. Since the biggest barriers revolve around a lack of perceived benefit, it would seem apparent that mainstream users aren’t aware of the benefit. Which is surprising, given how much marketing and communications there is on the mobile internet.

We tested various pieces of comms activity among our qualitative discussion groups – some examples of which are shown here.

These three quotes give a flavour of the reaction of mainstream users – in short, they were pretty poorly received. The main reason for this is that the communication had little appeal to them. The messages didn’t interest them.

Nearly all of the material tested focused upon one of these four services. Mainstream users don’t use entertainment or social media sites on a computer very frequently (let alone place a great deal of importance on them in relation to other activities) – a mobile isn’t going to be any different. But while they do use email and web browsing more regularly, and these services do form part of the core of their internet behaviour, this creates a direct comparison.

To which the mobile phone fares poorly, in perception if not always reality. The final point is the most important. People are inherently lazy, they need a strong incentive to change their behaviour. In general, the communications we tested didn’t have it.

Instead, communications should be promoting relative value. Features or services that the mobile can provide better than any other device or media outlet produce a relative advantage, and relative value is created.

Here is another correlation scatter chart to show this. When non-users of the mobile internet are directly asked about the services they’d be interested in using via a mobile they are most likely to answer the services that they are familiar with - fast email access and web browsing appear further to the right. But when interest in services is correlated with likelihood to adopt, those services that will be the big drivers of adoption for the next wave of mobile internet users can be seen. Fast email access has the weakest correlation – this is a service people can live with on a computer. Those services coming out best are those with the relative advantage – mobile media, including gaming for a small niche, and place sensitive information.

So we need to think more about relative advantage. Taking advantage of some of the strengths on screen. The benefits that organisations can offer their audiences can be shown with 6Ps.

The first is piloting – using the place sensitive functionality to make the most of their surroundings. Time sensitivity emerges through prompting – active or passive opt-ins for timely, relevant information. Purchasing on a mobile itself will remain small so long as people have to enter their credit card details rather than be directly billed or use a PayPal like system. People have major security fears over losing their phone or having it hacked, and so don’t want to enter their personal details in directly. The opportunity is instead assisting people on purchase journeys –search, social recommendations and barcode scanners are three examples that can completely revolutionise in-store purchase decision-making processes. Mobile media certainly has its place. But this has to be a compelling, mobile specific proposition – something to prevent people waiting until they get to a TV, computer, newsagent or stereo. All these media types interact, but they don’t need to be in competition. Whether syncing information with a computer or acting as a remote control for your set top box, there are opportunities for the mobile to pair with other devices. But the final P is the most important and runs across all this. The mobile is the most personal device – services can and should be totally customisable to the specific needs and interests of the user. Personalisation has to be at the centre of any offering.

This leads onto the final point of the presentation – although there are challenges to overcome, the opportunities on mobile for media, content and service providers are vast.

For instance, over half of all non mobile internet users would consume media via their phone if the technology were good enough, with the formats of most interest displayed. However he key phrase here is “good enough” – the idea of live TV via a mobile for when you can’t get home in time for the start of the Apprentice is appealing, but the reality isn’t quite there yet.

Opportunities for media companies are not and should not be limited to content – organisations should consider their audience’s lifestyles and how brands can assist people with going about their daily lives. We prompted our respondents with over 80 specific types of mobile internet services across industries ranging from local government to media via finance – some were real, and some were fictitious. A majority of non-users were not only interested in at least one, but also willing to pay a small fee. To repeat, in principle, non users are willing to pay for mobile services that meet their needs.

The services that have the strongest initial response to people not using the mobile internet are those that offer a benefit via a tangible saving - either in money, time or effort. Several of the more popular are on screen, but this assumes the market is homogeneous. This clearly isn’t true and so we did what any research agency would do in this situation - we ran a segmentation model based on interest in these services, and came up with seven groups

Each represented on screen by one of Ramona Flowers’ evil exes. Taking the middle segment, Active Adventurers modelled by Lucas Lee, are social early adopters keen to make the most of their environments. They are interested in TV but travel and leisure services could be big drivers for adoption. There are many opportunities for brands to provide services relevant to Mr Lee’s interests. More details on the segments are available within the full Brandheld report. This, along with the quant dataset, is available for purchase NOTE: At this point the third and final video would play. This video depicts some of the joys of using a smartphone, and some of the benefits that our participants received (sometimes after a bit of prompting to make them fully aware of the capabilities of the phone and the mobile internet). The point of the video is that while, in their natural behaviour, our ethnography participants faced a lot of difficulties, once they had support in using the phone and realising the benefits, their perceptions of the phone changed.

To recap the key points of this presentation, the mobile internet has grown successfully among the early adopters but we can’t assume it will automatically diffuse to the mainstream. Organisations need to move away from the obvious early adopter interests to think about their audience’s needs, and how their brands can help them – whether through content or a new service. In communications, avoid technical jargon. The comms that tested best in our discussion groups were the iPhone prints ads – a homescreen with explanations of what the apps do with no mention of words like internet. So instead focus on the strengths of the service, and focus on how your audiences will benefit from engaging with you

For more information on Brandheld, visit our website at http://www.essentialresearch.co.uk/brandheld or alternatively I can be contacted via email, twitter or at my Curiously Persistent blog.

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Brandheld - MRG award winning presentation

by Essential Research on Nov 14, 2010

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Brandheld - MRG award winning presentation — Document Transcript