The bleeding edge at Cannes

Michael Hedges June 15, 2008

Mobile phone giant Nokia is spreading its love. As a major sponsor of the Cannes International Advertising Festival Finland’s best known exporter wants to romance the advertising people. There’s a party and free phones.

Salesmen every one, the ad people love a good show. The annual pilgrimage to the Mediterranean coast of France is a show-off event. The best ads in every medium are showcased, judged by expert juries and awarded kudos sufficient to propel agencies to legendary status. Mixed in with the parties and awards ceremonies are, of course, seminars, workshops and speeches.

Over 28,000 entries will be judged, more than a quarter for the Titanium Lion. This year there are no workshops on 30-second television commercials.  The Titanium Lion award, an idea championed by Weiden and Kennedy CEO Dan Weiden, first appeared at Cannes in 2003 to “celebrate daring.”  More ad people, it seems, want to get in on that action. And the action is in new media.

Nokia is the king of kings in the mobile phone world. Its market share of hand held devices is unrivaled, mostly, and its influence on mobile phone operators unparalleled. The company’s appearance at the advertising worlds’ show-of-shows gives even more push for marketing through new media, as if the advertising people need it.

To show-off its N series mobile devices, Nokia is sponsoring the Young Lions competition for ad people under 28 years old. More than two dozen teams of young ad creatives will be set loose with top of the line mobile devices to shoot 60 second viral spots that will then be dutifully judged and suitably awarded. Nokia is also offering “The Cannes Experiment” for old ad people – anybody over 28 – to play and add to a streamed television program from the Palais de Festivals.

Perhaps more significant than giving Festival goers toys to play with, Nokia recently (June 11) formed the Nokia Advertising Alliance to give “the bleeding edge” of advertising access to top line technology and Nokia developers. Marketing specialists will be working with Nokia on instant couponing, location targeting and, yes, image recognition, said the Nokia release. Early members include uLocate, i-movo, Mobile Acuity and Mobiqa.

Never heard of them? You will. uLocate sells itself as a “publisher of mobile location services” using GPS technology for “finding people, places, and things around you.” It’s financed by Kodak Venture Partners and Venrock Capital. Mobiqa and i-movo are leaders in digital couponing, ticketing and subscriptions. (See Phil Stone’s article about i-movo here) Mobile Acuity markets a mobile image recognition platform sold as ‘Snap2Win’.  Get the picture?

The mobile phone industry wants, needs, to avoid the Web’s open access path that enabled people by the billions to run riot with a technology for free or, at least, cheap. But, with so many developers and platforms, the road to financial reward is littered with those who died failing to find the perfect price point. Consumers shoot down dozens daily; hence, make nice with the ad people.

Nokia is in the business of solving problems for its network customers. Mobile telcos, now that the competitive gloves are off, seem to say they can’t make a profit on basic services – phone call seconds and SMS units. The lowest cost prevails for products and services that become commodities and are traded as such. Worldwide mobile advertising may grow to $12.8 billion in 2011 from $1.7 billion in 2007, according to a Gartner forecast; peanuts compared with television.

Enter the advertising and marketing people, also problem solvers. Their stock in trade has been and will always be creating images, sounds and clever turns of phrase to move people to do something, usually to let loose of hard earned cash. That the mobile phone and the Web offer new means of message delivery direct to an individual is too tantalizing for the ad people to ignore. And they haven’t.

With revenues for basic services maxed out and new services – like games and mobile TV – attracting but a few, the mobile telecoms see potential salvation in advertising. If I had one euro for each time somebody said “…and we’ll make money from advertising” I’d be writing this from the beach. But mobile social networking platform itsmy.com is making a go of it and, following the key construct of new media, is putting more control at the customers’ fingertips, allowing choice of ad categories shown.

The marketing potential of mobile technologies could be huge, portability being a key aspect. The mobile phone – now referred to as ‘hand-held device’ – is a ‘must-have’ item. Marketing messages are easily targeted directly to people who can instantly interact. Advertisers have been slow to pick up on all this highly touted potential. After all, a 3 by 3 cm screen is very small.

The ad people have cautiously experimented, knowing that the wrong message at the wrong time through the wrong medium is deadly. Experience with Web advertising has shown that pinpointing a message to an individual pays off. It’s also shown that simplicity works best. And, too, everybody hates spam. Ad people are quick to point out that ads proliferating on mobile phones would be perceived as spam. Regulations would quickly follow, privacy issues looming large.

But back to the important Cannes stuff. The Nokia Media Network’s party kicking off the week is Monday night on the Hotel Sofitel rooftop terrace.