BRANDING UNBOUND

Pizza Hut iPhone App Racks Up $1 Million In Pizza Sales in 3 Months

So it's probably akin to what a single franchise location rakes in every month. But still, not a bad take from an iPhone app.

Back in July, I posted about the launch of Pizza Hut's (ne,"The Hut's") iPhone app, called "iHut," as just the latest method in which the popular chain is using mobile to boost sales.

Well, three months, in the little app that could has brought in $1 million in business for the chain. That's an accounting error for a brand that's on track to make $1 billion in sales on the old school Internet.

But since when is extra toppings a bad thing?

Read more, here.

 

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Google Set To Acquire AdMob For $750 Million

Mobile advertising has turned into a major payday for San Francisco-based mobile ad network AdMob.

Like so many other things these days, Google's acquiring the firm for $750 million. As I've reported before, Google, has stated it believes most of its ad revenues - yes, most - will come from mobile in just a few years.

As longtime readers know, I'm not a big proponent of extending ad models from one medium, in this case the Internet, to another, in this case, mobile.

To be fair, AdMob has had some blockbuster successes - and has sparked even more interest in mobile advertising on the part of its advertisers.

But if online click-through rates are low now, just wait until you see mobile's in five years.

Parenthetically, has Google really turned its acquisitions into huge money makers? Dodgeball and even YouTube are still open questions.

Either way, at today's CTRs, mobile's already so much more powerful than that as a marketing platform (for examples, start here).

But with $750 million, AdMob doesn't have to worry about tomorrow anymore, does it?

Read more, here.

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First-Ever Movie Launch for Theaters & Mobile Phones

In what's being billed as the first ever "day and date" theatrical and mobile release, mobile entertainment player Myxer and Mass Animation are launching a new movie that will premiere on 500 digital screens at theaters and on mobile phones on the same day.

"Live Music" is from members of the teams behind "The Chubb Chubbs" and "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs."

Question #1: Will viewers show up at the cinema, or just phone it in?

Read more, here.

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'Deal or No Deal' Gets New Text 2 Win Mobile Game

"Deal or No Deal" is the real deal when it comes to mobile.

Mobile participation in the live game show has been a phenomenal success.

Now, producer Endemol is teaming up with Snackable Media to create a stand alone Txt2Win mobile game that will allow millions of fans to play a mobile version of the show, in which they can win up to $50,000 in mobile content merchandise.

In the game, mobile players open up one case at a time to reveal its contents and decide whether to take the banker’s offer or continue in the pursuit of a larger amount. Players earn points which may be redeemed for rewards.

In a limited release, thousands of fans have already signed up to play the game on their cell phones. The new mobile game can be accessed online at dond.tvtxtr.com.

This is participation television in reverse, the show extending out to mobile, rather than the other way around.

Time will tell if it pays off for fans.

Try it yourself, here.

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NBC Taps Social Networking To Build Buzz For Winter Olympics

If NBC has its way, Olympic fandom is about to become more participatory than spectator sport.

In the run up to the Winter Olympics, just 100 days away, NBC is build on its considerable success with online initiatives in 2008 to tap the power of social networking technologies this time around.

Offerings will include a new online video player that is more DVR-like, with rewind, highlight clips, the ability to save content and more.

But what's more interesting is how viewers will be able to chat with their Facebook friends from the NBCOlympics.com website, and use the "Tweets and Blogs" section, which will run real-time feeds for select Olympic athletes and NBC analysts - as wel as up-to-the-moment tracking of content being shared on Facebook, Twitter, other social networks and certain blogs. 

Will it work for viewers? Will fans cotton to Twitter missives from Apolo Ohno and Shaun White?

CBS's social viewing lounge has gone largely unused. Will the Olympics prove any different? Similar But NBCOlympics.com attracted 50 million users during the 2008 Beijing Games, and socnet initiatives from CNN during Inauguration Day last year were a massive success - so NBC's hoping the torch will be passed to their big event.

Get the full scoop, here.

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Cadillac Opens Up Pandora To Drive Leads Via Android Smart Phone

A fabled automaker is turning to the Cadillac of personalized Internet radio to push its 2010 cars.

Cadillac - it of the new SRX Crossover - is taking Pandora for a spin with the premiere and exclusive advertiser of Pandora's launch of its latest mobile marketing platform on the Android smart phone.

"Cadillac smartly wants to reach hip, on-the-go, affluent consumers -- an audience Pandora readily delivers," says Aimee Higgins, vice president, sales strategy and planning for Pandora, in a statement.

Cadillac has been getting hip to digital for sometime, what with its Project Gotham expansion pack and what not. Pandora's the IT thing right now, gaining 200,000 new mobile users per week. Could be the perfect match of medium and a hip audience. Will the message sell, or will all the personalized music  drive users to distraction?

Find out more, here.

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Business Week: Mobile Augmented Reality To Be One Of Top 10 Disruptive Technologies Through 2012

Well make that augmented reality in general, but as Business Week points out today, much of that will be in mobile.

The downside: Only 3% of mobile subscribers will use augmented reality apps by 2012 (and let's face it, the technology needs to come a long way).

The upside: Young people love this stuff, and brands are racing to create immersive experiences to engage them.

Lego Group, for one, has created stand alone store kiosks kids can use to hold up packages in-store to engage with AR experiences at the point of persuasion. No mobile phone required here. In other experiences, from Burger King and Ray-Ban to Doritos and Esquire magazine, a PC is used.

But in Europe, mobile AR is all the rage, as evidenced by efforts for Ford Ka and the Coca-Cola sub-brand Fanta, which has, among other things, a mobile AR game of tennis (shown above, and explained more fully here), in which players connect via Bluetooth to compete in a real world-virtual world game of tennis.

As Prinz Pinakatt, head of interactive marketing for Coca-Cola Europe tells me in my new book, THE ON-DEMAND BRAND (Spring 2010, AMACOM/McGraw-Hill), the lure for marketers seeking to create blockbuster brand experiences will be unprecedented. He says every major consumer brand will have created an AR experience for consumers over the next few years.

How many of those experiences will be mobile? We'll see how the predictions live up to, well, reality. 

Read the Business Week article (which is more about the technology, less about marketing opportunities), here.

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Coca-Cola, Others: Mobile A Line Item On Media Budgets for 2010

LandRover was touted this year as the first brand to engage in a million dollar mobile ad campaign.

But that could change in 2010, as more marketers - including Coca-Cola, BMW, Lufthansa, Pepsi and others seem to be gravitating to mobile as an advertising platform.

As MediaPost reports, Coca-Cola says "Mobile is a line item on our media budget for 2010."

The problem, says the pub, is that 20% of the brands advertising via mobile account for 80% of the spend.

But I'm not convinced that's a problem. For starters, if you believe mobile is the place to spend, you won't have any problem with that equation, because there's fewer advertisers crowding out face time - helping to explain 24% response rates in mobile, vs. .2% on the PC.

Secondly, why do we care about spending in mobile? There's a reason that not a single advertisers spent more than $200,000 in mobile last year, before LandRover. Mobile ads are a bore. And mobile's far more powerful as a response mechanism to commercial messages in other media. With mobile, television becomes interactive. Radio becomes interactive. Print becomes interactive. Outdoor becomes interactive. Direct mail becomes interactive. Point of purchase becomes interactive. Even the product itself becomes an invitation to have an interaction with consumers that is nothing short of remarkable.

None of that costs much. And none of that has anything to do with something called an "ad buy."

LandRover had great success in mobile advertising, and others have, too. But real results come from thinking bigger, bolder and more bodaciously. For some great examples (including, btw, examples from Coca-Cola, Pepsi, BMW and many others), start here. And here.

To read the MediaPost piece, click here.

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Swebapps, AppBreeder, MyAppBuilder: New Services Let Non-Techies Build iPhone Apps

The number of mobile apps downloaded from Apples App Store, Google's Android Market, Microsoft's Windows Marketplace and others is expected to top 18.7 billion in 2014.

And thanks to new sites like AppBreeder, GameSalad.com, MyAppBuilder.com and Swebapps.com, non-techies can get into the action, creating their own apps and marketing them through these and other app stores.

As Business Week reports, it's not just about making money off apps. Most will likely help marketers pitch other products and services.

Read more, here.

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First Read: Books Overcome Games in iPhone Apps

Will the iPhone save the publishing industry?

Word's out that for the first time, game apps have been overtaken by book apps - accounting for one out of every five new apps, according to studies cited by The Telegraph.

To be clear, that's apps launched, not downloaded. There's a difference - one that that has yet to be documented.

If true, what might an Apple tablet do to the equation (and to Kindle)?

Read more, here.

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