The fact that it’s hard to remember a life without iPhones speaks volumes about their impact on marketing over the last ten years. The dawn of the smartphone has had the biggest effect on media consumption and hence advertising effectiveness than anything else since the internet made its mainstream breakthrough in the nineties.
The iPhone has unarguably led the way when it comes to driving the constantly connected world we now live in. Just think, ten years ago, the leading handset manufacturer was Nokia and when Apple launched the iPhone it was the first handset with no buttons. Now, absolutely everything is touchscreen – even the ordering process in McDonalds! It revolutionised the concept of the ‘app’, changing the way consumers interact with brand assets – we now get asked whether brands need websites if they have apps - and with Siri it was the first home of voice activation, which is possibly the biggest theme of 2017 so far.
The smartphone landscape is now more complex and competitive than ever, especially with last year’s Google Pixel launch, but the industry is still somewhat centred around Apple and their iPhone updates and launches. We only need to look at the brand campaigns from Google themselves as well as Samsung to see how synonymous iPhone is with smartphone and vice versa.
As a performance agency, we plan mobile first. For years, we talked about the year of the mobile and looking back its easy to understand why – there was always something new to talk about. New platforms, new data opportunities and benchmarks being broken left, right and centre. If we don’t plan mobile first, then we’re liable to miss opportunities of reaching our target audiences in the most contextually relevant environment.
The smartphone has completely changed the way we approach media targeting – simply because of the nature of the relationship we have with our devices. Since the birth of the iPhone 10 years ago, we’ve gone from being online in the home and in the workplace, to being connected all of the time. In the majority of back pockets across the country, there’s a device that advertisers and brands can use to reach an audience at an increasingly personal level. Be it based on location, the weather or even the digital 6 sheet you’ve just passed on your commute to work. In my opinion it’s all down to these devices and the data they open up, that we are in a world where we can talk about one to one marketing.
Apple and their iPhone also have a lot to answer to when it comes to the platform choices we make. The likes of Instagram and Snapchat weren’t even a possibility 10 years ago, and now we’re telling our clients to develop creative in socially led, mobile fed formats like 1:1 or even vertical.
We don’t have to wait for the latest iteration of iPhone, to see developments in the category; in fact they come most weeks. Whether it’s one of our partners like Facebook or Google coming to us with new formats or measurement options, or it could be a technological development from somewhere across the world of media that allows us to link mobile with a more traditional media format like press or OOH.
If I never hear the words ‘year of the mobile’ again I will be more than happy, we should just admit that we live in a world where every day is mobile first. Thanks iPhone, and Happy Birthday – we’ve come a long way since we were playing snake on our 3210s.
For more information on how iPropsect can help your brand in the mobile world contact Emmaclare Huntriss.
