Curt Doty just joined Bemis Balkind, a pioneering entertainment marketing/branding boutique, after launching the Advanced Content Group for entertainment marketing agency Trailer Park. There, as president, where he focused on user experience, building and leading design and development teams that focused on creating Mobile and TV apps for iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7, Silverlight, Xbox and Google TV. By forming mobile and iTV units, Doty quickly expanded Trailer Park’s clientele into new markets, and mobilizing numerous brands.

Doty is also a leader in the nascent digital publishing industry, by developing immersive reading experiences for eReaders and tablets, including the introduction of video and animation to eBooks, and worked in the home entertainment division of  Universal Pictures as well as for many Dreamworks and Focus Features titles.

MobilizedTV caught up with Doty as he takes on the position of Bemis Belkind GM and Executive Creative Director, Digital.

MobilizedTV: Tell us a bit about Bemis Belkind.

Curt Doty: The company has a huge entertainment and branding legacy, and  a lot of my history dovetails nicely into what they’ve been doing for years. I came to them with a  vision for the opportunity, which revolves around much of what I started and built at Trailer Park. We’ve built our own philosophy around the connected consumer and we’re very consumer focused. The consumer is in the driver’s seat. They want content anywhere on any device at any time.

The  connected consumer has multiple connected devices and believes that it’s his or her right to have access to that content. You read that every day in the news with what’s going on with Netflix; they’re pushing the envelope much more quickly than the studios are.  I have to admire them for their courage. They get kudos and criticism. They’re trying to match the need to the consumer with the capabilities of their company, and we’re trying to do the same thing in where we put our energies and efforts.  The more we understand the consumer, the better our interfaces will be. And they’re done in a collaborative manner.

MTV: What kinds of clients will you be working with, with regard to the new digital division?

(L to R) Peter Bemis, Aubrey Balkind, Doty

Doty: Bemis Balkind has a strong legacy in the entertainment marketing and branding/strategy categories. It’s been around since 1968 so they’re the oldest agency doing entertainment market in the business today.The legacy also lies with building strategies and experiences for media companies and consumer brands over the years, with clients like Adobe, Merrill Lynch, Time Warner Cable, Comcast. An interesting connection I have with these guys is that practically at every disruptive technology change that happened in media over the last 30 years, they’ve been at the forefront in advising their clients how to move into the future.  It’s just fascinating. I’ve had a parallel path of being a lone wolf and evangelizing where studios needed to go with distribution of content. I’ve run up against people who either loved what I was saying or were scared by what I was saying. They had similar experiences in trying to push innovation over the last three decades. It’s a spirit I’m akin to.

MTV: Where is the cutting edge?

Doty: The iPad as new channel for distributing content has reached the zenith of the awareness. Cable companies have taken note, as Time Warner, HBO, Comcast have come out with apps. They’re all searching for ways to connect to the consumer. The cable companies have a lot to worry about so they’re pushing this technology forward; they don’t want to be left out. The networks are developing their show apps or network apps to stream content or have enhanced content experiences.

Those are trends. And there have been some successes and failures in all those ventures. It is the Wild West. A lot of hype is out there and pressure for the networks to play catch-up. We see that as an opportunity because there are a lot of networks out there. There’s an evergreen evolution of networks and shows. The case for technology and business have been built.  Now I look forward to the next phase which is the creative phase: how do you  make that content interactive, evergreen and fresh? That’s what’s most exciting. We’re over that technology curve and we now can get truly into the creativity of enhanced storytelling and how that relates to TV shows, movies and books.

MTV: Does transmedia fit into your plans?

Doty: That’s a word that I haven’t exactly embraced. I’ve been cross-platform for way over a decade. So transmedia to me is a new moniker for people who deal with cross platform or multi-platform. Transmedia storytelling is about connecting the experiences of storytelling across devices. A transmedia producer has a grasp of all those technologies and can shepherd a story across these platforms and devices and give the consumer a value they’re demanding. It’s describing a really great producer and a really great storyteller. The obviousness is that we’re living in a multi-platform world.

About Bemis Balkind:

Bemis Balkind’s was born in New York in 1968 when Steve Frankfurt (President of Young and Rubicam) and Phil Gips (Yale designer) joined together to create the industry changing advertising campaign for the classic film “Rosemary’s Baby.”  Since that time, Bemis Balkind has led many iconic campaigns of the last forty years. They did viral marketing 1968 by placing classified ads announcing “Pray for Rosemary’s Baby” and coined the iconic “In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream” for “Alien.” Other milestone campaigns included those for “Superman,” “Fatal Attraction,” “Forrest Gump,” and many more.

In 1972, Aubrey Balkind joined his partners and the agency began to add corporate, financial and technology clients to its growing entertainment base. An office was opened in LA in 1987, focusing on entertainment and in San Francisco in 1991 serving technology clients. In 1997, Aubrey received Ernst and Young’s “Industry Entrepreneur of the Year” award.

In 2002, as Frankfurt Balkind, the company’s center of gravity moved from New York to Los Angeles and under the leadership of former Grey Advertising International Creative Director Peter Bemis, (recipient of the Hollywood Lifetime Achievement Award) changed the name to Bemis Balkind.

Other recent motion picture campaigns include Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland 3D, Slumdog Millionaire, Black Swan, and Bad Teacher.

Now DDD, the company that puts the 2D-to-3D conversion software into all of Samsung‘s 3D TV receivers, upped the ante. The company just announced their first smartphone deal with an as-of-yet-to-be-named manufacturer, whose 3D phones will not only enable consumers to shoot 3D content but to consume 2D content in 3D…and to watch the converted 3D content on their TV sets. Read the full press release here.

How’s it done? MobilizedTV had a chance to speak with DDD chief executive Chris Yewdall about DDD’s 3D smartphone technology and the implications for content creators. And, by the way, for those new to 3D, “autostereoscopic” means that you can see the 3D effect on the screen without the need for glasses.

Tell us about your smartphone deal.

Sprint HTC EVO 3D smartphone

We haven’t named the manufacturers but they’re shipping an Android-based, autostereoscopic phone very shortly into major markets in Asia, Europe and the U.S. with our 2D-to-3D conversion software in it.  We worked with Texas Instruments‘ OMAP 4 platform, which includes applications processors, a comprehensive software suite and power management technology. We showed this at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, delivered it to our first customer in May and it went into production last month.

We’re announcing this tomorrow morning to our shareholders through the London stock exchange. As soon as we have permission to name them, we’ll announce the manufacturer.

What do these new 3D smartphones enable consumers to do? What will the phone enabled with your software add to the mix?

The latest 3D smartphones from HTC and LG have two cameras built in so you can capture 3D content using the phone itself. When you add our application, it means you can stream 2D content to the phone and turn it into 3D in real time. Suddenly everything you’ve got and everything you can get from places like YouTube can be watched in 3D. You can download movie trailers to 2D films and watch them in 3D.

These latest Android processors are very powerful. The latest one plays 720P HD and, with an HDMI cable, can play content from the smartphone on the TV set. I think people will be doing this. The big game changer will the wireless display technology, so you won’t have to hook the phone to the TV with an HDMI cable.  When it’s wireless, it’ll be easy to transfer the tablet or phone content straight onto the TV. That’s one of the series of stepping stones that will make this experience ubiquitous.

In order to watch 2D-to-3D converted material sourced on my smartphone on my TV set, do I need a 3D-capable TV?

Yes, you need a 3D-capable TV.  The phones coming out have a high-quality 4-inch screen that’s autostereoopic. Once you get beyond the single one-on-one experience, and put it on TV, you have to use glasses.  Samsung, LG and Vizio TVs all use different types of glasses. The phone can communicate with any of those systems using the 3D HDMI standard. The Texas Instruments technology supports that 3D extension of HDMI so the phone can communicate to the TV.

Can you tell us which carrier will have the phone with your technology embedded?

Sorry, no. We work with the manufacturer’s R&D dept so we never know which carrier is going to get it. But it is a carrier that doesn’t have a 3D phone on the market yet.

What are you working on now? Wireless connectivity?

Wireless connection is something that DDD will take advantage of when it becomes commercially available. Our next step with the technology is to get the video to 1080P, full HD and put it straight onto your TV from the smartphone. What we’re talking about here is the ability to output full HD from the handsets to 1080P TV sets, through  the Android processor, whether it’s Texas Instruments or anyone else’s technology.

What are the implications for content creators who will be able to get their hands on smartphones with your 2D-to-3D conversion software?

I think for the content creator, the biggest challenge in 3D has been the complexity of making the content. From the top of the food chain with special events to content that can be downloaded from YouTube, 3D is limited by this small pool of content compared to what’s available in 2D.  Having phones with two cameras in them puts the content creation in the hands of the consumer. When you look at the drivers behind very popular content sites like YouTube or even MySpace and Facebook with lots of picture and video content…now we’ve got camera technology in 3D in a mobile phone and fairly sophisticated processors that can be connected to your YouTube account or your TV.

It’s a much simpler infrastructure for people to create their own 3D content.  Now you don’t need a sophisticated camcorder. You can take your phone out of your pocket and just start shooting. You can’t capture 1080P yet, but most of the material we see at 720P, the quality is there even at that resolution. A High Def 3D cameras sitting in your smartphone is a pretty big advance for the smartphone maket.

Rather than fight or deny the audience’s split attention between TV show and simultaneous use of a second-screen – be it phone, tablet, laptop or whatever is to come next – networks would do best to commission shows that tell stories across both screens.

The key is to tell multi-platform stories: not repurposing B-roll content (that doesn’t create a compelling enough mobile value proposition) or churning out tedious encyclopedic character detail (let the fans create that) but by writing multi-layered stories with additional sub-plots and parallel plots intended specifically for mobile and to be enjoyed socially either at air time or later on demand.

The first illustration shows an experience intended to play across both screens simultaneously which, having been created for the original air date, can be re-run again (or modified) during re-runs or when viewed on-demand or on DVD. Strengthening the “story-in-the-cloud” increases the value of the participatory experience and hence diminishes the value of pirating the show’s video content.

Crafted correctly, synchronous, second-screen stories enrich the TV drama, not distract from it, and encourage sit-forward participation from those that want it. Of course, old school viewers can simply enjoy the show as they always have but they’ll be out of the loop and not a show insider. Maybe their friends who are fans will encourage them to join the party via their live tweets, Facebook status updates and social sharing of show content.

Delivering synchronized content does not necessarily mean when first broadcast live. For recorded and online shows, playback can be synchronized a variety of ways from fancy audio fingerprinting (such as .intonow.com and shazam.com) to entering an episode-specific code at the start of playback when prompted by an on-screen message. And of course there’s no reason why the “live” second-screen content needs to be the same as the “on-demand” second-screen content.

In fact, by using unique on-screen overlays at air time, on-demand or on DVD the second-screen content can be tailored by distributor, territory, media or calendar date. This doesn’t mean all the second-screen content has to be unique to each media channel but savvy production companies can create experiences for easy repurposing and translation to local needs. This means that when successful shows are sold internationally they can be sold with localized experiences tailored to the needs of the buyer.

There are also strong reasons to offer asynchronous or interstitial second screen experiences that keep shows top of mind between weekly episodes and encourage word-of-mouth ahead of the next air date. As illustrated below, experiences might only be available while the season is showing yet flexible enough to fit around the viewer’s availability – offering content that’s easily viewed while commuting or slacking off at work!

In fact, there are many benefits of the dual-screen experience for all players in the value chain if the two screens really are tied into a single entertainment experience:
• reduced churn
• increased incentive for the consumer to buy multi-platform packages (TV, Internet, telephony) if second-screen experiences are enhanced for these consumers. (Currently these 3-in-1 type offers are differentiated solely on price.)
• improved metrics and with it metric-informed experiences that increase retention and social sharing
• increased potential for integrated advertising during the show and between commercial breaks
• increased viewer attention and engagement.

There are many possibilities and business models if the mobile device is seen as more than a simple back-channel communications device. Readers should look beyond the mobile as a remote control and voting terminal and see the second screen as the means by which broadcast media can become personalized entertainment. And it doesn’t have to mean bespoke apps – our pervasive entertainment platform, Conducttr, builds second-screen experiences with email, text messaging and social media so there’s no programming languages to learn or expensive mobile apps to develop.

All that’s needed to enjoy the benefits of the second screen is good transmedia storytelling.

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Robert Pratten is CEO and Founder of Transmedia Storyteller, an audience engagement company and provider of Conducttr, an interactive marketing and storytelling platform.  He has more than 20 years experience as an international marketing consultant  and has established himself as a thought-leader in the field of transmedia storytelling through major contributions to the evolving field in the areas of audience engagement, content strategy and new business models.

He is author of the book Getting Started in Transmedia Storytelling: A Practical Guide for Beginners.

Shoot it on mobile phone or tablet and upload into any of Mobile Screenfest 2010′s categories. Filmmakers can submit as many entries as they want. The categories are:

Dr. Avnesh (Avi) Ratnanesan

Each of the prizes comes with $500 cash and other goodies (except the junior category, which is a $250 prize). For now, thanks to sponsors, there are no entry fees to the festival. According to festival director Dr. Avnesh (Avi) Ratnanesan, who is also CEO/producer at Araya Pictures, festival organizers and judges reserve the right to move a film from one category to another, if it is deemed  more appropriate for that category. In this instance, the filmmaker will be notified and have a right to refuse any change.

The birth of the Mobile Screenfest International took place in 2009 in Los Angeles when Avi met Professor Karl Bardosh, where

Karl Bardosh

they were both attending a film festival. Avi’s film won the Best Directorial Debut for an International Short Film while Professor Karl, educated filmmakers in mobile filmmaking at the festival seminars. After a conversation, the all-mobile Screenfest International was launched in 2010.

Check out the video below for the highlights of the 2010 festival and visit the website for more information on how to enter and who’ll be judging the awards!

Other popular mobile video apps included Vimeo (No. 4 Global, No. 1 Latin America & UAE), Blockbuster (No. 6 Global, No. 2 U.S.) and DailyMotion (No. 9 Global, No. 1 Russia). Kang-hyun Kwon, Senior Vice President, Media Solution Center, Samsung Electronics, stated that, “the TV is a family-based device and people want to lean back and enjoy their time in front of the TV.” “These apps are the entry point for consumers to discover other experiences on their TV like gaming and social networking as well as the limitless possibilities being created by our third-party developers,” he added.

The rate of app downloads is increasing, said Samsung. After taking approximately five months to reach the 5 million mark, Samsung consumers are downloading Apps for their television at an average rate of 100,000 apps every four days. Samsung Apps is now available in 120 countries.

Samsung is clearly not bothered by Nielsen‘s recent bombshell that TV ownership is down to 96.7 percent of American households, down from 98.9 percent previously. A New York Times article reported that Nielsen ascribed this downward trending to two factors: Low income houses that can’t afford digital TVs…and young people who prefer to watch TV shows and movies on the Internet (mobile or otherwise).

More news of major content on mobile devices came from Google which recently added full-length feature film rentals to its Android Market app store. So if you own an Android device you’re in luck: the app will enable you to instantly stream movies to to your phone/tablet and/or cache content for offline viewing. Movie rental prices begin at $1.99; the rental period is 30 days, but once the customer begins viewing the movie, the clock starts ticking as the availability window shrinks to 24 hours. The Android Market website spotlights new releases, top rentals and allows users to search for titles.

Although the platform agnostic world is not yet seamless–the ecosystem is still in development–the signs are everywhere that we’re moving in that direction, 5 million app downloads at a time.

MobilizedTV catches up with Jeff to talk about the definition of transmedia means, how it’s being implemented, and what the future holds for storytellers in all media.

MobilizedTV: Transmedia seems to be one of those terms that means different things to different people. How did you construct the category for the Producers Guild?

Jeff Gomez: The thing that I would want to clarify first of all was that  I had help here at Starlight Runner in the drafting of the credit. The credit is not a definition of the term “transmedia” or “transmedia storytelling.” It’s simply a list of criteria that would need to be met if you were a media producer if you want to join PGA under the transmedia credit. It’s a subtle but important distinction

The primary definition of transmedia is often attributed to Henry Jenkins, the professor at MIT [and now at USC] who popularized the term academically several years ago.

In the year since the PGA approved this category, what’s happened? How many transmedia producers have been approved for membership?  What kinds of projects have they been working on?

I know that there have been a number of producers who have come into the Guild under the specifics of the credit but I’m not on the Membership Committee so I don’t know exactly how many. I know we’ve vetted a few at Starlight Runner. If the Committee thinks there’s an ambiguity or they don’t understand the subtleties, they look to us to help them out.

Who would you encourage to apply for membership under this category?

The interesting thing to me is that this affords people who have a very specific and unusual skillset to get some of the perks of the PGA including health insurance and the credit that it would take to earn more money in Hollywood with the studios. That skillset involves a person’s ability to understand the fundamentals of story and serve as a producer, not on an individual project but across multiple projects being developed across multiple media platforms. That’s an unusual set of skills,  but if you walk onto any college campus, that’s what  these kids today are doing. It’s going to come more and more to the fore as people with these skillsets enter the workforce.

The studios have been good at taking a feature film or TV property and using online and mobile to market it.  Do you consider this transmedia?

Here is what makes a transmedia application distinct from marketing implementation where mobile or online would effectively be serving as a way to build public awareness of the fact that something is happening in TV or a movie theater:  it’s the content. If the content is tweaked to actually extend the experience of the narrative of the story itself onto the mobile platform or onto the web, then you have a transmedia experience. The mobile experience becomes an extension of the story or some aspect of the story or the world of the story is being communicated in a unique fashion that plays to the unique strengths of the mobile platform.

That forces the transmedia producer and the producers of the original content to have to think about mobile not simply as a re-purposer or repeater of content or a way to carry a commercial. It forces them to think about how one would convey an aspect of the story or the world of the story in an intimate fashion, because that’s the strength of the mobile platform:  it communicates solely to us and you’re having an intense personal experience with it. The content is designed to play to that strength and be additive to the totality of the experience of the narrative.

Now you’re starting to create content specifically designed for mobile and that’s what we’re all looking for, that is what will touch us about that platform. I love describing the mobile platform as the equivalent of a teenager’s bedroom. There’s a lot of responsibility that needs to be taken by  transmedia producers for extending intellectual properties into the mobile platform. If they mess that up–if they walk into the bedroom and tear the posters from the wall or alienate the possessor of the device, you’re out. The sign will be put on the door: you’re not allowed in.  It’s really something that needs to be taken seriously.

Is transmedia commercially viable or still in the experimental phase?

Let’s look at a recent transmedia implementation: Star Wars.  -  every product you pick up seems to be telling you a different story set in this wonderful aspirational universe. That’s certainly a transmedia application that’s producing billions of dollars on top of the driving platform which was 6 movies. We’re learning Star Wars isn’t the exception. Let’s look at Glee, which is certainly a transmedia implementation. It manifests itself on many platforms including mobile and literally dialoguing with its core fan base. It’s listening to me using the devices I’m familiar with and the devices I want to be reached on. It shows me that it’s listening to me because it integrates how I feel about the show,  acknowledges in-jokes the fans have, worldwide. Of course there are an array of apps, official and fan-generated that build on the intimacy that fans feel for the show, and this is all quite lucrative for the Glee producers and for Fox.

Glee is not alone. Heroes was a transmedia implementation that was a quite well done Sprint mobile element. It generated $50 million in revenue per season from mobile and online as well as graphic novels, in addition to the revenues derived from the TV commercials themselves.

Tell us a bit about your career, which began in television. How did you come to embrace transmedia?

I was as a kid, deeply inspired by the seriousness of Japanese pop culture, particularly the stuff aimed at kids. You had super heroes and monsters and these serial narratives that were really compelling and dark and quite sophisticated. What was unique about the Japanese stuff was they seemed to have no compunction about starting a story in a comic book and then picking it up as a live action TV series that ran for 30 or 40 episodes, ending that and then continuing as a theatrical film. They’re making you jump through hoops to see the story. Each component was complete: you could be satisfied by the comics and not need to watch the TV show but when you did, your appreciation for the world and its continuity vastly increased.

I experienced this in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before Star Wars. I thought wouldn’t it be wonderful to be the visionary who would do this.  That’s what I fixated on when I was 12. I was a bit too far beyond the curve; no one would listen. They thought I was nuts. It took a long time. In the 1990s, after being on the periphery of geek culture, writing comic books and designing games, I was given the assignment at Valiant Comics to make sure that fans became aware of a certain videogame I was working on. The comic book company was acquired by Acclaim, a videogame company and I was responsible for making the comic book characters go to the videogames. I almost subversively showed fans the connections between the comics, the videogames and the web. It became enormously successful and I left Acclaim and founded Starlight Runners, in 2000, with my partner who comes from the publishing industry, Mark Pensavalle. We raised a little venture capital. Originally we thought we’d develop content across multiple media platforms on our own, but the dotcom bubble burst, 9/11 happened and we were forced to become a service-oriented company for companies like Mattel and Disney. We started wracking  up incredible story world clients like Avatar, Hot Wheels, Pirates of the Caribbean.

What piece does the mobile platform play in transmedia productions?   What are its strengths and weaknesses as a storytelling medium?

This hasn’t manifested itself entirely yet, but I believe very soon the mobile platform is going to be the platform that validates your participation in a story world in the most powerful way. So, if you’re interacting with a story world and a character from that world texts you and you text back and have a reasonable logical conversation with that character and perhaps if that conversation actually impacts the greater narrative and you become aware of it…that is a powerful, brand new kind of experience. Of course text is  a simple feature. You’re Skyping or whatever, and the two-way communication is manifesting on your mobile phone. That’s going to be incredibly compelling.

What about the Internet?

In the near future, the experience you have on the Internet–in an environment that could be read as game-like or social media oriented–you’re going to be able to walk out of the living room because mobile will allow for the smooth, almost seamless transition of the experience you’re having right onto your mobile device. You’ll leave the room, the house and still be entirely, completely engaged with the story world. Not to mention the fact that the visual experience of being engaged with those worlds can become a kind of augmented reality experience with your mobile device. You’re walking down the street and when you hold up your device, you’re capable of taking action in that world.

What advice would you give someone who is interested in creating transmedia projects. No one has written the book yet. Are there rules?

I’m working on the textbook–stand by for that one!  Here it is.  The expectation that I always run into when people ask me about transmedia is that it’s highly technologically oriented and that’s not true. In order to understand how to implement transmedia successfully you need to know story. You need to know how to derive the essence of the story and infuse it into the experience on the peripheral devices, so that when you’re using  mobile or the web or reading a comic book, the experience of doing so feels as though it’s an authentic extension that’s additive and true to the core experience wherever you might being enjoying it.  When you get what you’re working with, fundamentally from a creative standpoint then it’s easy to call in developers for the mobile platform and leverage it the best possible way through each media platform. You collaborate with people who know better. And you’re not slapping a logo on it. It’s not two dudes hitting each other with light sabers. It’ll look like Star Wars but not feel like Star Wars.

When we look at the real world and real world applications, I think, and some people agree with me, that a major component of the Obama campaign was his use of the mobile platform. Historically that would be the first time that any one running for office creating a direct and intimate communication with someone who wanted to be communicated with in that way.  Even though it may not have actually been him, when I got a text from Barack Obama I felt that he likes me.  He’s communicating with me, in the way I want. It’s kind of cool and it connected him. I feel with a generation of people that wanted to be communicated with in that way. And that makes all the difference in the world: – it builds loyalty, longevity and extends retail windows. It could generate a response to which you’re listening and adjusting so the next implementation is stronger.

What’s the state of the art with regard to transmedia?

As for us – we’re fortunate because we’re working on a series of co-productions, so we’re involved with independent producers who are bringing us the financing and intellectual properties that are allowing us to do this from scratch for certain projects.This is an area where there isn’t enough thought being put into the development of story worlds and multi-platforms including mobile. I would like to promote that.

In general, it’s very, very striking how far everyone has come. Not just Hollywood or videogame companies but the whole world is, if not embracing the word transmedia, certainly embraces the technique. We’re seeing it proliferate with TV projects in Amsterdam, the BBC. The Canadian government is incentivizing TV and film production companies to develop multi-platform content around everything they do. The network Televisa in Mexico has created a transmedia division that will include mobile, which is just amazing. Who’d a thunk?

The following are links for those interested in following Gomez and/or Starlight Runner Entertainment:

Twitter & Facebook:

http://twitter.com/#!/Jeff_Gomez

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Starlight-Runner-Entertainment/445657890522?ref=ts&sk=wall

Transmythology link:
http://transmythology.com/

SLR Portfolio Projects:
http://www.box.net/shared/lsxurtfm4b
http://www.box.net/shared/0vty51kn63
http://www.box.net/shared/jm7mgssfux

Your bio describes you as having digital expertise in integrating advertising agencies. When did you begin integrating the mobile platform in your advertising campaigns?

Actually it’s been more than 12 years that I’ve been working for brands and trying to leverage digital into their strategy. Here at Ogilvy, we have been trying to integrate mobile advertising into their strategy for more than five years. Every year, year after year, we have been preparing for the mobile revolution, getting ready to invest more of our mixed media into a mobile strategy to engage a new way of reaching people. I truly believe mobile marketing will be the next big thing for marketers. We know that it’s the only way to reach people everywhere, every time and every place. It’s the only device that’s always in the consumer’s pocket. In Asia, mobile marketing is more important than the Internet, for example. Those guys have an average two mobile devices per person; some people have three or four. So, you have to get prepared and know how to integrate mobile in a campaign. In the last five years, we were looking for great tools, a functional, technical way to provide a brand experience. That was missing on the market, specifically for the last 5 years. There was a lot of noise around mobile marketing but when you are taking care of iconic brands such as Nestle, Ford, Mattel, you want to make sure you’ll have the space to communicate and express the richness of the campaign, and that was missing.

Was Ogilvy one of the first iAd advertisers? What did you see as the promise of iAd?

Ogilvy was the first in Europe. Steve Jobs presented iAd in San Francisco in March 2010 and they launched the first iAd in the U.S. with Chiat Day in July. We launched with Apple one of the first iAd campaigns in Europe in mid-December. Six brands were involved in the first round, and two of them–Louis Vuitton and Perrier–were brand of Ogilvy Paris.

Steve Jobs, in his keynote, was actually quite bold. He said that digital advertising sucks, basically with iAd he was going to make people love advertising again. When you’re working in this industry for 16 years, trying to engage the consumer through advertising, you want to see what our folks from Apple are up to.  You say, Interesting, how are you going to do that? So when we brought in ten of our brands for a presentation at Ogilvy on iAd, we weren’t skeptical but actually quite neutral in trying to understand if the iAd format was the best for our brands to set up a mobile strategy. It wasn’t definitely a done deal for iAd. But they do have something that has revolutionized the market in a few different ways; iAd allows you integrates video, functionality of the mobile phone, all kinds of stuff that is totally out of the box compared to digital advertising or what Google is doing.

The other aspect was the targeting value of the iAd proposition. Following the meeting we had with our clients and brands and the Apple team, we were quite seduced about the targeting model, with the iTunes store and the application-based model they proposed. The third thing that was really interesting as an advertiser and for a brand was the way you’re monitoring your investment. The entry ticket to participate in the iAd was quite high: $1 million Euros. You know how Steve Jobs explained his rate: $1 million is $1 million Euros. That’s the Apple way to do things. That was for one year on iAds, and it’s a huge amount of money when you’re talking to local European or even global brands. In the French market, $1 million Euros is the price of a great, ambitious TV campaign. It’s a lot of money. But what was really interesting, beyond the targeting, was that you only paid when the user is tapping on your banner. It makes a huge difference on the digital advertising through mobile. It means that we are truly pushing for the user experience and truly believing in that it provides a great experience.

How have you measured the ROI? What kind of metrics are you getting from iAd and is it enough to make more decisions going forward?

I would say that the main difference between what we got in metrics with iAd compared to the other platforms is that when I’m doing a regular digital advertising campaign on Yahoo or YouTube, I know the rate of clicks, I know the amount of audience, I know how many people have been exposed to the campaign and the banner. But that’s it. I don’t know how they interact with the creation, where they stopped, or details like whether it’s a guy or girl who clicks on the ad or what age they are. That is what Apple is proposing, thanks to the iTunes store. Due to the fact that the iAd is only available on the application, you know in an easy way who is watching, interacting with your ad format.

I’m happy with the results we got. We got amazing results compared to traditional digital ad: We got an average of two minutes spent on the ad. It was quite amazing to imagine that people are spending two minutes of their time on a digital ad. Who can imagine spending two minutes of their time on an ad format, when compared to a banner or buying a masthead on YouTube or a traditional banner on Google…there’s no comparison. On this side, we are thrilled.

Concerning metrics and data, we are a little bit frustrated. There is a gap between what Apple is selling from a metrics stand point–they said we could know exactly who is tapping on the banner, age of the user, interests of the user–the exact target you want to reach and what they delivered. We are quite transparent with Apple about that frustration.

What kind of creative shines on the mobile platform? Is this still a nascent field or are there lessons we can take from existing advertising strategies.

I truly believe that you have to go beyond classical advertising. When you are doing mobile creation, you have to propose a serious user engagement proposition, more than just posing your product in 360-degrees. You want an experience based on the device, made for the device, that takes into the context that you are on a mobile phone and you are actually moving with it. That’s why I think we had such a good success with Dita and Perrier for iAd. We transformed the iPhone into a mansion where you could discover every room of the mansion. That’s part of the answer. A mobile campaign has to be based on a great idea, and the idea here was to transform your phone into a Perrier mansion. We are always coming back to the richness of the idea. It’s your ability to provide a brand experience that’s really linked to the device and user experience.

What about integrating such technologies as augmented reality and mobile commerce? Will you be integrating these or other technologies going forward?

Augmented Reality is like, to me, a trend. AR is like other great technologies, such as Geolocalization, Facebook Connect or QR codes, you need to link it to a big idea to see a real benefit from it. All those technologies are great. As creatives, we do think that technology in 2011 is a great lead for ideas. But again, my point is that technology is great to leverage our ideas, but if it replaces the idea, you’re dead. AR is a great new way to engage the user into the brand world and into the interactive experience but at least you have to get a great proposition and a great idea to make it happen. That’s the only thing I’m a little skeptical about. From what I’ve seen, I don’t have in mind one really, really great example that allowed augmented reality to liberate a great idea. I hope we’ll find a great way to integrate it, but today it’s more of a technology than a great idea.

What’s the one missing piece in mobile advertising you wish you had?

The biggest difficulty today is that there are so many devices out there, and so many different ways to execute your idea on those devices, between iPhone 4 and my ‘vintage’ Samsung that is not dead. A big part of the world has these older devices, and the brand experience is totally different. What I wish for is to be in a step of the history where everyone will be able to have a rich brand exp through their device, and not only a niche target. When I do an iAd on Perrier, I’m talking about a niche target.

So much has been written about how big mobile advertising is going to be. Do you agree? Will the mobile platform become the first screen?

That’s a great final question, and it comes back to the first question. It’s been ten years that we’re talking about the mobile revolution, and it’s been five years since we’re just starting to smell that something is really happening. For sure, when you see the social trends and you just have a look to Asia, to the fact that they’re using mobile more than computers, when the alarm that wakes me up every morning is my mobile phone…from that simple social trend, we all know it is going to be the next big big thing.

As an example, for Perrier, one of the most important periods for these guys is summer. When you’re on the beach and you’re in L.A., the only device you’ve got is your mobile phone. When you’re skiing, the only device you’ve got is your mobile phone. But again, there are so many big gaps between what is going on with smart phones in the U.S. and what is going on with mobile phones in India, which is one of the most important countries for mobile. For brands and advertisers, the experience is totally different. For sure, it’ll be the next revolution, but we’re going to have to heed this point where everyone will be on the same page from a device standpoint to make sure we’re taking the best part of the revolution.