Smithsonian Channel Mobile Marketing for Aerial America

I came across a fantastic mobile engagement on the back of this year’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival brochure. These guys really put a lot of thought into this mobile promotion, and for the most part, it created an excellent mobile user experience in a time when many marketers are throwing together poor mobile campaigns.

More Ways Than One

Mobile Marketing Campaign for Aerial America

Many mobile campaigns these days only offer one door for mobile users to walk through: a QR code, a SMS call-to-action, or maybe a link. A solid mobile campaign will offer several different doors to accommodate the myriad of devices and user preferences out there, and this Smithsonian Channel ad does just that. They offer a QR code, a SMS call-to-action (text AERIAL to 74699), and they spell out the link that the QR code and SMS point to: http:smithchan.com/aerial.

This approach is critical for including the highest possible number of mobile users. Although QR codes have been out for a while, the majority of people in America don’t know exactly what QR codes are for, so relying on that as the only way for consumers to interact with you on their mobile devices is like trying to sell a book written in Greek to New Yorkers on their lunch break.

SMS (text messaging) is a widely supported technology among mobile phones (essentially supported by all mobile devices), but some users are cautious of getting extra charges, using up their allotted texts, or getting spammed in the future and may not want to text in. Also, SMS great for having users sign up to receive periodic text updates or coupons from you, but again, if you rely on it as the sole means of interaction with mobile users, you will be leaving some people out.

This is why it’s important to offer the URL itself, in print, in addition to other mobile entry methods discussed above. People who aren’t comfortable with other methods can always access your mobile content the “hard way” by typing in the web address themselves, and Smithsonian Channel even makes this easier with a shortened URL (although this could be a lot shorter). However, for mobile users who are accustomed to scanning QR codes and texting to short codes, entering a URL is almost as bad as having to write down the website on a napkin so that they can visit later when they’re in front of a computer.

In addition to all of these mobile calls-to-action, there’s a traditional website link (www.smithsonianchannel.com) printed near the bottom of the ad. The mobile engagements are important for catching people right when they see the ad, before they forget and move on with their lives. If, however, for those that take the ad all the way back to their computer (like I did), it’s quite insightful to have a small line telling us how to get there without using a cell phone. This makes it easy to watch the videos comfortably on our larger computer screens.

Mobile Web
The mobile website that the QR code, text messaging, and URL take you to (http:smithchan.com/aerial) is quite well done and looks great on all the smartphones we tested it on. The page is very nicely formatted, and the 45-minute episodes streamed quite well, with few breaks or interruptions. We saw some HTML5 in the source code, and like how the page fills all of the mobile screen, no matter its size. (It doesn’t look very good on computers, but it’s not supposed to!)

The Mobile Website doesn't look very good on this older smartphone, the HTC Excalibur.

The only disappointment we encountered was viewing the website on non-smartphones. There was no simpler code served to basic feature phones and the like, which means that those types of devices try valiantly to load the whole page, but ultimately fail in rendering anything usable. This page uses some JavaScript and advanced CSS that feature phones, older smartphones, and most Blackberries should not be expected to render at all, so there should a much lighter version of the mobile web page for these older/more basic devices. They ought to be able to read about Aerial America and learn about where they can watch the free episodes. There could, for example, be a form where the users enters their email address to receive links to the episodes so that they can watch later from their computers.

Here at Knovolo, we have been developing our own “advanced device detection” technology to address this problem. In fact, as of last month only 35% of American adults own smartphones. Mobile marketing campaigns that don’t address non-smartphone mobile users are leaving out a lot of people.

Summary
Aside from isolating non-smartphone users, this mobile marketing campaign for Smithsonian Channel’s new Aerial America was excellent. We hope that others marketers that are venturing into mobile will have mobile websites and call-to-actions of similar quality.