Last night, I was invited to join a dinner hosted by DoublePositive’s Sean Fenlon. At the table sat an impressive, if not quite mixed, group of interactive CEO’s. Some on their first company, others leading ones they’ve spent tens of millions of dollars or more acquiring. Somewhere in between a discussion about the punishment levied against Penn State and a deep conversation on angling, one of the CEO’s couldn’t help but notice that another CEO still had a Blackberry. The fact that someone using a Blackberry necessitates a “still” in front of using shows you just how far Apple has come. They have changed how we view the world. Well, almost. The two richest guys at the table didn’t seem in any rush to abandon their antiquated technology. The reason why speaks to the very heart of mobile and the Post-PC era.
Twilio CEO, Jeff Lawson, delivered what might be a clarion call to the world of direct response marketers at LeadsCon East 2012 this week. The PC is not dead, but with tablets and other devices outselling personal computers, those in media have been put on notice that the world is absolutely changing. As he shared in his talk, “Lead Gen in the Post-PC World,” the numbers provide additional optics with which to understand this change. The largest mobile ad network earns less than 1/10 what Google does. It makes sense given that mobile represents just 7% of all internet traffic. But, what that 7% doesn’t tell you is that half of all video consumption takes place on a mobile device. Already 18% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. Equally important, half of all tablet users have made at least one purchase from their device.
We all know that mobile’s role in digital is increasing. We don’t need reports from research firms. This is something we can feel happening from our our own use. What Jeff did was help articulate the trend. As he said on stage, PC’s are for productivity. When in front of a PC, you are generally focused, task based, working on something with a nice big keyboard. More importantly, whatever you are doing is generally the primary thing occupying your mind. That is not the case with a mobile device. With mobile, you are generally on the go; marketers must fight for attention as whatever you are doing is secondary to some other desire. People are either using it to kill time (opposite of productivity) or to solve an instant need. Plus, the device is not designed for productivity. As Lawson points out, on the iPhone there is no Tab key, not to mention that almost every ad for the iPad shows someone lounging, a position more like TV than computing.
Put it all together, and we see why lead gen on the phone faces serious physical (no keyboard) and other (short attention span) impediments. Lead gen as it has been perfected today is perfectly optimized for the fingers and a form, but not so much when a person is not in a situation or at a modality to do so. It might sound like a scary new world ahead, but that implies taking lead gen too literally. If we think of lead gen as simply form gen, then yes, a mobile world will present challenges. What we need to remember is that lead gen as it results in form fills is not the definition of lead gen, it is the direct outcome of a PC driven digital world. The form existed in the offline world, but it didn’t scale that well given that very few inventory sources could collect the information and any information collected required additional work to make use of the handwritten data.
Online changed direct response. It meant that advertisers could easily collect information and users could easily complete information. All of a sudden, those who wanted new customers didn’t have to rely on handwritten forms or call with little context. They could have calls with substantial context and an ability to do more calls than before at a cost per call that they couldn’t achieve offline. And, just as the online world starts to feel comfortable with the generation and follow-up of leads, the world has started to change again. This time, though, it isn’t a direct or natural evolution. Initially, online meant improving on the offline process. It meant doing what you could do offline, more frequently, more easily, and at a lower cost. Mobile does not mean that. Mobile means figuring out something completely different, and that’s the scary part.
Lead gen is about demand generation. It is about needs fulfillment. That is why the promise of a new media modality might sound scary but will become a great opportunity. Lead gen isn’t about a form; it’s about a function, and that function figures out what to do regardless of the format. Figuring out the function means operating independent of a form(at). As for the two high net worth guests at dinner. They were PC’s. They managed to stack so much into their lives that when they used their phone, they want pure function. They want a mini-PC. That’s what most people wanted initially. They wanted an extension of the PC to a non-PC environment. It wasn’t until Apple that people realized and had available a device that didn’t mirror a PC but mirrored what people would enjoy using. These gentlemen like to enjoy but not on their phone. For the rest of us, it means we might have less money, but we will figure out how to leverage it for greater money in the future.
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