iPhone: A new platform for Marketing as a service.
While the developer reaction to the recent WWDC has been mixed, the news that Apple will allow 3rd party apps on the iPhone has several of the partners at Zeus Jones salivating even more and virtually guarantees you won’t find us in our office on June 29th.
To me, the iPhone presents the first real promise an entirely new class of marketing services to appear. Location-based marketing as a service that provide a unique purpose (and communication) specific to location. I realize, of course, that we’ve been promised this many times in the past and the iPhone is not the first smartphone or device with its set of features. However, as with the iPod, Apple’s implementation creates an entirely new level of usability and that creates new usage patterns.
Everyone I know went through the same revelation with the iPod. It doesn’t operate like a digital Walkman in that it simply allows you to carry your music around. Instead, because it allows you to carry ALL (or most) of your music around, it actually changes your relationship to music. Using an iPod makes music matter more and that typically leads to increased consumption and greater variety in the type of music consumed.
I predict we’ll see a similar disruption created by the iPhone. Here’s one easy illustration: iTunes is obviously an established content portal. So, if I wanted to increase traffic at a museum or gallery – I could now provide freely downloadable guided tours for the iPhone. I have now essentially created a device that has metadata specific to my location. Having location-specific metadata (in an easy to access form) opens up entirely new possibilities, this simple example alone could have massive implications. Importantly, this is doable knowing nothing about the iPhone api or sdk. I simply need to provide content that’s runnable as a timed movie file or even simpler, as an html file viewable in Safari.
Of course, it’s inevitable that most advertisers will simply view it as another virgin (for a brief moment) advertising vehicle, but the potential to do something of value for people is far greater.