If not, pay attention.  A consortium of tuna brands and processors want to elevate the tuna –  as a fish, as a meal, as a healthy ingredient to sustain life itself.  Okay, maybe that was a little strong.  Regardless, the new campaign, Tuna the Wonderfish, is attempting to elevate the tuna to a new level — to a milk, orange juice or cheese status.

The success of the campaign is reliant on its ability to crack the four modes of how we think.  The modes are simple and straightforward:

• Daily Mode:  A person is focusing on life – daily issues.  They are not thinking about tuna, Omega 3, or tuna tacos — the person is just living their life.  BTW: this is 99% of people.
• Interest Mode: Someone takes time in their day, because they are intrigued by a product or service.  The person decides to to learn more about the product, but they are still not in the mode of  buying the product.
• Buy Mode: A person’s mindset when shopping for a product.  This mode can be months with a high-consideration purchase or seconds for commodity items.  Whether shopping online or aisle 3, the Buy mode is about closing the deal — getting the purchase. 
• Own Mode:  A person’s mindset during product usage.  Although usage is about meeting and exceeding expectations, you should also layer in did the product generate an emotional connection — a connection to the brand, a connection solidifying loyalty.

The modes vary in intensity by product.  Products with a strong advocacy (e.g. autos, fashion, electronics) tend to have a pronounced Interest mode for some people, because it is not just a product it can also be a person’s passion. 

The biggest factor for marketers is breaking through the Daily mode — a mode advertising is designed to crack.  And it can, however, it is hard to penetrate due to the overwhelming marketing noise in our life.  To compound the “noise” many marketers choose the wrong communication strategy, because they assume everyone is one degree away from purchase.  So instead of influencing the person in the Daily mode, the marketer is appealing to the minuscule Buy mode audience.

So will people Get Tuna?

The answer lies in the campaign’s ability break through the Daily mode, because there are very few tuna passionate people regularly seeking out tuna info, and by the time we get to the tuna aisle the marketing shifts from the Tuna the Wonderfish campagin to the individual tuna brands.  The novelty of the campaign may break through, however, I wonder if the gimmicks used on television can be leveraged in other media.  For example, the “Got milk?” campaign used the iconic milk-stache as an ubiquitous signature to pair with the breakthrough television.

The apps outlined in the article were interesting.  I could see the appeal how the apps would appeal to certain shoppers.  However, I do believe there is a bigger idea out there.  Albeit not an easy idea to execute, but if successful the application could define the category. 

Before I paint a vision of what that could be, let’s first briefly review the mobile apps discussed in the article.  I grouped the mobile apps based on perceived shopper benefit: saving money, knowledge, and convenience.  Note that some apps may fit into multiple benefits.

Saving Money
Some people spend time to save money, others spend money to save time.  When a person is driven to save money, they view their time as an investment to get the best deal.  The lowest price, coupons, rebates, are priorities.  These shoppers are willing to drive out of their way to get a deal.  So it is not a question of ”if” they will drive out of their, rather it is a question of “how far” they will.

•  Yowzadelivers coupons to nearby stores based on GPS-ing the shopper’s location. 
• ShopSavvycompares store prices (through scanning the bar code) with  online and at nearby retailer pricess.  Also includes coupons and allows users to make online  transactions.
•  The Find will locate retailers, both online and offline, that carry desired products, will compare prices of the product, and even calculate the cost to drive to each store.

Shopper Knowledge
Making an informed decision is a desired benefit for many shoppers, especially on a high-consideration purchase.  Achieving this goal is not always easy.  It is not for lack of information — the internet provides an abundance of information on products, pricing, and product reviews.  No the issue isn’t information.  The issue is gathering knowledge to determine what is the right product.  What product meets the shopper’s needs.

• RetrevoQ uses texts and tweets to provide shopper with information about electronics equipment including pricing information, reviews, and whether it is a good buy.

Convenience
Sometimes it is a manner of getting in and out quickly.  For many shoppers going to a mall is an experience.  A social journey where they explore stores and take in the ambiance of the mall.  For others it is a task.  They prefer not to waste time. Get in. Get out. Or get to where their desired location as quickly as possible. 

• Fastmall provides interactive maps displaying the quickest route to stores and it can remember where their car is parked.
• GroceryIQ (now owned by Coupons.com) allows consumers to create grocery lists, organize them, access coupons and share lists with others.

By reviewing the list of apps one can see the inherent benefits of each app.  However, I do think there can be more benefit.  The true killer apps will get more personal.

Get Personal
Right now the apps listed are rather impersonal, and a bit pushy.  Pushing coupons to the phone.  Pushing prices to the phone.  Pushing reviews to the phone.  We need to be a little less pushy, and take a more empathetic view of the shopper.  Make it more about them.  Make it personal.

Mobile phones are digital wallets. Potentially, they have reams of personal data.  Mobile phones know who we know.  They carry our contacts, our social groups, our trusted advisers.  Mobile phones also know where we have been.  They can capture visually a place or the specific GPS location.  Mobile phones can learn our tolerances.  They can record how far we are willingto travel for certain items like shopping or dining.  Mobile phones can learn our time-value relationship.  By combining these factors and more we can match shopping information with our personal code will generate knowledge.  If the app can fuse  our personal information the shopper environment think of the possibilities. 

My Meals
We don’t eat ingredients, we eat meals.  We all have favorites meals. So, imagine GroceryIQ with a taste layer – finding and recommendingfood and recipes based on personal or family food genres like ethnic flairs (e.g. Thai, Italian), and then incorporatingthe recipes into your shopping list. Also, imagine a time layer – accessingyour calendar to determine how much time you have to cook and making meal recommendations (then pullingrecipes, coupons into the list).  There are sites on the web that do aspects of this today.  The challenge is combining the elements together in a seamless experience for the shopper.

My Money, My Time
Some people save pennies, some save dollars, some just spend. The variance is mostly explained by how we valuate our time.  As stated prior some people will spend time to save money, others prefer to spend money to save time.  There can be an app for both.  Apps like Shop Savvy and The Find could be fine tuned to understand a shopper who is willing to wait a week (for shipping) to save ten dollars, while another shopper may willing to spend $30 to buy the product today.  The Find is headed down this path with the ability to calculate the driving cost to each store.

 My Purchase
Many marketers (and tech people) think what people need is information.  This is a misconception.  People do not need information, the internet, publications, and retail environment offer an abundance of information.  No, what the shopper needs is knowledge.  In the case of shopping, knowledge is the synthesizing of personal needs  with product information to determine the appropriate fit. 

Think about a high-consideration purchase like an HDTV.  The mobile app can combine electronics advise from experts with your friends with your personal needs and home environment.  The goal of the app is to not push the information, rather synthesize the information by fusing the data points into knowledge.  Think of this as a three step process.

The first step would be to create a personal foundation.  The app could capture a picture(s) of where the television is to be located including room lighting, distance from viewing area, and accessibility to cable, stereo and internet/wi-fi.  The app would also ask the shopper questions like budget, primary television usage (e.g. movies, sports, gaming), and brand preference.

The second step would be to fuse this information with product data (e.g. specs, pricing, product availability) and expert reviews.  This overlay would inform the shopper about product fit with their needs, product reliability through expert reviews, and where the television can be purchased (and for how much).

The final step is to fuse it with social information.  Mobile phones are a gateway to our social network.  For important purchases, most shoppers seek advice from someone in their social circle.  Maybe the person is a tech geek or fashion savvy or just a friend whose opinion matters.  From the shopper’s perspective the social circle could provide first-hand experiences from people who either bought the product recently or knows someone who has.  Based on this first or second hand experience, the shopper would receive additional input.

It is not about My Phone, it is about My Life
Based on the last example, you get the idea of the depth and breadth of an app.  However, the complexity of the app brings up a final point: the best apps should be integrated into our life – accessible from multiple access points and not limited to just our mobile device.   Think about facebook, YouTube, or Twitter — they began as experiences to accentuate different aspects of a person’s life.  Each began by fulfilling a need.  Each has multiple touchpoints including a mobile app.

Generating an app solely for a mobile device is limiting.  While there are merits of mobile, there are also restrictions.  The more complicated the application, the more cumbersome the application usability within the limited screen realestate.  The more visual the application, the more difficult it will be to shrink it to a mobile screen without compromising visual aesthetics.  That is why the best mobile apps will transcend the device - the best apps will emanate from the shopper within the shopping experience.

Television is a safe bet.  It has been around for one-half century.  It is proven, modeled (with reach and frequency curves), and provides immediate high exposure.  Oh yeah, and no one gets fire for recommending television.

Some clients and agency people have the luxury of wrapping a multi-million dollar, television-campaign, security blanket around their careers.  It works — no one gets fired for recommending a television campaign.  Sure, the product may not sell, but that must be the fault of the product designer or the price point; maybe even logistics.  It sure as heck was not the ad guy — he recommended television.

About four years ago I worked on the Pontiac G5 launch.  The Pontiac Client had a flair for the dramatic (he was behind the Oprah G6 launch, where all audience members received a new car).  For the G5 launch he declared it would be the “first all digital launch”.  A bold move considering most automotive marketers just dabbled in digital.  Sure they may put a million or two in digital, but the bulk of the money went into television. But, the G5 launch would be different.  It would be all digital.  It would live or die on the Internet.

Did it work?  Doesn’t matter.  The point of the story is it takes a bold move to not use television, especially if you have tens of millions of dollars in your media coffers.  I am sure many people in the business have a G5 launch story.  And  there are plenty of other clients who thought about an “all digital launch”, but the  clients and/or agency people got cold feet and added television to the campaign.

Television is an easy sell.  
 The reality is with television the media gods plug numbers into their reach and frequency models and can guesstimate how much impact the campaign will create.  And just maybe the agency has a data wizard that can interpolate how the reach and frequency will relate to different funnel measures: awareness, familiarity, favorable opinion, consideration, intent, and purchase.  Seems scientific.  Seems plausible.  Seems like it will work (insert visual two agency people doing a high-five slap).  Seems like we are missing something — oh yeah, the idea.

For those who don’t know, I began my career (eons ago) in media research, and I will tell you media models do work — sometimes.  The obvious problem is the model treats ads like they’re widgets — like there interchangeable.  The model is about efficiency, not effectiveness.   The reach and frequency model is illogical — it is illogical because the creative will have no discernible difference in the campaign results.  The model may misjudge the impact of the campaign.  If the creative is lame, you will have no impact regardless of what the model spits out, and conversely  if the creative is superior you may be wasting money, becuase you already persuasively made your point in the first couple of exposures.

You can’t model the subjective
This is an interesting debate, because the models may hold us back.  Subjectivity in creative, in ideas, and in different channels is difficult to measure.  As we increase efforts in lesser known areas like digital, social, and mobile, the comfort level of many decision makers decrease.  Many people think these channels make for nice tactics, but they wouldn’t bet their entire product launch on them.  The prefer the television security blanket.

This debate needs to go to a higher plateau, because it isn’t about the tactics or picking a channel.  Unfortunately many people in advertising begin with tactical elements like a Super Bowl commercial, facebook page, or mobile QR Codes.  An all TV or all digital launch makes very little sense, because like the media model, picking on channel is not an idea, nor does it account for a bigger idea.

The true gurus see advertising through ideas.   Ideas that are impactful.  Ideas that can effect people with one exposure. However, ideas are risky.  Risk mitigation will tell you to test an idea before you invest — before you launch.  So we test.  The problem is we often test our ideas through television or some video format.  This testing method may be fine for television or other intrusive media , but it does not work well  for interactive campaigns.  Sure, a marketer could just create the site and test it, but creating a $500,000 to $1 million web site could be a waste of money, or worse result in consumer backlash.

I guess this is where the boldness needs to happen.  The willingness to take risks when we can’t model our future.  We shouldn’t be careless in taking risks — we should be educated.  Ideas should be generated from consumer insights, brand insights, and channel insights.  Insights rooted in data — not just opinion.  These ideas will transcend any one channel.  They will live in the cross section of a brand truth and a consumer insight, and will be executed through channels that maximize the impact of the idea.  If the premise of launching a product without a media model, don’t fret — you can always wrap yourself in a television security blanket.