Stories of Mobile Marketing Madness featuring Tappable, Adidas, Huawei & The Guardian

TL;DR

• There’s a new power couple in town: Adidas has started a love affair with Instagram and it’s bringing in the big money.
• What happens to tech when politics get involved? Looking at the case of Huawei and Google.
• If you want to harness the power of the open web with stories, Tappable’s got your back.
• The Guardian is in black and white and red no longer, after announcing £800 000 profit for the first time.
• Good news for retailers: Generation Z kids are still visiting stores — they’re just using their smartphones for the best deals.

ADIDAS & INSTAGRAM: A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN

Since March, sportswear giants Adidas have been participating in Instagram’s ‘Checkout from Instagram’ beta test. This allows users to shop, buy, and track their ideal goods directly via Instagram.

Although details of how much money brands are paying Instagram to participate in the program have been thin on the ground, the fee is evidently worth it as far as Adidas is concerned. Digiday reports there has been a 40% leap in first-quarter online sales for Adidas.

Adidas has been enjoying a growth period recently, reporting a 24% growth from the third quarter of 2018 to the fourth quarter. This is nothing compared to the first quarter of 2019, however, where they have recorded a total of $6.57bn in in-store and online sales. This comes out at a net profit of around $707 million — a 17% increase in net profit.

The Adidas x Instagram collaboration is one of 20 experiments the Facebook-owned company is trying out in 2019, and if this success is mirrored in the other companies, it looks like we’ve got ourselves another shopping trend to watch out for.

Here is our source.

LEAVING HUAWEI OUT IN THE COLD

While political tensions run high as the Trump administration double down in their economic argument with China, Huawei has found themselves on the ‘entity list’ as a threat to national security.

While Google has had to block Huawei’s future access to Android updates, the serious sanctions imposed on the Chinese firm is having an international butterfly effect. To add insult to serious injury, British-based chip designer ARM has announced it will stop all activities with the brand, and retailers around the world have stopped dealing with the company.

While currently there is a temporary license against the sanctions for Huawei, this is a temporary license which seems to offer a temporary reprieve. By August 19th, without further negotiations, the company will no longer be able to offer Google apps on any of its smart technology.

Here is our source.

BUILD STORIES WITH GOOGLE AMP

When it comes to allowing your customers and users to interact with your company, stories are a powerful and vital method of communication. Tappable Stories allow you to build your Google “Accelerated Mobile Pages Project” (or Google AMP), creating interactive videos specifically designed for smartphones.

There are three major real-world applications for this technology:

Marketing

While the concept of paying for ad clicks is familiar, this offers you a post-click user experience which leads to active conversions. The full scope of your potential can be unleashed with Tappable Stories.

Communication

Your customers and clients are already using their smartphones for everything from ordering groceries to moving house. If you’re not directly talking to them in an aesthetically pleasing way that is optimized for smartphone, you’re missing out.

Publishing

The reality is that content is consumers via mobile. This means that relying on outdated printed formats to translate is exactly the wrong way to convey the news to your audience. Give your readers an up-to-date experience that delivers what they want, when they want.

THE GUARDIAN GROUP IS BACK IN BLACK

For the first time in 20 years, the Guardian has announced that it has attained financial stability.

For the past three years, the company has been running on a gruellingly tight budget, which included cutting costs by 20%. Interestingly, rather than erecting a hard paywall, they offered the opportunity for donation-based membership, which saw them correct financial course.

In 2016, there were 12 000 paying members on the site — this has transformed into 655 000 paying customers and counting. Of these, 360, 000 are paying members on a recurring basis — the other 290 000 pay-for-print papers and digital memberships. This has led to an April ’18 — April ’19 revenue of $292 million, with an operating profit of $1.47 million.

To get to the first announced profit in twenty years, over the past three years the Guardian has received 1 million payments, with a combination of one-off donations, recurring membership payments, and print sales. Impressively, 55% of all their revenue comes from digital.

Here is our source.

GEN-Z ARE MOBILE SAVVY — BUT THEY’RE STILL GOING TO STORES

While there’s been a lot of debate about the future of the in-store experience, the statistics are in — and for those making doomsday predictions about the nature of in-store shopping, they make surprising reading.

Shoppers — in particular, Gen-Z shoppers — are still going to stores but they are now interacting with them in completely different ways.

• 64% of shoppers finish their sales journey in a store — with 39% starting it via mobile technology
• 69% of shoppers would rather consult a product review on their phone than ask for help from a store employee.
• 53% would rather use their mobile to find promotions or deals than consult a store employee.

So while there’s plenty to be done with driving e-commerce and mobile sales, the savvy store owner will embrace this change in approach to physical shopping and adjust their customer journey as a result.

Here is our source.