Shake This Ad: Dockers Uses iPhone In Unusual Marketing Effort
Dockers, the apparel-maker known for pleated slacks and casual Friday’s, is the latest advertiser to jump on the iPhone bandwagon. AdAge.com reports that the iPhone appealed to the San Francisco-based company because it gave a way for users a way to interact with its ad using the phone’s accelerometer. Users shake the phone in order to see Seattle urban street dancer, Dufon, dance in a pair of Dockers. The ad will appear in several iPhone games, including iBasketball, iGolf and iBowl, and is similar to applications released by Gap and Target for the holidays. The Gap app allowed people to mix-and-match outfits with the swipe of a finger, while Target allowed you to search for gifts by shaking a virtual snow globe. The big difference is that the Dockers ad will appear in a free game that a user might want to download anyway, whereas Gap and Target were asking users to download their standalone apps.
Patti Sircus Bender, director of brand marketing at Dockers, told AdAge that the ad is targeting tech-savvy 30- to 39-year-old men. “With the introduction of the iPhone and other technologies, it became clear to us that we need to talk to our target when and where he’s open to our message.” In this scenario, “he’s in gaming mode and in the mood to be entertained.” The ad was created by OMD, Docker’s media agency, and Razorfish is Docker’s online and creative agency of record. The iBasketball app is available today, but the ad isn’t launching until later this week. It will run for four weeks.
Photo Credit: AdAge.com.
Thanks for covering this, Tricia. My team at Medialets provided all of the technology behind this. Our ad technology lets agencies and brands like OMD and Dockers build rich media ads that can do in an ad unit much of what can be done in a native app without having to face the distribution challenges inherent in shipping a new app to consumers.
Part of this solution is a new generation of ad analytics that reports on performance from a number of perspectives including CPM, cost per engagement, effective cost per click, and cost per time unit. We'll add more over time so that brands can compare campaigns served using our technology against other marketing initiatives they are running. Transparency is key.
This is a unique way of using advertising for a company like Dockers and will open up different advertising channel for more companies in the coming years.