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Emotive mobile advertising imperative for jewelers this St. Valentine’s Day

January 23, 2012

Tiffany & Co. mobile site

Tapping into affluent consumers’ emotions, rather than product-pushing, is the main point behind any mobile marketing tactic this St. Valentine’s Day.

Mobile sites, applications, banner ads and SMS can all contribute to using emotive marketing to inspire feelings for loved ones at any place or time. By using this strategy, brands run a better chance of driving transactions.

“Regardless of the tactics employed, the merchant must first understand the necessary duality of their overarching strategy,” said Scott Forshay, Austin, TX-based luxury and premium brand mobile strategist. “More often than not, a jewelry purchase is a gifted purchase – this is even truer of a Valentine’s Day purchase.

“As such, the merchant must derive strategies that cater to both the recipient and the purchaser through slightly nuanced approaches,” he said. “Successful mobile marketing to the recipient should be about seduction and the creation of desire.

“In this instance, delivering compelling content specific to romance and love allows the merchant to transcend the status of simply a purveyor of fine jewelry and position it as a brand integrally associated with the experience of romance.”

Love is in the airwaves
One mobile tactic to dually inspire emotion and drive transactions is through apps.

“We are seeing more luxury jewelry companies adding a mobile app to their marketing campaign as it is the most direct way to get in touch with their consumer,” said Doo Kim, director of marketing and advertising at Appitalism, New York.

An obvious example is the What Makes Love True app by Tiffany & Co.

Tiffany & Co.’s What Makes Love True app

A tactic that has the same idea but is more platform-agnostic is a mobile-optimized site that allows transactions.

Mobile sites can offer content and commerce, should the occasion arise where consumers want to buy on the spot.

For example, De Beers’ mobile site is holiday-themed.

De Beers mobile site

Brands can even combine different types of mobile marketing through apps and sites such as banner or pop-up ads.

“For this coming Valentine’s Day, consumers will use their smartphone to search, browse, buy or find the closest store, giving luxury jewelers the perfect opportunity to engage directly with their customers by sending location-based offers and messages to drive consumers to their stores or to buy through their mobile device,” said Dan Lowden, vice president of marketing at Digby, Austin, TX.

In fact, any sort of location-based advertising would work well for luxury brands.

Luxury jewelers that have apps could send push notifications to consumers, or use opt-in SMS messaging to immediately connect with affluent users.

“Consumers will use mobile this Valentine’s Day to check prices, inventory, store hours and also to purchase,” said Jeff Hasen, chief marketing officer of Hipcricket, Kirkland, WA. “SMS plays an important role for several reasons, including its reach to nearly all mobile users and consumers’ increased responses to calls-to-action.

“Wise retailers, including luxury jewelers, though, take a wider view,” he said. “SMS is often the springboard to valuable opt-in databases that allow for remarketing opportunities.”

Mobile misses
There are definitely a few “do-not’s” when it comes to marketing for Valentine’s Day.

“The one thing mobile marketers should try to be aware of for Valentine’s Day is to not be overly obnoxious about this Hallmark holiday,” Appitalism’s Ms. Kim said.

“All in all, luxury jewelers should highly consider developing a Valentine’s Day app but hook the consumer immediately by offering an incentive for downloading an app, because in what world do you see a male downloading a jewelry app just for the hell of it?” she said.

If brands choose to enable commerce on their apps or sites, they should definitely make sure they have all advertised products in stock.

After all, emotions will be running high, especially if consumers wait until the last minute to purchase.

The most important measure to remember come Feb. 14 is, basically, do not market just to do so.

Consumers, especially of the affluent persuasion, will expect a seamless process throughout all marketing channels and shoddy or incomplete mobile attempts may just annoy or frustrate them.

“The most potentially dangerous tactical error that marketers can make in engaging the mobile consumer is to ignore the differentiated elements of the medium itself and present a medium agnostic, universal messaging strategy,” Mr. Forshay said.

“Whether termed cross-channel, omnichannel, transmedia or brand everywhere, successful marketing across mediums is not based on uniformity but, rather, requires an understanding of the inherent strengths of the individual medium and how to leverage these differentiated elements most advantageously,” he said. “The mobile medium is uniquely contextually relevant, given its understanding of time and location, and marketers must use this to their advantage to effectively solve the immediacy variable inherent in mobile interactions.

“With mobile, there is sophistication in speed and simplicity.”

Final Take
Rachel Lamb, associate reporter on Luxury Daily, New York

Rachel Lamb is an associate reporter on Luxury Daily. Her beats are apparel and accessories, arts and entertainment, education, food and beverage, fragrance and personal care, government, healthcare, home furnishings, jewelry, legal/privacy and nonprofits. Reach her at rachel@napean.com.