Multi-channel marketing

Last year Kia released their Game On app for the Australian Open. It’s back again this year, but with a few changes.

If you’re unfamiliar with Game On, it’s an interactive app that lets you return Australia’s own (and the world’s fastest server) Sam Groth’s serve live from your TV, with your phone. Although this year's version of Game On is more or less the same as last year's one, it comes with an added feature:

You're able to return Grothy’s serve using your smart watch.

In a previous article, we speculated that the future of mobile marketing rests on the point that everything is going multi-mobile. The Game On app evinced this point pretty well. Now, however, with the introduction of its smart watch capabilities, the point is even clearer. And just last night, I experienced the truth of it first-hand.

While watching the tennis, I faced a conundrum. In an all Aussie showdown, Kokkinakis and Game On Groth were sweating it out in a five-set marathon of heavy hitting in Hisense Arena. Kyrgios was taking the giant Croat Karlovic (who’s easily a top-twenty standard player) to town on Margaret Court. Nadal was clawing and scratching his way through an epic five-setter against a completely unknown Smyczek ranked 112. The conundrum? Which match to watch? The answer to that question:

All three, and then some.

Thanks to the Seven Sport app by Yahoo, I was able to have Kokkinakis and Groth on my laptop, Nadal on my iPad beside the laptop, and on my iPhone I was oscillating between watching Kyrgios and checking out the latest results from the other courts.

What I found interesting about last night’s cross-device shenanigans was that prior, I’d never considered myself someone who uses his mobile technologies in such a way. I don’t text while I walk; if I’m with friends I avoid my phone as much as possible; and if I’m on my laptop I typically have little use for my tablet. In fact, I consciously aim to reduce the time I spend inside the white shroud of my glowing screens when I'm at home. I spend long enough buried in the absorptive shroud of my laptop at work. Home time's a needed breather from the ever-present technologies smothering me at work.

Turns out, however, habits aren't so easily escaped.

After giving the matter a little attention, despite my best efforts, I do indulge in the beguiling realm of mult-device use. And I do it more than I thought I did. At some point it became a routine. Normal. And I've a feeling that's how it's going to remain. I can't help it.

Thanks to this new way we’re engaging our technologies, mobile marketing is quickly turning into a beast of many heads. It has to. Marketers and business owners have to keep up-to-date with the ways people are using their devices, because that’s how customers are engaging the modern business.

Kia has shown us how multi-device marketing can be utilised. Although we don’t all have the same budgets Kia does to make such elaborate campaigns happen, the message that this campaign smears across the colourful tapestry that is mobile marketing is clear: think multi.