Mobile & Measuring Public Attitudes

Mobile has been used in marketing circles to measure public attitudes since its early days. The most common mobile executions were text to win contests, text voting interactions or text to screen set-ups at live events. In each case, marketers were able to gather important information about their customers. “Mobile marketing has helped companies gauge if they were creating the right kind of promotions, how popular their product is, how people use their products, what geographic locations are their most active markets and what people are thinking at events,” says Brady Murphy. “I don’t see why the same approach couldn’t be used for PR people trying to find the pulse of their audiences.”

The best use case for mobile and measuring public attitudes would be mining an existing database of customers who have opted-in to receive polling questions. Hill & Knowlton Canada’s David Jones cautions that care must be taken not to abuse the permission granted by the consumer but agrees that mobile could offer a fruitful instant snapshot of the public opinion.

The mobile web could also be used as an effective tactical touch point for polling.  Customers could easily be directed to a mobile website featuring a short series of questions of interest to the organization. The website URLs can be integrated into other communications vehicles and generate a useful sample size with appropriate distribution and targeting.

As early as 2003, CNN was using mobile as a channel to get viewer reaction to questions posed during broadcasts  and the practice has since been widely adopted by other media outlets. Nielsen Entertainment has also developed a mobile polling solution that they say “transforms even a basic mobile phone into a quantitative and qualitative data collection tool, enabling clients to reach consumers at precise moments immediately before and after being exposed to specific entertainment or advertising content. The application will also facilitate unsolicited consumer comment on programming, or content more generally.”

The Nielsen example illustrates how mobile can leverage context to gather nearly real-time information on a situation. Properly timed outbound messaging can hit subjects when they are activity engaged with the content in question. Responses can be processed almost instantaneously upon receipt giving the public relations professional a living dashboard of public attitudes. Imagine a not for profit organization that is holding a public event on an issue related to their mandate. Text message voting or a mobile website promoted at the event could allow the organization to solicit attendees opinions on the issue by having them vote on a series of related statements. That data could be processed in near real-time and speakers at the event could customize their content to address attendee concerns.  The data could also be compiled with the findings used to influence the tone and content of future communications.  The precedent for using mobile as a channel for measuring public attitudes has clearly been established.

The examples above show how text messaging and the mobile web can be used for gathering data on public attitudes and there is even more potential in mobile applications. Rising Smartphone penetration is a key tipping point as it serves as your mobile computer.  Applications offer richer experiences with better graphic and video capabilities. QWERTY keyboards allow for more detailed responses.  However, Smartphone users make up approximately 20% of the market so usage might have to see further growth before it is a truly viable polling channel.  Until that point is reached, mobile still provides a useful supplemental channel for measuring public attitudes and applying those findings to future communications programs.

Next Up:  Using mobile in crisis communications

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