Notes from SMB Austin: Discussion of the iPad’s impact on Marketing

Social media breakfast met in Austin yesterday, with a discussion that explored the iPad’s role in business. Is the iPad innovative? What’s the difference between the iPad now, and the failed Newton of yore? Will the iPad play a disruptive role in media and publishing? Or is it little more than a big iPhone?

Some of the factors critical to success we discussed – differentiating the iPad from its failed predecessor – include:

• Context
• Ubiquity
• Adoption (largely driven by social media)

We then broke into 7 groups to discuss the iPad’s impact on different aspects of business and lifestyle. Our group talked about Marketing.

Breakout Group #4: the iPad’s Impact on Marketing:

The apps. Of course, the first thing we think about is the apps. What are the apps like? Are they different from those we know on the iPhone? Our Group iPad Owner took us through some of the apps he’s been using, such as USA Today and the like. Much like those of the iPhone, but more consumable on the larger screen. But how are these being supported by marketing, advertising? Still through traditional disruption style ads.

Social transforms linear. One of the interesting features of the iPad as ebook reader is the way it changes text from linear to distributed. You can still read a text linearly as you would a print book, but you can also jump to chapters, or highlight text and then share it out across social media. So there is potential here for ideas to travel across mediums. No, this isn’t unique to the iPad, but the iPad has the potential to make the traditionally linear and static formats of books social.

Remember the sales funnel. Amidst the discussion of the apps and social media potential the iPad brings, the point was raised, yes, but how do people discover these apps and social conversations? Which is an important point. Because social media is such a shiny object to so many marketers right now and huge chunks of marketing budgets are being put against tactics that address only the middle and bottom rungs of the sales funnel. But awareness is important too. And while social media has the potential to generate awareness, it’s likely to be niche, and it’s not a panacea.

 Print, reborn. So within the circles that focus on the “awareness” rung of the sales funnel – most notably advertising – this is one of the conversation taking place: The potential of the iPad to revitalize the dying print medium…specifically, breathing new life into a hybrid platform that promises the large format creative scope that traditional print spreads allowed advertisers, but with the interactive and measurement potential of digital. There’s still of course the complicated question of whether the iPad – and the iTunes Store model – will help or hinder the publishing industry, and whether in fact anything can save so broken a business model, but for advertisers at least, the iPad offers a new palette for creative impact.

Push reinforces pull. The form factor and ease-of-use contribute significantly to the “pull” aspect of the iPad. Users lean in, form an intimate relationship with the device – and the content – as they do with analog media. The iPad is digital, but it isn’t a work space. The relationship users form with the device and content is reinforced by its push notification features. Our Group iPad Owner illustrated this point with an anecdote about his consumption of NBA content, which has increased substantially since he began watching it on the iPad. Because of push notification. This is huge for broadcasters, publishers and marketers who have been steadily losing audience share-of-time to the fragmented media space that is the web. The iPad push functionality suggests the potential to draw audiences back.