By Ann Oliver, Account Director

Using Mobile Technology to Reach Moms in New Ways

My daughter was growing bored sitting, once again, waiting for her brother’s baseball practice to wrap up. The usual distractions and games had grown tired, and I was running out of tricks. I checked the time on my Blackberry, noticed the icon for Pandora and had an idea. In less than 90 seconds, my daughter was happily singing along on her very own “Hannah Montana” station I created in the Pandora app. Occupied child, happy mom.

The call for app-based mobile experiences just keeps getting louder. commScore estimates that there are now more than 200,000 mobile apps available across various smartphone platforms, and the numbers keep growing.  That got me wondering, are mobile applications a good way for marketers to reach busy moms?

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By Ann Oliver, Account Director

Finding reasons to celebrate

We recently launched a new campaign for Balloon Time Helium Balloon Kits. We started the project by laying out our communication objectives, and then talked about strategies that will help us reach these goals. Sounds pretty traditional so far, right?  But connecting with moms and reaching moms during the party decoration purchasing cycle has led us to develop some very fun social media applications to integrate with our traditional programs.

Why this investment in social media now?

Is 2009 the year to risk our limited marketing funds and test the waters of social media? Our Balloon Time client has enjoyed tremendous success with their online marketing program since its inception just four short years ago. Of course over that time we’ve evolved the program and changed some of the media partners and tactics we started with. But our objective has remained consistent - connect with influencer moms. The research we’ve seen points to social media as a key connection point.

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