Should brands develop applications for mobile handsets?

There has been a resurgence in "app stores" driven by the success of Apple App store. Android, Apple, Samsung, RIM, O2 and Nokia (rumours) have all announced plans to move into the space.

So should brands look to develop mobile applications?

There is always a danger that brands ‘pile-in’ to a new way of getting in front of consumers. The beauty, and Holy Grail, here is that if a brand can create a compelling/useful application it will received regular on-going usage and potentially become a viral phenomenon. This was clearly demonstrated within the area of social network applications – eg Facebook apps where there was a rush to develop branded applications

In the majority of cases however these Facebook applications weren’t useful and got the minimum of on-going usage – with client picking up the (often) quite large development costs. Of course there are huge successes - Trip Advisor’s ‘Cities I have Visited’ being one. It’s a good example of the fact that the most successful applications will always provide a service for consumers

So brands need to learn the lessons from the world of social media before rushing headlong into the mobile application world. Building for the iPhone is one thing (it’s largely one handset and operating system) – but building for the myriad of manufacturers (eg Samsung, Nokia etc), handset variations and network providers (eg Vodafone, O2 etc) means that an added ‘watch-out’ for brands is that applications for mobile phones are more complex (and therefore expensive) to build

So what are the golden rules for brands in considering the development of a mobile application? Brand teams need to ask themselves:

• “Would I/my customer really use this?”/ “would I/they want to send this to friends?” – many ideas fail to ever meet this most basic of usefulness/viral requirements
• “Is credible brand territory” – Carling’s iPint is a great brand fit, but Aston Martin’s brand Nokia phone felt too mass market for the brand

If the answer to these is ‘yes’ then brands should minimise complexity of their mobile developments; focus on the most popular handsets rather than all possible configurations – and maximise the PR around it (that will put the brand in front of more consumers than the application itself will)