Lately, there have been a lot of examples of brands or let’s call them “bigger corporate entities” launching an iPhone app to increase their brand recognition and basically just use the Apple App Store as a marketing channel. The North Face, Lufthansa or Coca-Cola are just a few examples of this. There certainly is no general answer as to whether this makes sense or not and should rather be evaluated on a case to case basis. The point we’d like to make is another:

In the beginning one might have thought it would be enough for those brands to use their already existing brand awareness to drive downloads of the app. This appears to have been the wrong strategy. Those applications that have been successful on the App Store so far, have all been really thought through and a lot of care was put into creating viable mobile products. Additionally, while they all may be useful in a different context, they all at least provide some kind of utility. This is also why several industry experts claim that branded apps are in fact no marketing at all. A few apps have even proven to be a very successful direct distribution channel, like the Pizza Hut app, which just recently exceeded 1 million in sales, generated directly through the app.

The most recent announcement of VW’s iPhone app exceeding 2 million app downloads is impressive, but in some ways not unexpected. Notice the time and effort that was put in thinking through the app and mobile apps as a marketing channel (quote from MobileMarketer):

“Volkswagen has done a lot of in-depth research, especially surrounding the GTI target consumer, and have found that in many cases, he is a tech-savvy individual, who enjoys social networking, plays games and spends time on mobile devices and in most cases, that device is an iPhone”

Additionally, the product provides a utility – it’s a fun game, though its clearly thought of as a marketing tool, as verified by Charlie Taylor, general manager of digital marketing at Volkswagen of America saying “the iPhone platform reaches our target customer’s sweet spot and allows us to make an impact in a way that a 30-second spot never could”.

So bottom line in our opinion is that brand and attention is helpful, but your app still needs to be a product with a definite target group and utility. And getting there demands effort. Common sense, right?