It may be surprising to hear that Puma, the athletic apparel brand, released a smartphone earlier this year. It may be even more surprising to hear that, despite the lack of mobile technology experience at Puma, this was actually an intelligent, marketing-driven decision.

Why would Puma create a technology that seems so far from its core business or product? The answer lies within an idea called beyond the product marketing, which aims to fully leverage today’s technologies. By developing mobile service applications, marketers can give consumers relevant tools, collect actionable insights and, importantly, move the shopper along the path-to-purchase.

This idea takes Dr. Dan Herman’s theory of creating brand instrumentality beyond the product to a more tangible level. Dr. Herman is CEO of Competitive Advantages, an international firm specializing in strategy consulting. His theory is about product extension through psychological and emotional attributes of the brand.

“Beyond the product” marketing takes brand instrumentality a step further and provides a tangible utility, which reinforces emotional attributes. Brands have been focused on emotional brand extensions for years (e.g., the Mac versus PC personality-based commercials). It’s only natural in the digital age to drive this value-add extension to include product attributes.

For instance, the Kraft Big Fork Little Fork iPad app provides a plethora of resources in the form of recipes, cooking tips, how-to videos, education, games and shopping lists. To a shopper, this app is both useful and fun.

But the opportunities extend far beyond the surface of the pure consumer service. By constantly collecting data about clicks, video views, items on the shopping list, and searches, we can begin to formulate this raw data into actionable insights.

By collecting data about each individual utility, such as recipes, Kraft can serve up additional dishes, similar to those the user has previously read. Of course, the idea of tactical, contextual relevancy is nothing new in the digital marketing world. However, an iPad app like Kraft’s really gains momentum when we piece tactical data points together to formulate a full path-to-purchase insights model.

Doing this allows the marketer to push and pull the shopper through the shopping journey all with one application. If a marketer can take the most-read recipes, along with the most-viewed how-to videos, and pair these with the user-generated items on the shopping list, they can offer a targeted promotional hook within the same application. This means that there are potentially multiple moments-of-truth.

Furthermore, by layering in other data points, such as location and historical transactions, a marketer can push the communication at the right time and place. Depending on redemption, marketers can reformulate the offering to be more targeted.

Path-to-Purchase in a Box

This process allows the brand to enter into the consumption portion of the path-to-purchase, but ultimately drives the consumer to become a shopper in the consideration and pre-purchase buckets of the path-to-purchase. If the brand is able to integrate post-purchase activities, such as social media or product reviews funneled to an e-retailer, then they’ve integrated the other phases of the path-to-purchase cycle and taken their brand beyond the product.

By providing realistically usable services and solutions, a brand can be relevant beyond consumption. This is something not often achieved by brands that are usually only relevant closer to the in-store moment-of-truth or during usage.

By taking a holistic view to any application-like programming, a marketer is able to create a path-to-purchase in a box. In other words, by providing a services-based resource to consumers (such as an iPhone app), a brand is able to measure and manage the shopper along the path-to-purchase with one application — again, potentially creating multiple moments-of-truth.

The Starbucks Mobile Card iPhone app is another example of a simple utility. This allows shoppers to load money or gift certificates onto their phone for easy at-counter payment. By tracking purchases over a period of time, Starbucks can offer a free coffee to the shopper if they’ve seen a drop-off in purchases of that specific drink in recent weeks, for example.

Version 2.0 of this app might include location-specific offers, other utility data sets (maps, nutritional information) or social integration (buying a drink for a friend at another Starbucks via a Foursquare or Google Latitude integration).

We are currently working on an app here at Mars Advertising that will encompass 360 behaviors around social responsibility. We are integrating various social activities to encourage consumers and shoppers to help others, such as “checking-in” at their local food bank or taking a photo of a QR code on-product.

Promotional activities will be integrated, such as distributing coupons to friends. This not only aligns with socially responsible behavior, but also helps meet the brands’ sales objectives.

We are also developing a tool to segment shoppers by their behavior. By tracking shoppers within their mobile usage, we can not only optimize the content, but also determine where in the path-to-purchase they are. For instance, if a shopper is using the shopping list function, she may be in the consideration stage. If the shopper is loading coupons while in-store (which we know thanks to location data), she’s most likely in pre-purchase mode.

Serving Shopper Needs

Pushing brands beyond the tactical executions in mobile allows brands to offer full path-to-purchase tools while simultaneously measuring the effectiveness. Instead of using text messages or QR codes separately, we’re progressing towards integrating these tactics.

All of these tools, presented in the correct manner, give the shopper a reason to engage with the brand for more than just a one-off promotion and allow the marketer to build a deeper relationship with the shopper over time. A mobile application provides a brand relationship that is “always-on” and more than just a sales transaction.

There are benefits to apps beyond consumer utility and marketing insights. They also provide insights for non-mobile activation, such as stocking shelves with products from iPad shopping lists, specifically targeted to the store level.

Since an integrated marketing plan is usually the most effective, these applications can help solve the offline-to-online communication barrier. Furthermore, mobile apps provide real-time data, which drives real-time dialogues with shoppers. For instance, if a company knew that its competitor’s recall was a trending topic, it would be able to communicate with its shoppers in a timely and relevant manner.

Finally, mobile apps allow for the integration or dis-integration of third parties. For example, if a brand is limited in its options to develop a relationship with the shopper because of retail restrictions, it can tap into this direct-to-shopper communication platform. On the flip side, by integrating retail data with the existing app data, the communications become even more targeted, relevant and customized.

By creating marketing applications as holistic solutions that provide value to every part of a consumer’s life, the brand will become more relevant at all stages and be more effective at moving the shopper along the entire path-to-purchase.

By narrowing the shopper’s choices to the most appropriate options and providing a clear, simple path-to-purchase, marketers can give shoppers the freedom not simply to choose, but to choose well, building loyalty and increasing satisfaction over the long term.

They can develop consumer and shopper relationships beyond the product.