Give beleaguered General Motors a few points. Its all-American Chevy brand had a major presence at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival. In March, the 2011 Chevy Volt electric car and Chevy Cruze sedan were front and center at the Austin, Texas–based confab of cool as the brand tapped mobile media to bond with the tech-savvy, early-adopter attendees. SXSW took place March 11 to 20, its interactive track March 12 to 15.

Challenge: As a super sponsor of SXSW, Chevy used the event as a showcase for the Volt and the Cruze and test bed for mobile marketing. That neither vehicle was available presented a challenge for Chevy. “We recognized that to be effective with a digital, social media audience you can’t just go in and put a logo all over something. That’s not engaging and it wasn’t an automotive event,” said Christopher Barger, General Motors’ director of global social media, in an interview with eMarketer May 20.

Chevy wanted to build awareness among attendees for both the vehicles before the major marketing pushes began, but it didn’t necessarily see SXSW a near-term lead-generating opportunity. It decided to offer experiences that would inspire attendees to associate the brand with cutting-edge cool. (Read more…)

We know mobile advertising is effective. The question is: how effective? Recent studies suggest pretty solid results for both direct response and branding metrics, better, in fact than some online ads.

The lead article in yesterday’s eMarketer newsletter, for example, reported low ad recall but high response rates for location-based service ads, based on results of a recent Luth/Mobile Marketing Association study. On the other hand, the same survey indicated fairly high recall rates (and correspondingly lower response rates) for display ads seen while browsing or using applications, particularly among mobile users ages 18 to 34.

The 11th installment of InsightExpress’ Digital Consumer Portrait likewise indicates impressive branding and direct response metrics for mobile ad campaigns. In a podcast interview with MobileBeyond, Joy Cicman Liuzzo, InsightExpress’ senior director of marketing & mobile research, noted that banner ads on mobile websites generate the highest click-through rates and the lowest annoyance factor, although among “mobile intensives,” 68% of whom have smartphones, app banners (appearing in both the top and bottom of the application) also generated favorable results.

In an earlier interview with Mobile Marketer, Ms. Liuzzo discussed how, in some cases, particularly where brand favorability and purchase intent are concerned, mobile ads can be five-to-six times more effective than online ads. Overall, mobile display ads outperformed SMS and mobile video in every category other than aided awareness and brand favorability.

These findings add weight to the interviews eMarketer conducted last fall with executives from Razorfish, JumpTap and Admob, who indicated that response rates to their display campaigns were as much as 10 times as high as those on the desktop Web. Patrick Moorehead (then with Razorfish but now VP and director of mobile platforms at Draftfcb) told eMarketer he had seen click-through rates for sponsored SMS campaigns go as high as 10%. Note that full versions of these interviews are available to eMarketer Total Access clients only.

One of the main points of last fall’s “Mobile Marketing and Advertising: Change Is in the Air” report was that the lack of on-screen clutter (relative to the desktop) and the ability to reach people at their point of interest contribute to mobile ad effectiveness. Higher response rates and better branding metrics, in turn, help make the medium more appealing to advertisers. As indicated by studies cited here, these trends—along with the ongoing mobile app frenzy—continue to drive the market forward.

A February 2010 Edison Research study of Twitter usage and demographics is making the rounds on several blogs, and some readers think they have found a problem for microblogging marketers: Twitter’s failure to convert awareness to usage.

However, that finding is not about brand awareness—unless the brand is Twitter itself. The site rose in popularity last year and got plenty of attention from the mainstream press. The result? Almost as many people have heard of Twitter as Facebook.

At the same time, relatively few people who have heard of Twitter actually use it. That “conversion rate” may be a problem for Twitter itself, though the service still boasts tens of millions of users (and counting), and keeps those users engaged over time.

But for marketers, there is plenty of data to support targeting Twitter. The Edison study itself found more than one-half of Twitter users followed a brand, compared with just 16% of other social network users. Small businesses have found Twitter effective for lead generation, and Twitter users are more likely than Facebook users to respond to brand recommendations from friends. There is also evidence from companies like IBM and Dell that Twitter promotion can make millions.

Skepticism is healthy, but perhaps the most experienced social media marketers are onto something and Twitter marketing is worthwhile.