NEW YORK ? A Mondelez International executive at the MMA Forum 2013 said that being able to understand a consumer's entire shopping journey will give brands a disruptive competitive advantage in mobile.

During the ?Mobile Marketing: Demographics are Dead? session, executives from Mondelez International, Catalina and Ansible spoke about how marketers can leverage purchase behavior to trigger contextually-relevant messages to consumers. The session was moderated by Sarah Fay, former CEO of Aegis Media North America.

?We talk so much about big data, but this is really the battle for small data, for being able to understand how I connect with that consumer and understand their entire journey as well as their history and deliver them something that?s going to provide disruption or a disruptive competitive advantage for myself,? said Bonin Bough, vice president of global media and consumer engagement at Mondelez International, Deerfield, IL.

?There?s a couple of things that I consistently think about ? how is this going to continue to empower this ecosystem to make all of us smarter and to deliver what are going to be transformative results,? he said.

Mobile snacks
Last year, Mondelez International spun itself out from Kraft. A program called Mobile Futures was developed to build up mobile marketing efforts around some of Kraft?s well-known snack brands.

To help this initiative, Kraft dedicated 10 percent of its media spend to mobile (see story).

According to Mr. Bough, there are four pillars in Mondelez International?s turn towards aggressively going into mobile.

The first one is around video equivalency.

The second pillar is about engagement. When the company combines digital with television marketing, for example, engagement is higher.

The third centers around using mobile as an impulse media, and the final is about pulling everything together in a retail environment.

?I would say everyone in the organization is laser-focused on that, and what?s amazing is that as soon as we made that bet, all of the data that has come back on the programs that we have run have been super-positive,? Mr. Bough said.

There is a big opportunity to target consumers inside grocery stores at the zero moment of truth as long as the message is relevant.

For example, a consumer who picks up a package of cheese and scans it in the grocery store can be linked with a digital message that encourages consumers to try a type of cracker to go with it.

Being able to target consumers with these kinds of programs is causing Mondelez International to see conversion rates that it has never seen before, according to Mr. Bough.

Despite the stereotypes about digital marketing primarily targeting younger consumers, Mondelez International is seeing that the core group of consumers who engage in promotions are moms with an average income of $70,000 because it saves them time and is convenient.

Then the challenge is for marketers to turn the in-store engagement into loyalty.

One example of a campaign that Mondelez International has rolled out is a mobile game for its Oreo brand called Twist, Lick, Dunk.

The game had two goals according to Mr. Bough ? to see how quickly Mondelez International could scale up its mobile launch and to see if the company could develop a game that would be cash-positive within six months.

The game has in-app advertising, which helps the company monetize the app, and according to Mr. Bough will be cash-positive six months from its launch earlier this year.

Additionally, the game has three million downloads and 200,000 daily active users.

Shop on mobile
According to Todd Morris, executive vice president of mobile and marketing at Catalina, St. Petersburg, FL, consumers ignore 98 percent of what is sold in a grocery store.

Therefore, the opportunity with mobile is to tie the shopper history into the experience to target the two percent of products that consumers use and like.

Personalizing the experience via mobile can double the response rates of traditional media, per Mr. Morris.

For example, Catalina has a program in 350 stores that lets consumers buy their entire grocery shopping list via their smartphones by scanning the UPCs on products and paying through their devices.

Per Mr. Morris, these consumers are spending 30 minutes per session, and spend 40 percent more than consumers who do not use their phone to shop.

Additionally, these users also spend eight percent over time.

?The reason we think that that?s the case is because if you picture a mild budget [of a consumer] who has $100 to spend this week, she?s guessing when it?s just in her heart that she?s waiting to not be embarrassed at the check-out,? Mr. Morris said.

?But if she has a running total on her phone, she knows that she can throw in some gum, she knows that she can throw in a People magazine because she has $5 in room,? he said.

?What we think it is, is because she knows where she?s at because she?s getting real-time savings alerts all on her phone, she feels permission to spend a little bit more.?

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York