NEW YORK ? Men's Health, Benjamin Moore & Co. and Zagat Survey said brands must use mobile to reach new consumers and retain customer loyalty.

Representatives from Men?s Health, Zagat Survey, Benjamin Moore & Co. and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers discussed their mobile strategy and the importance of applications to their brands during a panel at Apps for Brands. Applications don?t hurt the existing brand, like a print publication, rather they extend the brand?s reach according to Men?s Health.

?The gold rush for applications is over now, so hurry up and get on board,? said Matt Bean, articles and brand editor at Men?s Health, New York. ?The product doesn?t have to go out the door fully baked, it shouldn't be half-baked, but it doesn?t have to be 100 percent perfect.

?We slept through the first wave of iPhone apps and we look at iFitness and some of the other apps out there who planted their flag first and see how much it helped them," he said.

Men?s Health stays active on iPhone
Men?s Health is a fitness magazine targeting males published by Rodale.

Currently the magazine has several iPhone applications in the App Store and is gearing up to launch more, showing no signs of slowing down its brand extension into mobile.

Fifteen months ago, Men?s Health missed the boat, Mr. Bean said.

Competitors grabbed the market share in the fitness space of the App Store and Men?s Health took notice.

Mr. Bean recommends getting into the application game however quickly a brand can.

Being a Cubs fan, the Major League Baseball application inspired him to leverage the iPhone platform for his brand.

When it came time to develop the applications, Mr. Bean said he met with several different kinds of developers and cautioned potential brands to avoid putting all the creative power into outside hands. Brands should remain active in the development process beyond content production.

?For us we wanted to maintain control of the brand and learn a little bit about the space,? Mr. Bean said. ?We worked with Fuzz and a couple of other developers to do code and design but we also had a hands-on approach in the user interface and design, which helps us learn about the space.?

One of the newest applications from Men?s Health, the Jimmy the Bartender application, led the magazine to leverage the iPhone's functionality to further engage users beyond what they are used to from the magazine's Jimmy column (see story).

Mr. Bean said that people are not going to buy an application that features 10 years of achieved magazine material because the application needs to appeal to a larger consumer group. Mobile content should be consumable in small doses.

A breakout hit from the new application is the Instant Wingman feature. Men?s Health plans to release a free version of it soon.

?By developing our apps, it helped craft a long-term strategy and understanding of this new content space,? Mr. Bean said.

Zagat, at your service
Zagat has been leveraging the mobile channel for 10 years, first launching on the Palm platform and then extending to other devices such as the iPhone and Android-powered phones.

Ryan Charles, senior product and marketing manager at Zagat Survey, New York, said mobile was a natural evolution of the company?s product guides.

Mobile is a good way to increase revenue if a brand is successful in a back-to-basics goal-focused content campaign.

?It?s a natural evolution of product guides that were created to fit in a jacket pocket,? Mr. Charles said. ?Now consumers can fit 45 guides in their pocket.?

On the Zagat iPhone application, Zagat Recommends, consumers get asked a series of questions to help the application better understand their needs. After all of the questions have been answered, the application serves a recommendation.

Mr. Charles said that the application was designed to emulate asking a friend or hotel concierge for dining tips.

Zagat is No. 77 on the list of most-downloaded paid applications out of the approximately 58,000 premium applications.

The survey brand recently launched an augmented reality application letting users see a digital map of Zagat-rated places on the Android platform earlier this year, setting an example of new ways mobile can be used to extend brands.

What about ben?
Carl Minchew, director of product development at Benjamin Moore & Co., Montvale, NJ, said that while the ben Color Capture application was a huge success for the company, it failed to generate sales of the paint giant?s new ben brand.

?The ben Color Capture app was more of a fun tool type of software,? Mr. Minchew said. ?We actually announced the software before we built it and that gave us an incentive to go build it.?

Benjamin Moore & Co. is a Berkshire Hathaway company founded in 1883 and is one of the country?s biggest paint manufacturers.

Mr. Minchew said the application was created to attract new consumers to the brand (see story).

While it was a success for the Benjamin Moore brand, it did not get the new ben brand off the ground to the extent the company had hoped.

Still, the company plans to run mobile marketing initiatives going forward.

The iFund
KPCB, a venture capital firm, launched the iFund program because of its belief in the power of applications.

The iFund program was set up to fund ideas and products that extend the iPhone and iPod touch platform.

So far the iFund has been seen 3,300 proposals, met with 250 companies and funded fewer than 10 applications.

?There is a reasonable change mobile has been overhyped in the short term sense,? said Aileen Lee, partner at KPCB, Menlo Park, CA. ?But, in the long term, I think it has been under-hyped.?

Ms. Lee said mobile has changed interaction and the everyday usefulness of products in a consumer?s everyday life.

The iPhone platform and App Store have outdone the already successful iPod touch device, showing users demand more, Ms Lee said.

Tips of the trade
When a brand is first entering the iPhone application arena, it must remember all aspects of the device?s functionality to truly engage users.

One increasingly popular function is the iPhone's GPS capabilities. Zagat, Benjamin Moore and Men?s Health all leveraged it in their respective applications.

Mr. Bean said that Men?s Health is using every application release to generate paid revenue and as an awareness builder.

?We are able to control which properties we promote in our apps and place offers for our other apps and subscriptions inside the apps,? he said. ?We?re looking to it as a profit center in 2010 and beyond.?

Being a paid application or subscription-based service will not hurt a brand, Mr. Charles said.

He cited The New York Times and Zagat?s Web services as good examples of consumers paying for content.

To be noticed in the application world, Mr. Charles said that there is one key: innovation.

 ?Innovation is increasingly more important as brands need to differentiate their apps at this point,? he said. ?You need something to draw people in and differentiate your brand and your app.

?Now it?s not as simple as it was 15 months ago,? he said.