In today’s world, it’s harder than ever to spark a consumer impulse. Amidst all the chaff, the clutter of a thousand billboards, the noise of a million commercials, to get today’s jaded consumers to respond to a message – any message – is no mean feat. Worse, not every impulse sparked is an impulse acted upon: untold thousands of impulses lie extinguished by the waysides of advertising because consumers were unable to act on that impulse at that instant, because they were running late to a meeting, because they didn’t have a pen with them to note down the details, because they just forgot, because... just because.

For an advertiser, every consumer impulse sparked is a small victory; every one that is subsequently snuffed out is a great tragedy.

Snipp helps advertisers minimize lost impulses. Snipp is based on a few fundamental premises:

1. That consumers often wish to respond to an offline ad they are interested in but are unable to act upon that impulse for a variety of reasons
2. That the one device that most consumers have with them at all times is their mobile phone
3. That paradoxically, even though mobile phones may be the ubiquitous device of choice, phones are not ideally suited for complex purchase decisions or information searches. The PC is a much better medium for transactions

Snipp provides consumers with the ability to easily and effectively time-shift the desire to act upon an impulse to a time and medium that is both preferable and better-suited for most transactions.

Actions and metrics

Snipp brings with it other benefits to advertisers. Offline advertising fails to provide advertisers with the the actionability and metrics that online advertising offers. Snipp attempts to remedy these two issues for offline advertisers.

Snipp can enable a rich set of follow-on actions for consumers once they have snipped at a Snippet. Advertisers can specify any combination of actions they wish to implement:

• Provide more information about the item (through SMS and email)
• Email links to purchase the item (including straight to checkout links)
• Provide discount coupons or invitations to marketing events
• Generate a list of related items they might be interested in
• Enroll users in a distribution list through which the advertiser can send follow-up emails or SMSs

By tracking the number of users who Snipped a particular item, advertisers can gauge with better precision the effectiveness of a particular ad and how many people responded to it. Snipp provides advertisers with a rich set of reporting tools to measure the impact of their offline media campaigns and manipulate the data as they wish.

Snipp for performance

The Snipp service is provided to advertisers on a pay-per-Snip model, whereby advertisers only pay for actual Snipps generated by consumers. This enables advertisers to effectively tie their costs of using the service to the effectiveness of the service itself.