Timberland is rolling out a collection of interactive mobile ads to encourage customers to purchase its new line of footwear featuring SensorFlex technology.

The ads are a part of a larger campaign that features the full advertising suite of campaign tricks along with some influencer endorsements. The interactive mobile ads are an attempt by Timberland to tap into mobile’s unique power to drive customers directly and immediately to the purchasing stage.

“When people think of Timberland, words like ‘rugged’ and ‘heritage’ and ‘quality’ tend to come to mind – and those are great attributes for a brand to have,” said Jim Davey, vice president of global brand marketing for Timberland. “But the spring SensorFlex™ campaign showcases a new Timberland with lighter, more modern looks that can be worn in all four seasons, day to night, for any occasion.”

Interactive ads
When designing any marketing campaign, marketers always want to have the most direct connection possible between the advertisement that the consumer sees and the actual purchase that they make later.

For a long time, these connections were hard to measure objectively.

For one, there was no reasonable way to always know how a consumer got to the purchasing stage of the transaction and what led them to that moment.

Digital has changed that significantly with direct attribution and call-to-action ads being a great way to correlate advertising with purchasing.

Mobile has made that even more potent of a possibility thanks to its status as one of the primary ways that consumers shop online and because of the immediacy with which brands and marketers can tie a mobile presence to a specific person.

Timberland is the latest brand to make use of these types of direct attributions thanks to a new ad campaign that seeks to drive up purchases for the brand’s newest footwear collection, which makes use of a special new construction technique called SensorFlex that makes its boots even more flexible than before.

Timberland is promoting that new style with a bevy of standard marketing tactics, including demonstrations by dancers and choreographers wearing SensorTech footwear to show off how light and flexible it is.

But nice as those ads are, they do not give consumers a great idea of how exactly the flexibility works. For that, Timberland turned to mobile.

The company is rolling out a series of mobile ads that are interactive and allow consumers to test out the SensorFlex system for themselves.

Immediate and interactive
These ads are only the latest step on the part of apparel brands to leverage mobile to drive up sales.

And Timberland is hardly the first to do so.

Express recently launched a campaign that leveraged the menswear lifestyle aesthetic to pair whiskey subscriptions with men’s apparel (see story).

Meanwhile, Guess tapped into a different area in which mobile tends to dominate – social media – for a campaign that gives consumers inspiration for a New Year’s celebration outfit based on advice from social media influencers (see story).

All of these campaigns represent just some of the ways that apparel brands such as Timberland are working mobile to their advantage.

The strength of mobile lies in its interactivity and immediacy, and Timberland is milking that advantage for all it is worth.

“Highlighting flexibility in a dramatic and powerful way is a great way to surprise consumers with the versatility of the Timberland brand,” Mr. Davey said.