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EXCLUSIVE: Mobile Crowdsourcing Photo Service Supplies Media & Brands With Compelling Content

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:21:06 +0000

Every week over at m-pulse we discus the companies and concepts rocking the industry and my pick was Scoopshot, a mobile crowdsourcing app (and ecosystem) that allows media companies to post location-aware photo ‘assignments’ to the community of app users. The upshot is user-generated content that impresses on two counts: media (newspapers, magazines, online) have fresh content and people earn money for their photos. What’s more, the app is plugged into an ecosystem that manages right and makes payments.

It is refreshing to see such a well-executed strategy and end-to-end ecosystem, so I caught up with Niko Ruokosuo, who acts as the CEO of the company (owned by Helsinki-based P2S Media Group Inc.) and is in charge of Scoopshot’s internationalization efforts, business development operations and marketing. Niko has a long track record in the media industry and held executive positions in companies including: the Saudi Research and Marketing Group, one of the largest media organizations in the Middle East, the Finnish magazine publisher Sanoma Kaupunkilehdet and the Los Angeles Times. The team (and brains) behind Scoophot is Petri Rahja, along with CTO Timo Rinne and Head of Development Jussi Markula.

Scoopshot: at-a-glance

Scoopshot is a free mobile app for iPhone and android devices allowing users to capture and send photos to the media. An app for Windows Phone is next in the pipeline.

The service is ‘live’ in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands, where it is supported by agreements with leading media companies. Anyone, anywhere can download the app and start capturing photos (thus, responding to the ‘assignments’ posted by media companies to the ‘community’).

As of January Scoopshot counts over 35,000 registered users in 135 countries. (Of course, the real action is mainly in Europe because that’s where the media partners are — for the moment.) And stats show the users are fairly active, with 52 percent of the users actually using the Scoopshot app in the last two weeks of January (when I interviewed Niko).

Interview with Niko Ruokosuo

MG: You are in several countries in Europe through media partnerships. How do you set up shop?

Niko: We launch a country by making an agreement with media there. The company basically agrees that it will start using Scoopshot within that country. Then the question becomes how do we recruit the photographers, the Scoopshooters. In 90 percent of the cases, this comes from the media companies. They tell their readership that they are seeking user-generated content by means of Scoopshot.

MG: You have more than app, you also have a community and a way for media companies to post ‘assignments’ detailing the photos they want. How does this work?

Niko: The other major functionality in Scoopshot is a way for media can send targeted tasks to the Scoopshooters anywhere in the world. In other words, I select a region and I direct and send a push notification to all the Scoopshooters in that region asking them to take photographs of an event. At the same time I tell them how much I’m willing to reward them for that photo.

MG: Let’s talk about the IP to hook Scoopshooters up with media companies. Is it yours?

Niko: Every line of code, everything that is used within the system, is written by us. We have numerous patent applications, invention notifications that relate to the technology that we use and we’re fairly advanced in the process of applying for patents. Those relate to the messaging technology, the location technology and authenticity of the content that we can provide through the system. All communication is directed through the app. In the next version of the app the communication with our user base becomes much more visual and much more engaging…

MG: What can we look for?

Niko: We will introduce new features, new functions and they will all be focused on boosting ease of use and simplicity. Video support is next. This will allow Scooshooters to shoot and send video because we know how media now is yearning for video content at low cost because it improves stickiness and social media.

MG: It could also open up advertising opportunities…?

Niko: We’ll be introducing Scoopshot Race in a few weeks. That, to me , is very exciting because it turns the application into a marketing device. Let’s say that Coca-Cola wants to capture their consumers, the old fashioned theme of capture a Coke moment. They can send the branded Coca-Cola task with a description or image that pays out exactly what they are looking for, as well as the prices. It is very visually engaging for a competition as well. The app says ‘capture a Coca-Cola moment, push this button, take a photo and send it, and Coca-Cola will reward the best photo with 5,000 Euros.

To make this all possible for the brand to offer and manage we have built a website that takes the branding of a Coca-Cola and pushes all of those photos that the users send to a Coca-Cola moment website directly from the readers’ mobile phones. On top of that, we can also provide Coca-Cola with certain rights to those photos if they want to use them in their marketing.

MG: You mention Coca-Cola. It may be a brand on your radar, but what can you tell me about the brands that have signed up or showed serious interest?

Niko: We are in concrete discussions with agencies and brands. Interestingly, we also have interest from one of the top music companies in the world. They approached us and want to offer a branded app so the fans can take photos from concerts on the tour. So, I think the opportunities are pretty much endless. Any brand that wants users to become engaged and participate, they can use this app to capture the content as part of a bigger social-focused advertising campaign.

MG: It’s definitely an app that brands can use. Are you looking beyond that to in-app advertising?

Niko: In one of the next releases we want to be able to inform our users of certain things on the homepage. So, when they open the app they will see a field for messaging. How we’re going to use that field hasn’t been decided. In the early stages it will news and announcements about Scoopshot, like announcements, profiles of successful Scooshooters…

MG: Which brings me to another key question: how much money are the Scopshooters making?

Niko: On average, the media now pays 19 Euros per photo. But, we have had where media companies were so pleased with the results that they wanted to pay 5 times that.

MG: You are new — but you are also working to expand your footprint. Where will we see you launch next?

Niko: Our focus has been on Europe and Asia. We have signed to launch in countries. And I can tell you that we will also be launching outside of Europe. North America is also our focus. (Editor’s note: Niko hinted later that Latin American countries and Canada figure high on the list, so I gather we can look for those next…)

MG: Scoopshot has social media at its heart. How do fit in with all the other social media out there?

Niko: There is the ability to link Scoopshot on Facebook and media all together with this application by sharing what the user is doing on Facebook. I see Scoopshot fitting right in the middle, allowing media companies to reach out beyond the walls they have built to engage with people and encourage them to participate. We are right in the middle of that, building a bridge using social media and the eagerness of the audience to participate in content creation, and linking that to the needs of media companies.

MG: As you mentioned, there are social networks out there and creating and sharing content is a part of who and what we are. How are you going to compete?

Niko: While they all allow people to share content, we have the entire ecosystem in place that is needed to manage a publishing cycle from the user to the end media. We have the intellectual property rights covered in the system, both for the Scoopshooter and for the media. So there is no vagueness about who owns the rights to the photo, which is the case for Flickr, Facebook and any other social media.

The rights belong to the sender —the Scoopshooter. The rights are transferred to us for a period of 48 hours, giving us the right to sell the photo. If no one buys a photo within 48 hours, then rights are transferred back to the sender. If the media buys it, the company can buy a single license — single time publishing rights— allowing that company to publish the photo once in their print, online and broadcast media. If they want to publish that same photo a week later, then they need to re-purchase that photo. They can also buy exclusive rights, which is 10-fold the price. If the media company clicks the button to buy exclusive rights, then no one else can publish that photo — period.

We also have created the related payment structure because there needs to be a payment to the source. So media can transfer money instantly and the Scoopshooter gets feedback about paid photos instantly on their mobile device, including the money.

MG: This really is an economy around an app…What are the nuts and bolts of the mobile payment process?

Niko: In countries where the IBAN accounts system is prevailing, you have two options – PayPal or direct transfer to a bank account. In countries where IBAN is not used, it’s primarily PayPal. Payment is fed into the system and it’s made instantaneous. We also make sure the photo is authentic and original. We track and include in the photo information the location, what device it came off of, who the sender is, where the sender can be located. Photos cannot be imported or exported of the system for Photoshop or anything like that, so authenticity is baked into our system.

Finally, we orchestrate the value chain. Where we launch we have media on board. There’s already a purchaser, a publisher for these photos, and that makes it worthwhile for the Scoopshooters to engage and participate.

My take:

Media and marketing are deep in the corporate DNA of Scoopshot, which is why it has cleverly focused on both of these segments. It recognizes the opportunity for a user-gen content creation service aimed to take the pain out of generating fresh, hot content from everywhere on the planet. No doubt the decline in print media also plays in favor of this model since these companies are hard-pressed to generate a continuous flow of original content and lack the staff to do the job. But don’t just think media. In an age where advertising is content, this could be the community-building tool that will put brands (and their social media outreach) on the fast track. Video is in the pipeline, and so is expansion to North America and Latin America. Scoopshot clearly has the infrastructure in place (communication, rights management, payment methods) to make crowdsourcing an ideal business (and not just a business ideal). Lots of possibilities, and a great capabilities mix, now we just have to see how the company executes on its strategy to build a bridge between companies (media, brands, even cities) and the people eager to participate.

Check out the video over at UNTETHER.tv

CES: 2012 Banner Year For Mobile & Gadgets; Google Clamps Down

Jeff Hasen — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:30:39 +0000

This last week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas will be remembered for innovation and limitation. The show — where approximately 3,100 companies took the wraps of more than 20,000 products — was big in more ways than one. I haven’t met a person who covered the over 1.85 million net square feet of exhibit space (more than 37 football fields), but I did glean enough from the reports I’ve read about the show highlights to know this year will be huge for gadgets. Innovation abounds. But, first, let’s talk about the limitation — and what’s behind it.

In my view, technology won’t limit how we use, access and enjoy the world (digital and physical) on our wireless devices. The carriers and hardware and software makers will do that with closed approaches that limit what is possible.

For years, the carriers (mobile operators) have tightly controlled the services and featured available on handsets and delivered over their networks. Be it content or products, the carriers have acted as gatekeepers with a singular focus: look out for their interests first.

Then there’s Apple, which famously bypasses all operators and flaunts a closed Apple system. Content is only accessible using Apple devices that, in turn, only use the Apple iOS platform. Mobile apps are approved by Apple and sold via the Apple App Store. And advertising is served via the Apple platform — period.

Google is also clamping down. Granted Android is more open than Apple, but Google’s decision to beef up its search engine results gives us more reason to be concerned than to celebrate.

Google intends to add social networking results to the results we receive in response to our search queries. But don’t assume your search results will display a wide variety of results from a wide variety of social networks. No, Google is just adding the results that come via Google+, the search giant’s own social networking service (which has so far seen more buzz in the media than it deserves given the low level of member activity).

This is a huge step backward — not forward — and ignores the desire of us (the people) to have all-inclusive search results that allow us open access to everything on the Web.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Google has limited our access.

Last summer, the company turned off real-time search results from Twitter in what was described as a contact dispute. Back then (as is the case now), we — the people seeking information through the Google search box — were the losers.

Google is spinning or in denial on the issue. An official blog post states that: “Google Search has always been about finding the best results for you. Sometimes that means results from the public web, but sometimes it means your personal content or things shared with you by people you care about. These wonderful people and this rich personal content is currently missing from your search experience. Search is still limited to a universe of webpages created publicly, mostly by people you’ve never met. Today, we’re changing that by bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search.”

The features added (as described by Google):

Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

How I See It: Google has proclaimed loud and long that its practices stand in strong contrast to those of Apple. Google’s Android operating system, for example, is widely regarded as being not only good for everyone in the mobile ecosystem, but also for consumers worldwide. However, Google’s moves this week tell a totally different story. Is Google becoming a closed shop? Twitter is worried. It was among those who criticized the ‘improvements’ to Google Search. “We’re concerned that, as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users,” the company said in a statement. Google’s version of the story? It says Twitter is not included in search results because Twitter chose not to renew its contract. Where does this leave us? According to the Los Angeles Times, a privacy watchdog group will likely step up and complain to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about the privacy and antitrust concerns this new Google search feature raises. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has said his group is considering filing a letter with the FTC. Where does this leave Google? It may ultimately “search” for a way to display more people-focused information in search results while still maintaining control over what we get in the end.

Innovation abounds at CES

Enough about the limitation we face. Let’s shift to innovation that awaits us.

Here is some of the stuff that caught my attention this week:

Samsung’s attempt to hit the sweet spot was the introduction of a 7.7 inch Galaxy tablet. You may remember the company’s first effort was 7 inches. Did focus groups tell Samsung the 7-incher was too small and 8-incher was a wee-bit too big?
From the “getting with the times” department, Polaroid introduced a camera powered by Android. Users can upload images to social networks.
Microsoft’s Windows Phones were warmly received by many, marking a departure from previous shows where Microsoft products were panned.
RIM announced that it is bringing native email to its Playbook tablet. Can someone explain to me why it has taken the company — that built its market prowess on email and messaging — nine months to provide us an email solution?
Ultrabooks were everywhere, including a 2.5 pound, half-inch Samsung notebook that boots in under 10 seconds and has a 10-hour battery life.

How I See It: Having introduced products at CES, I know how difficult it is to break through the clutter and rise above the noise. At first, I wondered if mobile would get lost in a show that is physically difficult for media and influencers to report. But I was pleasantly surprised. Wireless grabbed many of the headlines, eclipsing what was presented as the latest and greatest televisions and audio products. In view of the fierce competition in the industry and the need to unveil innovative products sooner than later, it’s understandable that many more mobile companies used CES this year to show off their best and brightest. After all, CES is about the consumer and consumers are mobile. Next up is Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which kicks off on February 27. Expect more innovation as more companies (from even more countries) use the show to debut their products and devices.

About Jeff:

A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

Mobile Commerce Moves Up To Marketing Mega-Trend

Jeff Hasen — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:42:12 +0000

It was the brands that told us with their increased marketing spends that 2010 was The Year of Mobile. Now consumers are the ones showing us through their actions — reaching for their mobile phones at every step of the consumer journey, from researching products to making purchases — that this is the Year of Mobile Commerce.

IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative has produced a new online retail benchmark study, research that compares Cyber Monday 2011 versus Cyber Monday 2010 and reveals some surprising trends. By way of background, these early holiday season findings are based on data from IBM Coremetrics Benchmark, an analytics-based, peer-level benchmarking solution that measures online marketing results, including real-time sales data from the web sites of more than 500 leading U.S. retailers. All of the data is aggregated and anonymous.

Predictably, we are willing to spend more when shopping on the Internet. Online sales in the U.S were up 33.0 percent over 2010, with consumers pushing the average order value up from $193.24 to $198.26 (or an increase of 2.6 percent). The real news is our increasing reliance on mobile. Specifically, 10.8 percent of people used a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site, up from 3.9 percent in 2010. Additionally, mobile sales grew dramatically, reaching 6.6 percent on Cyber Monday versus 2.3 percent in 2010.

How did Cyber Monday 2011 compare to Black Friday 2011?

Online sales were up 29.3 percent over Black Friday
On Cyber Monday mobile traffic averaged 10.8 percent compared to 14.3 percent on Black Friday
Consumer sales on mobile devices reached 6.6 percent versus 9.8 percent on Black Friday
Apple’s iPhone and iPad continued to rank one and two for mobile device retail traffic (4.1 percent and 3.3 percent respectively). Android maintained its position in third at 3.2 percent. Collectively iPhone and iPad accounted for 7.4 percent of all online retail traffic versus 10.2 percent on Black Friday
Shoppers using the iPad also continued to drive more retail purchases than any other device with conversion rates reaching 5.2 percent compared to 4.6 percent

How I See It: Mobile has become as much a part of the holidays as snowflakes and candy canes. Several surveys, including one from Hipcricket, show that consumers would use their devices in-store to compare, shop, read product reviews and more. But it’s not just a shift in attitudes that we see. A near tripling of mobile web site visits and sales from mobile are clear indications that people are engaging in mobile retail. Indeed, mobile shopping is fast becoming a mainstream activity and the market has moved past the early-adopter stage. To the brand marketers who have yet to get on board, I offer two thoughts. One: you have some serious catching up to do. And it’s not like we kept you in the dark about the tremendous mobile opportunity or you weren’t given enough information to act. Two: there is still time for you to create a mobile advertising campaign for this holiday shopping season. But planning broadly for next year should start before Santa parks the sleds and calls it another season.

Facebook’s big mistakes

The social networking service Facebook agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing the personal data to be shared and made public. The proposed settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future. Top of the list: Facebook will have to obtain people’s express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established (and agreed to) on their Facebook page.

The FTC charged that the claims Facebook made were unfair and deceptive, and violated federal law. As Jon Leibowitz, FTC Chairman, put it: “Facebook is obligated to keep the promises about privacy that it makes to its hundreds of millions of users.” Facebook’s innovation “does not have to come at the expense of consumer privacy.” The FTC action is aimed to make sure it doesn’t.

Interestingly, the FTC complaint also lists a number of concrete instances in which Facebook allegedly made promises that it did not keep:

In December 2009, Facebook changed its website so that certain information users may have designated as private – such as their Friends List – was made public. Facebook didn’t warn users that this change was coming, or get their approval in advance.
Facebook stated that third-party apps that users installed would have access only to user information that the apps needed to operate. In fact, the apps could access nearly all of users’ personal data – data the apps clearly didn’t need.
Facebook told users they could restrict sharing of data to limited audiences – for example with “Friends Only.” In fact, selecting “Friends Only” did not prevent their information from being shared with third-party applications their friends used.
Facebook had a “Verified Apps” program and claimed it certified the security of participating apps. It didn’t.
Facebook promised users that it would not share their personal information with advertisers. It did.
Facebook claimed that when users deactivated or deleted their accounts, their photos and videos would be inaccessible. But Facebook allowed access to the content, even after users had deactivated or deleted their accounts.
Facebook claimed that it complied with the U.S.- EU Safe Harbor Framework that governs data transfer between the U.S. and the European Union. It didn’t.

In this blog post Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized and pledged to do better.

His response to the strong allegations: “Overall, I think we have a good history of providing transparency and control over who can see your information.”

But he did admit to making some mistakes along the way. “In particular, I think that a small number of high profile mistakes, like Beacon four years ago and poor execution as we transitioned our privacy model two years ago, have often overshadowed much of the good work we’ve done.”

Zuckerberg also showed some understanding for the hundreds of millions of members who feel their personal information —and trust— was compromised. “Even if our record on privacy were perfect, I think many people would still rightfully question how their information was protected. It’s important for people to think about this, and not one day goes by when I don’t think about what it means for us to be the stewards of this community and their trust.”

He closed his post reminding us that Facebook has always been committed to being transparent, and promised to do better in the future. “I’m committed to making Facebook the leader in transparency and control around privacy,” he stressed.

How I See It: This is cause for public outrage, but I’m not seeing it. Consumers have not punished Facebook for its deception despite repeated reports of infractions. That’s either because they haven’t noticed that Facebook has breached their trust, or they simply don’t care. I believe it’s mostly the latter. Zuckerberg said all the right things in his blog and public apologies. But the company’s actions are really all that matter. If Facebook members won’t do anything about Facebook’s privacy breach, then the FTC has shown that it will.

About Jeff:

Atlas’ Game-Changing Sports Fan App & Social Network: Bad News For Facebook?

Peggy Anne Salz — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:31:28 +0000

Social networks allow us to share and discuss our passions with people everywhere on the planet. Up until now this free exchange has known only one barrier: the digital fence erected by the social network provider. But a new mobile app from Atlas Premium Brands (APB) could do more than turn the tables on the likes of Facebook; it could also provide brands and advertisers a much-needed opportunity to join the conversation.

When it comes to mobile sports content, Atlas is a major league player with an innovative mobile business model. The company— official and exclusive mobile partner of several leading soccer teams including Chelsea, Liverpool FC and Real Madrid with exclusive mobile and Internet rights to players and teams within the premiership league across in territories worldwide, including the Middle East, Thailand, Indonesia, China, Vietnam and all countries in Africa —has built up a stockpile of rights and relationships. The ability to connect teams and their fans (and gather all the CRM data it produces) is a core capability Atlas plans to monetize big-time through today’s release of Second Screen.

This social-focused app allows fans to watch the game live (complementing the TV experience, not negating it), discuss the action with friends in real-time (regardless of whether fans are on Facebook, Twitter or Instant Messenger, for example) and co-create a truly tribal sports experience that ticks all the relevant boxes.

Brands get social

Atlas has also quietly and cleverly sealed a partnership with Omnicron, the second largest advertising agency worldwide. Together the companies have the resources to take brand sponsorship of sports to a new level, and one where advertisers alone will call the shots. The strategy is on the mark since Omnicron already works with high profile brands (the likes of Emirates, Etihad, O2 and other brands that sponsor sports) eager to engage with fans every stage of the journey, and not just during the game.

To this end Atlas and its partner Omnicron are determined to offer brands an alternative to the likes of Facebook. Since brands cannot monetize on Facebook, except through the virtual currency Facebook Credits, Atlas has stepped up to allow brands to monetize using any payment system (through integration with payment APIs from all the usual suspects including PayPal, Google and mobile operator billing systems.

More importantly, Atlas enables brands to access all the CRM information around the relationships they cultivate through interacting with fans via the app, data that would otherwise be the property of the social network provider.

Connect the dots, the new apps covers all the bases to give the likes of Facebook some serious competition. Nigel Tatlock, Atlas Premium Brands CEO, tells me he has already signed deals with advertisers including P&G —a brand well known for its massive mobile spend.

Editor’s note: We’ll have more information about the app (formally announced today) and the brands on board from Nigel in next day(s). He is in Brazil speaking at SOCCEREX, the world biggest soccer show, and currently unable to respond to our questions.

Exclusive interview with Altas’ Nigel tatlock in Netsize Guide by Gemalto

One of the great advantages of writing the Netsize Guide by Gemalto is the opportunity to connect with cool companies and individuals to discuss disruptive technologies and debate mobile mega-trends.

Nigel and I did both in an exclusive Q&A, an interview that also details Atlas’ larger mobile-social-CRM play and big-picture strategy to give TV broadcasters a new and pivotal role in cross-platform, cross-media efforts to deliver us an immersive experience.

As Nigel put it in the interview: “The idea is to give the networks the ability to take control of the consumer experience on the handset — through our app — during half-time, so they can start a discussion with fans directly about the game. This way the TV execs at SuperSports in South Africa can say, ‘Wayne Rooney was off sides when he scored that goal.’ Back in the studio, they can take excerpts from the fan comments that pour in, and broadcast them. After all, people everywhere want that 15 minutes of fame. If fans see their name on a ticker scrolling across the bottom of the screen with their message or their views, then they are more inclined to pay attention, and watch the advertisers that are sandwiched in the conversation.”

The reward is our attention, but the real value is in the CRM data brands can glean from our exchanges and interactions. Without a sharp focus on mobile loyalty, mobile CRM and all the ways to grow the lifetime value of the fan/customer brands (and sports teams!) are leaving money on the table.

“A football club will tell you they have around 200 million fans around the world. Ask them to supply names and details, and they can’t. Atlas adds value to their model because we have state-of-the-art CRM platforms that allow us to provide our partners and clients insights into every handset that buys content from the service. We could give Samsung, a sponsor of Chelsea, what we acquire from 10 million handsets and users — no matter if they are Nokia users, HTC users or iPhone users. What that does is extend the reach of the football clubs and their sponsors. We engage with consumers on a daily basis, a relationship that allows us to build up a detailed profile. And we can become quite scientific about our calculations based on the data — to the extent of that we can predict how much users are likely to spend over a period of a month.”

Based on this, Atlas can help its customers set the prices and offers for regions and user segments accordingly. “That’s where all football clubs traditionally fail,” Nigel points out. “They simply don’t have the CRM in place to understand the buying consumption of their consumers. Our systems help them identify where to spend the money and effort. We can also advise then when — and how — they need to target specific user segments, rather than just spend their marketing budget putting up a billboard up in Cape Town Airport with Manchester United plastered all over it.”

DOWNLOAD THE NETSIZE GUIDE BY GEMALTO & READ THE COMPLETE INTERVIEW

My take:

Will Atlas eat Facebook’s lunch? It’s a tough one to call. But the app clearly allows people new flexibility and freedom to connect and multi-task as never before. Against this backdrop, the app emerges the perfect complement to watching the game on TV — and the only platform to bring together all our friends across Facebook, Twitter and more. Atlas also wields its own stockpile of rights and exclusive games content (video, stats, interviews —the works) to give us stuff to share with our friends during the game and so enrich the overall experience. That’s the human side of the story. The business model puts brands and broadcasters back in the picture, allowing them a real opportunity to deliver advertising/content that is aligned with our context (watching the game). More importantly, this model (unlike Facebook & Co.) allows advertisers access to the CRM data that was created through their interactions with us. Granted, brands and advertisers will have to play by the rules (translated: learn from Facebook’s mistake and do not share our data with partners or third parties without our consent). But, if brands can grasp the reality that we alone own the customer, then this sports app (and think beyond sports to any activity we enjoy or participate in as a tribe) could indeed change the game — forever.

Disclaimer: Netsize collaborates with MobileGroove’s Peggy Anne Salz since 2007 to research and write strategic thought leadership and collateral including the new Netsize Guide by Gemalto. You can explore these industry reports and books here.

Digital Mind State CEO Mike Johns: App Developers Must Capitalize, Digitize, Monetize

Peggy Anne Salz — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 19:35:09 +0000

Mobile apps isn’t the only game in town. Developers need think big-picture and focus efforts on multi-platform apps capable of connecting our devices and our experiences. This is the trend to watch for 2012 and why Mike Johns, CEO of Digital Mind State, and his views on the vast opportunities at the intersection of apps, TV and social media are more pertinent than ever.

We catch up with Mike to talk about his success brokering profitable business relationships between brands and urban/hip hop artists to deliver a 360 degree entertainment experience combining social media interaction and TV (Social TV) and mobile apps.

We also get an unexpected scoop about Urban World TV, a new mobile TV channel Mike is launching in December to bring us “Pop Culture Redefined.” Look for the youth-focused channel to hit AT&T U-verse, Apple TV and Yahoo Connect TV. The channel purposely allows fans worldwide to connect, rate and rank what they see and share. As Mike puts it: Urban World TV is a “consolidation of cool content, from martial arts films from Hong Kong, to the Brazilian Carnival, to reggae in Germany.” The youth of the world appreciate urban/hip hop music and culture —and Mike’s venture will surely be a trailblazer.

Marketing first

Mike recently spoke at Apps World New York, where he joined in a discussion of how developers can/should build an app business. In his view, app developers have to keep the main thing precisely that: the main thing. This means focusing on the people first and using a deep understanding of the app audience to guide development —and nothing else. Once you know who the audience is (the main thing), then you can put together the marketing (and social) strategy that will grab mindshare and market share.

Listen to artists

Developers and brands would also do well to listen to (translated: let themselves be inspired) by the urban/hip hop artists, not just make entertainment apps. Mike shares the example of Ice Cube, who also branded and promoted a healthcare/fitness app. Games may be number one, but developers shouldn’t ignore the opportunity offered by health and finance apps, apps that are life-simplifying and will predictably command a great deal of our daily attention. There is a great fit between urban artists and fans’ daily routine. Make the effort to find it.

As Mike sees it. “In terms of how artists are using apps, it’s pretty much the wild, wild West.” There is also new territory to navigate such as the way artists can (and should) best connect with their fans and super-fans. Plug location into the equation and there are lots of ways artists can use apps and location to get more mileage out of their tours. “We can re-visit that in 2012 to see what we’ve done,” Mike says. “It’s brand new territory and there’s so much out there, and also so much more to be discovered.”

Advertise, advertise, advertise

How do developers rise above the noise and beat the discovery dilemma? “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise— that’s what it has to be in the app world.” It may sound basic, but Mike believes attention to business basics is what will separate the winners from the also-rans. “It’s now a competitive space, [making and selling apps] is a very serious business.”

Coupled with that, Mike says, developers and artists have to outreach using social media. Social media and mobile —it’s table stakes.

Urban World TV

Mike filled us in on his new venture: a new first-ever “urban, multi-cultural, tech-savvy channel” going live in December. Urban World TV will feature VOD (video-on-demand), streaming and allow people watching to recommend and rate the shows. As Mike explains: “Our slogan is: ‘Pop culture redefined – we connect the streets.’ There was a need for a channel that covered not just U.S. entertainment content, but the world.”

Apps World

Mike also tells us about his experience speaking and connecting at Apps World, an event he strongly recommends to brands, artists and developers trying to navigate this tough territory. In his view the event was professional as well as personal. “For me, I would say that one of the things that I did like about the event was that it was intimate.” What’s more, attendees were approachable and open to exchanging business cards and ideas. “People were very open; it was very laid back and that was a good thing.”

My personal thanks to Kate Williams and the great folks at Six Degrees, the company that organized the Apps World event, for introducing me to Mike. If you missed Apps World in New York, then you can catch the show in London on November 29th and 30th. Six Degrees tells me that the event — which uniquely looks at multi platform apps and the ecosystem emerging to take advantage of the significant business opportunity — counts well over 3,000 registrations (!), so click below to register today!

My take:

Mike is a wealth of practical knowledge and know-how, based on his long track record in the industry. Before he started Digital Mind State (whose clients include Flowd, the music lover’s social network) Mike was the driving force behind the brand UrbanWorld Wireless, where he was responsible for planning, business developing, marketing and brokering profitable business relationships with some of the biggest company names in the mobile industry including T-Mobile, Zed, Jamba, Fox Mobile, NBC, Fun Mobility, Nokia, and Microsoft.

But it’s not just his impressive bio that gets high marks. It’s his passion for what he does, and his razor sharp ability to cut through the technology and get to what matters: the experience. He also correctly sees the need of global youth (united by an interest in urban and hip hop that transcends any physical barriers) for a global youth channel. It’s a brilliant move (and hard work!) to create a place where cool content combines with social media to deliver an entirely new kind of interaction. I look forward to connecting with Mike and watching this develop.

Another development to watch: the advance of multiplatform experiences (and the apps to help enhance and deliver them). 2012 is bound to be the year of connected experiences (such as connected TV) and a turning point for developers who are equipped to ride the wave. As my esteemed colleague Chetan Sharma pointed out in his milestone app report (back in March 2010). “Connectivity breeds apps.” Expect a significant uptick in apps for and avalanche of devices that entertain us, connect is and lay the groundwork for new experiences.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW WITH MIKE JOHNS HERE. [18:05]

#DearKen: How The HECK Do I Measure My Social Media ROI?

Ken Herron — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:37:31 +0000

How DO you measure your social media ROI? And here you thought pondering the answer to life, the universe, and everything was a tall order. My boss asks me this question. He should. It’s what he pays me for. My friends ask me this question. What can I say? I have some pretty geeky friends. Even complete strangers in line at my local Smog ‘N Go ask me this question. Yeah, it’s that kind of neighborhood.

With marketers spending almost two billion dollars on social media last year, it’s understandable that all of us don’t just “want”, but *need*, to accurately measure the return – the ROI – of our investments in social marketing. Here’s my answer.

My usual disclaimer before we start – all opinions expressed here are my own, and come from my experience running social marketing campaigns, managing social marketing teams, and advising social marketing clients. Because every brand is unique, your mileage will vary.

Why? What? How?!

Despite there being SO much written about measuring our social media marketing efforts (10.4 million+ results on Google as of writing this post), the fact that we marketers continue to ask the question, tells me none of us are satisfied with the answer.

Before tackling the ‘how’, let’s be perfectly clear on why you must measure the results of your social media marketing investments. Said bluntly, ANY effort that consumes your financial or human resources needs to be “worth it.” By the way, if your answer to the question “why bother to measure?” is a nasally-whined “my boss makes me do it,” then I recommend you seriously consider that career in flower arranging.

Our existence as professional marketers depends on our seemingly magical ability to maximize revenue by creating and executing strategies that meet, and even exceed, the results demanded by our organizations at an agreed upon dollar and time cost per unit of results.

We do this by measuring the return on the investments we make in each of our paid, owned, earned and [now] social media marketing efforts. So, let’s get to the punch line: what exactly do we social media marketers need to measure?

WHAT should I measure?

New customers. Sales. Revenue. Choose the key performance indicator (KPI) that best matches your company’s most important business objective. If your most important goal is to acquire new customers, then measure the number of new customers. Just don’t forget to also measure your cost-per-acquisition, because spending more to acquire a customer than you can generate from the lifetime value of that customer will not help your career in marketing.

Which KPI is best for you to measure? Start with a good list of the most common social media metrics. This will help you to quickly identify the specific indicators most relevant to your product and audience.

It helps to remember that most social media metrics can be broken down into three basic categories:

Good: The number of social connections
Better: The quantity of positive (and negative) brand content
Best: The amount of direct brand engagements

The research-backed takeaway here is simple: The more your target customers connect with you, talk about you, and directly engage with you on social media, the more likely they are to purchase your product or service.

The bottom-line? It is critical for you to identify the specific metrics that have the strongest correlation to the financial success of your business.

HOW do I measure?

A large part of social media is actively listening to the multiple, simultaneous conversations going on 24×7x365 about your brand.

No surprise that this monitoring cannot be done manually, even if you are fortunate enough to have a large team. There are multiple for-pay, “big boy” solutions, including Radian6 [and their *many* competitors] and HubSpot.

However, I have always been a big fan of “fast, easy, and free” social analytics tools like Klout, Twentyfeet, and Crowdbooster. Also, check out Ken Bubary’s great list of paid and free social media analytics tools.

Finally, don’t forget to make full use of the free/freemium analytics tools built into most popular social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Flickr and YouTube.

The magic, however, is not in the tools, but in strategically and consistently using the combination of tools that gives you the most actionable insights into the use of social media for your business.

In other words, do NOT produce a “weekly report” for your boss. Instead, produce a dashboard that enables *you* to analyze the fewest possible metrics which will provide you with the deepest possible insights. The aim here is to gain the actionable information you need to make data-based business decisions about what works (and what doesn’t) for your marketing.

On the very first day, of my very first market research class in graduate school, my professor told it like it is. “If you’re not going to use the information to make business decisions, don’t waste your time and money collecting and analyzing it.” While he couldn’t have foreseen the advance of the Internet or social media when he said this, his advice has never been more true.

To recap: it doesn’t matter whether it’s paid media, owned media, earned media or social media marketing. Clearly articulate what it is you want to achieve with your measurements, and STOP tracking any metric that is not helping you to make better business decisions. Instead, identify the “critical few” KPIs that are actionable in driving growth for your business.

What do YOU think? How do you measure the ROI of your social media marketing efforts? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

Editor’s note: Do YOU have a question about social marketing technologies, tools, and best practices? Tweet your question with the hashtag “#DearKen”. All tweets will be acknowledged, and considered as being submitted for publication.

About Ken

A cool hunter for new ideas, strategies, and technologies to help world-class brands develop stronger emotional connections with their customers, Ken is Vice President of Marketing at Deaf, deaf-blind, and hard-of-hearing communications services provider Purple Communications (http://purple.us). Ken is also a frequent author and popular speaker on the best practices to engage customers on social networks.

Follow Ken on Twitter @PurpleComm (http://twitter.com/purplecomm) and @KenHerron (http://twitter.com/kenherron), and listen to his “Powered by Purple Marketing Minute” on the LinkedIn Lady radio show with Carol McManus live (and podcast) on Wednesdays from 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. ET.

Mobile Marketers Should Sync More Offers With Our Transit Routine

Jeff Hasen — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:57:37 +0000

Mobile devices have become nearly as commonplace as toothpaste for travelers in North America and Europe. Like the true road warriors we are, we take our wireless gear with us wherever we go — and our use of them is unprecedented.

According to new data from Boingo Wireless, a leading provider of software and services worldwide, smartphones and tablets passed laptops as the most widely carried Wi-Fi device in airports, reaching 58.9 percent of all devices in June. Mobile devices topped the 50 percent mark for the first time in February of this year. The study draws from data across Boingo’s managed network of 60 airports and aggregated network of hundreds of thousands of hotspots worldwide.

Boingo reports the overall size of the Wi-Fi device market has increased five-fold in the last five years, with laptops doubling overall, while the explosive growth of smartphones/tablets accounted for the lion’s share of the growth.

Apple operating system iOS has a commanding market share of mobile devices actively using Wi-Fi in those same venues, representing more than 83 percent of mobile total. Android more than tripled its market share from 2010, but comes in fourth, following iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices.

The numbers also underline an opportunity for companies that — like Boingo — have cleverly identified where we congregate as we circle the globe. Indeed, airports are truly hot spots when it comes to mobile marketing. My own company, Hipcricket, has created an innovative, location-based brand awareness campaign called Blue Moon on the Fly that begins by asking people to opt in by sending an SMS keyword to Blue Moon beer’s short code.

When an opted-in user arrives at a participating airport, they receive a message welcoming them to that airport, along with directions to the nearest terminal where they can find and enjoy a cold Blue Moon beer. Hipcricket and Blue Moon, a member of the MillerCoors family, have selected 59 airports across the country to be part of the campaign. At each of these locations the campaign delivers a unique message to users’ devices at each airport. No blanket mass marketing here. We also harness other channels to increase overall effectiveness, and recruit new users via call-to-action table tents we have set up in participating airports. Acknowledging the incredibly important role of social in the mix, we also support the campaign call out through posts on Blue Moon’s Facebook page.

How I See It: We travel a lot and we use mobile devices more than ever. But anyone who travels a fair amount has surely noticed that not everyone is a road warrior with the newest smartphone. A significant number of people still carry feature phones, connected devices that companies should not ignore. Blue Moon certainly hasn’t, and being all-inclusive (rather than limiting your focus to high-end smartphones) has allowed brands to have reach and impact. While Boingo’s data is interesting, it is important to remember that there is room for all kinds of mobile programs to target those who spend time in transit.

Marketers should grasp Google+

If you’re like me, you scrambled for an invite to join your colleagues on Google+ right after it broke on the scene in July. And, if you’re like me, you have struggled to find the time to settle into yet another social network. Goodness knows contributing to the conversations on LinkedIn and Twitter can expand into a full-time job, if you let it. So, I may have been one of the first to sign in to Google+, but I’ve have spent virtually no time on it.

Apparently, I’m not the only one. Google has moved activities up a gear to capture our attention (and our time). This week the Web giant took the wraps off Hangouts, a mobile extension that enables simultaneous interaction with up to nine people via video.

As Google puts it: “Bumping into friends while you’re out is one of the best parts of going out and about. With Hangouts, spontaneity hits the web. Whether you’re home in your pajamas, or hitting the streets with your mobile phone, video hangouts let you bring up to 9 people into your world. It’s the next best thing to everyone being there.”

For the time being, Google says that you must have an Android phone with a front-facing camera that has Android 2.3 Gingerbread or higher. The company has also announced that an iOS update is coming soon.

How I See It: It Google+ poised to be the next Big Thing? It’s a tough one to call. Having access to Google+ on mobile will certainly increase the odds that I will use it (once it hits the iPhone). I have also become a believer after watching this presentation from social heavyweight Chris Brogan. Brogan eloquently made the case for staying current, pointing out that services like MySpace were red-hot before falling out of favor with users. Social is exciting, and we are just beginning to understand what is possible. As consumers — and as marketers — it’s imperative that we keep an open mind and stay open to trying new things – especially if the new thing comes from the likes of Google.

About Jeff:

Microsoft Windows 8 Turns Apple Devotees Into Advocates

Jeff Hasen — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 13:44:57 +0000

For years, tech influencers and bloggers have been accused of being blindly in love with Apple. There is even a name these devotees: fanboys. These men and women live to gush about Apple products and bash Microsoft and others in the process. So it was remarkable to observe the tech influencers this week in their near unanimous approval of Microsoft’s new operating system.

This headline on msnbc.com stopped me cold: Windows 8 Does What Apple Doesn’t. Talk about an about-face.

In case you missed it, Microsoft used its developer-focused BUILD conference to provide a detailed preview of the next major release of Windows, code-named “Windows 8.”

“We re-imagined Windows,” Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division at Microsoft, said in his keynote address to the thousands of developers in attendance. “From the chipset to the user experience, Windows 8 brings a new range of capabilities without compromise.”

What’s new in the new release?

A new interface that Microsoft says embodies simplicity and gives you control. The Metro-style UI provides for access via mouse, keyboard and touch. And there are apps that work together to deliver users a seamless experience whether you are in email, on your desktop, or on a social network – an experience that Microsoft says syncs across devices.

“This is no desktop of files, intended for you to push around in your little dreary garden,” highly-regarded tech writer Wilson Rothman wrote on msnbc.com. “Instead, it’s based on the assumption that your computer is a dynamic extension of a changing world, and that you yourself are a node in a vast social network. If that sounds crazy when referring to a Microsoft-built PC operating system, it kinda is.”

Rothman gives kudos to Microsoft for making tough, but necessary decisions. “When Microsoft set out to design Windows 8, it faced a pretty daunting decision: Put its mobile OS on tablets, or rewrite Windows entirely so that it would be as good on thin touch tablets as it is on a big honkin’ PC. That latter choice is waaay harder, but Microsoft has global dominance on the Windows side, and pretty much zero traction on the phone side. A PC is still what most computer companies want to sell, especially the ones that are crazy jealous of Apple’s products (and profits). So as a long-term strategy, leveraging its huge Windows base to grow a tablet business makes more sense.”

How I See It: Microsoft put no timeline on the release of Windows 8, but reports say it will be a year or more from now. Innovation can never come fast enough, but that doesn’t mean marketers can sit and wait it out. If the observers are right that Windows 8 is poised to have dramatic impact on our personal mobility, then we as marketers need to plan for this convergence of experience and devices. It isn’t that difficult if we focus on what matters most: people. This is about lifestyle and connected lives. Products, services and technologies need to take a back seat. Early adopters lead connected lives today, and technology like Windows 8 could move this into the mass-market. It’s great when a large audience of consumers want — even demand — connectedness in everything they do (including the marketing they receive). Clearly, this makes the activity of reaching the masses easier on one hand — and far more complex on the other.

…

Regular readers of this column know how much I believe in the convergence of mobile and social.

Nielsen released new research this week based on a survey of nearly 2,000 people worldwide that shows just how far we’ve come.

Among the findings:

Nearly 40 percent of social media users access social media content from their mobile phone
Internet users over the age of 55 are driving the growth of social networking through the Mobile Internet
Over twice as many people aged 55 and older visit social networking sites on their mobile phones than last year
Nearly two in five social media users access these services from mobile devices. About 37 percent use mobile phones, 3 percent use iPad, and a whopping 97 percent access via computer.

How I See It: I’m fortunate to be an annual speaker at Mary Furlong’s impressive Boomer Summit. Each year, I talk about how intuitive technology can go a long way toward bridging and — ultimately closing –the Generation Gap. It wasn’t so long ago that many wrongly assumed the 55 and older crowd was made up of hopeless luddites who chose to use their phones only for voice calls. Fast forward, and the majority of skeptics are finally convinced that this is a demographic that can’t be pigeon-holed. Nielsen provides us another interesting stat to drive this home. It states that this age group is leading the growth of social on mobile. I want to call someone and tell them the news, but why bother? It’s more likely that the best (and most effective) way to reach my intended audience is to use a social network.

About Jeff:

The Social Impact of Social Networks; SMS Best Practices List

Jeff Hasen — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:57:38 +0000

The Pew Internet Project is consistently a source of valuable data and this week the organization has again produced fascinating research into how technology is changing our lives.

The wide-ranging report, which details people’s use of and behavior on social network sites (SNS), is full of insights and analysis explaining how use of these technologies is related to trust, tolerance, social support, and community and political engagement.

By way of background, the results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from October 20 to November 28, 2010, among a sample of 2,255 adults in the U.S., age 18 and older.

According to Pew, 79 percent of adults said they used the Internet and nearly half of adults (47 percent), or 59 percent of internet users, say they use at least one social network. This is close to double the 26 percent of adults (34 percent of Internet users) who used one in 2008.

Pew said that the average age of adult social network users users has shifted from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010. Over half of all adult users are now over the age of 35. Some 56 percent of SNS users now are female.

We also have proof that Facebook dominates the social network space. A whopping 92 percent of SNS users are on Facebook; 29 percent use MySpace, 18 percent used LinkedIn and 13 percent use Twitter.

There is considerable variance in the way people actually use SNS. Half (52 percent) of Facebook users and 33 (percent) of Twitter users engage with the platform daily, while only 7 percent of MySpace and 6 percent of LinkedIn users do the same.

Delving into our interactions on Facebook on an average day, the report reveals that:

15 percent of Facebook users update their own status.
22 percent comment on another’s post or status.
20 percent comment on another user’s photos.
26 percent “Like” another user’s content.
10 percent send another user a private message

How I See It: Pew once again delivers us important data points, but has chosen not to break out the mobile numbers. This is unfortunate (and counter-productive) since we know that Facebook and Twitter users are twice as active on mobile as they are on a PC. As I have written here on MobileGroove, social is what we do on mobile — and why Facebook has hatched an ambitious plan to get 500 million worldwide users via mobile. I believe that we’ll see major shifts in daily activity once more people access Facebook via mobile. And, drawing from the Pew report, we can bet we’ll see even more users update their status, post their photos and reveal their location. As marketers, access to this information is gold as we seek to be relevant and engage with Facebook members.

* * *

Editor’s note: As we go live with this post mobile marketing firm Augme Technologies has announced it will acquire Hipcricket for $44.5 million in cash and common stock. In addition, the transaction calls for a twelve-month earn-out payment valued at up to an additional $27.5 million.

I’m fortunate to work with Hipcricket, long a leader in marketing via SMS. (We also work with other mobile marketing approaches and formats.)

This week, Luxury Daily (a Mobile Marketer destination) asked me to offer advice and insights about text message marketing and the most effective ways to reach — and engage with — affluent users on their mobile devices. I responded with the following list of top ten best practices.

1. Use SMS as a customer relationship marketing tool, not just a means to provide one-time offers.

2. Use past experiences with the customer to offer luxury customers what they actually want.

3. Do not assume all luxury customers have smartphones – make sure SMS plays a large role in your program to connect with large numbers of consumers.

4. Use SMS for time-sensitive offers and information. Ninety-seven percent of text messages are read within four minutes of delivery.

5. Consider location to boost relevance.

6. Make sure SMS campaigns fit into the brand’s overall marketing strategy.

7. Use SMS as a means to connect to richer brand experiences. For example, link back to the brand’s mobile Web site or app.

8. For this audience, over-deliver on customer service – it is more of an expectation.

9. Use SMS to drive customers to the store.

10. Exclusivity is important as it makes customers feel like VIPs, so reward the brand’s best customers with something special.

How I See It: Of course, mobile marketing is more than SMS. But, if you are after reach, no other format or approach comes close in terms of effectiveness. What’s more, text messaging often opens the door to engagement that consumers desire — and have even come to expect. At Hipcricket we are gearing up to do our annual mobile loyalty survey, the fourth year in a row. In it, we ask mobile users about their attitudes towards brands’ loyalty clubs and programs. Last year, the majority of mobile users told us they are open to joining loyalty clubs and are eagerly waiting for more brands to approach them to engage. I’m eager to see what this year’s results reveal.

About Jeff:

#DearKen: Is Social Media Really Like A Cocktail Party?

Ken Herron — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:34:12 +0000

Thank you for your question. I am sitting here smiling. Social media has been compared to a cocktail party, high school and a Bruce Springsteen song. While each of these different analogies has their merits, I don’t think the writers were thinking big enough. Or hairy enough. Social media is like a big, hairy spider. “Social media is like a tarantula?!”, you ask, out of breath from jumping on top of your nearest chair. Yes. It is. Here’s why.

Social media is like a tarantula, the biggest and hairiest of spiders. As we know, the mere mention of a tarantula can send otherwise fearless arachnophobes running screaming. Likewise, just the *thought* of having to create, execute, and track the ROI for a brand’s social media strategy can send otherwise fearless marketers running screaming.

The Eight Ways Social Media is Like a Tarantula

(You just knew there were going to be eight ways…)

1. Tarantulas are the king of spiders. Social media is the king of marketing.

Remember back long ago, when our companies asked us marketers why we needed a website (1994), why we needed to be on Facebook (2006), why we needed a mobile app (2008), and why we needed to be on Google+ (last week)? Okay, some of us are still working to convince our companies about that mobile app, but we’re no longer having to convince our companies of the value of social media marketing. All marketing has become social. We no longer get to choose our media. Our customers do. And they have spoken. Regardless of whether we’re B2B, B2C, or B2X, social media is now at the heart of our integrated marketing strategies.

2. There are over 900 species of tarantulas. There are over 550 social networks.

I’m the first to admit it. You may never need to know or care that there are 14 different social networks for cat lovers. But, if you’re marketing a brand of cat food, then you need to know the specific audience and culture of each and every one of them. In fact, niche social networks may be the most effective marketing channels you have for your brand.

3. Tarantulas move fast (10-16 kph/6-10 mph). Social media moves faster.

People think I’m joking when I say the worst part for me about being a social media marketer is waking up “stupid” every morning, after going to bed feeling so smart (“wicked smart” as my friends in Boston like to say). Why? Because each and every day new technologies, tools, and practices are launched to help us better engage our target audiences. ”Keeping up” with the blistering pace of innovation in social media means being able to identify and analyze – often in real-time – what is valuable for our brands, what is not, and why.

4. Tarantulas have a lot of moving parts, eight legs to be exact. Social media has a lot of moving parts, six to be exact.

I define social media’s six “moving parts” as:

Actively listening to what our target audiences are saying to and about our brands
Tracking and analyzing our target audiences’ [often out of synch] social content and behaviors
Creating valuable, [hopefully] viral, brand-appropriate content
Publishing this content *everywhere* our audiences choose to be
Growing, cultivating, and managing our social connections with our target audiences
Engaging and interacting with our target audiences in ways *they* think are valuable, actionable, respectful, [appropriately] outrageous, and entertaining

Each of these moving parts has its own unique function, but they are also tightly integrated and interdependent. The real power (and effectiveness) lies in the sum of the parts, and taking them as a whole.

5. Where there is fear of tarantulas, there is opportunity — for the tarantula — when we run away. Where there is fear of social media, there is opportunity – for our competitors — when we run away.

The opportunity here has nothing to do with the hype driving and driven by the ever-increasing army of social media “experts.” The opportunity is to embrace rather than run away from social media by mastering it to out-market our competitors.

So where is the opportunity? Ask yourself these three questions:

1. Which customers are my competitors not listening to?

2. Which social channels are my competitors not using?

3. Which customers are my competitors not engaging?

Your competitors’ social media blind spots are the real opportunities for *your* brand!

6. Understanding tarantulas will reduce your fear of them. Understanding social media will reduce your fear of it.

It is rational for us to fear big, hairy things with lots of moving parts that move quickly, particularly if we don’t understand them. It is equally rational for marketers to fear complex, quickly changing new media, particularly if we don’t understand it. Acknowledging our need to constantly learn new skills and change ingrained behaviors is the first step in transforming our fear into action.

7. You can be startled out of your shorts if a tarantula sneaks up on you. You can be startled out of your job if social media sneaks up on you.

Evolve, don’t perish! Take 15 minutes a day, 7 days a week to LEARN. Where should you start? I recommend the media of social media, Mashable (http://mashable.com). You should also sign up for the free SmartBriefs on Social Media at: http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia. This is not “extra credit.” These are the requirements for us as marketers to succeed in this era of rapid, unpredictable and unprecedented change.

8. While you may think of them as “just plain weird and to be avoided at social functions,” many people just like you around the world have “befriended” tarantulas. While you may think of them as “just plain weird and to be avoided at social functions,” many people just like you around the world have “befriended” social media.

Today, marketers have greatly diminished financial and human resources at their disposal. To achieve our companies’ business objectives, we MUST use the tools and channels of social media effectively. Engage, learn, and share. You will always find someone in social media who’s a page ahead of you, so reach out and ask questions. Likewise you will never feel better than when you can return the favor and help a colleague who’s a page behind you.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether social media is like a cocktail party, high school, a Bruce Springsteen song…or a tarantula. What does matter is that you are fully leveraging every aspect of social media you can for your marketing, communications, product development, customer service, and talent acquisition efforts. Why? Social media works. Interactive, viral, and real-time, social media empowers *anyone* to talk about you, your company, your brand, and your products and services with as much [or even more] authority than you do yourself. Back in the Mad Men era, marketers were the de facto creators, controllers, and [sole] authorities on their brands. Today, we are just one of many voices talking about our brands. It is up to *you* to use social media to be THE voice with the highest social authority on your brands.

***

What do YOU think? What would you compare social media to in order to explain it to your peers? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

About Ken

A cool hunter for new ideas, strategies, and technologies to help world-class brands develop stronger emotional connections with their customers, Ken Herron is Vice President of Marketing at deaf, deaf-blind, and hard of hearing communications services provider Purple Communications, and the marketing strategist behind many of New England’s most successful startups. A frequent author and popular speaker on engaging customers on social networks, Social Media Marketing Magazine ranked Ken the #2 CMO on Twitter worldwide in his prior role as Chief Marketing Officer of social solutions and services company SocialGrow Inc. Follow Ken on Twitter @PurpleComm (http://twitter.com/purplecomm) and @KenHerron (http://twitter.com/kenherron), and listen to his “Powered by Purple Marketing Minute” on the LinkedIn Lady radio show with Carol McManus live on Wednesdays from 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. ET.

Groupon Mobile App Tries To Match Our Requirement For Relevant Deals

Jeff Hasen — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:05:38 +0000

Groupon’s most interesting offer to date doesn’t involve a discount but instead a deal with consumers to provide relevant offers via its new Groupon Now service in exchange for user permission to factor in location and buying habit data.

In the last week, Groupon gave mobile users in select cities the option to receive relevant, on-the-go offers (via iPhone and Android apps or the mobile Web).

In an email to users, Groupon put it this way: “If you use a Groupon mobile app and you allow sharing through your device, Groupon may collect geo-location information from the device and use it for marketing deals to you.”

Fortunately, Groupon spelled it out for us. In addition, Groupon stated in the email that it might also collect other information (including relationship information, transaction information, financial account information and mobile location information) and share it with Expedia.

What about the consumer side of the equation? Groupon has said customers can control what is shared and collected with partners like Expedia by managing their email preferences and subscriptions through their account settings, or control how cookies are handled by making similar adjustments to their browsers. Users can also stop their mobile devices from sharing location information with Groupon by adjusting the privacy settings on their phones.

Finally, and most importantly, users can click links contained within Groupon’s privacy policy to opt out of being targeted by certain third-party advertising companies altogether.

How I See It: I’ve been vocal about the irrelevance of many Groupon offers, pointing to the similarities between the deals I get and outright spam. (Interestingly, I am not alone in my criticism of Groupon’s approach. Lisa Ciangiulli, a board member of the Mobile Marketing Association, has also argued on MobileGroove that Groupon has been walking a thin line between exciting us with bargains and annoying us with spam). Groupon must have read our rants because its Groupon Now offer represents a step in the right direction — and just in time for the initial public offering Bloomberg tells us could give Groupon a market value of up to $30 billion. So, Groupon should be congratulated for being so transparent with Groupon Now. Some users will choose to participate, and others will opt out rather than divulge personal information in return for a deal. As for me, I’ll take the relevant offers every time. Interestingly, I do that already by simply opting in to the loyalty clubs run by my favorite brands.

***

Facebook has been front and center in the news lately following its video chat announcement and the launch of its so-called “Facebook for Every Phone” app.

Its video chat offering (via a partnership with Skype) is online only. There is no mobile component – yet. The offering is noteworthy because of its ease of use. Soon all Facebook members can initiate a chat with other members right from their Facebook pages. Among other things, it will close the distance between families and bring in older demographics.

And then there is the Facebook app, a development that shows Facebook’s serious interest in attracting feature phone owners (a strategy I have written about on MobileGroove and elsewhere). This week, Facebook launched the app, which it says offers a fast and comprehensive Facebook experience on over 2,500 different phones.

According to Facebook, the app “not only includes Facebook’s most popular features, such as News Feed, Inbox, and Photos, but also enables you to upload photos and find friends from your phone’s contacts.” What’s more, people all over the world can download the app (also available in leading app stores) by visiting m.facebook.com and scrolling down to the download link, or by entering d.facebook.com to install directly into their mobile browser.

How I See It: The video chat offering is important because it is sure to accelerate the adoption of video chat – period. And, if just a small percentage of Facebook’s 750 million users participate and use the service, the impact will be meaningful. I was disappointed (but not surprised) by the lack of a mobile component to the service. Mobile operators everywhere earn billions of dollars on calls and are obviously resistant to products and services that threaten their money flow. As for the app, I’m on record as saying the convergence of mobile and social is here (NOW), and bigger than many would like to believe. Facebook’s newest move validates the convergence of mobile and social and – more importantly — gives the phenomenon global scale.

About Jeff:

#DearKen: Should I Automate My #Socialmedia?

Ken Herron — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:33:42 +0000

And if I do, how can I maintain a “personal” touch?

What a *great* question, thank you! The simple answer is you shouldn’t automate ANY part of your social media marketing, communications, product development, customer service, or talent acquisition efforts. At least, not until you understand social media well enough to know exactly how to use each social media channel to connect with your target audience. Yes, it is very tempting to use every tool you can find to reduce the time you spend managing your social media efforts, but think about the irreparable damage you can do to your brand. Do you really want to drive faster in the dark? Let’s take a look at the risks and benefits of automating the different parts of your social media strategy, and turn on your headlights in the process.

A recent study from the University of Missouri confirms what we marketers know instinctively: people (both B2C and B2B people) want to connect with real people, not with companies, products or brands.

Interestingly, I’m asked with surprising frequency why I use my own name and photo on my company’s Twitter account, rather than my company’s name and logo. Ask yourself the question: who are *you* more likely to follow, friend, subscribe, or connect with on social media? A real person, or an anonymous entity? There’s a very real reason why President Barack Obama is starting to write his own tweets. To market and sell *his* product, the country’s best communications experts have convinced him that he must personally connect with people on social media.

What your mom never told you about automating social media

To better answer this question, I will break social media “management” into five distinct areas: listening and monitoring, tracking and analytics, creating content, publishing content, and managing your connections.

Which tasks should you always, never, sometimes, completely, never, or partially automate? Let’s jump in!

1) Listening and Monitoring: Immediately automate as much as you can.

While there is nothing better than directly reading your target audience’s social media posts, the reality is that it quickly becomes physically impossible to read *everything*, while balancing your daily workload. Social media never sleeps. There is always the risk that just when you step out for a cup of coffee, you will miss THE post that has the potential to change your business forever. Thankfully, there are many free tools that can help you to effectively manage this gargantuan effort, as not all of us have the trained staff and the financial resources to use Vocus or radian6 [full disclosure: my company uses one of these for fee solutions, and is evaluating the other]. A fast, easy, and free place to start is Google alerts.

If you have not yet already done so, stop reading this article and take three minutes RIGHT NOW to set up Google alerts for your name, your company’s name, the name of your #1 product or brand, and your #1 competitor. ”But Ken,” I hear you say, “the last thing I want is more emails!” Google alerts are immediate, free, and can be routed using your email’s rules function to a sub-folder so they don’t clog up your email. Besides [using my dad voice here], as marketers, our number one job is to listen, and social media exponentially increases our ability to do so. I’m old enough to remember paying millions of dollars a year for (instantly) out-of-date customer and market research. Wouldn’t you rather get immediately actionable intelligence delivered in real-time to your inbox?

2) Tracking and Analytics: Immediately automate as much as you can.

Yes, I can do math without a calculator. But I would never try to analyze the results from multiple social media accounts manually. While many of the same tools you use to listen can also be used to track and analyze, don’t overlook the free (and freemium) analytics that come with most social media accounts. Spring for the pay version of Flickr. Ante up for the lowest pay version of SlideShare. The analytics capabilities already “built into” each social media channel are often the easiest and cheapest way to track your marketing ROI, especially if you are only using a handful of channels.

3) Content Creation: NEVER automate, period (unless…you’re a bakery).

When people follow you, even if all they initially want is a discount, they become engaged because of their connection with you. Whether they find you interesting, educational, informative, useful, entertaining, funny, hot, or just a hot mess (celebrities often fall [literally] into this last category). Said differently, these people want to know what you personally have to say. They are not following your agency, your publicist, or your staff, and most certainly not some “bot” that automates (or semi-automates) the creation of your posts. The ONE exception to this rule? Bakers. Yes, bakers. The single most ingenious use of social media I have seen to date was designed for bakers. They have harnessed the power of Twitter to automatically tweet out when they have hot bread coming out of the oven (I love you http://bakertweet.com!). Now *that’s* marketing.

4) Content Publication: Sometimes, but with caution.

This is where social media automation, under the right conditions (such as when you’re speaking publicly) can work brilliantly. Imagine you’re presenting a keynote address to a packed ballroom. If you’ve pre-written tweets summarizing each of your slide’s content, your tweets can be “magically” shared with the world (this post from TNW tells you how).

However, under the wrong conditions automation can fail, and fail big. Take your blog. Imagine you’ve labored for days researching, writing, and editing a thought-provoking post. You then configure your blog to “auto-tweet” your new post out to your followers when it goes live. Sure, people get the link to your post, but the tweet is nothing more than a link. It’s bland, and it is missing your characteristic style, flair, and personality. What motivation have you given your followers to read your new blog post, let alone new people to follow you?

5) Connection Management: Only AFTER you understand your social conversion factors, and with extreme caution.

The dark underbelly of social media is what a significant group of people embrace as the more desirable alternative to ”white hat” approaches based on the sharing of their passion and expertise to personally engage with their target audience. Instead, these opportunists give social media a bad name with a “get rich quick” approaches that promise to deliver thousands of followers and lots of buzz by creating and monetizing large numbers of social connections. A search for social media automation tools on Google yields millions of results (14.8 million results at the time of writing this column). Ask yourself why you are using social media, and what it is that you want to achieve. The litmus test I use? Would it help or hurt my brand with my target audience if I shared the tools I use, and why I use them?

For example, I think Manage Flitter is invaluable for helping me to identify [and then disconnect from] “dead” accounts, where people have either stopped using Twitter entirely, or simply haven’t tweeted in months. That said, I still recommend you avoid the use of *any* connection management tool for your first 30 days on a given social channel. Going back to my driving in the dark analogy, why would you EVER risk automating a process before you know how it works for you?

* * *

What do YOU think? To what extent should you automate your social media, and how can you maintain your personal touch when you do? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

Editor’s note: Do YOU have a question about social marketing technologies, tools, and best practices? Tweet your question with the hashtag “#DearKen”. All tweets will be acknowledged, and considered as being submitted for publication.

About Ken

A cool hunter for new ideas, strategies, and technologies to help world-class brands develop stronger emotional connections with their customers, Ken Herron is Vice President of Marketing at deaf, deaf-blind, and hard of hearing communications services provider Purple Communications , and the marketing strategist behind many of New England’s most successful startups. A frequent author and popular speaker on engaging customers on social networks, Social Media Marketing Magazine ranked Ken the #2 CMO on Twitter worldwide in his prior role as Chief Marketing Officer of social solutions and services company SocialGrow Inc.

Follow Ken on Twitter at: @PurpleComm and @KenHerron , and listen to his “Marketing Minute” on the LinkedIn Lady radio show with Carol McManus live on Wednesdays from 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. ET.

Blyk Sells Indian Youth On Permission Mobile Marketing

Peggy Anne Salz — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:41:46 +0000

Since launching its permission-based marketing service with Indian mobile operator Aircel in November 2010, mobile messaging media company Blyk reports over one million opted-in users. But the milestone doesn’t only confirm the attraction of a model that delivers advertising to people with their permission and in tune with their preferences. Blyk country manager Shubhodip (Shubho) Pal reveals the company has also tested (and proven) brand new approaches to raise awareness and acceptance of Aircel’s service among Indian youth.

***

Aircel gets high marks for understanding and responding to the requirements of its user base. With some 54 million customers — 34 percent of them in the 16-29 age bracket — a permission-based, youth-centric service focused on delivering relevant advertising about trendy brands makes business sense.

To make the most of this opportunity Aircel’s service (branded ‘Blyk on Aircel’) focuses on the 16-29 age bracket. Advertising categories include: entertainment, sports, lifestyle, travel, fashion, wellness and tech gadgets, as well as local events, dating & relationships tips, comics and careers advice.

I caught up with Blyk Country Manager Shubhodip (Shubho) Pal to discuss Blyk (which describes itself as a “mobile media that works with operators to link young people with brands and other stuff they like”) and key learnings from the Indian market.

40+ mobile campaigns

To date over 40 mobile marketing campaigns have been delivered via Blyk on Aircel by major brands including: Bausch & Lomb, Apple, Perfetti, Levis, Make my Trip, Samsung, Bajaj Pulsar, Coca Cola, Smirnoff, Red Bull, Bacardi, Fastrack, Diesel and Nokia — to name a few.

The average response rate for campaigns is 27 percent. But there are notable exceptions such as Perfetti, which reported response rates of 41 percent to the first SMS followed by MMS reply for its campaign. The campaign was aimed at creating awareness and excitement around its new brand “Center Fresh”. In India Perfetti is one of the few brands harnessing cross-media, combining traditional media (TV, radio, outdoor) and mobile to reach out to their audience. Another top response rate comes from Apple, which reported response rates of 55 percent to the first SMS for its campaign advertising the Nano Touch iPod.

According to Shubho, the high response rates are the norm because the opt-in service leverages texting — the “most dominant and everyday behavior of youth”- to enable people to “communicate with brands in the same way they do with everyone else.”

What brands inspire this close interaction? Overall, users favor popular brands and consumer-focused products, Shubho says. But there is also a significant audience eager to receive advertising related to local content and happenings. Interestingly, MMS (picture messaging) is also proving more effective than SMS at generating response and brand interaction from end-users.

India, like most developing markets, is country where spam is a concern. How does Blyk handle the issue? Shubho says the “Blyk ecosystem” nips the problem in the bud. “When a member [user] is enrolled into the Blyk ecosystem, the member is automatically placed on a DND [Do Not Call/Disturb Directory of India] list on Aircel. They therefore only receive messages from Blyk or from Aircel. So far, we have not received complaints about unwanted messages being delivered to members’ handsets.”

Content partnerships & stickiness

Where there is youth, Shubho says, “there must be Blyk.” With this in mind the company has purposely refined its strategy to deliver content (not just the advertising) youth will likely appreciate. A smart move since surveys show that exclusive content (allowing users to be part of an ‘in-group’ that gets the newest news first) is an effective incentive to encourage youth to opt-in (and stay opted-in).

An example of this is the Wills India Fashion week, the must-attend fashion event for the country. Seeing a connection between the content and the audience demographics, Blyk entered into a strategic partnership with organizers and became the exclusive content partner for delivery over mobile and Internet. (Live streaming was available via the Facebook pages belonging to both Blyk and Aircel.)

The partnership provided Blyk access to a repository of pictures, videos and sound bytes, content it delivered to users as a perk to encourage loyalty (among existing customers) and sign-ups (to recruit new customers).

According to Shubho, the effort was a success, allowing Blyk (a company that relies heavily on peer-to-peer recommendations and member-get -member schemes to grow its user base) to build on its social media properties. Among the results: a 500-percent increase in the number of fans on the Blyk India Facebook page, and almost 20,000 hits on the streamed fashion coverage sponsored by Blyk.

Interestingly, it is this “stickiness” that has convinced Aircel to use the service to do more than just monetize the mobile operator’s opted-in inventory. Blyk on Aircel is also increasingly viewed as a means to combat churn, a strategic goal that Aircel COO Gurdeep Singh outlined in a recent interview with Telecoms.com.

As Singh put it in the interview: “What’s most interesting for us is that, in a hyper-competitive market like India, this can really act as a differentiation and retention tool.” He adds: “There are 14 operators in this market and churn is very high; 90 days after acquisition we retain just a little over 60 percent of new customers. But with Blyk our retention level moves up to 89 percent.”

Undefining youth

In India youth want — even demand — interactivity with brands they like. But there is a catch. To be effective “the emphasis need to be on context over content.” It’s not who they are or where they are that matters, Shubho explains. “What matters is the context: what they are up to.”

What do advertisers need to understand about youth and how can they avoid premature segmentation and generalization? Blyk India learned some lessons since its launch in 2010 that apply to mobile marketing (and particularly permission-marketing) strategies across all markets.

“Youth around the world are similar,” Shubho notes. Effective marketing messages are delivered in tune with what really moves mobile youth. “When brands talk with youth the first thing they do is try to define them. However, the attempt to pigeon-hole youth is patently wrong. “You have to undefine youth to reach them.”

(Editor’s note: How can/should marketers undefine this demographic? Why should brands engage in “open marketing” and harness a permission-marketing approach to explore what youth really wants and thinks. Blyk co-founder Antti Öhrling will address these and other key questions in a guest column next month.)

Four Qs with Blyk India’s Shubhodip Pal

MG: You count over one million users of Blyk on Aircel. What is driving the youth interest in your offer and how do you intend to grow the audience?

Shubho: At Blyk, we believe in relevance in advertising. Our technology detects patterns within messages, rather than looking directly at the text itself. Thus we can detect patterns within messages and users’ response to it, an analysis of responses that is highly useful and helps us send only relevant content to our members. This way the messages are welcomed by youth, not dismissed as spam. We count campaigns with over 40 brands so far, and many repeat spends. We understand that the most important principle of mobile advertising in India — and everywhere — is about respecting the wishes of individuals and providing them services that provide value.

MG: Blyk on Aircel has attracted interest (and users) by employing a variety of strategies. At one end, Blyk itself has been active building a brand and providing exclusive content around India’s top fashion show, for example. At the other end, you have run over 40 mobile ad campaigns. Based on your experience in India, what incentives really work with youth?

Shubho: Our experience in India has been similar to our experience in other countries. One exception: MMS – or multimedia content – works better in India. That’s contrary to the trend in the West, and mainly due the SMS spam backlash in India. Overall, Indian youth are hungry for content and their appetite for rich, vibrant content is insatiable. The demand for multimedia content – video, audio, images – is huge, which is one reason why India is also among the top 10 countries in YouTube usage. On our platform we see that video-based campaigns score the highest. Nearly two-thirds of the campaigns we do are around TV commercials, great engaging and entertaining content to send out to the users. At the same time, our emphasis on profiling has been paying off, with niche, targeted campaigns delivering phenomenal results. Our MMS capability also allows us to create great experiences and send videos about how to mix a cocktail in the case of the Bacardi campaign, for example. Finally, Indian youth want to be heard and express themselves. Hence, our user-generated content campaigns — where the incentive is a chance to get featured on the [Aircel] network and be seen as a youth idol — have also been drawing in responses by the thousands.

MG: Overall, what is the current state of the mobile advertising opportunity in India and where do you see the growth?

Shubho: The Indian mobile advertising market experienced an annual growth of 217 percent in 2010. This is compared to 93 percent growth in global mobile advertising traffic and is expected to reach $4 billion in 2015. This clearly suggests a huge potential for mobile advertising in India, but mobile marketing has not yet started to yield maximum results. Part of the hold-up is linked to the serious SMS spam issue. The need of the hour in mobile advertising in Indian market is for focused technology and innovation that can deliver relevant advertising according to customers’ explicit segmentation – through opt-in — and usage pattern analytics. This is where permission-marketing can undo the damage spam has done. It has been six months since we introduced Blyk in India and see a growing trend among youth mobile users. They want more features and more useful information at their fingertips and on-the-go. I expect this appetite for information — and useful information from brands in particular — to continue as smartphone penetration in India — and everywhere — climbs. Global smartphone penetration is forecast to reach 22 percent, with the number of users in India growing doubling to 4 million, up from 2 million in 2009.

MG: Blyk describes itself as a “messaging media that links young people with brands and stuff they like.” This is a rather unique way of seeing your role in the mobile advertising space. What makes Blyk a media and what is driving your company in that direction?

Shubho: Blyk takes a different view. We know from our experience in the field that the most profitable form of mobile advertising is one that encourages a dialog and enables an engaging media experience. This has helped us build a long-term relationship based on mutual trust with our members. We don’t believe in just sending advertising, but rather on creating a conversation with our members based around the topics and brands they find interesting. The Blyk Media experience is personal and valuable based on content that is more informative and insightful for our audiences, which is why response rates are so high. In fact, our members look forward to receiving messages from Blyk.

My take:

India is a perfect market for permission-marketing and a youth-centric service like Blyk. It has the demographics (in India over half of the population, which is approaching 1.2 billion in total, is under 40 years of age). And it has the attitude. The backlash against over-spamming plays in favor of approaches that harness opt-in to deliver people advertising they will likely appreciate. Blyk on Aircel counts one million opted-in users and reports impressive campaign response rates – data points that prove the effectiveness of its approach to permission marketing. But it’s not only the concept that delivers. The anti-advertising and anti-segmentation mindset (part of Blyk’s overall strategy to undefine youth) is intriguing – and fits with the requirement — even the demand — of people to get more involved in the products, services, content (everything) they use/enjoy. It is inspiring to see that the ideas put forth by one of my favorite thinkers and interview partners (Eric von Hippel, author of Democratizing Innovation, head of the Technological Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and THE authority on how and why brands must empower their lead users) are finding their way into mobile marketing strategy.

Disclaimer: Blyk is a MobileGroove supporter.

Mobile Marketers: Focus On Small Tribes For Big Results

Jeff Hasen — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:28:29 +0000

Seth Godin has written thirteen books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He is arguably the most influential marketer in the world and the most vocal when it comes to the need for permission-based marketing.

At a terrific three-hour workshop I attended recently, I asked Godin for his views on how mobile has changed – and will continue to change – marketing.

“With mobile, advertisers are trying for the masses,” he told me and the others in a packed hall in Seattle. “But it’s really about what I [as an individual] want. We need to have advertisers see how talking to 20 people or even just one person matters. We’re not there yet.”

Perhaps Godin is most famous for his views on building “tribes” of passionate people who support a business, idea or cause. It begins with asking for permission, as Godin has written.

“Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them,” he believes. “It recognizes the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention.”

In Seattle, Godin expanded on the idea during the workshop.

“One of the biggest mistakes people make is believing that bigger tribes are better than smaller tribes,” he said. “The goal is to find more music for my listeners, not more listeners for my music.”

How I See It: I was surprised that mobile was just a footnote to the discussion. I believe this was due, in part, to the fact that traditional marketers, not new media marketers appeared to account for the largest share of the attendees. Godin sees trends before most of us do – but when it comes to mobile and its impact on marketing (and everything) – I miss hearing more from him. In the meantime, the best way to stay current with Godin is to subscribe to his popular blog – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

* * *

Twitter tells us that a record number of tweets were sent during a fateful natural disaster. On March 11, the day Japan was hit by an earthquake and later a tsunami, the volume of tweets sent per second spiked to more than 5,000 on five separate occasions, commenting the quake and the aftermath of the tsunami. Many of the tweets were sent via mobile, although Twitter doesn’t give us the precise breakdown of mobile vs. PC.

The numbers are phenomenal. But they also call us to question whether tweets are news reports.

At the recent 140 Characters Conference in New York City, where I also spoke, we heard from two media authorities who have interesting (if not controversial) views on Twitter and on-location reporting.

Dan Gilmoor (@dangilmoor) — a 25-year newspaper veteran and head of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, a new project of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication at Arizona State University — told us not to believe every thing we read.

On Twitter and “news”, he said. “Take a breath. Be skeptical.” What’s more, Gilmoor said there’s a “credibility scale” to consider when it comes to what we read. An anonymous blog is at the low end.

“Time adds depth and context. I’ll tweet, ‘interesting if true’,” Gilmoor added.

Andy Carvin (@acarvin) – senior strategist for National Public Radio, who broke news during the civil uprisings in Tunisia, Cairo and elsewhere — told us Twitter has become part of the mix.

“People used the Twitter channel to send photos and videos captured by mobile. We saw live streams of people getting arrested.”

But it’s not just about people in the street reporting. Proper journalists also have to follow suit. “You need to be on Twitter now so people trust you and you can trust them.”

How I See It: Are observers who tweet what they see or experience news reporters? It’s an important question to ask, and one I examined in a blog I wrote on a related subject on the same awful day in January that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Arizona. There, in a post I purposely titled The Danger of Getting Our ‘News’ on Twitter I outlined the shift in how news is reported — and the consequences. While I’m old enough to remember getting my daily dose of news from Walter Cronkite, I now learn about world events from our fellow tweeps (whom I now refer to as “@fillintheblank”). And, as I wrote in my post, @fillintheblank (increasingly our source of news) hardly has the gray hair, much less the resume, to warrant the job. (Yes, there was a time when only older, experienced journalists and correspondents brought us the news.) The advance of Twitter (and the fact it empowers any @fillintheblank to ‘report’ from the scene) raises some serious questions: Does Twitter pressure journalists (or an eyewitness acting as one) to oversimplify or rush to judgment in order to pump out news in 140 characters? And who’s a journalist anyway? To be fair, there was great value in the tweets that came from Bahrain sent by Nicholas Kristof, New York Times columnist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner (@NickKristof). But Twitter also let’s anyone (this includes people with agendas, individuals with a disregard for the truth and tweeps too lazy or short of time to check the facts) to be an iReporter, iWitness or iKnowItAll and spread their news and views faster than we can verify their credibility. Suffice it to say that each of us with a voice that can be heard – and that means everyone with a Twitter account, blog, Facebook page, etc. should think before pushing the send button. You never signed up for that task, you say? Tough. It’s our responsibility to be responsible because these tools amplify our impact.

About Jeff:

Surprise Highlights From MMA Forum NYC & 140 Characters Conference

Jeff Hasen — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:37:40 +0000

Last week I attended two conferences in New York (the Mobile Marketing Association’s Mobile Marketing Forum and Jeff Pulver’s 140 Characters Conference) that showed how far we’ve come in the mobile industry.

First, my report on the MMA event, which offered the audience of 700+ attendees a mix of introductory content and advanced material. There were many highlights although some sessions covered well-traveled ground and were targeted to those new to mobile. The buzz centered on smartphones, location-based services, privacy, and the spirited and ongoing apps vs. the mobile Web debate.

Some memorable moments:

Mobile ads are expected to generate around $3.3 billion worldwide this year, according to Gartner.
Coca-Cola displayed a vending machine that lets us pay using SMS – not money. ”What we’re seeing in a couple of use cases is that this increases purchasing frequency,” a Coke executive told us. “Because the consumer doesn’t have to carry around coinage to purchase, it is easier and faster. We think that it will not cannibalize currency sales in the same machine. Any time you take friction out of the system, you increase frequency.”
Microsoft reported that consumers engage with mobile 13 hours a week.
Mobile video usage is on the rise with 20 percent of U.S. users watching a video on their smartphone at least once daily, according to Google
· Live Nation president Russell Wallach gave data to back up the claim that mobile provides the “perfect storm” for concerts. In his view, mobile is the glue for commerce, content and community at the venue. Do the numbers to back it up? It sure looks like it. Mobile interaction at concerts: 47 percent text or email; 66 percent take photos and 32 percent update Facebook.
The research from Adobe Omniture that says that 79 percent of iPad owners spend 30 minutes a day or more reading news.

How I See It:

No matter if you’re a newbie or an accomplished mobile marketer, the MMA event provided attendees ample opportunity to learn something new. And that’s always a plus if you consider that this is still new territory for a lot of us. According to a May survey by King Fish Media (and reported by eMarketer) only one-third of marketers have a mobile strategy. What’s more, a quarter of respondents said that mobile advertising wasn’t meeting expectations. Remarkably and regrettably, 34 percent revealed they had not measured a mobile program they had run. (A disconnect that makes you wonder how respondents can know mobile isn’t meeting their expectations if they don’t bother to measure campaign effectiveness.) So that’s where we are in mobile. Some have been involved for a while and achieving positive results that prove the power of this medium. Others are just starting out and taking their first baby steps. And it doesn’t stop there. More marketers will be testing the waters this year – whether they like it or not. The report mentioned above shows that six in 10 North American marketers are gearing up to have a mobile strategy within the next year.

* * *

Jeff Pulver is a real-time Web pioneer and one of the most generous spirits one will ever meet. I spoke at Jeff’s flagship two-day New York City event, a happening that brought together the famous and not so famous –all of whom have been impacted by Twitter and the immediacy of the Internet.

As Peggy reported recently, I used the occasion to release my own data on how shoppers use mobile and social at what I call Moments of Trust.

During the conference there was terrific discussion about how the mobile Internet and social media have impacted our society and paved the way for a people’s revolution in Egypt and Tunisia — and elsewhere.

I will also remember Alon Nir, a funny and caring Israeli who has combined Twitter and tradition. The result is a site where visitors can engage in the old Jewish tradition of placing notes with their prayers in between the stones of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, also known as The Kotel. Alon encourages visitors to tweet their prayers and wishes. The prayers are then printed on real paper, cut down to small notes, and placed in the Wall by Alon and others.

Alon now has an iPhone app as well.

“Who needs a business plan?” Alon asked from the stage. “Just don’t monetize.”

Instead, he said, “create meaning and affect change.”

How I See It: Mobile isn’t just about money. It’s also about connecting to do good. Thankfully, we have lots of examples of this in the mobile space, starting off with folks like Alon and ending with global cause giving campaigns to aid people hit by natural disasters. Even better, the 140 Characters Conference introduced us to more examples of how mobile can be a tool for the common good, inspiring stories that made me proud to be part of the event.

* * *

Foursquare hit a major milestone this week. The location-based social networking service provider announced that it has reached 10 million members. On the official blog, Foursquare shared an interesting infographic that talks about where most people use the service.

A day later, Foursquare introduced an iPhone application that it says provides much faster check-ins and a feature the company described as an improved Explore tab to find specials, among other improvements. Updates for Android and BlackBerry are in the pipeline.

How I See It:

The 10-million user figure is impressive on the surface, but we shouldn’t be blinded by it. After all it’s a worldwide number and represents just a small fraction of the total global mobile subscriber population. (In the U.S. alone, there are more than 300 million people carrying a mobile device.) Foursquare is wise to focus on features to make deals more accessible and prominent. After all, it is the driver to usage. According to a jiWire survey that examines how people use Foursquare, 29 percent check in for deals and promotions. Clearly, with just under one-third using Foursquare for this purpose there’s room for growth, which is probably why they introduced the new Explore tabs in the first place. The survey also tells us that 17 percent use Foursquare to share a location, 14 percent are members because they want to be associated with cool things, and 7 percent use the service to score points.

About Jeff:

#DearKen: Does My Company Need A Social Media “Rock Star”?

Ken Herron — Tue, 31 May 2011 15:29:13 +0000

#DearKen I’m under increasing pressure to show results from my team’s social media efforts. Does my company need a social media rock star?

* * *

Thank you for your question. Yes, your company must must must have a social media rock star. The twist? It’s you!

My usual disclaimer before we start. All opinions expressed here are my own, and come from my experience running social marketing campaigns, managing social marketing teams, and advising social marketing clients. Your mileage will vary.

Rock star. Guru. Ninja. Maven. Back in spring 2007, at the film, interactive media, music, and converged communications festival known as SXSW, social media got shot out of the proverbial cannon as the “next big thing.” Pre-Ashton. Pre-Oprah. Pre-Gaga. SXSW 2007 was arguably *the* tipping point for all things social, kicking off the wave of Twitter marketing, Facebook marketing, LinkedIn marketing, SlideShare marketing, Quora marketing… Okay, you get the idea.

Four years later, most of us marketers have [either enthusiastically or grudgingly] added “social” to our media tool belts, alongside owned, earned, and paid media.

Why? Because social media empowers the people who use it. For the first time ever, anyone, anytime, anywhere can say, and then effectively publish whatever they want.

Combine social media with the power of mobile, and people can literally communicate at the point of inspiration, reporting and commenting on developments (such as natural disasters) as they happen. And, in the case of the ongoing revolutions in the Middle East, people can wield social media to criticize politicians, organize protests and change history. No wonder a man in Egypt named his newborn daughter “Facebook” in honor of the role social media played in bringing about the revolution.

As marketers, we know that social media doesn’t just give our customers, consumers, and users a voice. It also significantly increases their reach and social influence, instantly amplifying what they have to say – even if their message is not always brand-friendly (or even correct). This makes all of us just one bad customer experience away from our own United Breaks Guitars (yes, I am writing this on an airplane).

To complicate matters, social media presents all of us with an increasingly steep learning curve. Unlike the other forms of media we use daily, none of us has yet had the luxury of years of formal education and/or professional experience to hone our social media skills. In addition to our individual and collective lack of experience with social media, there is also increasing pressure on all of us to increase our overall marketing ROIs.

Staying current is tough for everyone. Every time I go online, there is yet another “new thing” for me to understand, master, and then integrate into my overall strategy. It’s no wonder so many of us seek outside help.

At SocialGrow, I was “that social media guy”. Fortune 500 and startup companies asked me to do everything from “teach our people how to tweet” to “help us completely rethink the way we ‘do’ marketing by transitioning our business away from its reliance on one-way print and broadcast paid media to truly interactive ‘free’ social media.” Wow.

Wow is right. I found myself repeatedly telling prospective clients that the single worst marketing decision they could make was to hire me to do all of their social media marketing (and yes, the line did get me a lot of clients).

Why? Because social media is not about tools, technologies, and practices, it’s about learning how to quickly identify, appropriately test, and successfully integrate new ideas into your marketing. YOU, your marketing team, and your company need to have the first-hand experience that can only come from doing your *own* social media marketing.

Put simply, YOU need to be your company’s social media rock star, full stop.

Yes, you can still accelerate your efforts with outside help. Just remember to use professionals who actually know the art and science of marketing. A quick rule of thumb: good “experts” will deliver the results you want by doing the work for you. Great experts will teach you and your team everything they know. But the best experts will teach you how to continually identify, analyze, and test these new marketing tools, technologies, and practices so you that truly are the social media rock star your company needs you to be to outperform your industry.

What do YOU think? Can your business create a sustainable competitive advantage by “renting” expert social media talent? Or is it more effective to “in-source” this social media expertise by ensuring YOU have the ability to learn and leverage social media, taking full advantage of all the new social media developments in line with your brand’s strategy? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

About Ken

Follow Ken on Twitter at: @PurpleComm and @KenHerron , and listen to his “Marketing Minute” on the LinkedIn Lady radio show with Carol McManus live on Wednesdays from 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. ET.

Make Way For The New User Content Ecosystem

Steve French — Mon, 02 May 2011 13:23:57 +0000

There’s a sea change underway shaping the way we all communicate. No longer limited to a specific device, people enjoy the freedom to seamlessly network with friends and co-workers, watch videos, share photos, or generally wander the Net 24×7 – wherever and whenever they choose. NewBay’s Steve French maps out the new landscape and impact on all the players — particularly mobile operators and device makers.

Today’s rich communication experience doesn’t just transform how we connect and communicate with our friends, families and social networks. It also encourages us to create and share content, including user- generated content (UGC) and premium content. At the other end of the spectrum, content delivery and social networking have converged with developments in cloud-based storage, device innovation and the advance of ubiquitous broadband to enable new experiences that were not possible in the past.

The result: We have a new appetite for content (including photos, videos, music, documents, messages and contacts in our digital devices) and we have little patience with providers that fail to deliver us what we want (on our terms) and securely store what we hold dear.

Against this backdrop, a new User Content Ecosystem is evolving to support the development (and variety) of our digital content experiences. It’s a seismic shift that will rock the industry landscape and result in new opportunities (and issues) for mobile operators and device makers.

What does this new ecosystem look like and who sits where?

Allow me to guide you through my view of the players — and what’s at stake.

Old players, new rules

As with all diagrams that depict our evolving business ecosystems, the individual is the focus. In this case, user content is at the heart of this new paradigm. By user content I mean both UGC and premium content. But it’s not so much about what people make and consume; it’s how they interact with content that changes all the rules. Specifically, people want access (entirely on their terms) to this store of digital content. To achieve this they upload their content to a digital vault, where it can be stored, managed, enriched and shared with friends and family or with their favorite social communities. And it’s not just about mobile phones. People demand this capability from any connected device.

Social communities have similar requirements. There are as many kinds of communities as there are members. In fact, we are witnessing the proliferation of social networks, not unlike the legendary Long Tail of content we know from the Internet. From local social networks (such as Renren in China) to groups of people looking for dating fun (such as Flirtomatic), each community differs in the content they generate. But they all have a common objective: to encourage and enjoy socializing, networking and entertainment.

Content for sale & storage

Premium content is also moving to the fore as storefronts like Amazon.com, Netflix, iTunes and hulu expand to feed our growing appetite for mobile entertainment. In addition, 100+ mobile app stores have opened their doors, offering us a fantastic variety of applications and turning up the pressure on mobile operators and device makers to help us store our pick of apps so we can access them when (and how) we want.

In fact, a new study from ABI Research reveals that the worldwide app industry is well on its way to achieving 44 billion cumulative downloads by 2016. The mobile app ecosystem and market model is also expected to evolve with the increasing pool of smartphone and tablet users.

Whether it’s storefronts or apps, consumers are using them to get the content they want – the way they want it. They rent premium content (movies, TV shows, games, music and apps) and stream it to their devices. Or they purchase the content, move it into their digital vault for safe keeping, or download it to their device for offline viewing.

Big Business (Enablers)

And then there are the business enablers, the underlying systems and processes that help support and monetize digital content. They bring important capabilities to the mix, providing ecosystem partners with deep insights into the key numbers, metrics and concrete results that are the lifeblood of the content business. These range from advertising and analytics, to business intelligence (BI) and billing.

Next in line is infrastructure and network resources. These gateways enable consumers to upload, download, store, stream, share, and manage content from different devices and screens. In other words, access entirely on the consumer’s terms – the way it has to be.

This choice — what I also call Access Independence — is critical to the success of the ecosystem. The movement to network technologies including 3G, long term evolution (LTE) and WiMAX provides speed and reliability. These are mission-critical when the end-game is about ensuring a consistent and gratifying user experience across all screens.

Screens everywhere

The issues around content storage and access are further complicated by a proliferation of connected devices. From smartphones to tablets, and from games consoles to Kindles, users have (and have come to demand) many more choices for accessing, sharing and organizing their content. In fact, our requirement for multi-screen (and consistent) content access and distribution is one of the main drivers for the Cloud. Consumers want to put their content in the cloud — and the ecosystem is emerging to make this possible.

How? In part through application programming interfaces (APIs). These are the glue that hold our new content ecosystem together, enabling systems to speak and interact with each other and give way to new forms of entertainment and a lifetime of digital content user experiences.

Change happens

Where does this leave mobile operators and device makers? How can they take advantage of the new digital content experiences and secure their own role in this new User Content Ecosystem?

Before we can discuss the opportunities we have to accept that command-and-control models belong in the past. They are not sustainable, and they do not cultivate the community needed to make this new ecosystem thrive and flourish.

Put simply, the walled-garden business model that flourished before (in which telecom operators tightly controlled voice, data services and our access to content) is no longer viable.

In this new landscape, operators have to accept some harsh truths in order to grasp the business opportunities around them.

Out of control: Operators have less control over subscribers, services, content and devices. Their historical dominance of the value chain is under attack, and their previously exclusive relationship with subscribers is eroding.

People go where the content is: Users are now taking their dollars and turning to new storefronts like iTunes, Android, Netflix, and Amazon to satisfy their appetite for games, music, movies, TV and more. Their mobile experience is also no longer limited to the mobile phone and operator. Readers, tablets, gaming consoles, connected laptops, and TVs all serve as portals for accessing, uploading, sharing, and managing personal and business content.

Networks are the destination: The popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is exploding, forming the heart of many users’ online experience. The business enablers of the new paradigm like advertising, analytics and third-party applications are largely evolving outside of the operators’ province.

Granted, operators can no longer dominate the telecom landscape, but they can still play a significant role (and not just be relegated to the role of a “dumb pipe”). In fact, they can even sit at the center of this new User Content Ecosystem, provided they build the capabilities that allow them to act as the central hub between the users (devices), social networks and premium storefronts.

From this position operators and device makers alike can leverage metadata, analytics, notifications and developer communities to create new revenue streams from subscription fees, advertising, premium content sales and extending lifetime value.

It’s a new business model that will separate the winners from the also-rans, and I will explore the options available to all the ecosystem players (and more!) in upcoming articles.

Steve French is VP Global Marketing, NewBay. NewBay enables operators and device makers to deliver a lifetime of digital content experiences across any connected device such as mobile, PC, tablets and TV. To find out more about this and other related topics check out the NewBay Blog at www.newbay.com/blog.

Editor’s note: Learn more about increasing the service adoption, usage, longevity, profitability and lifetime value of services by joining NewBay’s upcoming webinar on real-time push notifications.

“Discover Real-Time Push Notifications for Any Service, Any Device and Any Delivery Mechanism” will be held on Tuesday, 3rd May at 5 pm GMT (London) / 9 am PST (San Francisco).

#DearKen: Am I TOO Much of a Self-Promoter on Twitter?

Ken Herron — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:44:42 +0000

#DearKen: @TheMirrorTest author @JeffreyHayzlett calls people who abuse Twitter “twankers”. How do I avoid being too self-promoting?

Thank you for your question. Twitter “rules”, “guidelines”, and “best practices” are great fun for us marketers (especially considering that the golden rule of marketing is that there are no rules). That doesn’t stop folks like Jeff and I, however, from regularly writing about Twitter do’s and don’ts.

My usual disclaimer before we start to keep my company’s compliance team happy: all opinions expressed here are my own, and come from my experience running social media efforts, managing social marketers, and advising social marketing clients. Your mileage will vary.

I challenge the assumption that being a twanker, a rampant, frothing-at-the-mouth, self-promoter on Twitter, is inherently a bad thing. In fact, it may be the single most effective – and brand-appropriate – engagement marketing strategy for your business to attract, convert, and retain your target audiences on Twitter.

That said, if you have determined, based on your audience and your brand that a self-promotional tone, voice, and content are NOT appropriate, then you will want to avoid being a twanker.

How do you know when you’ve crossed the line? The answer is actually baked into the medium itself. By definition, Twitter is a two-way conversation. Back in the Jurassic days of marketing, when all of us relied on “traditional” broadcast, print, and direct media to engage our target audiences, we found ourselves spending a lot of time and money after sending our messages out into the world waiting for feedback to find out whether our audiences loved it, hated it, and most importantly, whether it converted.

With social media, our audiences continually tell us, in real-time (and often in ALL CAPS for the world to see) *exactly* what they think of our marketing and communications. Never before have we had such breadth and depth of insight into what our target audiences think about what we’re saying to them and how we’re saying it. We simply need to listen.

For us marketers, this means investing at least as much time actively listening to our tweeps as we do creating and publishing content. This will allow you to continually improve your Twitter engagement skills, and find the “right” level of self-promotion for your audience and your brand. There are many different tools by the way to help you create your “social listening post”, Google Alerts are a great (and free!) way to start.

One of the best analogies used to describe Twitter is that of a cocktail party. This gets to the core of Jeff’s “don’t be a twanker” message. At a crowded cocktail party, who are you more interested in listening to, the colorful raconteur who freely shares the stories of her many adventures, or the loudmouth who is only interested in talking about himself?

What do YOU think? Do you follow the lead of the loudest and proudest twankers — artists, politicians, athletes, and celebrities on Twitter? How do you identify where to draw the helpful/hurtful self-promotion line for your audience and your brand on Twitter? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

Editor’s note: Do YOU have a question about social marketing technologies, tools, and best practices? Tweet it with the hashtag “#DearKen”. All tweets will be acknowledged, and considered as being submitted for publication.

A cool hunter for new ideas, strategies, and technologies to help world-class brands develop stronger emotional connections with their customers, Ken Herron (https://profiles.google.com/kenherron/about) is Deaf and hard of hearing communications services provider Purple Communications’ (http://purple.us) Vice President of Marketing, and the marketing strategist behind many of New England’s most successful startups. A frequent author and popular speaker on engaging customers on social networks, Social Media Marketing Magazine currently ranks Ken the #2 CMO on Twitter worldwide in his prior role as Chief Marketing Officer of social solutions and services company SocialGrow Inc. (http://socialgrow.com). Follow Ken on Twitter at: @PurpleComm (http://twitter.com/purplecomm) and @KenHerron (http://twitter.com/kenherron).

#DearKen: Should You Put Ads in Your Tweets If You’re Not Kim Kardashian?

Ken Herron — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:04:19 +0000

Twitter is on the move, continuously launching features to enhance the advertising experience on Twitter. (Last week Twitter took the wraps off a beta service that will allow brands to target Promoted Tweets–the ad units that are actually Twitter messages–by country.) But what are the rules of engagement and to what extent (if any) should we promote goods and services in our Twitter stream? Ken Herron, social marketing authority and CMO at social applications and solutions company SocialGrow Inc., is back with a dose of valuable – and practical advice.

* * *

#DearKen What are the pros and cons of sticking ads in your Twitter feed, and what is there to consider?

Thank you for your question. What fun! A great question with no “right” answer, on which lots of people (including myself!) have strong opinions! Let’s tuck in.

The usual preface before we start to keep my company’s lawyers happy – my answers are my own, and are based on my personal experience running my own company’s social media efforts, managing a team of brilliant social marketers, and advising my B2C and B2B social marketing consulting clients. Your mileage may vary.

That said, do I think sticking ads in *any* of my personal or professional social content streams, such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, is a good idea? No. Hell no. Come closer to your screen so I can talk some sense into you for even considering this.

One of the joys of social media is its meritocracy. Setting aside Charlie Sheen and Kim Kardashian for a moment, on social media, the best content becomes viral. Social media creates a level playing field. Regardless of size or budget, any company, organization, or brand can quickly and cost-effectively get their message heard.

Social media is branding at its purest. We all learned in business school that a brand is a promise of value, an “earned trust” that defines your audiences’ expectations for what you will deliver. When people follow, friend, or connect with you on a social platform, it’s because they find the content you offer to be actionable, valuable, educational, interesting, or just plain entertaining (cue Charlie and Kim). As with any form of branding, consistency is key. Think about how turned off you are when your favorite athlete or entertainer starts talking about politics.

On my Twitter accounts, I freely recommend and promote people, products, and organizations that I like. What would be the value of these social recommendations if I were to include paid third-party ads from http://ad.ly/, http://mylikes.com/, or http://sponsoredtweets.com/ in my content stream? The value, my value, would plummet. Many people would simply stop listening to me, and the ones who didn’t would begin to question my recommendations. I would lose their trust.

An admittedly long-winded “no” from me on whether you should place ads in your Twitter feed. But what do *you* think? Would you be willing to monetize your social influence by placing advertising in your Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn feeds? Please share why or why not with us in the comments section below.

***

Editor’s note: Do YOU have a question about social marketing technologies, tools, and best practices? Tweet it with the hashtag “#DearKen”. All tweets will be acknowledged, and considered as being submitted for publication.

A cool hunter for new ideas, strategies, and technologies to help world-class brands develop stronger emotional connections with their customers, Ken Herron (https://profiles.google.com/kenherron/about) is SocialGrow’s (http://socialgrow.com) CMO, and the marketing strategist behind many of New England’s most successful startups. A frequent author and popular speaker on engaging customers on social networks, Social Media Marketing Magazine currently ranks Ken the #2 CMO on Twitter worldwide. Follow Ken on Twitter at: @SocialGrow (http://twitter.com/socialgrow), @WebExecutives (http://twitter.com/webexecutives), and @KenHerron (http://twitter.com/kenherron).

#DearKen: What Social Media Marketers Can Learn About Cause Marketing From Lady Gaga & The Disaster In Japan

Ken Herron — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 15:05:44 +0000

This week has seen both large tech firms (Bing) and small startup companies come under fire after their initiatives to solicit donations for Japan’s earthquake and tsunami victims in exchange for social support of their brands were viewed more as opportunistic PR than genuine efforts to help victims. How should marketers use social media for social good?

We welcome Ken Herron, social marketing authority and CMO at social applications and solutions company SocialGrow Inc., who will author a regular new social marketing advice column, #DearKen, to provide our readers with answers to their questions about social marketing technologies, tools, and best practices. To submit a question, tweet it with the hashtag “#DearKen”. All tweets will be acknowledged, and considered as being submitted for publication.

#DearKen : I see other companies doing “disaster marketing” to raise money for victims of the tragedy in Japan. Good or bad idea?

That’s a really great question, thank you for asking it.

As marketers, we have the opportunity and reach to help victims of natural disasters in ways that others cannot. That said, we don’t want our companies/brands to be viewed by our customers and the general public as being opportunistic, self-serving, or just plain tacky. Notably, the more horrific the disaster, as the tsunami in Japan, the more sensitive people will be to companies exploiting the situation for their own gain.

Prompted by the large number of brands asking people to “like” them on Facebook in exchange for a financial donations, I asked my followers on Twitter (@SocialGrow ) if the companies would have been willing to help anonymously, with no benefit accruing to their brands. The response from my followers was overwhelming – they universally supported the companies’ efforts, but only if the motivation was a genuine desire to help.

My advice:

Do everything you can. Leverage your organization’s unique strengths to help. Share with your audience why you want to help, to communicate that your motivation is not based on what you receive in return.
Do NOT require people to take any social action, such as “likes” on Facebook or retweets on Twitter to trigger your help. Lady Gaga’s approach, allowing donors to specify how much they want to give through the sale of inexpensive rubber bracelets is one example of a positive, viral, and brand-appropriate approach.
Use your social influence to encourage people to give to accredited, in-country organizations. Do your research so that you are partnering with organizations with the best reputations for high efficiency/low costs. One good place to start is: http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/interaction-members-support-japan-earthquake-response.

How does *your* organization support cause marketing without inadvertently hurting your brand? Please share your thoughts with everyone in the comments section below.

Five Great Ways Operators Can get More Mileage Out Of Social Media

Matt Anderson — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:05:00 +0000

In the app store space, social conversations and connections can mean the difference between notoriety and obscurity for apps on offer. In this scenario it makes good business sense for mobile operators (and app store owners) to improve content discovery, allowing consumers to rate, recommend and gift products to their friends just like Amazon does.

But why limit that approach to storefronts and app stores?

Mobile operators can refine this approach to insert themselves at the center of our social media exchange, a trusted position that is the cornerstone of a sustainable business.

The advance of smartphones (and their new importance as a social media tool) turn up the pressure on mobile operators to get involved in that exchange. Offering a content locker that aggregates their subscribers’ social media accounts and contact lists, is an excellent first step.

But it’s more than storage. Mobile operators can also add value by enabling users to share content (stored in the locker) or allow customers to recommend content they’ve purchased to their friends.

It’s easy to imagine a scenario in which mobile operators harness artificial intelligence to automatically display and recommend content to consumers based on where people in their social networks browse and shop – on and off-portal.

Read the rest of my post on the Amdocs Interactive blog.

Matt Anderson is Head of product marketing for Amdocs Interactive, a distinct business within Amdocs focused on Value Added Services, which is the world’s leading provider of digital commerce, Mobile Internet and personalization solutions. Matt has over 13 years experience bringing products to market in the telecommunications industry. Prior to joining Amdocs in 2008, he directed marketing for Nuance’s mobile business unit, focused on market development of speech activation applications in the mobile, navigation and automotive industries. Previously he launched the next generation of T9 at AOL Wireless and was responsible for managing mobile VAS offers at AT&T. Matt also founded a start-up in the telematics business and managed marketing and sales for one of the first wireless data networking companies. Matt has an MBA from the University of Washington. You can follow Matt on Twitter (@matt6156).

Disclaimer: Amdocs Interactive is an MSG client and supporter.

Aisle411: Accelerating In-Store Engagement With Mobile Search, Mobile Marketing & Social Media

Peggy Anne Salz — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:10:15 +0000

Heightened activity and interest in mobile retail (spurred on by holiday shopping and the rapid uptake of price comparison services and apps), has paved the way for a variety of new and immersive mobile experiences that insert marketing messages and campaigns into our daily shopping routines. From mobile codes (specifically, barcodes) to mobile coupons, companies are enlarging their arsenal of capabilities to capture our attention while we shop.

However, only a handful of companies are prepared to compete where it really counts: at the point of inspiration, otherwise known as the retail shelf.

A recent presentation during last year’s Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Forum in London by Joe Horwood, Communication Manager for GS1 MobileCom, an initiative of the GS1 aimed at making mobile commerce and product information services and applications interoperable, scalable and cost-effective, puts this into perspective.

Joe pointed out that vast majority (75 percent) of purchase decisions are made in front of the retail shelf. “So marketing has to influence that moment,” Joe said. He also offered some valuable advice to brands looking for an entry point to consumers: develop apps that enhance the experience of making and keeping a shopping list to drive engagement. GS1 research shows that over 20 percent of U.S. consumers alone would be interested in having a shopping list app from their favorite retailer.

Aisle411, a privately held company providing what is calls “mobile retail navigation” services and apps, didn’t attend the MMA event. But its ground-breaking approach to mobile retail is completely aligned with the market conditions (and opportunities) Joe outlined in his presentation.

What does Aisle 411 do?

Aisle411, which recently released its service as an iPhone app (free from the iPhone App Store), helps shoppers find what they are looking for in the store (down to the specific section of aisle) and get rewarded for it. (Think Foursquare-like check-ins meets the total value shopping experience.)

In this scenario the interaction (search query) cleverly triggers the delivery of relevant coupons and promotions aimed to help consumers save money on the purchase they are about to make. (A clear intention they signal by searching for the item in the first place.)

The process is also opt-in, allowing people to opt in right after they receive a coupon, for example. This puts people in control of their shopping experience and lays acceptable ground rules for a continued interaction between people and merchants/marketers in-store and beyond. (Think cross-sell and up-sell to related products, coupons and offers. Even better – outreach to Millennials that want to feel that brands are listening and responding with offers for their ears only.)

Where does the data come from?

Aisle411’s approach shows that crowd-sourcing delivers real results. Essentially, the company has tapped into publicly available retail store maps and global positioning system technology found on smartphones. Without retailers’ participating, Aisle411 says the service has 80 percent to 90 percent accuracy in locating products on the shelves. When retailers sign up with aisle411 and provide their floor plans, the accuracy naturally increases.

And then there’s the data that people contribute through interactions with the app itself. If a user is searching for duct tape in the hardware store and the spot in the aisle is now a special display for power tools, then people can tap the Edit Location button on the screen and input where the duct tape really is.

What are the features?

Search: First, a word about the search IP (one of the main reasons I connected with Aisle411 for a briefing): it’s the company’s own IP and shows that there is a lot of mileage left in mobile search provided the service is intuitive and makes genuinely helpful suggestions. In practice, people search and the service also lets them map the results (in the store and using Aisle411’s interactive map), add the item found to the shopping list and share the search results with others via SMS, email, Twitter or via an update to their Facebook page.

Offers: The service lets people know about special in-store deals (“Informational Offers”) related to purchase intent and decisions. Users are also provided access to Digital Coupons they can clip and add to their shopper loyalty card. At the checkout the cashier scans the loyalty card and credits the savings to the user in real-time. Note: This is powered by Inmar’s ONiX digital incentive network and enables brands/retailers to deliver micro-targeted mobile promotions to shoppers in near real-time. Aisle411 has also partnered with Cellfire,which is fully integrated into the aisle411 solution to deliver digital coupons onto a loyalty card.
Reviews: Once people find what they’re after, they can scan the barcode (iPhone app only) and get product reviews served up from Amazon.com.
Voice-enabled: Through the help of voice recognition technology powered by Nuance, Aisle411 lets users search and interact with the service using speech. (The perfect fit between mobile and voice-enabled access to services is what no doubt prompted Apple to slip and say it had recently acquired Nuance…)

Where does social fit in?

Searching, sharing and mapping. All have a social element. Specifically, people can earn virtual rewards for a check-in at a store. But they can also get rewards for “doing things” within the app (clipping offers and Digital Coupons, for example). Some of the badges unlock additional (special) offers from retailers and brands, while other “hidden” rewards are a plus to people who have earned it (by editing and correcting the store map, for example).

So what is the business model?

Charged up with a new business plan and $1.8 million raised from investors, Aisle411 is gaining traction. It has an iPhone app out now and plans for BlackBerry and Android apps in the pipeline. Aisle 411 counts deals with major chains (Supervalu’s Shop ‘n Save, for example) and is live in more than 750+ locations in the U.S.

Aisle411 has several aces in its hand that it can turn into money. It can involve marketers and monetize through brand advertising, campaigns and in-app coupon deals. It may also sell aggregate shopper behavior and analytics data (profile, not personal data) to stores.

What’s next?

Rather than speculate, I caught up with Nathan Pettyjohn, Aisle411 CEO, for a briefing to discuss strategy, progress and where he wants to take the company this year.

Q: Aisle411 is social shopping on steroids in my book, but there is overlap with the copycat check-in offers out there…

A: We plan on bringing in the Foursquare APIs – you check in with Aisle 411, you also check in there. But we have found that no one is offering rewards and badges for interacting inside the app. We also do what we do very close to the point of sale. It’s more compelling than a banner ad because we can turn the interaction into more of an engaging game-like experience.

There might be a scavenger hunt within our app - and we’re talking with brands about doing that. So advertisers could brand a badge for checking in, that could be centered around Aisle 411. But the act of searching for specific products, or scanning a barcode, would let consumers earn different rewards. It becomes a much more engaging and compelling environment for a brand to touch a consumer and goes far beyond the simple search-based apps.

Q: So it’s all about turning action – interacting with the app- into engagement…

A: Yes, absolutely, that’s a great way to put it. It creates almost an addictive environment for people to come back to. Search is the utility function and it addresses a pain point, but it’s about bringing people back and keeping them coming back for more, and that is where the social and fun element comes in.

As we evolve we plan to tie this interaction together so — instead of just getting a product review on Amazon — you have the option to send the product you’ve searched for or can’t make up your mind about to 50 of your closest friends and get their feedback within a few seconds. These are on the roadmap and how we want to go further with social.

Q: How about the mobile search? It’s your IP. How does it work and what does it deliver?

A: Our search is unique because we’ve developed it based on focus group studies on how consumers want in-store search to work. We found out that consumers want quick answers. Do they want to know it’s in Aisle 5, or do they want to know it’s in Aisle 5 halfway down 4 shelves up? The answer is no to both of those. People want search results that provide landmarks in aisles. If I search for cornstarch in the grocery store, I want results that tell me the cornstarch is in the flour and baking section of Aisle 2B. That gives me a landmark to look for. It’s not too little information, it’s not too much. It’s just right.

Q: How do handle ambiguous queries? I search for cookies – but could it be cookies or cookie dough? How do you deal with that?

A: Some mobile search services will ask you: do you want cookie dough or do you want packaged cookies. But that drags the consumer into another search and — essentially — they have to tell the search engine what they want to get the right answer. It can be tedious for shoppers who just want the goods.

Our search engine will tell you the cookies are in this section of this aisle and specialty cookies are in this section of this aisle and cookie dough is in this section of this aisle. You can see 5 search results on a page and make your choice. And our users appreciate this approach – which encourages them to explore other items they find genuinely useful.

Q: What about social search here? You have embedded crowdsourcing into the results.

A: For one, we have a button in the search results that allows consumers to edit the location of the item. We created a really simple approach to the in-store experience. If you say double-sided tape was actually in Aisle 28 in the glue section instead of in Aisle 29, you just hit edit location. Then you pick from a list of sub-locations that are available on the store that we’ve pre-defined, You pick and then – when someone searches for this – the results will tell you where we think it is, but we will also will say a user reports it is in Aisle 29. This way we eliminate the risk that a user could just change out a whole store layout and mess things up.

If you help us update where items are, we appreciate that and we also reward you. So we’ll give a Special Agent 411 badge as opposed to 007 badge to make it worthwhile. We also give them the option to share that on Facebook.

Q: What about marketers? They are flocking to Facebook to insert themselves in that exchange. Is there a place for them here?

A: We are talking with brands about supporting those physical rewards. We’ve started out with virtual rewards and tapped into social networks. And then we’re going to allow brands to connect with customer segments and say, if the consumer is the owner of a type of badge, that they qualify for some special deals or incentives from a particular brand.

Q: Where’s the money for Aisle411?

A: One is the consumer product brand, two is the retailer offer and three is from the business intelligence industry. We’re talking with brands about programs that we plan to launch in 2011 that give them the ability to market to a consumer based upon what’s being searched for or what’s on their shopping list.

For retailers where we start to generate some revenue is when that retailer participates in what we call a certified retailer package. It means that they are also marketing within our system, but then they’re also getting access to the shopper analytics and business intelligence metrics. It’s obviously not personal, identifiable information, but it aggregates around what people have on their shopping lists, what they’re looking for, and what time of day they shop.

In our application you can tie your loyalty rewards card to your account. Because they get a better sense of not only what people are purchasing, it’s easier for retailers to provide a more personalized product suggestion or offer.

My Take:

Granted there are a number of copycat check-in offers out there (Shopkick and Checkpoints come to mind.) But this isn’t about offering people rewards for shopping; this is about helping people find what they want while laying the groundwork for ongoing shopper engagement.

I first noticed Aisle411 because I liked the mobile search IP. But the real attraction is how the company harnesses mobile search to power a variety of deeper (sticky) interactions. From mapping results to making a list, the individual is interacting with the app. More importantly, people are volunteering personal information (through opt-in) that opens the door for marketers to connect the dots in search queries and interactions to make people offers they can hardly refuse (coupons related to expressed purchase intent, for example).

Social is a big part of this – as it should be. The badges however reward actions beyond check-ins, potentially encouraging what retailers and brands want most: interaction and engagement. Interestingly, observations such as this recent analysis by Sidney Eve Matrix (based on a piece in the NYT) tells us that people might not want to share their purchases with everyone via Facebook — but they do want to ping their closest friends using text. Aisle411 offers this option. Smart move.

Aisle411’s model takes check-ins to the next level, enabling companies (media buyers and brands) access to contextualized intelligence around people at the precise moment they are signaling purchase intent (via a query to find the item they want to buy). I will continue to watch Aisle411 with great interest. But it’s not about a single company, app or service. It’s about monitoring the exciting models that connect mobile, location, navigation, search and social to transform retail, CRM and our experiences at the point of inspiration.

Marketers Need New Mobile Social Media Mindset; Motorola’s Devices Could Have More Impact Than We Think

Jeff Hasen — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:54:26 +0000

Forty percent of all tweets are created on mobile devices. Surely, that’s a data point that shows the convergence of social media and mobile.

And then there are the statements made by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo at the close of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week in Las Vegas. He revealed that 25 percent of tweets were via wireless devices in 2010. Moreover, he told the audience that 50 percent of active Twitter users are also active on mobile.

(This dovetails with the activity Facebook is also seeing on mobile. There, users are spending approximately an equal amount of time on Facebook on their PCs and on their mobile phones.)

Costolo’s numbers are especially interesting to marketers stepping up investments in social media. But I have to question the wisdom of marketers keeping their efforts (and investments) in social media marketing and mobile marketing in separate silos. After all, social (connecting with our networks on the move) continually tops the list of activities we do most on our mobile devices.

But before I point out the faults of this silo mentality, allow me to say that Twitter’s own business model is marching toward more monetization.

As Costolo put it: “We’re a technology company that’s in the media business. Our business model is an advertising model. So we’re selling ads, and we’re letting people promote their accounts. And we really don’t have to do anything else. Our engagement rates on these ads are ridiculously high. When we saw our stats this last spring when we launched, the numbers were so big we thought we were measuring it incorrectly.”

HOW I SEE IT: The attraction of social networking comes in the connectedness it provides us and in the ability to stay connected to friends wherever and whenever. Users are way ahead of marketers in understanding that there is no meaningful difference in how they connect. So why are there marketing silos? First, this approach splits marketers into two camps (social and mobile) with fierce defenders who are convinced that their focus is the right one. (Why can there be only one?) Second, it ignores that fact that there are limited marketing dollars. So splitting budgets between social and mobile (viewing it as a case of “either/or”) is not beneficial to agencies or brands. Put another way, it’s a huge mistake to not follow consumers on their journey and understand that for them there is no line separating social and mobile. We need to realize this and use it in campaigns. The marketers who figure out how to use social and mobile in complementary ways will be the biggest winners of 2011.

***

The most interesting (perhaps the only) news coming out of the Verizon/ Apple press conference on Tuesday is the massive boost to our personal connectivity. Specifically, the new CDMA iPhone 4 will act as a mobile WiFi connection for up to five devices . Other phones on the market have that capability already, but some believe that the inclusion of this feature on a Verizon iPhone will bring the concept of a personal hotspot to the masses.

So how big is this opportunity really?

According to Ericsson, mobile broadband will reach one billion users in 2011. Ericsson expects Asia to drive the spike in users, followed closely by North America and Europe. By 2015, Ericsson estimates that there will be 3.8 billion broadband subscriptions.

HOW I SEE IT: You can (with good reason) argue that nearly everyone will want to be connected everywhere they go. However, there is another argument to consider. People want that connectivity, but they want it in the form of one connected device – part-mobile, part-computer (more on that in the item below). If this is the case, then there will be relatively little appeal in offering the option to connect multiple devices. But what about the many potentially lucrative use cases in-between? I see this breaking down into segments. If operators make it affordable (like Virgin Mobile has in the U.S. with its daily plans plus industry-low monthly charges), then teenagers and folks in their 20s are all over a flexible option to connect music players, computes, mobile phones and tablets. And the traveling business crowd is always in search of connectivity — so give it to them in a way that makes sense (aligned with their connectivity requirements). As for me, I purchased a Virgin Mobile mifi device late last year. I get unlimited data and connectively on up to five devices for $40 a month. I moved ahead with this purchase because it came with a month-to-month contract. It’s a perfect offer for lots of people (like me) who aren’t ready to make a long-term bet. Flexibility is king here.

***

Few people would have predicted that Motorola would be in the same sentence as “Best of CES 2011.” But it happened.

Motorola — the company that had risen to new heights with the Razr only to lose its lead to BlackBerry and Apple — had a week in Las Vegas only a lucky gambling high-roller could match.

In voting by the editors and reporters of CNET, Motorola won the “Best of CES” award for its Motorola XOOM – dubbed as the first device on Google’s new Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system designed from the ground up for tablets. In addition to “Best of CES” award, Motorola received two other award honors – “Best Smartphone” for the Motorola ATRIX and “Best Tablet” for the Motorola XOOM.

By way of background, Motorola XOOM has a dual core processor, and an HD optimized 10.1-inch widescreen. Motorola ATRIX 4G was presented as the most powerful mobile phone available. Its webtop application runs a full Mozilla Firefox 3.6 and uniquely docks with computers and keyboards.

HOW I SEE IT: Of course, this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen Motorola receives accolades for its innovation. Wikipedia tells us that, over the RAZR’s four-year run, Motorola sold more than 110 million units, boosting its position to second place in the handheld market behind Nokia. Was it an iconic device? You bet. PC World put the RAZR at #12 in The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years. Now Motorola is considered an also-ran with just 17 percent share in the U.S. market and no dominance elsewhere. As marketers, we need to be ready to adapt. And we must remember that it isn’t over until it’s over. Success comes with innovation coupled with sought-after consumer benefits and backed by great marketing and the right pricing. If those elements are indeed present in devices like the XOOM, then down go the pundits who have written off Motorola forever.

* * *
A career author and sought-after speaker, Jeff Hasen builds, strengthens and protects brands. Companies benefiting from his talents have landed on Wired’s list of most innovative entities on Earth and been named pioneers and the early leader in the burgeoning mobile marketing category. Jeff co-created the certification program for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He is one of only two individuals certified by the MMA to train professionals and students on mobile marketing definitions, techniques and benefits. At Hipcricket, he conceived and led the execution of an accelerated rebranding effort in advance of the mobile marketing software and services company being named “the early leader in the mobile marketing space in the U.S.” by Frost and Sullivan. Hipcricket also won consecutive annual pioneer awards from CTIA — The Wireless Association. Follow Jeff on Twitter (@jeffhasen).

IMPACT: Holiday Shopping Super-Charges Mobile Commerce

Jeff Hasen — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 18:24:21 +0000

Over a week into the holiday shopping season. A good time to reflect on how and why mobile is impacting this season like no other channel. Based on the massive response to mobile commerce apps, sites and approaches (as part of a cross-media push) I have to say 2010 will go down as the year that mobile shopping crossed the chasm.

A review of recent data points confirms that holiday shopping has brought a new activity to the masses.

PayPal saw mobile shopping jump by nearly 310 percent on Black Friday. Overall, PayPal reported mobile payment volume increased by approximately 27 percent, compared to Black Friday in 2009. Meanwhile, barcode giant Scanbuy says it saw about 30 times more scans last weekend than it did a year ago.

And it’s not just about buying real stuff using digital means. Zong, which powers mobile payments for virtual goods, says sales were up a whopping 117 percent year-over-year on Cyber Monday.

HOW I SEE IT: While mobile shopping (and related activities) hit record levels this year, 2010 is nothing compared to what we’ll see in 2011. Retail has arrived – and it’s safe to say that marketers who planned, integrated and provided relevance and value are going to be the big winners. Those who failed to support what people really do with their phones (research purchases, make payments, compare prices, scan barcodes) might not be around next year to make the same mistakes. As for my own mobile shopping, I bought a Virgin Mobile Mifi personal hotspot device on Black Friday in a brick-and-mortar Radio Shack AFTER checking prices and availability on my iPhone.

* * *

Mobile and social have been traveling on separate paths until now. But 2011 could be the year we see the two converge.

Sure, mobile subscribers worldwide use their devices to access and post to social media properties – 200 million use Facebook mobile, for instance – but brands and marketing agencies continue to put social and mobile in two separate silos. This approach is patently false (so are all siloed approaches, by the way).

And let’s not forget the potential and positive impact of mobile and social (and their impending convergence) on Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Interestingly, AT&T has revealed it is monitoring Twitter to become a better mobile company. According to ReadWriteWeb, “those (at AT&T) monitoring the system then uses the time-stamped tweets and locations and compares the data to customer service calls. Twitter trends can even indicate service problems faster and more efficiently than customer complaint logs, which take longer to log and analyze.”

HOW I SEE IT: AT&T is being smart here (words that haven’t often been in the same sentence). While monitoring Twitter doesn’t make for a better service, the strategy shows a sharp appreciation of the importance of social in – well – everything. In my view, AT&T deserves some credit for its efforts to monitor outages through customer tweets. Connect the dots, and this could lead to improved customer experiences . Or perhaps this is a publicity stunt that will do nothing other than temporarily put AT&T in a good light…

* * *

As we wait for mobile and local to come together and impact user behavior on a large scale, news from travel deal website Priceline tells us that the waiting could be over soon as more people use mobile to plan and book travel.

According to Advertising Age, Priceline found that 35 percent of its customers were within one mile of the hotel at the time of booking. What’s more, Priceline found that more than 80 percent of Priceline mobile app customers booked hotel rooms within one day of arrival, compared with 45 percent name-your-own-price customers online. Almost 60 percent of customers on Priceline’s mobile app were within 20 miles of the hotel at the time of booking.

Gerard Insall, Avis’ senior VP-chief information officer, was quoted as saying that the mobile traveler is going to be the more frequent traveler. “But over time,” he says, “everyone who travels — whether it’s once or 10 times per year — is going to be using mobile.”

HOW I SEE IT: This article has picked up on a mobile megatrend. The most compelling part of the article was Google’s description of the mobile traveler as an “incremental” consumer. As a Google executive put it: “What we’re seeing [in mobile] is a different consumer….What they’re booking is actually different than what they’re booking online.” Proof once more that mobile is different. People do different things (and book differently). Indeed, mobile provides unmatched value and mobile subscribers will react positively to information that is local and relevant.

SOCIAL MEDIA ASIA PODCAST: Freddie Laker Talks Hyper-Relevant Social Media Marketing

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 19:43:30 +0000

What are the key trends in social media and marketing in Asia? What is the future of Facebook (in regions except for China, where it is banned)? What is the potential impact of Asia’s home-grown social networking giants? And how should brands harness social media for effective marketing in Asia?

Tough questions that require brave answers.

I caught up with Freddie Laker – social media marketing authority, Asia trend-watcher and Director of Digital Strategy at SapientNitro an interactive marketing, creative design & technology services consultancy – to explore his views and insights in the run up to Social Media World Forum Asia (September 22-23, Singapore).

This event, organized by Six Degrees, brings together major global brands (Facebook, Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, BMW, OgilvyOne, Freemantle Asia) to discuss how they are using social media in their marketing and public relations strategies. Freddie will use the event to debut his take on top trends in a path-breaking presentation called Social Media 2013 that maps out the future of social media and marketing in Asia.

In many ways, the presentation will build on the insights Freddie collected in his first presentation (below), Social Media 2012. It counts almost 14,000 views and describes a future in which it isn’t just about social media. It’s digital, it’s interactive and it’s everywhere (!)

Social Media 2012 Master

View more webinars from Freddie Laker.

Asia will see a similar transformation.

However, the addition of mobile will have profound consequences.

Register while you still can to attend this high-calibre event — and quote that you’re a reader of MSearchGroove to receive a 15 percent discount.

My take

I won’t say that Freddie has all the answers, but he has identified the key variables brands and agencies should plug into their social media marketing algorithms. Among these: current mobile penetration, the requirement of people in rural areas for low-tech, high-value services, and the percentage of Asians who are engaging in social shopping (and valuing the advice/suggestions of their social networks over anyone else) — into the equation. Indeed, understanding these local developments is mandatory if brands want to remain relevant to their advocates.

Listen to the podcast here. [12:23]

Editor’s note: A personal thanks to Freddie for an invigorating exchange. I am honored that Freddie is not only on my wavelength; he has agreed to return to MSG after the event with an exclusive column outlining his vision of how social media and marketing will likely evolve across Asia’s rural regions. Stay tuned!

SOCIAL MEDIA ASIA PODCAST: Toys “R” Us Reveals Mobile Shopping & Barcode Asia Strategy

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:37:11 +0000

In brief: MSG is proud to be a media partner and launch a series of podcasts in the run up to Social Media World Forum Asia (September 22-23, Singapore), an event organized by Six Degrees bringing together major global brands (Facebook, Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, BMW, OgilvyOne, Freemantle Asia) to discuss how they are using social media in their marketing and public relations strategies. Today we speak with Argha Sen, Toys “R” Us head of Marketing & CRM.

Asia is fast becoming a major focus for social media giants. Indonesia and Japan have risen to become the second and the third largest Tweeting countries; Facebook has opened offices in Asia and forged a partnership with Malaysian based MOL; and a recent milestone report from Nielsen confirms that social media usage has seen unprecedented growth in Asia Pacific in the past year and is now “one of the most critical trends” – period.

Against this backdrop, the region is a perfect test bed for mobile social marketing approaches (what I call the combination of mobile, social media and marketing). Little wonder that major global brands have quietly and cleverly harnessed social media to raise brand awareness and – ultimately – generate sales.

A textbook example of this is Toys “R” Us, one of the companies presenting at Social Media World Forum Asia (September 22-23, Singapore). It has placed social media at the center of a retail strategy sharply aimed at results. Specifically, the company integrates social media with other efforts (loyalty programs and barcode schemes, for example) to make and maintain contact with customers before, during and after their in-store visit.

PODCAST WITH ARGHA SENN

I caught up with Argha Sen, head of marketing and CRM of Toys “R” Us, where he is responsible for managing company programs across 8 countries in the region. He also directs the company’s multi-country loyalty program. We discussed the details of his strategy, the results of his barcode/iPhone launch in Taiwan, and the topics he will discuss during the conference.

The podcast with Argha – chock-filled with fascinating observations and figures – is one of my personal favorites, which is why I couldn’t edit it down beyond 15:45 minutes. I urge you to listen in and hear his pragmatic views on social media, personal mobility and how this all comes together in a shopping experience aimed to blur the boundaries between physical retail (in-store shopping) and virtual interaction (scan a barcode to engage via social media). Very progressive and extremely impressive! I greatly look forward to a follow-up interview when Argha can return to discuss some hard numbers and real results.

Among the highlights:

LOYALTY & RETAIL: As Argha sees it, the number one priority of all his programs is to drive people into the stores to buy toys. The linchpin of this advanced CRM (Customer Relationship Management) strategy is the Star Card program, the Toys “R” Us loyalty program that runs across six markets in Asia and counts some 2.3 million members. This program drives “about 50-60, sometimes even 70 percent of sales,” which is why it is crucial to make sure all social media efforts support it. How? Integration. As Argha puts it: “Ultimately, they are connected to each other….The Facebook page takes you to our YouTube channel, or the Facebook page takes you to our store or takes you to our website; the website takes you to our Facebook page and all of them drive you to the store.”

MOBILE: Mobile penetration in Hong Kong (where Argha is based) rates among the highest in the world, so mobile is a big part of the company’s strategy. “There are three things that a consumer in Hong Kong does not leave home without: one is the Hong Kong ID card, which you need to carry around with you all the time; the second is what we call the Octopus card, which is really a transport card that allows you to get onto the subway, the bus, the ferries; and the third thing that a Hong Kong person is never without is his or her mobile phone…. So, that obviously presents huge, huge marketing opportunities provided of course that it is done the right way.”

BARCODES: Unlike the U.S., barcode scanning in Asia is about information first and price comparison second. Apps such as Red Laser have not gained traction – yet. Instead, barcodes are the way to “link the customer to videos and other kinds of elements that we can’t always display in the store.” Barcodes also fill the information gap. “You can’t always get all that information from the store staff, so one of the things we are moving towards is [displaying] a QR code next to the product. The customer simply scans that and it takes him or her to a website or to a landing page or to a video explaining the features of the product.” The barcodes were also featured in the company’s summer catalog, allowing customers to scan the printed page and land at the website (where they can also see the video). “We see a lot of opportunities for us to continuously experiment with the QR codes and build this in-store engagement, and take the customer to information and offers that we normally can’t give in the store.”

POINTS & PAYMENTS: Argha is also interested in exploring CRM and developing more holistic programs incorporating coupons and loyalty cards that can be completely executed on the mobile. “Ultimately, there may even be a situation where the customer also pays with their mobile, like they do in Japan or in Korea.” Until then Argha shares his insights around a new service (available in Taiwan) that allows people with smartphones and to swipe a barcode and collect points. “In the future, instead of swiping the [loyalty] card, the customer will swipe the mobile phone and we’ve already launched this in all our stores in Taiwan. There you can actually scan your iPhone. We give you a barcode, the Star Card is digitized and turned into a barcode, and that barcode is stored in the customer’s iPhone. The cashier simply scans the customer’s iPhone instead of scanning the card, and that links to the database and that gives the customer the points and the rewards and the coupons and all of that.”

MY TAKE:

Toys “R” Us understands the fit between mobile, the fiercely personal devices we carry with us at all times, and CRM, the programs and approaches that treat us as a valued customer and individual. Argha tells me the complete CRM program will be executed over the mobile phone in the next two years. But it’s not just about the mobile; it’s about linking CRM with social media (YouTube videos and the company Facebook page) at the all-important point of purchase. Connect the dots, and the power of mobile in retail is proportionate to the level of integration at the POS (point of sales). Barcodes, coupons, mobile payments – these are all elements of an exceptional shopping experience, but it’s the integration that makes them truly effective. I’ll have more on this in Real Goods, Real Commerce & Real Results: The positive future for mobile operator billing platforms, a soon-to-be released white paper MSG has produced on behalf of Tego Interactive.

In the meantime, allow me to leave you with Argha’s key message to his peers: “Instead of treating this as a completely separate channel and a separate thing that only the marketing guys are involved in, we tend to integrate this with all our other marketing channels and all our other business channels. Now, if we do things here which are not integrated with the business, however cool they are and however award winning they might be, they really have no place here. We’re not here to win awards, we’re not here to get plaudits for our social media work, we are here to run a toy business and to get the customer to the store and to get them to buy toys.”

You can register for the event here and receive a 15 percent discount – just quote that you’re a reader of MSearchGroove.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE. [15:45]

BEST & BRIGHTEST: COM #236: Mobile Games, Mobile Web, Mobile Data, NFC, Bible Apps & Trends

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:49:27 +0000

In brief: This week’s line-up includes mobile social games opportunities (now that Facebook is bombing and mobile is booming); must-read mobile design element documentation, mobile Bible content, and a look at why the Web is dead (not).

A few reminders before we deep-dive into the best in this week’s mobile blogging. As COM coordinator (or “keeper of the tents”) I’d like to encourage regular contributors and Mobilists to help me make the COM more interactive and valuable for everyone.

A step in this direction will be our LinkedIn group (an alternative to our presence in Google Groups). I also encourage everyone to follow posts and hosts via Twitter (@COTMobilists) and reach out to me directly with ideas, improvements and ways to make the COM outstanding as it nears its fifth anniversary in October. (The COM made its debut on October 13, 200, via this post over at MobHappy.)

Meantime, I want to showcase the quantity and quality of the COM’s 100+ contributors and mobile passionatas. A call to the Mobilists: Please send me a 50-100 word profile of your website and or/a recent (brief) bio.

And don’t forget to check out the calendar and pick a date to host. There are slots still open!

COM #236

It’s a slow summer at the COM, all the more reason for you to follow Tomi Ahonen’s excellent advice and use the seasonal “downtime” to re-charge your batteries and catch up on COM posts you may have missed. You can find a complete list of COM posts and links here.

This week we have a short (but snappy) line-up of posts, including my pick of the week. So let’s roll!

Social mobile games and the social graph: This post from Raj Singh looks at how mobile social games might tap the social graph to drive significant revenues for the ecosystem. He draws from several examples (such as the Game Lobby from U.S: mobile operator Sprint, a virtual mobile community for gamers to meet, recommend games and challenge each other) and concludes that if these platforms follow a write-once, run anywhere paradigm and tap the social graph (much like Facebook – only bigger and better), then viral distribution will pay dividends for everyone.

Mobile design for the masses: Steven Hoober over at Little Springs Design shares a detailed and valuable post documenting mobile design elements and the process that will ensure that his work helps everyone everywhere. As he puts it: “I think good documentation should not just communicate the idea, but help the designer, whether it be UX or software of systems or database design.” And remember you can still connect with Steve and the Little Springs team in Chicago next month.

Fair data usage debate: James Rosewell over at The Fonecast explains from a personal perspective what happened when he crossed the line between “unlimited” and “fair usage.” Based on this he warns that network operators should prepare for a consumer backlash if they stick to their current limits.

NFC noise and reality: In two posts C. Enrique Ortiz provides perspective on NFC (Near Field Communications) and mobile payments following the news that Apple could be making plans for a big role in mobile NFC after hiring of Benjamin Vigier as its product manager of mobile commerce. We also get the inside track on the discourse at the recent Forum Oxford and some provocative statements made by disruptive and highly respected Mobilist Dean Bubley. Did Nokia get it right (by dropping NFC) and will Apple get it wrong (by picking up the ball)? And what are the implications as handset makers push forward with non-Single Wire Protocol (SWP) NFC handsets next year? Read on here (and here) and find out

Bible apps & community: A thoughtful post from Antoine RJ Wright retraces the evolution of Bible content and apps and challenges us to imagine the future of Biblical software. From the advance of social networks to the pace of publishing industry consolidation, Antoine outlines the megatrends likely to impact companies in this space and the investments they make in Bible content and related services.

Is Skype (?): Last week’s gracious COM host Tam Hanna is back with a brief post about Skype in Germany. It seems that the German government can listen in on Skype-2-Skype calls – and Tam provides the proof.

The Web is dead?!: This insightful and balanced post from Ajit Jaokar dissects a recent article in Wired magazine claiming that the “Web is dead.” Kudos to Ajit for going beyond the hype to show how Wired misunderstands what the Web is – period. For one, the assumption that the mobile Web is always about browsing ignores the other models and ways we access content (such as Web widgets on mobile devices). It’s a detailed post and I am glad Ajit picked up the gauntlet, which is why it is also my pick of the week.

* * *

That’s a wrap until next week. You can still sign up to host the COM #237 at your site, so please contact me directly via Twitter (@peggyanne) or email (peggy@msearchgroove.com) to sign up for the privilege

Keep it fun!

GUEST COLUMN: Social Augmented Reality; Connecting People, Content & Context In New Worlds

Christine Perey — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:42:38 +0000

Editor’s note: Interest in Augmented Reality (AR) is on the upswing as companies harness it to super-charge their brand or make their offer more compelling. Malaysia Airlines has developed a mobile AR app to promote special flights; the magazine Time Out New York is using mobile AR to let smartphone users call up a singing chorus from Staten Island; and department stores are experimenting with AR to take the hassle out of trying clothes. (Consumers try on clothes by overlaying the clothes over an image of themselves.) Over in Asia, a region light years ahead in the adoption and acceptance of mobile AR, Japan’s mobile operator NTT DoCoMo is set to launch “chokkan nabi”, (stands for intuitive navigation), in September. The service uses mobile AR to help people find their way around megacities such as Tokyo and Osaka. While this progress is encouraging, Christine Perey, an independent consultant and industry analyst focusing on mobile AR, suggests that Social AR – the intersection of mobile social networking and AR apps – is the one to watch.

***

Mobile Augmented Reality (AR) applications started out allowing us to view useful or factual information associated with objects and places in the world around us. The classic example of this type of mobile AR is the Wikitude application (by Mobilizy), which associates georeferenced Wikipedia entries with a point of interest and presents the same Wikipedia text in a box overlayed on the live video window. Using platforms that empower individuals to post their thoughts or comments on objects and places in the real world, we now have the potential to be immersed in Social AR.

As I show in this column, social AR is a natural next step in the evolution of mobile AR and social networking.

We started out with social networks and microblogging services that allowed us to post our ideas and reactions to places and events. And then, with GPS in mobile handsets, we moved to services that allowed us to geolocate our cyber-graffiti, adding new meaning and context to the breadcrumb trail we left behind.

Then came the “see through” video streaming we know from using an Android handset or the iPhone4. This made it possible for us to “see” the same tags in the context of the real world and – more importantly – share our comments with anyone who cares to lift up their device, switch on their AR application and take a look.

Now we’re moving full steam into a new scenario. Imagine a thought or comment about an object or person which is not fixed in space, but which has unique features—a face, a pet, a product—which can be recognized from an image (using image recognition software) and tied or “stuck” to the target when it appears on your field of view. We are very nearly there and the implications for people and businesses will be profound.

TECTONIC SHIFTS

But before we talk about where this is going, it’s important to trace the milestones that mark our path to this point.

Dan Melinger, one of the founders of Kamida, a NY-based startup, was working on geo-located social media as early as May 2004. Later that year, Dan presented his vision via this poster at Ubicomp 2004 , and introduced the use of “sticky Shadows” as a way to bookmark our lives and literally leave our mark everywhere. The company released its commercial service, called Socialight, in December 2006.

Today the company is still pushing the envelope. In fact, a review of its clients (a list that includes Ford in Europe) tells us there is a lot of mileage in geo-tagged social media. Socialight’s platform has an open API, permitting developers to infinitely extend features (they can add a new symbol to the list of emoticons, tint/color different personal comments or objects) and deepen the user’s social experience with a brand or a place. This opens up Social AR to a larger audience, allowing public communities to build their own custom applications with filters.

In 2007 we saw photos show up on a live map, a development that gave geo-tagged mobile social applications new importance and impact. Back then Marc Davis was running Yahoo! Research Berkeley, and his prototype project combined geo-tagging with images. I got a demo of the maps-based view of comments and Flickr photos (only supported with Yahoo! ID users) when our paths crossed at an Informa Mobile Social Networking event in London. Back then the processor limitations of the handsets and lack of an integrated compass meant that overlaying those same images on a live video stream could not be implemented as a feature for mainstream users. But it was on the roadmap!

A year later, at ISMAR 08 (International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality), Sinem Guven and a group of researchers from IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, demonstrated a prototype mobile AR application aimed at transforming the shopping experience. And, in my view, it did.

In a nutshell, the application allows a consumer to scan the cover of a book or a barcode to access more information about the book from Amazon – with a personal touch. Magically, an animated figure appears (overlayed on the page of the book) and offers opinions and reviews about the book. It was the first sign that retail and AR were coming together to impact our lives.

TWITTER ENTERS THE PICTURE

Fast forward to 2009 and the arrival of the iPhone 3GS and smartphones with compass (and GPS from other handset makers) catapults AR to a new level.

By the fall of 2009 we started seeing a new wave of applications that combined AR and real-time or near real-time social media. Among these were path-breaking applications that harnessed the Twitter API to bring tweets to eye level.

In July 2009, Michael Zoellner, a designer working on AR applications at Fraunhofer IGD released TwittAround for Android handsets. Soon after an application was released for the iPhone

Not long after, Andrej Solar developed TweetAR for Android. But, for people who don’t live in highly concentrated urban environment, tags appear far apart from one another on the spatial scale. So, viewing a simple list view of your Tweets remains more convenient. The situation changes, however, when we find ourselves in a city center. One of the most densely populated areas on the planet is Tokyo, the birthplace of Tonchidot, the winner of a TechCrunch 2008 award and provider of a social AR platform and service, Sekai Camera for Android and iPhone.

Another leap forward for Social AR came in the fall of 2009, when Metaio, one of the players in industrial strength Augmented Reality, released the junaio application for iPhone 3GS. Getting social media into this platform was not incredibly easy, but it was possible. Users could follow a series of steps using their computer or the mobile phone app to tag the real world. What’s more, users could post personal comments or “insert” a photo or a 3-D object, which would then float in space over the place or object. Since then, junaio continues to improve and social AR is a major feature of some of the most popular channels on the service.

Around the same time, the design innovation company The Astonishing Tribe, aka TAT, upped the ante with an application that allowed users to tag themselves for others to see.

The concept of Augmented ID – the result of a collaboration with Polar Rose, a company specialized in facial image recognition and head tracking – brings a new dimension to social networking allowing users to choose and customize the profile they show to the outside world. In this video (click image above), we have the example of a user who links his image with suitable social media links, such as his Facebook page, in preparation for a night on the town.

The companies followed up on this application with Recognizer, which was shown during Mobile World Congress 2010. Unfortunately, due to lack of a clear business model and concerns about privacy and lack of social acceptance, the service is not commercially available.

LAYAR’S IMPACT

Social AR is here to stay. But where is this genre of AR applications heading?

We got a glimpse of this future on June 18, 2010, when Layar, the Dutch provider of the popular Layar mobile AR browser, announced the development of animated 3D objects called Floaticons. The Layar browser provides information in the video camera field of view, organized into various “layers” such as entertainment, eating out, games, real estate, retail, social networks, tourism, transportation and weather.

Floaticons put people back into the “total information” picture, giving users of the AR browser the ability to post their thoughts in space with more than just a bubble or a photo.

Although Layar has not yet released them, the company website highlights several series of Floaticons, including Floatos Locos, Robots 3000, Classic Monsters and Sparkle & Shine.

These animated 3-D creatures are part of a dead-serious business strategy. As Layar puts it: “Floaticons are Layar’s first step into the business of Digital Goods.”

To ensure that only relevant messages remain visible over time, Layar limits the “lifespan” of a Floaticon message. The health of a Floaticon can be prolonged by feeding it a digital cookie. And, since Floaticons are tightly connected with the in-application micropayment system, it looks as if there will be a business model for Social AR!

Identifying a viable business model is crucial to the continued investment in mobile AR services in general and social AR in particular.

In my view, having end-users pay—directly or indirectly—for Social AR is a much cleaner option than advertising or sponsorship. Consumers are nervous about seeing too much advertising super-imposed over their physical world, and advertisers are jumpy about having their brands associated with user-generated content that isn’t tightly censored or manually filtered/approved.

User-controlled options do more than build brand; they also add to credibility of the social AR content because it is more likely that, when users pay for it, only the best or highest value content is seen. It’s a simple voting mechanism. If a lot of users benefit from a post in the AR view, and give it their thumbs-up, then perhaps credits go to the source of the Floaticon and the cookie monster gets fed!

OPEN FOR BUSINESS

In the coming months, with the improvement of visual recognition algorithms, we can expect new mobile AR applications to support and super-charge retail, making good on the user experiences IBM promised and prototyped several years ago.

Take the recent moves made by both Metaio and Layar to integrate their client applications and backend systems with image recognition technology provided by Zurich-based Kooaba. It’s clear that shopping – already a social experience – is about to be transformed by Social AR.

As Metaio CTO Peter Meier put it in a recent interview with VentureBeat, we already have the object of desire in the field of view, and we can add on user reviews. The next logical step is to make it possible for the user of an AR application to purchase exactly what is in front of them through the AR payment system.

So, why not just buy it outside the AR service?

It’s easy to imagine incentives to both merchants and users to engage in this. It’s called Mobile Social AR Shopping and I saw it coming in 2009 when I wrote this post.

But we’re not there yet. From a user experience point of view, Social AR could make the screen very, crowded, to the point of being chaotic. So, filters will need to be developed and implemented that allow users to select their preferences and manage the noisy environment in urban centers, where people have tagged – well – everything.

Social AR will also have to address some thorny issues such as privacy management. Currently, the technology is so new and the number of social AR users is so small that we can’t point to a case in the courts. But it’s not difficult to imagine a situation in which privacy management in AR becomes as loaded and troublesome as it is in Facebook today.

But there are ways to turn a pending problem into a golden opportunity. (The topic is sure to be of interest to the participants of the upcoming ISMAR 2010 workshop. The Mobile AR Summit focuses on Mobile AR Commercialization strategies.)

One solution for managing social media sharing policies across federated networks, which the W3C Social Web Incubator Group is examining is the use of a third-party “privacy management service provider” to manage and protect an individual’s social media profile across the Social Web. Look for services like this to come on the market next year as distributed social media management tools, such as the One Social Web project from Vodafone, emerge.

Until then, enjoy a walk around and the chance to view the thoughts of your friends and family floating freely around a family pet or restaurant near you!
* * *
Christine Perey is an independent consultant and industry analyst focusing on mobile Augmented Reality, mobile social networking and smart spaces/intelligent objects. All these domains are leveraging Cloud Computing combined with small, ubiquitous end points which sense and process information about their environment for users. Christine provides business development/sales, management consulting and custom market research services to companies seeking to build upon these domains of expertise for the purpose of improving quality of life of end users worldwide.
You can contact Christine via email (cperey@perey.com).

MEDIA SPONSOR: Mobile Future Forward Discount Offer Extended Until Friday

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:46:59 +0000

In brief: Take advantage of the opportunity to experience the next five years in mobile in just one day! Special discount rates still available for Mobile Future Forward, a high-caliber Executive Summit (September 8, Seattle) organized by Chetan Sharma and his team. The agenda is in place to make this one of the events of the year, where attendees can shape industry debate and network with a “Who’s Who” of the mobile industry.

From the evolution of mobile data to content monetization models, to mobile health (mHealth) to mobile cloud computing, Mobile Future Forward is much more than just another mobile industry event. The one-day summit brings together top-notch senior execs and speaker to take the pulse of the mobile industry and ask the brave question: Where do we go from here?

SPECIAL OFFER

MSG is proud to be a media sponsor and help build awareness of this premiere event.

If you follow Chetan’s tweets, then you know that the special discount offer has been extended for another week.

Registration is Open Now. Special offer expires August 6 – Enter MSG to receive your discount rate

And speaking of agendas, here’s a comprehensive list of the event speakers and sessions.

8:30 am
Keynote – Stephen David, former CIO, Procter & Gamble

9:00 am
Keynote – Glenn Lurie, President – Emerging Devices, AT&T

9:30 am
Keynote – Anand Chandrasekher, SVP and GM – Mobile, Intel

10 – 10:30 am
Break

10:30 am
Keynote – Takayuki Hoshuyama, CEO, D2Communications

11:00 am
Taking the pulse and where do we go from here

Mike Sievert, Chief Commercial Officer, Clearwire
Dr. Genevieve Bell, Fellow, Intel
Lirong Shi, President, ZTE
Subba Rao, CEO, Tata DoCoMo

12 – 1:30 pm
Lunch

1:30 pm
Network and Mobile Data Evolution 2010-2015

Wims Sweldens, President, Alcatel-Lucent
Neville Ray, Chief Network Officer, T-Mobile
Bob Azzi, Senior Vice President, Sprint
Matt Bross, CTO and Vice Chairman, Huawei
Sean Cai, Vice President – Advanced Wireless Technology, ZTE
Ken Denman, CEO, Openwave

Future of Content, Engagement, and Monetization

Louis Gump, Vice President – Mobile, CNN
Jack Kennedy, Senior Vice President – Digital, News Corp
Omar Javaid, Vice President, Converged Media, Motorola
Paul Palmieri, CEO, Millennial Media
John Zehr, Senior Vice President, ESPN Digital
Rob Glaser, Chairman, Real Networks and Partner, Accel

2:30 pm
mHealth – The Impact on Society and Global Health

Dr. Sailesh Chutani, CEO, Mobisante
Jon Stross, General Manager and Vice President, Babycenter.com
Dr. Boris Nikolic, Sr. Program Director, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Dr. Greg Brandenberg, CEO, Columbia Basin Health Association
Dr. Suzanne Clough, Chief Medical Officer, Welldoc

The Economics and Politics of Consumer Data

Krishna Vedati, Senior Vice President, AT&T Interactive
Chris Murphy, Head of Digital Strategy, adidas

3:30 – 4:00 pm
Break

4:00 pm
Evolution of Communication and Social Interaction

Christopher Dean, Chief Strategy Officer, Skype
Mario Quirez, Vice President – Product Management, Google
David Weiden, General Partner, Khosla Ventures
Joe Sims, Lead Partner, Booz&Co
Chamath Palihapitiya, Vice President – Mobile, Growth, Intl, Facebook

Mobile Cloud Computing – At the Tipping Point?

Hank Skorny, Senior Vice President – Media Cloud Computing, Real Networks
Brian Shepherd, President – Mobile Services and Marketing, Amdocs
Abhi Ingle, Vice President – Industry & Mobility Application Solutions, AT&T

5:00 pm
Internet of Things

Amir Mashkoori, CEO, Kovio
Tony Lewis, Vice President – Open Development, Verizon
Danny Bowman, President – Integrated Solutions Group, Sprint
Mark Selby, Vice President – Industry Collaboration, Nokia

At the Intersection of Gaming, Social, and Commerce

Tim Chang, Partner, NVP
6:00 – 8:00 pm
Adjourn, Reception, and Networking

WHITE PAPER & PODCASTS

And if you want to get to prep for this lively event and debate, then check out Chetan’s new white paper (available for download here/PDF), which provides a comprehensive overview of the topics/issues that will define the business agenda for years to come.

In line with MSG’s special offer (available only to select event organizers), MSG will feature a special podcast interview with Paul Palmieri, Millennial Media CEO. In it we’ll explore some recent company news, the state of mobile advertising and mobile ad networks and take a sneak peek at what he plans to address during the session.

Keep checking back or follow MSG on Twitter (@msearchgroove & @peggyanne) to get the inside track on the speakers and the hot topics they will discuss.

Register today for your special rate – and I hope to see you there!

CENTER STAGE: Physical Context Drives Mobile Commerce; NearbyNow Paves Way For Shoppers to Find & Buy

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:41:50 +0000

In brief: Moving on with another in the “best of” selection of executive interviews from the Netsize Guide 2010 and setting the stage for a new white paper revealing the results of the Netsize Mobile Trends Survey looking at mobile commerce acceptance and attitudes. We speak with Scott Dunlap, Founder & CEO of NearbyNow, a U.S. – based provider of personal shopping services.

The sale of digital goods continues to be a robust business. In fact, the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) – the global trade body for the mobile media and entertainment industry – told MSG in this podcast that overall confidence in the mobile entertainment market continues to climb. Little wonder that the organization projects that the value of the mobile media market will rise from $32 billion for 2009 to $36 billion for 2010. (listen to the podcast here.)

However, the much more exciting opportunity could be mobile commerce that bridges the digital and physical worlds, allowing consumers to pay for real goods and services using their mobile phones and mobile retail apps.

MOBILE COMMERCE SURVEY RESULTS

Indeed, consumers see real value in mobile commerce and the convenience of being able to find and buy goods (digital and physical) at the moment of inspiration. It’s a profound shift that we’ll explore in more depth when Netsize releases the next in its series of thought leadership white papers analyzing the results of its milestone Mobile Trends Survey 2010.

By way of background, Netsize conducted a survey of over 1,000 professionals and practitioners across 67 countries to gain insights into key trends that top the industry agenda, including the advance of mobile applications stores, progress towards global mobile commerce and the pivotal importance of mobile as a means to bridge our virtual and physical worlds. (Download the apps report here.)

CONTEXT MATTERS A LOT (!)

But it’s not just about buying stuff with our mobile phones; it’s about enhancing our complete retail experience and transforming our mobile phones into what some call the fourth retail channel.

It’s not so far-fetched. Already, consumers – particularly smartphone owners – are researching and purchasing goods and services on the move. In fact, Compete, a Kantar Media company that produces a quarterly Smartphone Intelligence survey, forecasts a mobile shopping “explosion” this year as more people use their phones to comparison shop and ultimately buy goods on the go.

At the other end of the spectrum, a January 2010 survey of holiday shoppers from Motorola found that more than half (51 percent) of consumers across 11 countries used their mobile phones for in-store activities such as comparison shopping and for obtaining peer feedback, product information, and coupons.

All this bodes well for companies that enable retailers to offer opportunities for new levels of consumer connection.

INTERVIEW WITH NEARBYNOW CEO SCOTT DUNLAP

Success in retail is all about helping consumers find and buy what they want most. NearbyNow, a U.S. – based provider of personal shopping services, has taken this experience a step further, providing mobile shopping applications for magazines, brands, and retailers so that their consumers can stay updated on the latest products, buy online, or even locate and put products on hold at a nearby store. In 2009 the company released a succession of iPhone applications for lifestyle publications such as GQ, Seventeen, Brides, Lucky, Runner’s World and others, all based on their iPhone Platform. NearbyNow currently partners with more than 65,000 stores across the U.S. and continues to build mobile applications for leading lifestyle brands, retailers, and publications. Scott talks about the future of shopping and the role of social interaction.

Q: NearbyNow started out as a way for consumers to search all products and sales available at local shopping centers using the Internet or mobile phones. Now you build branded iPhone application to drive local purchasing. Please explain this shift.

A: Our original service allowed consumers to walk into a shopping mall and find any product they wanted in the size and color they wanted – even put it on hold –before they got to the mall to buy it. Over time we noticed that the same items were in demand over and over again.

We dug into the numbers and consumer behavior, and we found out that it’s really six or seven magazines and a couple of TV shows that most influence consumer purchasing. The real fashion-conscious demographic – teens and women aged 25-to 35 — were using their mobile devices to look for products that they saw in the magazines. Most of them were looking nearby, so they could try them on or try them out.

To connect and measure this, we built iPhone applications for the magazines. Consumers can see all the products that are in the magazine in one place and type in their size to find the closest store that has it. We connect the user from inspiration to trial.

Q: You have begun experimenting with new combinations of services around mobile shopping. What can you share?

A: We have over 1 million mobile shoppers now, and it has become clear that “mobile shopping” has unique patterns of user behavior in discovery, purchasing, and social networking. An example is the Brides Dressing Room, the first wedding and bridesmaid dress locator application on a mobile device. We found out that when looking at bridal gowns, most brides want feedback from a close set of friends, not everyone on Facebook. So we built a feature that allows a bride to send a picture of the dream dress to friends and family to get instant feedback via e-mail. It’s a mini-social network capability designed specifically for interaction around a single purchase, albeit an important one.

Q: We already have social networks such as Facebook, where we can post the purchases we are considering? Why create mini-networks?

A: The Bride example made sense because there was more social interaction prior to purchase than we had seen with any other item. We actually found that no one wanted to post the wedding gown they might buy on Facebook. It’s just not a broad social network play. It’s about communicating with a small group of folks involved in the wedding. There is a specific purpose to this network and we need a different kind of social network, not the tools that Facebook and MySpace provide.

Somewhere between the magazine and the in-store purchase is where all the action is happening. Capturing this on a mobile device says so much about purchasing behavior – who influences it, what products are considered, where they are considered, and more. It’s just amazing!

Q: Another thing that is amazing is the conversions on the mobile advertising. What are you seeing?

A: The conversion numbers are great, but the biggest impact is really about having information about purchasing that can be fed back to advertisers and retailers. Magazines are taking the data – which shows the number of consumers they reach and how much purchasing they incentivized – and handing that back to their advertisers, who can’t get enough of it. Having a mobile app allows magazines to answer a lot of questions about conversion that they couldn’t quantify before. In many cases, they can even show demand that was generated after the product had sold out, and how much business that represents. It’s very powerful.

The overall conversion to purchase per use is about 6 percent. What’s really fascinating is how that breaks down. Of the 6 percent, 5.5 percent are converting by finding a nearby store and purchasing there. The remaining one-half of one percent is purchasing the item directly from a mobile Web site.

Q: Do you expect that to change going forward?

A: As the user base grows, we expect this to come down some. But I don’t think the ratio of in-store to online purchasing will change that much. Offering both online and in-store alternatives really blurs the barriers between the physical and digital Internet world. It’s important to note that mobile shoppers will always have a foot in both worlds, constantly evaluating between a product available now down the street, or cheaper online if you are willing to wait and pay for shipping. You can think of it as a “convenience curve” that trades off price for convenience and immediacy. The ultimate price is probably found online; the ultimate convenience is paying a premium to have the item brought to you wherever it is currently geo-located. In all of these scenarios the role of mobile is to be a connector device. It gives you that world of physical and digital options at all times.

Q: Mobile commerce, mobile advertising, mobile social networking. Where do you see the growth opportunity?

A: There is a big opportunity for mobile to increase commerce for both online and physical stores, but the biggest opportunity will be innovation from mobile advertising. In the short term, companies like NearbyNow that host many apps on the same platform can give advertisers an opportunity to reach a wide range of people who are actively shopping. This solves the “reach” problem that holds back a lot of advertisers. NearbyNow will evolve into an ad network, but using ad “units” far more powerful than banner ads. We’re talking engaging experiences, like how-to videos to get a celebrity look, a catalog of all the products in the video, and using the phone to make an appointment with a nearby stylist to help you purchase and try it on. These are things we are doing today.

From here we will see a lot of innovation on mobile ads. How about a coupon that is only good for one hour to stop you from buying online? How about a similar ad targeted to people shopping at Nordstrom to get them to come to Macy’s? Once the capabilities can reach millions, the whole game is going to change. That’s the power of mobile shopping.

THE NETSIZE GUIDE

The Netsize Guide – which features exclusive interviews with 28 industry senior executives at leading companies and organizations including Havas, M&S, MMA, Nokia NAVTEQ, PayPal and Sony Music Entertainment — provides unique perspectives and reveals how players across the mobile ecosystem are preparing to meet the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities ahead.

The Netsize Guide 2010 also includes the results of Mobile Trends Survey 2010, an online survey asking +1,000 mobile professionals and practitioners across 67 countries their views on these key themes and their insights into trends that top the industry agenda, including the advance of mobile applications stores, progress towards global mobile commerce and the increasing importance of mobile across a range of business verticals.

Finally, the Netsize Guide 2010 presents detailed data on the wireless telecoms sector in 41 countries, including revenues, market shares and value-added service offerings for messaging and billing of 194 mobile network operators worldwide.

Disclaimer: Netsize is an MSG supporter. Peggy Anne Salz is author of the Netsize Guide 2010.

Mobile Charity Moves The Masses; Conference Roundup & Barcode Cancer Campaign Update

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:26:22 +0000

In brief: A look at the key takeaways from a recent AIME conference dedicated to empowering the charitable sector with mobile and an update of last week’s mobile campaign raising awareness about prostrate cancer in men and powered by mobile barcodes.

Regular readers will recall that MSG was a media sponsor of a full-day seminar entitled Empowering the Charitable Sector with Interactive Technology and organized by AIME. The tremendous industry response to the event has now led to the formation of a Charity and Interactive Tech Special Interest Group, spearheaded by AIME, to help drive further improvements in the value chain and encourage more charitable organizations to tap into this rich seam of revenue and communications. A round of thanks to Andrew Darling, AIME Event Chairman and Director of Communications, for organizing this excellent event and for providing MSG with the following learnings and observations.

AIME EVENT RECAP

Mobile is with us when it matters: at the point of inspiration. A personal outreach or call to action delivered to us on our personal device allowing us to get involved using technologies we understand intuitively (such as text or barcode scanning) drives positive results.

This is one reason why most of the AIME seminar sessions were focused on mobile and the perfect fit with fund-raising. Robert Thurner, commercial director of mobile agency Incentivated, highlighted several case studies from Save the Children, Marie Curie and British Heart Foundation.

In addition, Keith Brown (paythru), Rory Maguire (3UK), Roger Craven (Vir2), Jim Manis (Mobile Giving Foundation USA) and Simone Schmidlkofer (Cause2Connect) all focused their presentations on the mechanics of how mobile text donations via short codes work and – more importantly – how they could be improved from a user perspective.

The final panel session, chaired by Mike Short, honorary chairman of the MDA and VP at O2 Group, continued on this theme and the need for value chain improvements. Mike’s expert knowledge and questioning in this area brought out the best of the panel, which included Rob Weisz (MIT), Rory Maguire (3UK), Paul Whiteing (PhonePayPlus) and Rupert Daniels (Join 1Goal Org charity).

NEW INTEREST GROUP

Building on the positive momentum of this event AIME will push new initiatives, workshops and further seminars sharply focus on mobile charity and the requirements of stakeholders (value chain companies and real people) moving forward. Specifically, AIME is coordinating a Special Interest Group to assist in creating greater understanding of the space and a roadmap to navigate it.

To find out more or get involved, please email either Andrew (andrew@aimelink.org) or Zoe Patterson (zoe@aimelink.org) for more information.

Also: more in-depth editorial, photos, podcasts and video interviews will be published shortly over the next weeks on the AIME website. Meantime, here are some excellent speaker presentations to get you thinking…

MOBILE RAISES CANCER AWARENESS

While AIME obviously boosts awareness – particularly in the U.K. — of the new role of mobile companies in mobile charity, The Mobile Movement - a mobile ecosystem initiative providing non-profit organizations with a mobile platform and applications to extend their reach- continues to chalk up impressive progress. (press release and post)

Interestingly, campaigns that harness 2D barcodes to get out the message and inspire people to action are proving to be hugely effective. Even more so if they are linked to live events.

This is the key learning from last week’s One Million Voices Against Prostrate Cancer, a campaign that successfully extended the reach of Ed Randall’s Bat for the Cure, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness about prostrate cancer, to mobile in a big way.

The outdoor, in-stadium campaign was supported by a partnership of mobile companies. NeoMedia, a mobile barcode technology developer, created the campaign’s mobile barcode, and Neustar, a company known for innovative solutions and directory services, supplied the mobile barcode management, thus serving as a clearing house for mobile communications and IP that securely processed all of the campaign’s mobile barcode transactions. Renu Mobile, a company MSG profiled here, supplied short code call-to-action and website build.

BARCODE OUTDOOR CALL TO ACTION

In a nutshell, the campaign – which launched at minor league baseball parks across the U.S. — allowed people (baseball fans and so a predominantly male audience in the first place) to download an app by scanning the barcode below.

The app allowed users to interact with the non-profit in a variety of ways. They could view video content, navigate to the donations area and make a donation, and follow the cause via a live Twitter feed from @batforthecure. More importantly, the app let users add their names, addresses and emails to a petition demanding sweeping policy changes and governmental action in the U.S. to promote prostrate cancer awareness, detection, treatment and ongoing research. This last campaign also lays the foundation for a larger push in September 2011, when the non-profit will focus its efforts on promoting an awareness month. (By way of background, prostrate cancer strikes 1 out of 6 men in the U.S. Early detection can extend the lives of millions of men.)

According to Carol Glennon, Renu Mobile CEO, the next step is to deliver more applications that can be triggered by scanning the 2D barcode, including a look-up for clinics where the PSA blood tests can be taken, and “many other innovations that break down the barriers so that after a man is educated, he or his friends and family can easily act.”

I caught up with Carol today on Skype to chat about the future for this and similar mobile barcode campaigns to raise awareness of charity causes. Her takeaway: harnessing no-brainer barcode technology brings down the barrier to participation significantly.

But it may be the context that really clinches it. “People at these events don’t have laptops; they have their mobile phones. They are outside and open to using some of their free minutes to interact with a campaign that speaks to their interests.”

MY TAKE:

Ed Randall’s Bat for the Cure is sharply focused on raising awareness about prostrate cancer through national campaigns and fundraisers at baseball-oriented events around the U.S. Adding barcodes to the mix allows people an easy, no-brainer way to navigate to the mobile website and get involved. Combine this approach with additional features, such as a shortcut to make donations or a site to “sign” a petition, and non-profits can definitely wring even more value from their mobile charity strategies. What’s needed now? This industry (through campaigns like this one) has shown that it has education and awareness “covered.” However, non-profit campaigns would also benefit from sharing and allowing us ways to use our mobile to spread the message for them. Fortunately, I know of mobile barcode campaigns in the pipeline that will allow just this. Even better: campaigns coming online soon will allow people to scan health-related products for helpful information they can share with their peers. It is encouraging that mobile barcodes can power much more than mobile marketing and trigger purchases. (Although that is a big part of it.) As barcodes become a de facto interface to a range of digital content and destinations, they will also provide the bridge for us to share what we find (information, products, places to get treatment) with others who share our need.

Disclaimer: MSG is aligned with the mission and goals of The Mobile Movement and Peggy Anne Salz sits on the Advisory Board.

BEST & BRIGHTEST: COM #227: Smartphone Stats; Android’s Lead; Mobile Future Event; Developer Issue Survey & Voting Campaigns For Impact

Peggy Anne Salz — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:28:14 +0000

In brief: The Carnival is up at MSG with a balanced mix of must-read posts and rants. Topics include: Apple’s reign, Android’s gain, video how-to, SMS voting and a campaign that could have been in Slovakia.

Thanks to Communities Dominate Brands we get a great update on the numbers that play in the zero-sum game involving smartphone makers worldwide. As the inimitable Tomi Ahonen sees it, it’s a bloodbath – and he has the stats to back it up. It’s a meaty, must-read post that recounts shipments and sales by all the major players. It also claims “Apple’s market share has indeed peaked and we’ll see gradual market share decline for this year 2010 compared to 2009.” Is Tomi right? Read on, find out… (and bookmark!)

While Tomi argues with numbers, Ajit Jaokar gives invaluable insights (with a nod to Sun Tzu) in his post into why Apple is no longer the one to watch. Now it’s all about Android. In his view, Apple’s obsessive and un-open approach to mobile has stunted its growth. Android is gaining traction and “it is now a race for Nokia, LiMo and others to compete against the rate of change of Android and that will be hard.” Who will win and why? Read on and find out…

In the run up to an exciting event — Mobile Future Forward (September 8th) — Chetan Sharma’s new post gives us the opportunity to download a worthwhile white paper that outlines the themes/ trends impacting mobile at all levels. It’s a great way to get us all thinking about the big-picture issues that define what mobile is and will likely become. The white paper also gives us a good idea of the topics senior execs from a wide range of top-notch companies will discuss during the path-breaking event. (Shameless plug: MSearchGroove is proud to be the newest media sponsor, so check back here for more content in the run up to the event, including an exclusive podcast (!) with Paul Palmieri, Millennial Media CEO.) What are the trends that matter most? Read on and find out… (Download the PDF here)

Registration for the event is open now. Early Bird expires June 30th 2010.

Mark Bridge over at Fonecast showcases a podcast with Hans Eriksson of mobile video streaming service Bambuser, which lets you share streaming video in real-time and even add chat. Hans tells us about the service and innovative ways people are using it. For one, the service was used to cover Jukka Mutanen’s 1,000 km cross-country drive through Finland. Hans also discusses some of the problems (and solutions) associated with live video streaming. A useful podcast – particularly in view of the traction video is getting on microblogs. How can video amplify your message? Read on and find out…

We know from the Obama campaign that SMS messages encouraging people to vote can have a profound impact on people’s perceptions of candidates and key issues. This post from Alfred DeRose over at Tego Interactive connects the dots in recent research on the topic and walks us through a campaign (combining Web, social media and mobile) his team developed for a Slovakian political party. Why can a well-integrated multi-channel campaign influence voter’s perceptions and participation? Read on and find out…

Participation of another kind is the focus of this post from C. Enrique Ortiz over at About Mobility. He reflects on some of his recent work and insights about the rampant spread of mobile broadband that cause him to wonder if developers (or operators) will have to carry the burden of app support. He asks: Is app-specific support a real issue today or one that is coming? More importantly, can developers even handle the hassle? And he also wants your input on these questions, which is why he asks us all to participate in a simple survey. What are app developer responsibilities and where should we draw the line? Fill out the survey and make your voice heard!

BEST OF THE WEEK

My pick this week: Ajit’s excellent explanation of why Android is pulling ahead of – well – everyone in the smartphone space. His perspective – backed up by multi-disciplinary common sense — is a pleasure to read. And don’t miss his nod to an excellent post from another author on why Apple’s secrecy may also be its undoing.

That’s a wrap until next week – when I hope someone will step up to the plate. At the moment Tomi – always the gentleman – has agreed to be our host. However, I would like to hear from some of you lurkers out there! With over 100 “members” and counting – I sure hope one of you will give a shout….

MLOVE PODCAST: Google’s Nick Heller Talks Mobile Trends, Opportunities & Why Access Rules

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:11:37 +0000

In brief: Today we continue the shout out for MLOVE with Nick Heller, who is responsible for New Business Development across EMEA at Google. Listen in to his take on mobile, information access, location and where the NEXT Google might come from.

What’s next in mobile? MLOVE, a multidisciplinary event with a strong emphasis on mobile, promised to give us all a glimpse into the future of mobile and insights into the great ideas and biz models that can bubble up when artists, entrepreneurs, academics and executives brainstorm in a castle near Berlin. TED meets Burning Man? Maybe… But if you want to find out for yourself – then register for MLOVE at MLOVE.com – and take advantage of the 20 percent discount MSearchGroove offers as a media partner for the event.

PODCAST WITH GOOGLE’S NICK HELLER

Moving on to our final podcast in the series to tell you what awaits you at MLOVE – I am extremely to connect with Nick Heller. Nick is responsible for New Business Development across EMEA at Google. He is also sharply focused on new product incubation and exploratory efforts in technology, meta-data licensing, strategic partnerships, special projects, and alternative distribution for existing and new business initiatives.

In addition to a preview of his keynote at the event, Nick gives me his take on a variety of exciting – even controversial topics.

The role of mobile? In Nick’s view mobile is an “access point” to information. And the device is more about convergent computing than communications.
The value of location? Predictably, quite central to a quality (and relevant) mobile experience.
And where is the NEXT Google going to come from? A surprising answer that leads us back to the Web and not mobile…

For the full story listen to the podcast – or register for the event to meet up with Nick in person.

Register at www.mlove.com/register . Enter VIP-MSG to receive an instant 20% discount.

Listen to the podcast here. [10:34]

PODCAST: Right Here, Right Now; Will Mobile Personalization & Mash-Ups Deliver Us ‘Digital Sixth Sense’?

Peggy Anne Salz — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:38:47 +0000

In brief: Will recommendations from our significant others help us navigate the content deluge? This post draws from provocative statements about our future and the pivotal role of personalization in our everyday lives made by Andrew Gilbert, EVP, President QIS and Qualcomm Europe, and a podcast interview with Colm Healy, Vice President of EMEA Services for Qualcomm Internet Services (QIS) and General Manager of Xiam Technologies.

Regular readers will recall that I have been tracking personalization and recommendation in mobile since the start. It began with my industry-first report on the topic and continues in my current projects for GigaOM PRO. In many ways recommendation is much greater opportunity than mobile search because it’s not about giving people what they are looking for in the first place. It’s about surfacing new options for customers, helping them get over the paralysis of endless choice and creating a compelling and dynamic experience they’ll want to come back to.

In other words, it’s about selling more digital stuff and getting closer to your customer.

CONNECTED INTELLIGENCE

Speaking at Open Mobile Summit last week in London, Andrew Gilbert, EVP, President QIS and Qualcomm Europe, revealed that his company’s internal research shows mobile users who normally download one application a month, download five apps a months if they receive recommendations that are relevant to them.

As Andrew put it: “This means we need to better understand what our customers want. We have been doing this in sales for years, but now we have access to more information that allows us to better analyze the needs and make decisions on what to recommend so that customers can decide what they want to do.”

Put another way, it’s not about communications. It’s about tapping communications and social networks to turbo-charge services and deliver context-relevant content. “We are now working on recommendation engines to predict what you are interested in. Social commerce where you tap into your social networks to provide help and advice for purchases, holiday destinations, places to eat or locations to visit.”

All this paves the way for what Andrew calls the “next phase of Information Access.” In this phase of Connected Intelligence– which we are about to enter, by the way – things are connected and the information these things collect or monitor is then made available to us in an variety of ways.

DIGITAL SIXTH SENSE

At the same time we are rapidly moving from search (looking for stuff we know we want) to discovery (wanting services to suggest and deliver stuff for our consideration).

Andrew calls the result of this mash-up the Digital Sixth Sense. A way to think of it: it’s your “invisible friend who helps you out.” It tells you things before you even thought you needed the information.

Another part of this mash-up is the increasing role of our social circle in the scheme of things. “People will define what information they want to share with close friends. We will also rely more on our friends and our friends’ friends for help in our decision making.” Beyond that, our smartphones will help us make even smarter decisions. “Apps will help you decide where to buy clothes that you are interested in, what restaurants your friends have recommended and what interesting places to visit.”

INTERVIEW WITH COLM HEALY

A big part of this vision – and the capabilities that power Qualcomm’s aptly titled “relevance engine” — come via its acquisition of Xiam Technologies. I caught up with Colm Healy, Vice President of EMEA Services for Qualcomm Internet Services (QIS) and General Manager of Xiam Technologies, for his views on what personalization is – and what it isn’t – and what it can deliver.

Among the highlights:

GETTING PERSONAL: “To me personalization is really about helping people to discover more easily stuff that’s going to enrich their lives, entertain them and make them more productive. A large part of that is actually filtering out the stuff that isn’t relevant to them.” In Colm’s view, personalization is also about us taking control to ensure we see what we want. “But it’s also about somebody, an assistant in the cloud, who’s actually working out — based on what you have told us about yourself or what you’ve shown interest in before — what’s going to really excite you.”

BUSINESS VALUE: There are two ways to see and measure this. One is the enhanced user experience that it delivers. “We see that people who engage with, say, an app store that is personalized, come back more often. They spend more time on it, and they find it just a better experience…. So, that enhanced user experience is the foundation and cornerstone of any other business objective you want to achieve.” In addition, it’s a way mobile operators can differentiate themselves (and their app stores) from the shopping experience offered by Apple or Android, for example. “By using the kind of technology we offer, our customers have increased the likelihood of people to actually respond to an offer by three to four times, and even higher in some cases, and that, in turn, leads to being more engaged with the service.”

SOCIAL MATTERS: The next wave is about people connecting with people to make decisions – what Colm calls social discovery. So we will find out what we want to do, buy or experience based on what our peers (or the groups of people most like us) like. “Frankly, in many ways, the app store experience is almost going to become the last leg, where you simply pay for whatever you’re looking to download.”

MY TAKE

The innovation is clearly going to be in personalization and recommendation – and companies like Qualcomm have collected the capabilities that will allow it to play a major role. Mobile search (speaking here about universal search – not cool stuff coming out of mobile search companies on the fringe) will be more about the nuts and bolts, getting the destinations we want to do what we want. But how will we know what we want in the first place? Colm’s vision of social discovery is perfectly aligned with our current behavior. The rise of social networks and their impact on all we do (from using Twitter to replace our RRS to consulting communities for the best X (music, restaurant, apps — you name it!) are proof-positive that we discover cool stuff by asking our significant others. Clay Shirky correctly reminds us that the future is all about the filter. Personalization technology is one way to cut down the clutter and potentially boost revenue for the companies that give us what we want – even before we ask for it.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE. [10:22]

* * *
In part two of this series (June 16th) Colm and I explore the cloud, fragmentation and what all this means to developers, retailers and companies trying to make money on the mobile Web.

Disclaimer: Xiam Technologies, a Qualcomm company, is an MSG supporter.

PODCAST: Thomson Reuters SVP Plea To Publishers: Go Mobile, But Focus On Companion Products & Mobile Commerce

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 25 May 2010 13:53:40 +0000

In brief: Gearing up for the Open Mobile Summit, the deal-making mobile industry happening and conference taking place tomorrow in London, with a sneak preview of the key points Alisa Bowen, featured speaker and Senior VP consumer publishing at Thomson Reuters, plans to make during her panel. A special focus: the pivotal importance of iPhone and iPad apps and the business imperative to pursue monetization models beyond ad-funded and freemium.

The Open Mobile Summit is only a day away and – if you can somehow manage a ticket – I suggest you head on over. There are just over 50 seats left and the line-up of a whopping 70 speakers, includes senior execs from major players including Google, Yahoo, Nokia, Spotify, Admob, Ogilvy, AKQA, the BBC, MTV, FT.com, Opera, Vodafone, O2, HTC – and the list goes on. A special highlight: the first public appearance by Alberto Torres, the former McKinsey consultant who has recently been appointed head of Nokia’s MeeGo smartphone operating system.

Kudos to Robin Batt, my esteemed colleague and the executive producer of this conference. Robin fully understands that doing business -and making money- in an Open Mobile world will require new thinking and business models. The caliber -and variety- of speakers from across the mobile business ecosystem that she has brought together for this event will undoubtedly deliver attendees some answers and useful advice. MSG is proud to support Open Mobile Summit as a media sponsor. I won’t be able to attend this event – but I have already booked my flight for the next Open Mobile Summit (San Francisco, November 8-9) and suggest you do the same.

INTERVIEW WITH ALISA BOWEN

To promote this event and give you a preview of the hot topics on the agenda, I caught up with Alisa Bowen, Senior VP consumer publishing at Thomson Reuters, who will speak tomorrow on the future of publishing in a three-screen world. Alisa oversees the sales, marketing, product development and operations for the company’s Web, Mobile and IPTV propositions in 12 languages and 17 markets globally. From the start mobile has been at the top of her agenda, so I used the opportunity to ask Alisa what makes her so sure mobile is so powerful.

Among the highlights:

CONTEXT MATTERS: Thomson Reuters is sharply focused on the business professional, a customer segment that is increasingly mobile. “We need to do a world class job of providing them with the information they need wherever they are, whatever context they’re operating in and on whatever device is most convenient to them. Thomson Reuters provides intelligent information which means both information that you can make real business decisions on, but it also means information that it contextually aware.” Moving forward, that means much more intelligence built into the services. “It’s essentially just beginning. I think contextual awareness we’re seeing begins with location awareness…but I think there is tremendous opportunity in the future for the technology to become so much more sophisticated, to understand what your mobile consumption habits have been, and then customize your applications around that.” Alisa envisions a linkage between technology and context resulting in services that “know” our moods or the appointments in our calendar and then uses this insight to serve up relevant information.

READING & RELATIONSHIPS: “We spent a lot of time last year researching how business professionals were using mobile devices and what we discovered was that there is no generation gap. There’s been a seismic mind shift in terms of people’s adoption of mobile technology.” But it’s more than just information access on the fly; Alisa says mobile also has to help them connect with their peers in new ways. “For many of our professionals, their jobs are now much more about managing relationships.” They need information but they also need to be “a part of a community internally within [their] own organization and externally within [their] own client base.”

MOBILE VS DESKTOP: It’s not a case of “either or” – it’s a matter of creating content that harnesses the best of both. “In previous eras of our mobile strategy, there was a tendency for us to try and cram everything that somebody would use on a desktop onto a smaller screen. We’ve seen the light, so to speak, and I think we understand much more clearly that the mobile information consumption is not just the same stuff on a smaller screen.” This recognition has prompted Thomson Reuters to “split a desktop companion product from what we call task-oriented, bite-size applications that are very focused on executing a specific task. In the case of consumer media, that’s news awareness, browsing and reading, and so we’ve developed applications that just do that superbly and they don’t try to do everything else.”

APPS & ROADMAP: Alisa is predictable tight-lipped about the details, but hints that apps such as the News Pro for iPad is a prime example of where things are going. Video is another focus, which is why the company’s financial services division recently released Reuters Insider. “It’s an extremely innovative new video platform for financial professionals; it aggregates content from third parties but also showcases Reuters’ world class financial reporting on video. It has a number of interesting usability features and functions and essentially allows users the ability to create their own channel by dragging and dropping — from their desktop and from their iPad and from their iPhone — different video clips that fit their profile.” In addition, the service provides a transcript of the video content in “almost real-time” and allows users to search those transcripts and jump using touch gestures to the specific place in the video that contains the relevant keywords they’re interested in following.

ADVERTISING & M-COMMERCE: “I think customers have some cultural sensitivity to paying for the content. But they’re not just paying for the content, so my plea to publishers is to understand that balance between content and experience. One without the other is worthless, but both together is extremely powerful….I think it’s up to us as an industry to make of it what we can and I think you will see advertisers follow in and marketers follow in behind that.” But it’s not just about stock-standard banners and ad units we know from the Internet. “I think the [iPad] platform is a canvas for much more creative and rich advertising and marketing experiences [such as video].” So how can publishers make real money? Alisa is bullish about the potential for the iPad, in particular, to drive sales of real stuff. “I think that we forget sometimes that the iPad platform represents 125 million users with their live credit card details entered into a store, one click away from buying real stuff. I think that is incredibly powerful….I think if publishers can think about how to harness that opportunity around commerce for buying real goods and services, as well as virtual ones, then that’s a pretty interesting space that I don’t think is being well discussed yet.”

My take: Publishers and media companies are well-advised to embrace mobile. But they must also factor our “state” into the equation. Thomson Reuters has created robust services that effectively split the desktop chores from the task we have to perform on the move. Mobile optimizing content is not about whiz-bang stuff; it’s about understanding what we want to do and providing us the tools (information and access to our communities) to do it well. I was also struck by the sharp focus on video moving forward (for both rich advertising and exciting content presentation). Will video be the next big thing? A tough one to call (and fraught with bandwidth issues we also need to consider). Nonetheless, this bodes well for an announcement we can expect soon: the launch of the industry’s first mobile video ad network. I’ve signed up for a pre-briefing and will report back once it’s prime time.

Listen to the podcast here. [15:07]

EDITORS NOTE: MSearchGroove (MSG) – named a top 50 influential technology site by Konector – provides its platform to showcase select events that set the bar. In addition to standard media sponsorships, MSG produces interviews and podcasts free of charge for select event partners to boost promotion and create buzz. Contact me directly (peggy@msearchgroove.com) to explore ways we can collaborate to make your event stand out.

Next in the series: An interview with Paul Reddick, Handmark CEO, in the run up to M-Publishing, the premier mobile publishing event (London, June 1) organized by James Cameron and the team at Camerjam.

MOBILE SEARCH DATA POINTS: U.K. Usage Insights; ComScore Numbers; Taptu Reports; Australian Stats & Mobile Search Workshop

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:48:04 +0000

In brief: A run down of some significant mobile search stats and studies in the run up to Exploring the Future of Mobile Search, an exploratory expert workshop organized by the European Commission, where MSG will give the keynote address.

It’s encouraging to see a much sharper focus on mobile search and a growing realization among mobile operators, content providers and publishers/developers that there is a lot more to mobile search than the universal model we know from the online Internet. Mobile phone form factors push companies to develop new mobile search services that deliver us relevant results in tune with our intent and context. All the better if these services make use of features and functions such as voice recognition, image recognition, location-awareness and Augmented Reality.

Another development that makes search essential is the avalanche of apps and app stores, and the drive by all the players in the ecosystem to make these content and services storefronts a commercial success. Case in point: Apple’s decision to snap up Siri, a voice-activated digital personal assist that takes the concept of search to a new level (allowing us to find not search!)

OPEN CALL FOR MOBILE SEARCH FIRMS

Regular readers will recall that I have tracked mobile search from the start (hence, the name MSearchGroove, following on the popularity of my industry-first report on the mobile search and content discovery space).

My background and passion also allow me to connect with cool companies in the space such as Taptu, the first mobile search company to index the Mobile Touch Web; Expertmaker, a mobile search company in stealth mode that allows us to refine our search parameters in real-time; GetFugu, a company that combines search and image recognition to help people find local businesses and navigate to their website; and Aisle 411, a company at the sweet spot between mobile search and inventory management. (Check out the bnetTV video interviews I conducted with Carl Freer, GetFugu founder, and Nathan Pettyjohn, Aisle 411 Chairman & CEO.)

I look forward to including these and more cool companies in my keynote presentation to the European Commission. The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, which is part of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, has organized an exploratory expert workshop titled “Exploring the Future of Mobile Search” to discuss the innovation potential in mobile search. The workshop will take place in Ghent, Belgium (June 9), during the 9th Conference of Telecommunication, Media and Internet Techno-Economics.

Timed to this event I will also kick off a new series on MSG profiling mobile search newcomers and innovators. If you are a mobile search company and want to be included in my ongoing work and upcoming series, then please contact me directly (peggy@msearchgroove.com).

DATA POINTS

With search at the top of the business agenda, the timing is excellent to recount the key takeaways of several recent mobile search reports.

MOBILE COMMERCE & MOBILE SEARCH: Mobile Commerce (MC) – which handles over 25 percent of the searches coming from U.K. mobile operator portals and other sources – recently released a report summarizing the trends it observes based on the search queries it “sees” per year.

Among the findings:

The volume of searches has more than doubled over the last 12 months. MC reports an increase in mobile search usage from 125 million queries to 250 million, in part due to the jump in the number of people signing up for flat-rate data bundles to surf the mobile Web. The number of searches per unique user also shows an increase. The total has grown from 8 per month to 13. (Granted this is not the frequency of use we know from the online Internet, but it is an indication that users are gravitating to the search box on portals as they become more familiar with the mobile Web.)
The position of the search box is critical. MC’s data confirms that the higher the search box is placed on the portal, the more people use it. It’s not rocket science, but it does show that there are very simple ways to significantly increase the use of search. Even stating that search is free of charge (as Orange has done on its Orange World Portal) can boost usage.
Tag clouds are useful shortcuts. Many use search instead of bookmarks to reach sites and destinations quickly (which is why Facebook was the single most searched term of 2009). MC tells us that displaying tag clouds containing the most popular search terms is another way to increase searches and drive results.
Date, time and current events drive searches. No surprise here – but you can follow Steve Page, MC founder, who shares the top search terms and trends via his Twitter feed (@sjspage).
Internet destinations and giants (Google, Facebook, YouTube) are top search terms. In addition to this information and analysis (summarized in this earlier post on MSG) MC shares how subjects are searched, reminding advertisers that they must bid on many related terms and tag their mobile pages correctly to ensure their results are high up in the natural search results for the terms.
Are local terms also local searches? Google may have recently claimed that 33 percent of all searches on mobile have a local context, but MC is less convinced. It shows that searches such as “Manchester” are more about local soccer teams (Manchester United) than the city. Of all location searches, 55 percent include either a city or area name, 17 percent have a point-of-interest, 15 percent use a full zip code and 13 percent have a partial zip code.
Search shortcomings can be avoided. Transcoding is not the only way to mobilize sites. Advertisers should build versions optimized for device types. (Taptu indexes sites that are touch-friendly and built from the ground up for access via touchscreen devices, for example.) The intelligence behind the search boxes could also be better. MC’s road test of search on Nokia Ovi reveals that it delivers games results for pac man – but not for pacman. Android Market suffers the “same shortcoming.” (BTW: This could be solved with a simple “Did You Mean” response to clarify the search term and the searcher’s intent.)

Source

The bottom line: MC has brought together a lot of insights about what people search for and how they search for it. Mobile search isn’t perfect, but volumes are increasing, and so is the pressure on providers to deliver a better experience. And it’s not just about mobile operators any more. The rise of the app stores means publishers and the 75 app stores are well-advised to develop mobile search strategies to deliver people the apps they want – or at least relevant results.

* * *
ARE APPS BEATING SEARCH?: This insightful post from GigaOM draws from a Broadpoint AmTech note and asks if apps are poised to disrupt the standard online search model. The Broadpoint report says search engines derive significant revenues from commerce-related queries (searching for “Amazon” or “eBay”) and suggests that warns that the growth in the usage of mobile apps that take people directly to destinations could be bad news for Google & Co. “If users get in the habit of simply using the Amazon app to search for products or a Fandango app for movies, then Google would be seriously impacted,” the report concludes.

Source

The bottom line: Mobile apps cover the bases to bypass search engines when the purpose of the search is navigational (using the search box as a shortcut) and commercial (looking for a product on Amazon by searching for Amazon first, for example). Sebastian Rupley, who wrote the post, reminds us that Google can likely read the writing on the wall, which is why the search giant is so interested in the “spread of Android-based phones, many of which emphasize its tools and applications, and steer users into its search/ad ecosystem.” It will be interesting to see how all search engines react to the onslaught of mobile apps that make finding and buying stuff with our phones a no-brainer.

* * *

FACEBOOK DOMINATES: We all know that social networking is the number one activity on mobile. A recent ComScore report reveals that search queries on the social networking site (online) grew by a whopping 48 percent between February and March 2010. In its study, which is based on 15.4 billion core searches in the U.S., ComScore also found Google leads with 65.1 percent of the market, down 0.4 percent from February. It was followed by Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask and AOL. Microsoft showed a 7 percent increase after adding mapping and other features.

Source

The bottom line: Read between the lines and this bodes well for social sites and social search via mobile. Facebook, which has more than 400 million active users, is exploding when it comes to search (up 48 percent) on the Internet. Only a matter of time before this trend spreads to mobile, our preferred way to connect with our social networks and information about people who matter most to us on the fly. Meantime, Tech Crunch points out that search growth is slowing. The post concludes: the slowdown “may also be an indication that the search industry is maturing, and the next leg of growth may not kick in until people start searching on their mobile phones in a significant way or something else gives people a reason to search even more than they already do.”

* * *

TAPTU TOUCH WEB REPORTS: This week Taptu releases the fourth in its series of reports analyzing the Mobile Touch Web. To make sure we are all on the same page and to set the stage for the next report findings, here’s a summary of the key takeaways.

The January Report defined the Touch Web (and the ecosystem emerging around it) and concluded that the Mobile Touch Web had arrived full force. According to the company, which indexes touch-friendly sites and destinations, there were around 326,000 touch-friendly sites in January compared with a total of 180,000 apps across all app stores.
The February Report takes this a step further, offering a breakdown of the sites that make up the Mobile Touch Web. The report emphasized shopping and services, a major subset of this new Web. In total Taptu counts approx. 83,000 Mobile Touch websites devoted to shopping and services. Why is this significant? Shopping and services accounts for about 26 percent of all sites. The same category accounts for less than 4 percent of apps in app stores. Taptu concludes that commerce is a chief focus on the Mobile Touch Web and will play an important role in its evolution.
The March Report takes an in-depth look at the Government and Non-Profit sector and its growing presence on the Touch Web. The report highlights some of the leading services from Education institutions such as MIT, the Haiti disaster relief effort from the Charity sector and various local and federal government agencies that are using the Touch Web to reach a mass audience. A surprise: a large number of religious organizations embracing the Mobile Touch Web (a whopping 72 percent of all sites in the Government & Non-Profit segment are faith-based services).

Source: You can download all Taptu reports here: http://taptu.com/metrics/

* * *

AUSTRALIA STATS: This post draws from new Nielsen research to provide numbers on mobile search usage in Australia.

73 percent of mobile Internet users conduct searches, compared to 38 percent accessing email and 14 percent checking social media sites
The figure (73 percent) of people using mobile search was just 30 percent a year ago
43 percent of total Australian mobile phone owners have Internet-enabled handsets, though just 29 percent use their mobiles to access the Internet
Search came out on top of activities conducted on mobile Internet; checking the news and weather, emails, maps and directories, and social networking were also cited as common mobile activities

The report also includes some insights into mobile social networking and the top handsets.

Source

The bottom line: Great to have country-specific stats. Although mobile Internet usage has a way to go, there is a tendency among users to use mobile search to explore all the exciting content at their finger tips. Makes sense that we start off by transferring our online experience to mobile.

Disclaimer: Taptu is an MSG supporter and client.

Mobility Meets Compassion; New AIME Event Empowers Charities & Non-Profits To Leverage Mobile

Peggy Anne Salz — Mon, 10 May 2010 10:47:04 +0000

First, a round of thanks to all the companies and individuals that have reached out to become part of The Mobile Movement, a coalition of entrepreneurs, humanitarians, artists, academics and other industry leaders committed to bringing mobile capabilities to non-profits.

In the last weeks since the launch several members of the advisory board (which includes MSG and Laura Marriott, consultant and former global President of the Mobile Marketing Association) got together for the first board meeting in Boston to evaluate and prioritize the flood of requests from non-profits and companies.

It was also an honor for my post on our launch and mission to be chosen “Post Of The Week” by the Carnival Of The Mobilists (and COM host Holly Kolman).

HEALTHCARE IS THE FOCUS

The positive feedback to The Mobile Movement is overwhelming, and we are encouraged by the number of organizations resolved to reach millions more people in need by leveraging mobile devices, networks and innovative applications they will create in partnership with social entrepreneurs.

Healthcare is a prime focus and we have already received several requests from non-profits interested in harnessing mobile to offer early cancer detection services, for example. An interesting application in discussion is a location-linked early detection service that would allow people to input their zip code to find the nearest clinic offering these screening services.

MEDIA SPONSPOR FOR MOBILE CHARITY EVENT

Clearly, mobile is becoming a strategic focus for an increasing number of non-profit organizations and charities.

The timing couldn’t be better for an event exploring how the charitable sector can leverage mobile and this is precisely the focus of Empowering the Charitable Sector with Interactive Technology (May 27, London), an all-day knowledge seminar organized by AIME (the Association for Interactive media & Entertainment).

MSG is proud to be a media partner of this worthwhile event, which will feature presentations, case studies and panel discussions based around an editorial agenda that brings together charities, advertising & marketing agencies, service providers, broadcasters, industry bodies and mobile operators.

Attendees will learn, first hand from established charitable organizations and their supporting partners, how to put together multiple platform solutions which maximize the potential for all kinds of charities to connect with the public and collect donations on a massive scale, while benefiting from lower overheads.

The event will also include a number of networking opportunities throughout, such as coffee and tea breaks, lunch and possibly a small exhibition space for companies to showcase products and services.

It will also bring charities new to using mobile together with experts in an environment to share ideas, contacts and key learnings.

SPEAKERS & TOPICS

In an increasingly ‘connected’ world, interactive platforms such as the web, TV, mobile and social media offer the charitable sector opportunities to drive higher revenue generation and public engagement at lower costs.

This event looks as the key areas that charities should be focusing on in order to maximize their fundraising activities and get the most out of their investment in digital platforms.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Caroline Lien, Head of Interactive, Comic Relief & Sports Relief
• Jim Manis, President, Mobile Giving Foundation
• Chris Ward, Director Join1 Goal Organization
• Daniela Martimo, Director, World Society for the Protection of Animals
• Simone Schmidlkofer, President, Cause2Connect
• Mike Short, Honorary Chairman, Mobile Data Association
• Doug Laughlen, Director, Local Giving Organization
• David Ryder, Director, y6Media Ltd
• Darren Parker, Business Development Director, BT Agile Media
• Robert Thurner, Commercial Director, Inventivated
• Rob Weisz, Commercial Director, Mobile Interactive Technology
• Rory Maguire, Head of Payments, 3
• Roger Craven, Managing Director, Vir2 Ltd
• Paul Swaddle, Marketing Director, WIN PLC

Case studies include:

Comic Relief/Sports Relief
Save the Children
Unicef
Leonard Cheshire Disability Organization
World Society for the Protection of Animals
Just Giving Organization
DEC

Key topics include:

• Text Donations – tax and revenue share implications
• Maximising Direct Response using WAP, SMS, Web and Email marketing to achieve optimum outcomes
• Enabling a standardized charitable giving process across MNO platforms
• Understanding the practicalities of data segmentation
• Text and Email Alerts – CRM and data management
• The role of apps and Social Media Integration
• Online fundraising –key points for success
• Legislation – Opt outs, black and grey listings
• Other platforms available for fundraising – IVR, Red Button
• Driving consumer engagement to support your mobile, online and social media strategies
• What does the future hold?

Pricing: AIME Members & attendees from the charity sector (GBP 75.00), non members (GBP 99.00)

So, register as soon as possible to ensure your place. And here’s a link where you can book your place today.

Disclaimer: Peggy Anne Salz is member of The Mobile Movement advisory board.

Blyk Is Back With Ad-Funded Service In The Netherlands; Will Social Media Marketing Make The Difference?

Peggy Anne Salz — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:58:00 +0000

In brief: Details of this week’s commercial launch in the Netherlands from Pekka Ala-Pietila, CEO and Co-founder of Blyk, PLUS an update on activities elsewhere and a look at the social media marketing approach that the company has chosen to stand out from the crowd.

Blyk — the company that launched the world’s first ad-funded MVNO in the U.K. in 2007 and then moved to operator partnership model in 2009 – is back with its first commercial launch and consumer-facing service. The direct-to-consumer, pre-paid mobile services offer is branded Blyk and offered in partnership with Vodafone in the Netherlands.

Following the blueprint of the business model it pioneered in the U.K., Blyk offers free text messages and calling minutes (1,000 SMS and 1,000 free Blyk-to-Blyk minutes) to youth (and then some since the demographic is 16- to 29-year olds) in return for accepting a set number of SMS/MMS mobile ads per day. Once again, Blyk requires users to opt-in from the start and chose the advertising channels they want to receive.

To ensure that users aren’t just opting in to receive perks, the Dutch service requires users to top up every three months and update the information. This permission-based approach – delivering users advertising related topics such as fashion and sports that they agreed to accept in the first place – helped brands achieve high response rates on campaigns they delivered to Blyk’s profiled audience in the U.K. Overall, Blyk says it delivered campaigns on behalf of over 2,000 brands and reached an average response rate of 25 percent.

As Pekka Ala-Pietila, CEO and Co-founder of Blyk, explained in this earlier interview, the only part of the puzzle missing back then was scale. Put simply, media buyers wanted to reach more youth than had signed up for Blyk’s service in the U.K. This is why Blyk made the move from an MVNO model to a partnership model where it now focuses on providing mobile operators a managed mobile advertising service and delivering advertisers a greater reach.

BLYK IN NETHERLANDS & BEYOND

I caught up with Pekka following the launch to get an update on the U.K. services (offered in exclusive partnership with Orange) and the overall outlook for mobile messaging and advertising.

Here is a summary of the key points:

Mobile advertising formats: Predictably, Blyk is bullish about the outlook for advertising delivered using a mix of SMS and MMS. However, Pekka sees opportunities beyond messaging that spill into app advertising and notifications. “We believe messaging is the paradigm. It will win and find its way into other multiple formats such as notifications in apps, which are also push, and instant messaging.” No matter what flavors of messaging emerge, Blyk will remain “platform and transport agnostic.” He adds. “We can use W-LANs and email to give us the breadth if we need it.” As far as formats go, messaging will dominate, followed by search and in-app ads.

U.K. and beyond: Pekka was tight-lipped about stats and details, but has promised to update MSG at a later date (together with Orange) on progress in the U.K. That update will include APRU numbers that Blyk achieved during its time as an MVNO. Meantime, Pekka is “very pleased” with the partnership with Orange (where Blyk is not a consumer-facing service) and Orange’s overall strategic view of mobile advertising. The Monkey offer, the Orange service that draws from Blyk’s mobile advertising model, is a “different offer and constellation” but the results to mobile advertising campaigns are similar. “We are seeing similar results although the set up and model are different. We anticipated this. So, we can report the results and response rates are at the high level we reached at Blyk – as MVNO – and now as partner to the mobile operator [Orange].

Increasing competition: Blyk may have been one of the first, but – as I show in my upcoming report on permission-based for GigaOm PRO — a slew of companies have since staked their turf delivering, enabling and brokering permission-based advertising. How will Blyk continue to differentiate? Pekka said the rise in the number of rivals confirms that messaging is where the action – and the business – is. “We are rolling out the right services in the right sequence of countries and this will generate results, allowing us to move up the learning curve quickly and ahead of the competition.” India, the largest youth market, is next on the list.

Blyk proposition in the Netherlands: In addition to the free texts, “attractive rates for mobile Internet, roaming and other benefits” are planned. One example could be a members program that rewards members for recruiting friends/peers to use Blyk. The service is branded Blyk and the focus is on growth through minimal marketing budget and maximum impact. Pekka noted that Blyk’s grassroots marketing campaigns in the U.K. had achieved a net advocacy rate similar to Facebook and YouTube. It plans to follow a similar blueprint to recruit members in the Netherlands.

RANDOM ACTS OF FREEDOM

Which brings us to my chat earlier today with Eric Kip, MD for Blyk Netherlands. He couldn’t give me numbers but he did let me in on the details of the company’s “random” social media approach designed to deliver very deliberate results. As Eric put it: With more than 50 MVNO brands jockeying for position Blyk had to go for “small events with big impact.”

The motto: “Blyk Likes Freedom, Do You?” (and how can anyone disagree with freedom??)

Eric tells me the Blyk team brings together two Blyk employees, a small agency and “students and advocates who just like Blyk,” to commit “random acts of freedom” to reward people for just being – well – alive.

Timed to the launch Blyk took over a store selling sneakers and sporting apparel, closed the doors and then offered the people inside a free pair of sneakers. “The idea is to enrich people’s lives with actions and excitement they wouldn’t expect.”

For the twenty-something crowd, the Blyk team plans to reward people in coffee shops with lunches and perks. “We’ll just pop up and pay for their lunch.” Other campaigns will revolve around free movie tickets. Eric is even mulling over whether to make it all into a game and encourage youth to guess where the band of Blyk do-gooders will show up next…

My take: Reams of research (including the research I conducted for Mobile Advertising Research U.K., a research project endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) to expertly document the state of the mobile advertising industry in the U.K.) suggest that permission-based advertising is at the center of a virtuous cycle for all stakeholders. People opt-in, choose their advertising and – in the process — volunteer personal information. Brands and advertisers then use these insights to deliver advertising the people who most likely want to hear their message in the first place. It’s early days, but high response rates speak volumes. Display advertising appears to be different because it is one-way not two-way. Permission (in the form of opt-out) may quiet privacy concerns but the principle lack of a brand conversation (a text exchange that asks people if they like what they see and factors their answer into the marketing response) doesn’t let brands get quite as close to people as they would like. More about that in my upcoming GigaOM PRO report on permission-based advertising models.

In the meantime, Blyk’s launch shows progress and proves the permission-based model has benefits. But even more interesting is Blyk’s decision to go for small “events” with big impact. Because the business is people-focused (as permission-based advertising is), it makes good business sense to connect with people directly at the grassroots level. It is not social marketing – it’s the way all marketing of services in this space (and beyond) will have to be.

Disclaimer: Blyk is an MSG supporter and has authored a series of sponsored thought leadership columns examining mobile advertising strategies and business models.

CENTER STAGE: Augmented Reality Meets Real Business; Layar Talks About Mobile Advertising & Immersive Enterprise

Peggy Anne Salz — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:36:27 +0000

In brief: Europe’s first-ever Augmented Reality (AR) business conference is the perfect jumping-of point for a look at Dutch Augmented Reality (AR) company Layar, an interview with Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, Layar Co-founder & VP of Distribution and Marketing, and some updated company news & stats.

The overwhelming positive response to Europe’s first-ever Augmented Reality Business Conference and Developer Camp (ARBCon) speaks volumes about the new direction and vast potential of AR. The event – which was organized by my esteemed colleague Dan Romescu, an AR pioneer, to bring together companies across the emerging business ecosystem including developers, VCs and researchers. It attracted over 155 participants and featured over 30 speakers/keynotes from 17 countries.

I am pleased to collaborate with Dan to grow this event and continue this exchange on MSG through a series of interviews and podcasts with key players in this industry beginning with Dan, who will speak about the Augmented Citizen and the requirement for industry standards and a framework to ensure AR becomes a robust business with the buy-in of the people it impacts. So, what this space!

Meantime, the timing is excellent to move on to another in the “best of” selection of executive interviews from the Netsize Guide 2010.

This week the topic is AR from the perspective of Layar, a Dutch company released its reality browser application Layar last year. This mobile browser shows people what is around them by displaying real-time digital information on top of reality they view through the device camera. On top of the camera image Layar adds content ‘layers,’ which are the equivalent of Web pages in normal browsers. The platform allows customers, such as businesses, the ability to offer a range of layers, allowing consumers to see houses for sale, popular bars and shops, jobs on offer in the area, and a list of local doctors and ATMs by scanning the landscape.

Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, Layar Co-founder & VP of Distribution and Marketing, discusses the ways AR enhances reality and paves the way for real business models.

INTERVIEW WITH MAARTEN LENS-FITZGERALD

Q: Augmented Reality has been around for almost 20 years, but mobile AR exploded last year, when penetration of smartphones equipped with GPS systems, compasses and accelerometers increased. What level of interest are you seeing?

A: In the week that we launched the iPhone app we had over 100,000 downloads and we served over a million augmented views to the world. Currently, there are over 1,500 developers and over 300 layers have been published.

Q: How do you make money on Layer?

A: It’s free for the user and it’s free for the content provider or developer. Where we make money is placement. To understand this we have to understand the user experience. Starting up the Layar application automatically activates the camera. The embedded GPS automatically knows the location of the phone and the compass determines in which direction the phone is facing. Each partner provides a set of location coordinates with relevant information which forms a digital layer.

There will be lots of layers, just as there are Web pages. The problem will be discovery. We address this by allowing companies to participate in our Pay for Prominence program. When users start Layar, it starts up in the Favorites list, which is like Bookmarks on your Web browser. Those positions are for sale. The same goes for the Featured section, a section where companies can pay for placement to reach the more advanced users who come back.

Q: How do you make these layers relevant to me and my context?

A: What we serve in the Favorite and Featured sections is all based on your region. If you’re in the U.S. you won’t see the Dutch layers, for example. So, based on where you are, you select a layer and we send the request through our server to give you the relevant content. If you open up the Trulia layer to find homes for sale, you will be shown houses around your location.

Q: How do you see your pay for placement model evolving? Will you harness personalization or targeting?

A: That is how it will develop. What we do now is help content owners get on top of the stack of layers, much in the same way that Google has AdWords. We will have premium layers where companies can pay to add something to a layer relevant to their offer.

In the future, the browser will know who you are, and that you’re ready to go out, for example. Based on this the top layers you see will be layers about places to go, a lot like restaurant review guides. Some of these listings will be paid for by the restaurant owners or businesses who want to appear in the layer, the same way they advertise on Web pages, for example.

Q: You focus on advertising in this example. Is that the big growth opportunity?

A: It’s for the businesses that need to provide to their customers information right here, right now. I’m looking for a house for sale, so show me one. But it’s not just about real estate; it’s about goods and services nearby in the real world. Where is the bus station? Where can I get a taxi? Where can I get a bite to eat? Any business that has to get this information out to us can benefit from AR. And to enhance this we have added the ability for businesses to provide AR experiences complete with 3-D objects and interactivity.

Q: AR is a nascent industry. What is the value chain and how do you work with other players in your ecosystem, such as operators and brands?

A: We’re in for great ride and, as an industry, we’ll see come change and consolidation. In the end there will only be one or two companies that have the browser and the platform, and will grow from there. I see that happening and within the next six months.

How the value chain is shaping up? Actually, it’s not a chain; it’s a web and it’s all connected. On one hand, we have the users and we’re working on a better user interface to satisfy them. An example of this is our 3-D release, for which we also need new 3-D content and the content developers.

On the other hand, we have the device manufacturers that we talk to in order to get pre-installation deals and also ensure their devices work well with our software, and vice versa. Then we also talk with the carriers about where we can get pre-installed and have a unique offering with Layar.

Q: What is your vision for what AR can enable and how that will impact our lives moving forward?

A: An experience that is very core to AR is the ability to walk around and experience other worlds and walk around in a city the way it was a century ago, for example. That kind of storytelling will enable the creation of immersive experiences. It’s easy to imagine the benefit to education. It will be like being able to not just read a book, but actually visualize it. This is why we added 3-D and interactivity.

AR will also be a boost to vendor relationship management, putting the individual in control of the information they will accept based on their needs. Put another way, AR will allow people to issue a ‘Request For Proposal,‘ which businesses can answer.

Let’s say you’re looking for a table for four in a Mexican restaurant. You put that information out and people are only then allowed to see your profile and to reply to you using AR. So, a restaurant owner might pop up in front of you, saying, ‘hey, I’ve got a table and we have good food – so take a look at the reviews here on the Web and then come on over.’ If you end up going to that restaurant, then we might get a percentage of that deal. That’s a model we’re looking at.

We’re also looking at ways to benefit organizations such as the Heart Foundation in Holland. In time for Valentine’s Day we will make it possible for people to buy and display a 3-D heart in front of the house where their loved one lives, for example. The money will go to charity and people who walk around the city will see all these hearts placed by people who are expressing their love.

LAYAR STATS & UPDATE

To update the interview (conducted in late 2009 for inclusion in the Netsize Guide) I caught up earlier this week with Claire Boonstra, Layar Co-Founder.

According to Claire, the company has two major milestones to report.

One will be public in June, when Layar plans significant announcements during a press conference at Amsterdam HQ.

The other was just last week when the company launched a kind of AR app store/marketplace giving publishers on the Layar platform the opportunity to monetize their content for Android and iPhone platforms.

Specifically, publishers and developers (such as Berlitz, which was one of the first publishers to offer an AR city guide using the marketplace) can now create AR content, syndicate it on Layar’s platform and charge people a small one-time fee to access it.

The biz model: Layar is facilitating the marketplace – which uses PayPal to process the actual transactions – allowing people to buy and sell layers in the U.S., the U.K. Canada and Australia. Layar takes a 40 percent cut of the sale (compared with the Apple App Store that takes 30 percent) to pay costs associated with legal, admin and banking.

The numbers:

Some 550 layers are live and another 2,000 are in development
3,000 publishers worldwide are creating AR content for the Layar platform
1.6 million Layar AR browsers installed and pre-installs on LG and Samsung models, as well as devices supported by Verizon and Sprint (with more to be announced “in the coming months”)

The takeaway: The opportunity: the 60/40 rev split may be more than the 70/30 we know from the Apple App Store, but this is a marketplace aimed at jumpstarting a real business for AR publishers. Making it way to do business (and enabling payments) is a value-add and Layar can extract value for it. Overall, a marketplace could bring mobile AR, which has long lagged behind desktop AR, a huge and necessary step forward.

THE NETSIZE GUIDE

The Netsize Guide 2010 also includes the results of Mobile Trends Survey 2010, an online survey asking +1,000 mobile professionals and practitioners across 67 countries their views on these key themes and their insights into trends that top the industry agenda, including the advance of mobile applications stores, progress towards global mobile commerce and the increasing importance of mobile across a range of business verticals.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE NETSIZE GUIDE HERE.

Disclaimer: Netsize is an MSG supporter. Peggy Anne Salz is author of the Netsize Guide 2010.

Best & Brightest: COM #221 iPhone Stats & Rants, Smartphone Headaches, Mobile Advertising Figures PLUS This Month’s COM Highlights & High Flyers

Peggy Anne Salz — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 20:22:06 +0000

In brief: As many in Europe embark on a long weekend, here is some required reading in the form of a detailed summary of the best in mobile blogging covering the top posts from the last month. From iPhone stats to the size of the mobile market, from the business value of location to the potential dangers of social media, it’s all here.

This time the Carnival of the Mobilists – the line-up of the best blogs and bloggers on all things mobile – comes to us via Holly Kolman. Holly a first-time host, who – true to her blog title – is a real mobile enthusiast brings us COM #221. Kudos for an excellent job and I hope Holly will host another COM soon (!)

The line-up of blogs includes:

A look at the recent announcement that Japan’s four leading mobile phone makers are teaming up with NTT DoCoMo to develop the operating system for DoCoMo’s next-generation mobile phones (via Ajit Jaokar @ Open Gardens)
The real reason why Apple iPhone sales didn’t dip (via Tomi Ahonen @ Communities Dominate Brands)
Refreshing realism on the iPhone and app opportunities (via Carl Martin @ Mobsessed)
A welcome reminder to designers – and everyone in mobile – that not everyone will have or wants to have a smartphone (via new COM member Belen Barro Pena
The potential headaches associated with supporting smartphones & the opportunity for operators to wring more value from helping their customs use them in the first place (two post via new COM contributors Amdocs)
An in-depth look at opportunities in gaming and gambling (via James Coops @MobiAffiliates)
More need-to-know mobile stats (via Andy Favell @mobiThinking – an excellent curator of key mobile advertising facts & figures)

PLUS Post Of The Week:

Humbled that this week’s pick is my own post on The Mobile Movement. By way of background, I have joined with entrepreneurs, humanitarians, artists & academics in a coalition committed to bringing mobile capabilities to non-profits in order that they may reach millions more people in need by leveraging mobile devices, networks and innovative applications created in partnership with social entrepreneurs.

On Monday I will update you on our recent advisory board meeting and the exciting projects in the works, as well as details about a new Knowledge Sharing event focused on mobile charity. (Disclaimer: MSG is aligned with the aims of The Mobile Movement and Peggy Anne Salz sits on the board of advisors.)

COM #220

Tsahi Levent-Levi over at Radvision steps up to host COM #220 – a vibrant mix of posts and insights that fits with the excitement that comes with the celebration of Israel’s Independence Day. Pay special attention to the post-even coverage and videos around this centerpiece event looking at the impact of technologies on our life and work in 2025. Another destination not to be missed: The Wadi – a new site/blog dedicated to the Israeli hi-tech industry. For links and details check out Tsahi’s blog post here.

GUEST COLUMN:Tapping New Messaging Approaches For New Revenues

Antti Öhrling — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:18:44 +0000

EDITOR’S NOTE: This special series of thought leadership columns, which examines the pivotal role of messaging in advertising, promotion and all the ways companies connect and engage with their customers, continues with a look at exciting opportunities brands – and mobile operators – could be missing.

* * *

Mobile phones – and specifically text messaging – are central to the lives of everyone everywhere on this planet. This is the message that came across loud and clear in this well-written analysis in the New York Times. To drive home this key point the article recounts how people in emerging and developing markets are using their simple mobile phones and SMS text to improve their lives, conduct commerce, transfer money, record and share sermons and even oversee elections.

Mobile has become the truly universal technology and text messaging – a flavor of people-powered communication discovered quite by accident by ordinary individuals eager to connect using their mobile phones – has become mobile’s first and truly universal language.

Granted, we increasingly use our mobile phones to explore the wealth of content on the mobile Web or browse the assortment of applications in our chosen device or mobile operator app store. But mobile is and remains central to our lives because we rely on it to connect with the people who matter most.

Put simply, texting is embedded into our mobile behavior.

Rafts of recent surveys show teens would rather text than speak, and even more have turned off their voicemail as a rule to show they mean it! Some five years ago Mizuko Ito, a cultural anthropologist at Keio University in Japan, observed in her book, Personal, Portable, Pedestrian, the emergence of “tele-nesting,” the practice–especially among youth in Japan, and now everyone everywhere –of staying in touch through a steady stream of text messages. In the West Alan Moore, author and founder of the Engagement Communication Consultancy SMLXL, reminds us that we are a “WE SPECIES,” individuals who are part of, and belong to, a bigger whole. Our messaging behavior reflects this enables us to achieve our ultimate goal: to (co-)create and share the narrative of our lives that adds meaning and value to us and everyone around us.

The simplicity of ordinary phones and the fact that people everywhere can use them to send and receive text messages opens up a world of opportunities. It also paves the way for global innovation that allows companies and startups everywhere to harness simple text messaging to achieve extraordinary results.

We’re already seeing evidence of a new breed of messaging services. And this is surely just the beginning. From life-simplifying reminders to life-saving medical advice, people around the world – particularly in emerging markets – are using text to connect, communicate and interact with companies, brands, medical doctors, government authorities and clergy – and the list goes on.

SPEAK TO US

The emerging markets may have a greater reliance on text messaging, but our appetite for messaging – and the value we receive on top of the text messages we send and receive — is growing.

This is the key finding of a recent survey of the U.K. market by Dialogue Communications, a mobile messaging and mobile payments company. It reveals more than 67 percent of respondents want more messaging in their lives.

According to the findings, respondents would welcome reminders and alerts via text for everything from medical alerts to bill payments. People said they wanted to move away from postal reminders because it’s convenient, reliable, easy to store and on a phone for future reference and simple to synch up with the calendars they already have on their mobile phones. (Again, messaging – all messaging – should be permission-based.)

And let us not forget the important fit between text and marketing, for all the reasons I have outlined above.

Destinations such as Mobile Marketer and Mobile Marketing Magazine document the success of messaging campaigns daily. Brands and agencies harness text to connect with consumers (an even more effective approach if the advertising is opt-in, of course). From soft drinks that use text messaging to deliver brand messages and links to downloadable content and perks, to large U.S. chains that cleverly use text messaging to deliver product vouchers and drive customer loyalty, the press is chock-full of case studies that underline the central position of text in marketing and advertising.

But we should not limit ourselves to just these. Paul Berney, Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Managing Director Europe, has also said on several occasions that mobile CRM and mobile commerce loom large on the horizon as the next big opportunities for brands, agencies and all their partners.

I would take it one giant step further: messaging lays the groundwork for a much deeper – and potentially lucrative — exchange between a wide array of companies, advertisers and institutions, and the people who want to hear what they have to say. Brands want a dialogue with their consumers. What better and more effective way to achieve this than messaging?

Messaging in the proper context adds real value to our lives.

MORE MESSAGING MILEAGE

I have therefore identified three other scenarios where rich messaging – the mix of text and image we know from mobile advertising campaigns we have facilitated at Blyk on behalf of brands – could add significant value for everyone involved, including consumers.

AMS (Application Messaging Services): The heightened interest in ‘apps’ presents advertisers and mobile operators worldwide a new opportunity to deliver consumers a message they would appreciate in this context. We are witnessing the advance of services linked to reminders or alerts that connect with the mobile phone features and functionality to remind users us of birthdays, appointments and other important dates/events. Consumers have indicated that they would opt-in to receive these messages. Surely, this provides a perfect platform on which to deliver a related message or branded utility. And this could be so simple for handset manufactures. All they need to do is build on top of the functions they have already embedded into many phone models.
LMS (Location Messaging Services): The rise of travel advice and social media network services such as DOPPLR and WAZE point to a much larger trend: our willingness to receive messages about what’s nearby. From points of interest to traffic jams, consumers desire more information about their surroundings and have granted their permission to receive push messages that provide this detail. Again, this presents companies and mobile operators with an excellent opportunity to deliver a related and relevant commercial message. Done correctly this exchange might even lead to a transaction that consumers could perform using their mobile phones. The potential for mobile operators – the trusted keepers of our location data in the first place – are huge.
VMS (Value-Added Messaging): Here we are talking about real value to the consumer because these messages enhance and improve their lives. Mobile education and mobile health are two obvious examples. A global market survey of 3,000 consumers in six countries (500 each in Brazil, USA, Germany, South Africa, India and China) conducted by management consultancy McKinsey & Company suggests that mobile health (m-health) opportunities in 2010 could be worth between $50 and $60 billion in 2010, a finding that has prompted mobile operators – and the GSMA – the professional organization that unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators, as well as more than 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem — to step up initiatives. According to the research, the vast majority of respondents were interested in the following services: PhoneDoctor, a service that would allow people to call to speak with a qualified physician for remote diagnosis and advice, and HealthWatch, a SIM embedded biosensor watch that monitors vitals, and is connected to emergency services. It is easy to imagine how companies – through sponsorship and commercial messages — could align with these services to deliver related information, offers and real value to people everywhere.

Clearly, our messaging behavior powers of a wide variety of use cases and scenarios. What’s more, as a WE SPECIES we have come to expect – even demand – a two-way conversation with the companies delivering messages to our phones.

From bank statements to medical advice, from appointment reminders to public opinion polls, from location-linked services that tell us what’s nearby to mobile CRM services that ask us if we are satisfied with the service we just received at the checkout, messaging impacts people’s lives and lifestyles at all levels.

It also paves the way for new business models and combinations of models that harness push, permission and personal context to benefit companies across the ecosystem and – most importantly – consumers.

I have identified three areas of new messaging opportunities where companies, provided they apply the same rules of engagement, can reap tremendous benefits and build long-term customer relationships built on trust and respect. I expect to see much more innovation in this space –and I welcome it wholeheartedly. If you are thinking about new opportunities in messaging or have an application success story to share, please reach out to me directly to continue the dialogue. After all, two-way communication always produces the best results. (antti.ohrling@blyk.com)

* * *

Antti is the Co-Founder of Blyk, the messaging media that works with mobile operators to link young people with brands and other stuff they like. He has over 25 years experience as a senior manager in branded goods, retail and wholesale, TV& film and advertising industries. Antti is also founder of Contra Advertising Group, today part of Touch Worldwide. He serves as Chairman of Contra China, an advertising agency specializing in mobile and social media marketing based in Beijing. In addition, Antti is a Fellow at the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Art, Manufactures and Commerce) in the U.K. and a regular speaker at lectures on innovative business strategies and brand issues worldwide. For more information about Blyk, check out the company profile and explore the collection of customer case studies.

Disclaimer: Blyk is an MSG supporter. This is another in a series of columns by Blyk examining mobile advertising strategies and business models.

Permission-Based Mobile Advertising Gains Traction; Jumptap Platform Upgrade Puts People In Control

Peggy Anne Salz — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:12:29 +0000

In brief: An exclusive interview with JumpTap CMO Paran Johar connects the dots in this week’s announcement to support permission-based advertising with a new feature that lets consumers choose mobile display ads they will accept. PLUS a wider discussion of the value of permission and preference in mobile advertising.

After months of researching my chapter contribution to an upcoming book on marketing to Digital Natives, it’s increasingly clear that mobile advertising companies – and their view of “consumers” needs — must evolve.

Mobile is a fiercely personal device and people – particularly empowered Digital Natives – want content and advertising on their terms. (I purposely mix content and advertising here because they are becoming one and the same thing.)

Another shift in the marketplace: our requirement to have a say in the content/advertising we are willing to receive. This came through loud and clear in the research/interviews I conducted for Mobile Advertising Research U.K. 2009 project, a research project endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) to expertly document the state of the mobile advertising industry in the U.K.

Among the findings (based on 1,000+ consumer online responses and 20+ interviews with operators, enablers, agencies, and brands): only 32 percent of the 1,000+ consumers surveyed had a positive attitude toward receiving advertising messages on their mobile phone. However, that number rose to 64 percent, provided people were properly “incentivized,” and 70 percent if they were incentivized and “in control” of their mobile advertising experience.

Connect the dots, as an increasing number of mobile advertising companies and ecosystem companies have begun to do, and it’s clear that the capability to provide permission-based mobile advertising (with an easy opt-in/opt-out option) could become table stakes.

MOBILE PIONEERS

Companies such as BuzzCity’s myGamma and gofresh’s itsmy.com, mobile social networks turned mobile social ad networks, need little convincing. They made the strategic decision in 2007-08 to allow their verified members to choose the channel of advertising they would accept. Of course, this wasn’t just out of respect for the individual member. Opt-in also allows advertisers to better target their key demographic (example: sports enthusiasts with sports ads) and ensure members who receive a marketing message actually listen.

In my own mobile advertising road test/white paper (PDF) on behalf road test on behalf of Bango, a provider of mobile analytics solutions and MSG supporter, showed that this was indeed a plus for my own campaigns. In fact, I gave BuzzCity the highest marks overall because its opt-in allowed me to deliver effective mobile advertising. (Happy coincidence — I have an interview with BuzzCity CEO KF Lai next week and gofresh’s Vince Staybl has also just reached out to me from his NY trip to offer me a pre-briefing on some significant news, so watch this space.)

JUMPTAP CONSUMER INTELLIGENCE

Jumptap, a provider of mobile advertising solutions that also operates a major mobile ad network, aims to tackle these shortcomings. The company announced this week that is will implement a new feature in mid-year (translated: by end-June) that “enables mobile consumers to manage their own profiles for a more personalized brand experience.”

The focus is on permission-based advertising and on putting the consumer (individual) at the center of their advertising experience. In a nutshell, the feature will enable visitors to participating websites in Jumptap’s ad network to chose the mobile advertising content that interest them – and the choice to opt-out of the process altogether. (Specifically, all publishers in the network will be able to participate. Participating publishers will need to include a link to Jumptap’s profile manager.)

What’s the user experience?

People can choose from a variety of some 29 advertising content categories, including automotive, careers, chat & email, entertainment, finance, fitness, food & drink and games, as the slide below illustrates.

What’s at work (and how) in the background? And how does Jumptap avoid potentially presenting the same people with the same ads?

JumpTap operates a premium mobile advertising network with a penetration of approx. 50 million unique visits a month in the U.S. alone.

Predictably, Jumptap’s IP, which includes patented technology, mobile search algorithms and proprietary know-how around targeting and relevancy (which I have analyzed in this post), plays a huge role in delivering people mobile advertising they will likely find relevant and useful. The company counts unique visitors based on “distinct IDs we get from carriers, cookies, request headers and device IDs.” This can vary across network. “In instances where we don’t have a unique ID, we estimate the number of unique visitors based on page views/unique user that we see elsewhere in the network.”

INTERVIEW WITH PARAN JOHAR

Armed with this background I caught up with Jumptap CMO to learn still more about the nuts & bolts of this ambitious solution and what is says about the company’s wider mobile advertising strategy.

Q: Jumptap is one of a growing group of companies sharply focused on putting the consumer at the center of the mobile advertising ecosystem? Why is this important and what do you offer people?

A: What we’re now seeing is a new wave of mobile advertising right, with the focus on customer intelligence and really putting the customer at the forefront of the mobile advertising ecosystem. Many companies got lost and focused on other constituents: operators, publishers and advertisers. They are all important people, but we are putting the customer at the forefront of the mobile advertising ecosystem, and the way we’re doing that is allowing them to manage their own profiles in a really simple format. This also drives the relevancy of ads.

The concept of is revolutionary but because everyone else has been trying to satisfy other constituents. By driving customer intelligence you’re going to see a higher engagement rate. If you see a higher engagement rate, you’re going to see advertisers who are getting better ROI. If they’re getting a better ROI, you’re going to be able to charge them more. If you can charge them more, by default, you get a better publishing yield so you’re really taking care of all these other constituents by focusing on your core audience, which is the customer, and driving the customer intelligence.

Q: Other companies have a similar approach. And just last week Alcatel-Lucent broke on the scene with a mobile advertising solution that is the subject of a larger report I am currently writing. In it I argue that permission-based advertising is a good fit with messaging because you build a conversation that – in turn – can improve the customer data. But your focus is display….

A: Yes, it’s only about display and it’s not about behavioural targeting. What this is about is empowering consumers to choose their category of interest. That’s one component of the data that will drive the delivery of relevant advertising. It goes into the user profile. And then there might be a component related to context, a component related to carrier data, a component related to publishers’ data – or a keyword from a search. All these are components and the ultimate goal is to drive consumer relevancy through this focus on consumer intelligence– and the better we can understand our mobile ad network, the better we can serve relevant ads to consumers.

Throughout this process three things are critical. One is full-transparency. Two is respecting their privacy and making sure all this data is completely anonymous. And third is preference. We’re allowing them to tell advertisers ‘these are my categories of preference.’

Q: What’s the roll out and what are plans beyond the iPhone?

A: That’s a great question. We’re rolling this out at the end of Q2, and you’re going to get a link to a Beta site where you can go in on your iPhone – or any device – and just scroll through and change categories of interest to suit you. It’s incredibly simple. The idea was to keep it as simple as possible.

Q: It it’s for all handsets from the get-go?

A: It is for all handsets and all advertisers. It’s on iPhone and on mobile Internet, so it’s going to be limited at first. But, as it rolls out, it’s going to obviously develop [momentum]. The goal is ultimately to drive more relevant advertising to everyone on all handsets.

Q: I mentioned that other companies have placed some form of permission-based advertising at the core of what they do. Take BuzzCity. BuzzCity even surveys its members and shares this anonymized information with advertisers to help them target their audience. From an initial look at Jumptap is different because it offers the data to third-party publishers. This would perhaps be the differentiating factor. At the other end of the spectrum there is Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism solution, [a solution that harnesses permission-based advertising – specifically, text messaging – to improve targeting.] So, there are other flavors out there…

A: No one else is doing this the way we are. It is absolutely one of our key differentiators. We also have 80 percent of the carrier business in the U.S. AT&T works with two sales partners, right? One is Jumptap and the other is Yahoo. Needless to say, we’re in good company.

We also have the broadest IP portfolio of any mobile ad network. And we have our pay-per-lick performance marketplace that allows users to bid at a keyword level, category, handset or carrier. We’re the only ones who have all of that.

You bring up the mobile social networks such as BuzzCity. I think it’s a little bit different within a social media construct. That is one component that can be added to the user profile, certainly. But remember we are not taking a siloed approach. It’s not just contextual, not just consumer category information, not just behavioural, not just carrier information. It is all of these components aggregated across multiple forms of data to drive relevancy. That’s our consumer intelligence.

Q: Another part of this might be that you are a neutral network. You belong to a group of ad networks – including the likes of Millennial Media and inMobi – that is not in the Google or Apple camp…

A: I think that’s a great way to break out the marketplace now and there are three groups, so to speak. There’s a lot coming from Apple that I agree with — and there’s a lot that I don’t. On the one hand, Steve Jobs came out publicly and said that mobile advertising sucks and that he has this goal of driving relevancy right to his network. That’s something we applaud. It’s very much in line with our strategy of customer intelligence, so that I think is dead-on.

The piece I don’t think is dead-on is his approach. He’s almost creating a walled garden for himself, almost an AOL of the mobile Internet. Advertisers really don’t care where their ad runs. They care about reaching their audience, not the device. iPhone happens to be the sexy thing right now, but Android will be the next sexy thing – and it [Android] is already is starting to catch a lot of that limelight.

Imagine you were a TV buyer and you had to buy a 30 second TV spot and you had to be cognisant of whether your audience is watching television on a Samsung, Sony or Pioneer TV set. And then you had to worry about whether they were watching it over cable, satellite or a dish network. And then you had to customize your creative accordingly. And so on. It doesn’t make for an efficient marketplace and that’s where I think Apple is missing the boat a little bit. They’re becoming a walled garden in advertising, which I think is not good for the mobile advertising ecosystem in the long term.

Q: Finally, where is the excitement?

A: We’re doing a lot in rich media. Our Unified Rich Media Platform [which I detail further down] delivers the industry’s broadest set of rich media units – for both mobile Web and in apps – all from one network. And our rich media platform is completely open. So, if you’re a rich media buyer for you plug right into our system. We work with iPhone, Android, Palm, and Blackberry. We’re an open system and we help advertisers reach their target audience.

***

MY TAKE: Permission-based advertising sits at the core of a variety of approaches and solutions I analyze in my upcoming report for GigaOM PRO, a project that has evolved from a SWOT analysis of mobile advertising solutions (including Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism and JumpTap’s solution powered by “consumer intelligence”) into a wider discussion of the business value of permission-based (opt-in).

We have ample evidence that permission-based messaging delivers positive results and response rates. A messaging approach also allows brands and other companies in the ecosystem to build on this personal profiling data (with the individual’s permission) by adding questions to refine the profile. This way, an individual who has signed up for car ads (a broad topic) might divulge that they are more into Audi than BMW and even say why they prefer one over the other. All voluntary information an advertiser would no doubt value.

Display is a different. It’s more one-way than two-way, and there is a danger of “spamming” people with repeat advertising because there aren’t enough ads in a category – or because the ad networks can’t identify unique users (and therefore gauge whether an individual user has seen the same ad already, or not). Jumptap claims to have addressed the latter with its IP, technology and techniques that allow the ad network to identify 50 million uniques per month in the U.S. alone.

This week’s announcement builds on that foundation. The focus is to increase the value and relevancy of mobile display ads. (Thus, Jumptap does not compete with companies that focus on mobile messaging and direct marketing.) To achieve this Jumptap inputs the advertising categories chosen by the individual into a much larger, more sophisticated equation that includes data from carriers, searches and some context. This covers the bases to provide people a better user experience (provided there is a good supply of ads in each category), and that should certainly lead to high advertiser ROI and publisher yields. Of course, the proof is in the numbers. We’ll have to wait a while for those. In the meantime, Jumptap’s move can be read as an important confirmation that all advertising – not just messaging – is correctly evolving to provide people more of a say in what they get.

Disclaimer: Bango is an MSG supporter with a branded thought leadership presence on this website; Jumptap has been an MSG supporter and sponsored a series of podcasts.

THE MOBILE MOVEMENT Launches, Brings Mobile To Non-Profits; MSG Joins Advisory Board

Peggy Anne Salz — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:10:52 +0000

In brief: MSG and the Founding Members of a new initiative supporting non-profits – The Mobile Movement – announced today they have formed a coalition committed to bringing mobile capabilities to non-profits in order that they may reach millions more people in need by leveraging mobile devices, networks and innovative applications they will create in partnership with social entrepreneurs.

Ever since expanding the focus of the Netsize Guide, an analysis of mobile trends, to include mobility in verticals such as healthcare and education, I have sharpened my own focus on ways companies can combine mobility, creativity and compassion to help organizations reach out to people in need.

A moment of clarity came during my interview with James E. (Jim) Nalley, Co-Founder and CEO, EmFinders.

The U.S.-based technology firm has harnessed mobile to provide new support to caregivers and new freedom to a growing population of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, autism, and a range of cognitive and developmental disabilities. The aim is to facilitate the rapid location and recovery of wandering or missing adults and children. EmFinders achieves this through EmSeeQ, which combines a small, watch-like, wireless device without buttons or a screen, and a location service that uses triangulation through the cellular network – and with 911 emergency response systems – to accurately determine a person’s location.

I was struck by Jim’s dedication to his work (more like his mission), stemming no doubt from his own personal experience with his father, who – like some 5.6 million other Americans — had Alzheimer’s disease. His respect for his father’s quality of life and personal freedom inspired him to develop a solution that doesn’t track individuals like a Big Brother (potentially limiting their feeling of autonomy and self-worth). Instead, the EmFinders solution is designed to give some peace of mind to the caregivers and to the families, and ensure that – if the impaired person wanders off – then the service can recover them quickly.

As Jim put it: “It’s about personal mobility and giving these impaired people and their families the freedom they haven’t had before. We’re hearing back from our customers that we’re making it possible for them to go on vacation for the first time in years because now they don’t have to be worried that their mom or dad or child is going to run away and not be able to be found again.” (For the complete interview, download the Netsize Guide 2010 here.)

LEVERAGING MOBILE FOR GOOD

Jim’s service is just one of a new breed of personal mobility services that puts people, not technology, first.

Since then I have examined the needs of non-profits and explored how they might harness mobile to extend their reach and help people everywhere. Fortunately, I was able to connect with other entrepreneurs, academics and humanitarians who share my passion.

The result is the recognition that non-profits need (and are not yet using) mobile messaging solutions to connect people to resources and essential services, and the resolve to change that (literally) for good.

Today I am proud to join with my esteemed colleagues in announcing THE MOBILE MOVEMENT Initiative and serve on the advisory board. Our mission is to support non-profits by bringing mobile capabilities to non-profits, helping them to reach millions more people in need by leveraging mobile devices, networks and innovative applications they will create in partnership with social entrepreneurs.

Carol Glennon, a founding director of The Mobile Movement and founder & CEO of Renu Mobile put it best in this press statement (distributed today via MSG and its partner RealWire): “As we launch this effort we are very fortunate to be supported by a board of advisors with experience in education, non-profit services, finance and mobile applications, as well as the compassionate creativity we’ll need to continually innovate. Together we will build a platform and services by collaborating with our non-profit colleagues enabling them to help more people everywhere mobile devices can be found.”

Members of the advisory board include:

Avis Richards, film maker and philanthropist creating short videos and documentary films for dozens of non-profits – www.birdsnestproductions.com and www.lunchthefilm.com

Cynthia Artin, managing director of Auster Capital Partners, a private equity firm and investor in telecom, software and mobile applications companies

Kevin Patrick, serial social entrepreneur and producer, founder of a new web-based exchange that brings together musicians with the causes they care about

Laura Marriott, global thought leader in the mobile marketing industry, consultant and former global President of the Mobile Marketing Association

Dr. Mary Cronin, Boston College professor of management, consultant and author of mobile and smart product strategy analyses

Simone Schmidlkofer, expert in corporate social responsibility programs, entrepreneur and founder of a Cause2Connect, global strategy and branding agency

MOBILIZING THE MESSAGE

Thousands of non-profits are not yet using mobile messaging to serve their community because they lack the technical expertise and budget. The Mobile Movement fills that gap by connecting non-profits with sponsors and – more importantly – tools (mobile texting, mobile petitioning, mobile barcodes and mobile website creation/design) to achieve amazing results. We’re keeping it simple to scale quickly and have a positive impact on the causes that seek our innovation, support and collaboration.

Thanks to Avis Richards, founding board member, lifelong humanitarian, and Founder and President of Birds Nest Foundation, a non-profit organization that produces short videos and documentaries for a wide range of important causes, we kick-off with our first campaign.

As part of a series of Earth Day events in New York City this week, her company, Birds Nest Productions, in partnership with
Earth Day Network and Earth Day New York is screening LUNCH, a short documentary film investigates the causes and the consequences of “growing up in a junk-food culture.”

Using the platform to promote the documentary, Avis says her organization can “share our stories and services with millions more people.” Moving forward, Avis will take her initiative national (in the U.S.) with the help of the Mobile Movement team.

MORE INFORMATION

The Mobile Movement was created as an organizing force around a force of nature called collective compassion. Now that we have done the hard work of building global connectivity, and are placing communications devices into the hands of billions, we commence the work of finding usefulness and meaning through applications that can help improve, extend and even save lives.

If you manage a non-profit or would like to find out more about how to get involved, then please email me directly (peggy@msearchgroove.com). And please check out our new website. (Thanks again to the phenomenal Lauren Towle!)

Disclaimer: MSG is aligned with the mission and goals of The Mobile Movement and Peggy Anne Salz sits on the Advisory Board. Netsize is an MSG supporter and Peggy Anne Salz is author of the Netsize Guide 2010.

RealWire supports MSG with a global news release distribution service (specializing in the online media and mobile) that consistently delivers reach, audience and exceptional analytics.

mobilegroove » Mobile Social Media

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My take:

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Register while you still can to attend this high-calibre event — and quote that you’re a reader of MSearchGroove to receive a 15 percent discount.

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