Vote George Kidd NOW!!

It's the New Media Age Awards soon and they want to know from all of us who's had greatest influence in the last 12 months. There are some heavyweights up there, of course, like James Murdoch and very disappointingly, no women. But putting that aside, I reckon a vote for our very own George Kidd from ICSTIS wouldn't be a wasted vote. Yes, I know ICSTIS is the regulator, but for a regulatory body, they do a pretty good job and are helpful rather than antagonistic (well, that's been my experience of them to date) and in operating that way, help drive the industry forward. And then today I received an unofficial pitch from an "insider" on the Support George Kidd Team:

"So to paraphrase Elvis, 'A little less conversation, a little more action', ICSTIS is the regulatory body that helped monetise mobile, spike spammers and tame the tellybox. It delivered 100% per annum growth to £1.2bn, a 70% reduction in complaint levels and a funding levy a third the rate it was 10 years ago (sounds good so far - Ed). A body that has delivered Codes in a fast-changing world, reformed its governance and increased its openness (there are a few other Government body who could take a leaf out of the ICSTIS book). We have prosecuted without fear(mostly) when we had to, but tried wherever possible, with increasing success, to work with the industry to design its way out of having to.

Regulating premium rate can seem like riding a tiger, but Mr Kidd, at the helm of ICSTIS, have done so for many years and developed a framework that has been studie and copied in Europe, the USA, Australia, Africa and Asia.

Despite a shameful lack of language skills, George's capacity to make a memorable impact , often with sign and body language, has made ICSTIS legendary from Tower Bridge to Tokyo, from Bermondsey to Budapest and from Sydney to Swedish Beers nights."

It's dead easy to vote for George so there's no excuse. You just text NMA 4 (there's a space between NMA and the 4) and send it to 83338. Get your votes in before the 1st June. Winner announced on the 28th June at the NMA Awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel.

VOTE NOW!! You know it makes sense ;)

It's been a while

but I've been really busy with events and client stuff and life generally... So what *have* I been doing..

• A New Media day for a client in Oxford with my friend and colleague Lloyd
• A slot at the MDA half-day seminar on the future of mobile marketing
• A session with Dan from Sponge and George from Iris about the future of mobile and music with the lovely folks from Sony Ericsson in their fab meeting place just near Brick Lane (I can't tell you where it is otherwise I'd have to kill you!)
• The launch of Imaginary Futures by Richard Barbrook (a very interesting book explaining the history of the internet so we can see what the future might look like)
  
• The Said Business School Media Summit at Oxford University sponsored by Amdocs (notes and video clips available)
  
• A session on preparing students for 21st Century careers for academics at the University of Westminster (I'm alumni and I lecture on the MA in Integrated Marketing)
  
• Oh, and I've been trying to catch up on admin, client work (of which there's a fair bit to be getting on with), doing a bit of twittering, messing around with facebook and myspace, thinking about what to blog on MobileMessaging2 (I'm one of their bloggers which is very nice to be asked), thinking about what to blog here (and losing all my firefox tabs that were open and then didn't restore :( ) and preparing presentations for Knock Knock and the IDM.

Phew. So you can see why I have been a bit quiet of late. I promise I'll try and do better over the next few weeks. With a bit of luck you'll be seeing missives from Denmark as of tomorrow and Monte Carlo as of Monday next week.

Invaluable advice for new (and existing) managers

I've been catching up on some blog reading and stumbled across this excellent post on what being a manager means, especially where technical project management is required. Tom explains that the posts have been linked to from a few project management blogs over in the US and also, is required reading for several tech firms in Silicon Valley and beyond. And I've had a read, and it really is required reading for any manager, especially someone who's new to the role. Maybe there's a book in there Tom?

And while we're talking about management, here are some top communication tips for IT managers. More sensible advice and straight-talking and not just for techie folk! I know plenty people who still mumble and don't open their mouths when they talk and it's so unnecessary!

Some links for a Monday morning

It's been one of those weekends.. all the best intentions to catch up with everything and only a fraction done of what I'd intended. And part of the intention was to catch up on my blogging. Still, here's a linkage post on Mobile Video and TV which should keep you going for a Monday morning.

ScreenDigest figures the prospects are bright for mobile TV and despite generating revenues of only €169 million in 2006, the researchers reckon that TV will overtake both music and gaming in the mobile content space by 2011 as operators focus on the mass-market for growth. Read the rest of the article for more detail (free subscription may be required to read the article).

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Research company Infonetics reckons there'll be 46m mobile TV subscribers by 2010 with the first spike in traffic being around the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008 and Asia Pacific taking the lead in mobile video uptake.

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IBM also writes what the IPTV and mobile TV advertising landscape might look like and is positive at the prospect of targeted ads to users.

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And talking of advertising, 118118 is planning a series of mobile clips of their iconic 1970s runner characters as part of their current viral marketing campaign. This is part of a wider refocus to create 118118 as a destination web and mobile site to include sports, entertainment and celebrity news. The company will also allow users to upload their own videos to the revamped portal (which doesn't seem to be live yet).

As it happens, you can already claim ringtones and wallpapers from 118118 by clicking on the mobile phone image on the home page or by going to www.118118.com from your mobile phone and scrolling to the end to '118118 ringtones'. The mobile site is slow to load and I'm unable to preview the ringtones. And it's not obvious which link to press to claim your ringtone and what's even worse, is that there's no handset or network operator recognition so you have to rely on extremely clunky dropdown menus in order to tell them what kind of phone you have. It's also rather thoughtless to have a 16kb logo for those folks who are paying per kilobyte. This is especially disappointing for a company purporting to be mobile friendly. Let's hope they get that fixed in the next iteration.

A couple of viral campaigns with a touch of mobile

I've stumbled across a couple of nice viral campaigns, both with a hint of mobile video about them, via Alfie and Tom respectively.

The first is an exclusive McFly video of 'Baby's coming Back' with the band appearing on customised mobile phones. It's a really imaginative use of mobile video and put a smile on my face. I also signed up to the JoinUp campaign at http://www.sendmyfriend.org/mcfly/ where they're campaigning for education for all children globally. Once you've signed up, you can download your own arms and accessories for your mobile phone. And I hope, in time, we'll see some similar treatments of other music videos and/or some spoofs. Looks like it's pretty simple to do. Never mind the DRM ;)


The second example is a campaign for the Royal Navy called 'Get the Message'. Again using mobile video, here you can choose a method of delivery for your message ranging from a Diver to Helicopter Pilot, then you can choose to send the message to your friend's email address or mobile phone and then you can insert a short message. If you've chosen mobile (I sent one to myself), then you get sent a wap push message telling you that you have a confidential message waiting for you and a link to a wapsite to collect it. The link loads very quickly and you see a video and at the end, your message appears and is customised with your precise message. Very cool. You can see my test example here.



As you can see, my words aren't the most imaginative in the world, but you get the idea. The icing on the cake with this campaign would be to make it very easy to save and embed the video to leave a message with a mate on myspace for example. Instead I had to sideload my video from my phone to youtube and get the link from there. Nevertheless, it's a very nice campaign and an effective use of mobile video as part of a mobile marketing campaign.

How to do mobile marketing in China

I'm no expert on the Chinese market but I spotted this article on Contagious by Kaiser Kuo explaining the ins and outs of using mobile marketing in China and it seems solid advice and comment to me. Some key takeaway points for me are:

• Mobile phones have really taken off in China (no big surprise there - there are more mobile phones in China than there are people in the US) and it's commonplace to use SMS as a response mechanism to adverts.

• Wap advertising is also on the increase with several Admob-a-likes sprouting up as well as a raft of mobile search companies. The mobile advertising and marketing industry is poised for growth.
  

• 100m Chinese subscribers have tried wap and about a third of them (30 million) use it regularly.

• Chinese mobile subscribers suffer more from spam than we do here and that the authorities have not [yet] clamped down on this.

To sum up, Kaiser Kuo comes up with 10 top tips for running mobile marketing campaigns in China (or anywhere else for that matter - it's all pretty good advice):

10 Tips for Mobile Marketing Campaigns in China

1. Target with maximum precision: Leverage available user data, and aim by time, place

2. Hard sell turns off more users than it switches on

3. Play by the rules, and don’t anger operators or regulators

4. Keep it simple: WAP destination sites should be idiot-proof, with limited choices

5. Know the technology’s capabilities, and play to those: Technology can drive creativity

6. Pull is better than push: avoid spam as much as possible

7. Know when to get on a fad—and when to get off it

8. Use mobile to access user info, and own that data: mobile ad is relational marketing

9. Reward users for viral behavior

10. Mobile alone doesn’t work: make it part of a bigger campaign

I especially agree with point 4 - and not just for wapsites - make it all easy and idiot proof! Not sure that you need to reward users for viral behaviour if it detracts from your message and sometimes mobile only campaigns can work.

What are you doing on 13th June?

If you're in London Town, you could do worse than head over to LSO St Lukes for the NMK Forum 07. Curated by Mike Butcher, it promises to be a day of discussion and debate around the new wave of innovation in the digital media industry. Leading industry figures (ahem, that includes me and pals Justin, Sam, Jemima and Alfie as well as luminaries such as Jason Calcanis of Weblogs fame and author and citizen media specialist Dan Gillmor) will talk about the future digital landscape online, offline and mobile (I'm on a panel entitled 'Communities, Commerce and Marketing' in the afternoon). There'll be a good turnout on the day if previous events are anything to go by so the knowledge and networking should be great, greatly enhanced by the unstuffy 'cabaret' layout thus enabling a proper conversation.

To book your, very reasonably priced ticket, go to http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2007/06/13/NMK-Forum07. Tickets are £345 and there's a reduced rate for students, not for profit organisations, employees of micro-companies and freelancers of £245. Money well spent I reckon.

And if you can't wait that long to hear me in action, then you'll have to follow me to Denmark where I'm speaking at "Knock Knock The Future of Music" Conference in Aarhus from Innovation Lab on 31st May (It's being held in English not Danish). You can download the PDF flyer here. If you're interested in music and the impact of digital media and innovation in that sector, then it's probably worth a trip. Not least because there's also a music festival on that weekend as part of the conference and exhibition programme. A mini, Danish SXSW maybe?

If you're going to be there and fancy meeting up, let me know. I'll be at the networking dinner on the Thursday evening and am planning to hang around for the weekend too to check out some of the music, all being well.

Top mobile websites US and UK

Some more lovely statistics from the folks at M:metrics with the top mobile web domains as of March 2007. You'll see that there are no 'mobile' brands up there that aren't network operators.

Blogging can damage your wealth

...or so say a couple of lawyers who specialise in matters blogging. They've put together a list of top tips to keep bloggers within the law when it comes to writing blogs and pretty much writing anything online. The best tip being to avoid 'blog rage'. I concur. If I'm ever suffering blog rage, the way round it is to still write something but never ever ever publish it and never ever let anyone else see it!

Some very good commonsense advice there so worth a read if you ever comment or write anything online, and that's a lot of us these days.

Tuesday linkage

Mobile gaming and LBS
Have you played The Journey II yet? It's a mobile game - designed for Symbian phones (so that'll be Nokia Series 60 phones then).

"The Journey II" interweaves your real environment with the setting of a thrilling detective story. To solve the mysterious case, you have to go outside and walk around, literally. This concept makes "The Journey II" the world's first location based mobile adventure game!"

If you have tried it, do let me know how it worked. [Via Tom Hume]

Text to Win Sales Promotion
Coca Cola Company's new text to win a Wii campaign goes live on 14th May until the beginning of July 2007. Running on 182m cans and bottles of Fanta, Sprite and Dr Pepper, you have a chance to win 10 'ultimate Wii Games Rooms' which consists of a Nintendo Wii Console, Wii Sports game, Samsunb 26" LCD TV, a mini fridge and a case each of 330ml Fanta, Sprite and Dr Pepper. The campaign is heftily supported by above the line advertising and extensive PR as well as the Get Up and Play website. You enter by texting in the unique code on the underside of the ring pull or on the back of the bottle label.

I wonder what the chances are of you actually winning anything bearing in mind the promotion is printed on 182m cans of drink...? I'll give it a go when it goes live and see what the interaction is like. Wouldn't mind winning one of those Wii Games Rooms myself!

Has the bluetooth permission marketing conundrum been solved?
TeriMobile claims to have sorted out the permission aspect of bluetooth marketing. They've offered me a trial of the service and I haven't had time to take them up on the offer yet, but if anyone else has, or has a comment about the service, please do let me know via email or by leaving a comment her on the blog.

Movers and shakers
Angel Gambino (ex MTV) and Laurence Pichot (ex Orange) have both joined Bebo recently - Angel will be driving their music strategy and Laurence will be looking after marketing and partnerships. And Hugh Griffiths (ex O2) joins Microsoft (seems to me to be the 'live' division which covers off MSN Messenger amongst other things). Seems with Microsoft's recent acquisition of mobile advertising firm ScreenTonic and Hugh's appointment, they are, at long last, taking mobile seriously.

The consequences of mobile phones in Star Wars

Or at least a good reminder to turn your phone off when at the cinema or theatre.

How to build a brand through Social Networks

Online social networks and social media are something I play around with routinely - as a way to keep up with friends but also to keep an eye on web 2.0 and digital trends that may or may not be relevant to what I do or what my clients do.

Case in point being this blog.. I started it as an experiment to see what the 'blogging' phenomenon was all about and the best way to work it out was to start a blog myself. And here I am 383 posts and more than 2 years later still blogging away so it turned into a bit more than an experiment. Some key benefits for me have been creating my own archive of thoughts, links and stories which goes one step further than Delicious, taking part in online conversations about things mobile with other bloggers around the world and in generating business as it's a very visible resume.

But what about b2c online social networks - the likes of facebook, myspace, bebo, librarything et al? We're still making up the business models as the future is unclear, although Moblog UK seems to be doing a pretty good job around the sponsorship model.

As with anything 'social', on or offline, people move around according to where their friends hang out - whether it's a website, a bar or a nightclub. So if you want to learn more about social media and what it means in the commercial world, I have 3 tips for you..

1. Read mashable - it's a great blog covering all aspects of online social networking and is a great read (you can even get the feeds via twitter)

2. Have a read of this particular post of 'how to build a brand through social networks' from the mashable guys

3. Join Lloyd's London Social Media club which meets every Thursday in Central London where you get to do and talk about social media. And no, you don't have to be a geek to attend. Just like you don't have to be a geek to have a page on facebook.

Mobile Marketing Principles - Permission

I was just reading about Mark Logan's thoughts on mobile marketing principles over at bemomobi. He breaks it down into 4 categories:

1. Embrace User Control
2. Get Personal
3. Optimise for Mobile
4. Provide Value

These are not dissimilar to my 'Key Success Factors' slide that I use in training and seminars. However, Mark has missed a critical point - getting personal isn't enough. What Mark has missed on his list is the fundamental "Permission". He talks about 'embracing user control' but this isn't quite the same thing so I'll elaborate as to what I mean...



You need permission before you do anything mobile. The assumption is generally that you need a list of mobile numbers to begin with but this isn't necessarily the case. Yes, a list can be useful, if it's opted in (that's the law) and has a close link between what customers signed up for and what you want to tell them (ideally being your own list as many, although not all, third party lists are dubious in their effectiveness). Permission is also when a customer texts back in response to having seen an advert on the TV, in print or heard it on the radio or seen something on a packet of crisps or can of drink. In texting in, the customer gives permission for you to reply back, thus starting the conversation.

Mobiles were designed for communication and so it's a two-way street. No longer can you send out one-way text messages - you must allow the customer to reply - not least so they can unsubscribe. (Lakeside, when are you going to do something about this? - I'm *still* getting SMS from you with no reply path). Not all customers will reply to you, but some will. Some will say thank you, some will have another question, some will just want to give you feedback (both negative and positive) and a fair few will tell you to s*d off (you can take that as an unsubscribe request). Indeed, in my ZagMe days, one chap texted in to tell us he'd dedicated a record to us on Capital FM - praise indeed.

So, don't do anything without permission (although on it's own, it's not enough) and keep the lines of communication open so that people can reply to you.

New installation from Txtual Healing

I really like what the Txtual Healing artists do and the latest project, DripTxt is no exception. They've taken a famous (Jesus Saves) graffiti artist's tag style and made it into a font. They they ask the public to text in their message to their system, it then formats it into the graffiti artist's style and projects on to a massive wall - the latest ones being in Brooklyn, New York. They've also created a video to show more about how it works which is worth a look too.

Way back in 2003, I came up with a similar concept for a client who was putting on a Hip Hop event. No, honestly, I did! It was all about creating your own graffiti tag although we didn't plan to project on to buildings at the time. Maybe we'd have won the business if that's what we had proposed...

Telco 2.0 round up on 'digital yoof'

The Telco 2.0 initiative is about brainstorming how telcos, handset manufacturers, media companies et al can generate revenue in an IP based world. They had a recent brainstorm session at the end of March and the write up of the session on digital youth is now on the website and is well worth a read.

Some highlights include:

Research from Peter Miles from SubTV, the UK student TV network

1. 90% access the internet daily in 2006 (up from 82% in 2005 and 65% in 2004)
2. 51% of students visit social networking sites each week
3. 99% own a mobile (and 74% ‘would lose their mind if they lost their mobile’)
4. They are VERY good at multi-tasking and filtering - normal marketing messages may not get through

Nick Bassett from Vodafone's research unit tell us of the key phone requirements for the predominantly pre-pay 'Tireless Texter' :

• Modern. Yup, the device must be cool ‘n’ funky.
• Have good quality camera. To capture those young fun-lovin’ moments…
• Include Bluetooth. So those pics and games can be exchanged with friends for free.
• Have lots of memory. To store those illegal music and video downloads.
• An MP3 player. To play those (still) illegal downloads

Alfie Dennen from Moblog reiterates the need for sensibly priced flat-rate data plans to encourage mobile web usage without fear of billshock and appealed to the operators to come up with alternative (improved) revenue share models.

Well worth a read.

The Kaiser Chiefs tell us to Unpluggit..

..our phone chargers that is as a plea to do something about climate change.


The Kaiser Chiefs are heading up a campaign for unpluggit where they're encouraging us to unplug our electrical equipment when not being used - especially mobile phones which tend to get charged up overnight and kept plugged in during that time, when in fact they only need an hour or two's charge. They're putting together a petition to ask the handset manufacturers to do something about this with the way they make the chargers too so they switch off when the charging is complete. Seems like a good idea to me. Go add your name.

I'm very excited about seeing the Kaiser Chiefs at Glastonbury too :)

Bank Holiday links

As the Bank Holiday draws to a close, I thought I'd better capture a few links that might be of interest, so here goes...

Comeks raises cash but I still don't know how to get it on to my phone or my 'puter so I wonder if it's a network operator specific service? If so, it's a shame, as I reckon it would go down a treat with the community at Moblog UK. It looks to be a great service that gives you the tools to turn your photos and images into a comic strip so you can create those photo-love type stories as seen in The Sun (print version) or in days gone by the much missed Jackie magazine. Thanks to Dan for the tip-off.

Talking of which, they've been very busy of late at Moblog UK with new moblogs for Channel 4's Binwatch, a new anime moblog for Gong Studios (and there's prizes 'n everything on offer) and the official launch of the Big Art Mob, again for Channel 4. It’s the UK’s first comprehensive survey of Public Art – based entirely on pictures from the camera phones of art-lovers nationwide. It aims to record for posterity the wealth of artworks in public places right across the country and serve as the focus of a dynamic national conversation. Go check the site out and take part yourself.

Vodafone/Cingular (USA) has included in its website terms and conditions to disallow deep links to their website, and also disallowing bloggers or anyone really from saying anything negative about them. Now that just seems barmy to me. I understand copyright issues and libel or slander and that's fair enough, but to stop free speech and hyperlinks seems ridiculous. Although it does appear to be legal. I imagine monitoring this will become nigh on impossible as the internet and blogosphere both grow exponentially. Ewan has also commented on this over at SMStextnews. It seems to me that the days of 'controlling' your message are long gone and these ts and cs seem a bit last century.

Kajeet launches an MVNO in the USA for tweens with snazzy mobile phones *and* related, targeted content aimed at kids aged 8 to 12 and it looks pretty good to me. The characters they've invented are appealing, the handsets look ok (although they won't be as funky as their older siblings' Razr and Krazr handsets from Motorola), it's well priced, a lot of thought has gone into keeping both parents and kids happy so maybe this is one MVNO that will work. Their aim is to sign up 175,000 customers in their first year.

Wii style gaming comes to mobile

I wonder how long it will be before we get these in the UK? In Japan, DoCoMo has released a handset on to the market with motion-senser gaming capability. Now that's very cool. I think.
I'm not quite sure how this motion senser stuff will work on a phone as part of the appeal of the Wii is that there's a screen that you're aiming at and others can see what you're doing.

At World Telemedia last week, the bright sparks at ARN recruitment bribed one of the team's nephews to borrow his Wii and they set it up on their stand so you could play Wii Sports. And it was a great hit too with the expo delegates. And it's great fun to play judging by how long people were hanging around to join in and play golf and ten-pin bowling.

DoCoMo seems to be innovating a lot in the handset market with recent phones having a touch sensitive screen and another that gives off a scent when you use it. Whatever next!

Nokia and Mastercard are teaming up on mobile payments

This looks like an interesting mobile payments development...

"Consumers will be able to use a phone as a wallet or as an access card simply by waving it over a wireless reader -- and in some cases punching a PIN number into the phone -- similar to how travelers in Tokyo and London access public transport (referring here to the brilliant Oyster Card that we use in London for all London Transport services).

...The world's biggest payment card company, MasterCard, is also involved in the initiative, which is cheaper and much faster than other wireless payment experiments, like those using SMS text messages. Trials with the new standard are set to start in October." (via Reuters)

So I wonder a) if this will take off and if it does b) where this will leave the likes of Paypal by mobile, Luup and the like. The mobile payments war is definitely still not won yet and this is still very early days.

So much to write about, so little time

Ok, this post is going to be a little random as I'm very short on time but need to capture a few things on my blog before my firefox explodes with having too many tabs open simultaneously.

So it seems to be conference season.. World Telemedia last week in Amsterdam where I talked about mobile marketing in the PRS (premium rate services) world and then on Tuesday I was moderating a panel at Internet World around mobile marketing in the age of personalisation with very able speakers Stephen Pinches from the FT.com and Robert Thurner from Incentivated. I'm also due in the Heist Conference for Education Marketing today (I've got as far as my wonderful hotel room at least) and I'd really like to catch some of the sessions to help set the scene before I'm on this afternoon with Robert Thurner again and also Ramesh from Active Media. So I digress, lets get on with the links 'n stuff.

Voip and MSN/Yahoo/Skype messaging on your mobile from fring. Has anyone tried it? Looks like it's a pretty neat application that sits on your mobile phone allowing you Voip and integrates with your existing messaging apps. My poor old Nokia N70 is due for retirement so I'll hang fire in downloading this until I upgrade. But if anyone else has used it, please comment here.
Update: Alfie's done a rather good review of Fring over on his moblog. And both he and Whatleydude recommend it. So I guess I'll just have to get on and download it and use it myself then!

MP3tunes locker - this looks like a good idea - you can back-up all your mp3s from your 'puter for free and then you can access them anywhere over t'internet thus allowing for a back-up of your music but also the chance to access those choons wherever you are. It'll even stream over mobile (make sure you're on a flat rate data charge mind!). Another one I must try I reckon.

Limbo has raised USD8m for their reverse auction company. The founders are ex Enpocket (who were always good at raising cash it has to be said) and seem to be doing a good job of bringing the reverse auction concept to the US masses. As it happens, reverse auctions were in the news last week as well as Million-2-1 (who are one of the largest UK reverse auction houses) were up for a Eureka award last week at World Telemedia but lost out to ZoneMedia's made-for-mobile horror short series 'When Evil Calls' (it's not for the faint hearted!).

It seems teens are interested in receiving ads on their mobile phone so that should bode well for Blyk provided they can work out the economics to pay for it all as I discussed with one of the Blyk team in the back of a cab to Victoria after the W2F party (ably sponsored by our friends at Tanla Mobile).

Emma's Diary launches on mobile for expectant mums whilst GMTV and Opera's in a pickle again amid allegations that for some of their competitions potential winners were picked on the basis of their location and type of abode thus ruling out those living too far away or in tower blocks as these were too tricky for cameramen to reach. Opera brazened it out last week at World Telemedia and I've heard tell along the grapevine that they are in current negotiations with a very large UK broadcaster for a very large phone and text service despite the fact that it was said broadcaster who exposed them in the first place. The plot truly thickens and I'm sure we haven't heard the last of it and I'm quite sure we don't have the full story either. I guess it'll all come out in the wash..eventually.