Marketing Manager Job Opportunity with mobile marketing and advertising company

Fancy a job as a marketing manager for a funky, well-funded, mobile advertising and media company aimed at the under 30s? Do you have youth marketing experience and a can do attitude and hands-on approach to things? Can you also put together good copy for web, wap and print and have good ideas about marketing and PR? Well, then you need to talk to Ben Rosen at ARN Consulting about a role he has going with one of his clients.

The role involves creating and running marketing and PR campaigns, appointing and managing agencies, working out budgets and keeping to them, working out ROI, carrying out and acting on market research and generally being a hands-on marketer. Your patch will cover Europe, Scandinavia and the Pac/Asia. Reporting to the COO, I think this is a great chance to forge ahead in your marketing career.

Wanna win an iphone?

Then best get yourself over to Qipit before 21st February. They're running a Valentine's competition where you have to download a template from their website, customise with your Valentine message in hand-writing and then take a picture of it with your cameraphone and upload it back up to Qipit. And in doing this, you'll also see exactly how Qipit works. Pretty neat.

They already have an entry from Jade who sends Shilpa a Valentine's message.

What will your message be?

Reasonably priced music on your phone anytime

Omnifone has launched with an all-you-can-eat over the air music download and news service called Musicstation. They've teamed up with major labels like Universal and 23 global network operators so far covering 40 countries and a potential of 690m subscribers.

This looks like a serious contender to ipod/itunes/iphone - especially as the iphone doesn't support OTA downloading and isn't even available over here yet.

So Omnifone's Musicstation looks like it has a really neat interface and looks very usable, it's reasonably priced at £1.99 a week (although I wonder how much it will be in India or the US?), it has a broad back catalogue from the major labels, there are NO data charges due to their deals with the operators, works across a ton of phones, you get personalised news and it has the obligatory community features.

I wanted to see the service in action for myself, but of course, I've no idea how I actually get it on my phone and whether or not T-Mobile supports it in the UK. But I reckon, knowing that the Motorola Krazr for example has better sound quality than the ipod (and this came from a teenage die-hard ipod fan), that this could be a big problem for Apple if they get the marketing right.

As an aside, the management team includes Rob Lewis who I met many years ago when he worked at a b2b publisher with a friend of mine in Balham in South West London. After his stint there, he very sensibly, joined the dotcom world and launched silicon.com and now omnifone.

Via Mobile Entertainment

Text message storage from O2... but not until May

I've been reading about O2 opening up its Bluebook for its customers over at 160 Characters. The bluebook account offers 1000 MB of storage space for important text messages, pictures or video clips. Photos taken from cameraphones can optionally be opened up to be viewed online by others (I'm guessing flickr or moblog stylee) and also sent directly to Kodak for printing. The service launched on the 11th January and to begin with, users must send in their content back to the server using a free shortcode 40202.

In the next phase in May, messages will automatically be cached which I think is great. I'd love to be able to get my messages either as an email or some kind of online store so that I can search them from time to time. Often there are phone numbers to be retrieved, or simply text messages you want to treasure (like the service currently offered by treasuremytext). In addition, in this next phase, customers will be able to store their contacts and other blogging features will be incorporated. I was initially skeptical of this, but actually, O2 has done a pretty good job, by all accounts, of LookAtMeTV which is another of their community efforts.

Of course, you can already store your contacts online for free at Zyb and also that's an additional benefit if you download Shozu to your phone so you don't *need* to switch to O2 to get the service. Oh and did I mention, Shozu and Zyb are also free? There is also a new kid on the block for mobile storage and that's Mobyko which seems to me to do the same as Zyb. Mobyko claims an ability to store your texts, pictures and videos, but you have to send them on to a long number so there's a cost to send so it's not really a full syncing service. Still, it was as fast as Zyb so worth a try.

Still, at least this is progress (albeit, I've been backing up my phone book on Shozu and Zyb for some time now). But I love the idea of AUTOMATICALLY storing your messages - that's a definite plus factor for me. So come on T-Mobile. If O2 can do it, so can you. Instead you have an incredibly difficult log-in process, that's so tricky and archaic (if you don't log in correctly, they have to send you your password by post), I've NEVER actually managed to log in to it despite being a customer for 5 years or more! So it *could* be quite a leap for T-Mobile to do something like this. I live in hope!

Last chance for tickets for DMC Europa on Tuesday 13th February, Barcelona

STOP PRESS: DMC Europa on Tuesday 13th February in Barcelona has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.

Swedish Beers has not suffered the same fate I'm pleased to say.

The DMC (Digital Music Conference) Europa is a focused, one-day executive-level event tackling issues vital to the European and global mobile and digital music industries, including EU and international regulation and deal structuring, the mobile music marketplace, networked communities and the evolving Peer-to-Peer market.

Decision makers from across the music, mobile, digital and entertainment industries will gather at this event to make deals, engage in a candid discussion of the challenges and opportunities in the global mobile and digital music marketplace and to showcase new products and services essential tools for the creation and growth of successful mobile and digital entertainment businesses.

It's on Tuesday 13th February and is running concurrent with 3GSM and is at the Tryp Apolo Hotel in Barcelona and I'm sure it will be a fantastic day.

Speakers, who are sadly lacking in any women which I'm sure they'll work on for next year, include:

Keynote:

- Ingo Schneider, VP, Group Strategy, Mobile Data, T-Mobile International

- Ralf Lülsdorf, Senior manager Music, Sponsorships and Events, T- Mobile International

- David Ulmer, VP, Marketing, Digital Media Services, Motorola

Panelists:

- Michael Bornhaeusser, CEO, Secure Digital Container

- Luke Magnuson, International Music Project Manager, T-Mobile

- Nenad Marovac, Managing Partner, DN Capital

- Thomas Ryan, SVP Digital and Mobile Strategy and Development, EMI Recorded Music

- Dominick Tolli, VP, Mobile Data Services, Virgin Mobile USA

- Albin Seviant, Senior Director, Marketing, Musiwave

- Glenn Litwak, Founding Partner, Litwak and Havkin

- John C. Beiter, Of Counsel, Loeb and Loeb LLP

- Cornelius Claudio Kreusch, CEO MUSIC JUST MUSIC GmbH & LLC

- Anthony Stonefield, CEO, Emotive

- KamranV, President, Spaceland Recordings / CEO, CyKiK

- Pablo Soto, Founder/Creator MP2P Technologies

- Steven Masur, Managing Partner, MasurLaw

- Mark Bush, VP, Business Development , Urban Sports Network

- Adam Levin, CEO, Cinema Electric

- Ted Cohen, Managing Partner, TAG Strategic

- Peter Sung, Managing Partner, FM, Inc.

- Mark Frieser, Managing Partner, FM, Inc.

For more information on the event, a full list of speakers and the latest agenda, please go to:

http://www.dmceuropa.com/agenda.html

And what's more, as a special offer to Musings of a Mobile Marketer readers, you can get in for just 250 Euros. Yes, that's right 250 Euros instead of the standard 650 Euros. To get the special rate you need to register here as soon as you can.

And if you do go, don't forget to come to Swedish Beers afterwards and tell us all about it (and we're only a few minutes walk away - so no excuses now!).

Some tips and links for 9 February 2007

I'm so busy at the moment with work stuff (good), stuff I want to read and do, events I'm organising (both of which I'm really looking forward to), and stuff I want to blog about but there are only so many hours in the day. So I'm going to compromise and just give you some snippets today.

I think "marketing to women" is a really interesting topic generally, especially as women make something like 80% of all buying decisions for *anything*. So it's interesting to get more of an insight into this area from Holly Buchanan. She talks about women and mobile gaming, as well as more general articles about marketing to women and Marketing Momentum shows how a magazine us using mobile marketing to women.

On the subject of mobile marketing, Christine.net tells us about her top 10 mobile marketing campaigns from last year, has some tips for would-be mobile marketers, and shares some mobile advertising results from 3 Italia.

Which leads me to the next iteration of mobile... mobile 2.0. If you want to know about mobile 2.0, then you could do worse than have a look at bluflavor's post on the topic having visited the mobile 2.0 event last year or Paul Golding's thoughts on the subject (his blog is a must-read anyway if you're into this mobile stuff). And if you're interested in the future of the internet more generally, then take a look at Jemima Kiss's round-up of Robert Loch's last 'Internet People Dinner' back in January (somehow that already feels like a long time ago!).

Meanwhile, in the offline world, I went along to Chinwag's Wobble 2.0 event which was great. I particularly enjoyed listening and later chatting to Andrew Orlowski from The Register. It still amazes me at the lack of recognition in web 2.0 world that mobile even exists. It's still barely on the radar. This has been my experience at pretty much any digital event that isn't focussed on mobile. I just don't get it. Are web 2.0 folks so in love with their monitors and laptops that they never go out so just don't see the need for a mobile phone? Anyway, Ian Delaney has done a really good write-up of the event as has Alan Patrick and Seamus McCauley and Steve Clayton. I also hear that a podcast of the event will be published any day soon. Photos of the event are up on flickr. Extra points if you happen to spot me in any of them ;)

And finally, it appears that 3GSM registrations are all out of kilter. I tried to log on to the site today and couldn't get on and couldn't get a password sent out to me as everything I tried defaulted to a poor looking page saying registration was now closed. Then I find out that two of my colleagues still haven't had their visitor pass emails and then I get an email to tell me I've been magically unsubscribed from the 3GSM mailing list except I didn't ask to be unsubscribed. And then I hear that a company who isn't exhibiting has received 120 emails confirming registrations for 120 people they didn't invite. What *is* going on? Hmm - registering is going to be fun next week. I'm glad I'm not going to be there on Monday morning trying to register the best part of 57,000 people!!

Right back to the day job then!

And while we're on the subject of free apps for your phone

..you might also like to try Yell's mobile service which is a java download. It's a fast download, and the search is fast and when you're through to a directory entry, you get the option to click to call, to find on a map and even get walking or driving directions to get there. You can get it by going to the website and entering your number, texting MOBILE to 80248 or you can visit http://mobile.yell.com/uk from your mobile phone.

I stumbled upon this one as I was catching up with the discussion at MoMo London on Monday night at Auntie Beeb which I wasn't able to attend. Phicons has done a very nice write-up of the evening and ties into some of the conversations I've been around mobile search recently. Phicons has written up some thoughts about search and context on mobile which is worth a read.

Transport for London has a free tube map for your phone

Well, that's not news actually. The java tube map download has been around for some time as I used to have it on my lowly Sony Ericsson K700i a couple of years back, but for some reason, unbeknownst to me, when I upgraded to my Nokia N70, T-Mobile decided to *not* support the download and offer a wap-only service. Which is a bit useless if you're in a tunnel or on a tube train trying to work out your journey! Anyway, I'm very pleased to say that it's now working on the Nokia N70 as well. And it looks like it's available on all UK networks except Three and MVNOs and on most Java-enabled handsets.

All you have to do is text TUBEMAP to 60835 and you'll get a link straight away to download the application. There's no charge for doing this except your normal data charge. TfL has lots of other mobile services too which are worth a look.

Fancy a slice of cake?

I know I do. All the snow today just makes me want to snuggle down on my sofa with my fluffy cushions, drink hot chocolate with whipped cream on top and munch a great big piece of coffee cake with lots of buttercream in it. However, I don't have any of that in the house right now, so will have to make do with looking at the iphone cake instead!

via Tom, I think.

Interested in mobile stats?

Yes? Then check out this very useful site that I stumbled upon today - IT Facts: Mobile Usage (they do have other IT categories, but obviously, mobile is the bit I'm particularly focussed on). Today's headlines include:

100.22m mobile subscribers in Japan in January 2007

55% of wireless customers have contacted customer support (I have no idea how this compares with other service related businesses or whether there are big differences between countries/regions btw)

25% of mobile phones shipped in 2011 to cost less than USD20 (half to Asia Pacific and the rest to emerging markets in Africa, South America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, with India predicted to be the biggest market within 5 years)

134m mobile gamers by 2010

Mobile Content and Services to generate USD150 billion by 2011

Mobile video to attract 100 million subscribers by 2010

1 billion handsets shipped in 2006 of which 300 million were music phones

35% of Americans use text messaging (A bit behind the 70%+ of Brits but I'm sure they'll catch up soon enough. It took a year or two for us to get to that point.)

174 million to get into mobile social networking by 2011

and lots more besides. Worth adding to your favourite RSS reader.

Moblogging as mobile marketing is taking off

I've been playing around with moblogging as part of the mobile marketing mix for sometime now - not least with a campaign I ran for Sony Ericsson a year or two ago (BeepMarketing - my company - did the mobile bits and pieces with ijack managing the website). And I see it as an important way of connecting people and an effective marketing mechanic and this is reflected in the success of sites such as flickr and myspace and fab services such as shozu which confirm the rise in appeal and usage of so-called user-generated content.

Well my friends at Moblog UK, are really going for this moblogging thing and doing it really rather well. They not only have a live community of mobloggers (that's folks who take pictures and send them to the site via their phone - with shozu integration now - yay!) but they've also found imaginative ways of tapping into that community for advertisers without hurting the brand equity and following they have acquired to date. Typically, they've done campaigns for bands and artists such as Maximo Park, Goldfrapp and Girls Aloud. But they have also run successful competitions and promotions for Sony Ericsson and Ravel and have just launched an awareness campaign for Action Aid's Extreme Cuppa initiative.

As if that's not enough, there's a new moblog competition to celebrate the launch of the new Michel Gondry film, The Science of Sleep. You can win a signed movie poster and 2 tickets for a special Valentine's screening of the film, with tickets going to 10 runners-up. All you have to do is send in your video clip or still picture that captures one of your dreams. The best ones win.

Are you twittering?

I'm twittering, Lloyd's twittering, and Tom's been twittering gently and also thinking about it deeply too. What do you think?

Links for today 6 February 2007

Ericcson wants to own the whole mobile value chain from infrastructure to all content formats (from SMS to wap to apps to TV) it seems. It's just announced a collaboration with Turner to create a variety of mobile content offerings starting with CNN mobile.

Walled gardens don't work (like we needed to be told that...)

Get coverage of New York's fashion week live on your mobile but only if you're in the US and an AT&T customer.. better be quick though - the 'Mercedes Benz' Fashion Week has been running since 2nd Feb and will be closing in a couple of days time. If any US readers are out there, I'm interested to know what the experience was like - please do let me know.

Ringtone widget for independent artists to promote their content via mobile phones launched by Beta Records - US only again but looks like an interesting initiative.

Are mobile operators going to clean up their content act in conjunction with Safer Internet Day?

Carnival of the mobilists 61 - mobilist matsuri!

Jan Kuczynski has done a great job of this week's carnival with a Japanese flavour over at Wireless World Japan - go check it out.

Can't wait for the iphone to come out?

Well you can have the iphone ringtone to keep you amused in the meantime from our friends at C21 ringtones. And even better, it's free which the iphone certainly isn't! Enjoy.

The Japanese do mobile content for women so well

so it's not a huge surprise that women use the mobile internet more than men. Some recent examples of female specific stuff you might want to check out are:

Create Nail Art on the go - where you can design art for your nails, and I guess try and get a nail bar to replicate it for you, or maybe it's just for fun. I can't imagine Nails Inc going for this - mind you they've just started sending me emails again having been silent since summer 2002 - the reason I know this is because I signed up after meeting Thea, the founder, and that was in the summer of 2002. I kid you not! Still, at least you can get 20% off services in February with this voucher.

Lose weight with the GPS enabled Beauty Walker mobile application from Bandai. I'm guessing it's a mix of pedometer and calorie counter. And I expect this appeals to both sexes, but with a name like 'beauty walker' probably veers more towards the female contingent.

Or just get yourself a very blinged-up Swarowski crystal covered handset courtesy of DoCoMo.

More on Japanese mobile usage over at Jan's Wireless World Japan.

The next M:Metrics web-briefing is on Tuesday at 4pm GMT

And Paul Goode from M:Metrics is going to be talking about trends in mobile content consumption prior to us all heading off to Barcelona. It's free to register and is well worth a checking out. And while you're waiting for the briefing, you might want to also check out M:Metrics latest thoughts on teens and (mobile) social networking.

Did you know about the Mobile 2.0 directory?

I've just been catching up on some email and had missed the launch of the Mobile 2.0 wiki so I'm writing about it now.

Following the response and feedback on Rudy de Waele's "Understanding Mobile 2.0" article at Read/WriteWeb, he created a wiki space to start categorizing the so-called mobile 2.0 companies, the next generation mobile products and services coming to market the Mobile 2.0 Company Directory wiki

Companies can add their own information and keep it updated. You just need to sign-up to add your Mobile 2.0 company. And you can add images, slideshows, video's, and RSS feeds as well, not to forget about relevant tags. Visitors can browse the wiki by category, by keywords, subscribe to the wiki's feeds, comments and news.

This seems like a good idea to me so if you are a mobile 2.0 company, then best add your details now so the world can find out about you.

Call for entries for Content 360 pitching competition in Cannes

Content 360, a cross media festival, is a main part of this year's MIPTV at Cannes and they're hoping to showcase the most creative ideas in exploiting all variants of digital media through an international pitching competition with briefs from the BBC, Ogilvy, Korean Broadcasting Commision and the National Film Board of Canada. The event will also feature a series of cutting-edge conferences as well as a Content 360 pavilion and networking events. There's no info on speakers or the program yet, but the deadline for the pitching competition is looming - it's next week - 9th February so best get your thinking caps on if you're thinking of entering.

Global Peers Awards 2007 finalists announced

Rudy, over at MoMoBarcelona, is doing a great job of organising the 1st Global Peer Awards which is happening on Monday 11th February in Barcelona alongside 3GSM. Unfortunately, my flight gets in too late to join the event but I'm sure it will be just as good without me there!

The British finalist is Reporo, which is great news as I think they have a good chance of winning with a proven customer base of 100,00 or so already and a mobile business model in action. Check out the other finalists on the MoMoBarcelona blog and check out the different companies involved. And if you*are* going to be in Barcelona on the Monday, then it's worth checking out the Awards event and take some notes for me!

Life is a Cabaret..

Well it was for me on Tuesday night when Lloyd accompanied me to see Cabaret at The Lyric Theatre ably directed by our Swan Youth Theatre chum, Rufus Norris.

Cabaret happens to be my all-time favourite musical - both the stage and film versions although I think the stage version is more powerful than the film. And this production is no exception - probably the darkest version I've ever seen and I've seen a few (not least the Swan Theatre production in Worcester which I saw at least 20 times as directed by John Doyle!).

The staging is wonderful - minimalist certainly, but spot on for design, functionality and keeping with the spirit of the piece. You do get a feel for what Berlin nightlife would have been like at the time both onstage, in the audience and backstage. The choreography and costumes (and lack of at times) bear this out - risque, exciting, dark, encapsulating 1930s Berlin perfectly. And of course the performances themselves were brilliant - so much passion and energy put into the roles. The Emcee, played by Christopher Akrill, was everything the Emcee should be - menacing, controlling, fascinating, lithe, slippery, a barometer of the times. Anna Maxwell Martin made the role of Sally Bowles her own - minx and victim on a rollercoaster ride of drink, drugs, sex and cabaret. Sheila Hancock was brilliant as Fraulein Schneider and Geoffrey Hutchings was a wonderful partner to her as Herr Schultz. I loved every minute of the emotional journey it took me on from frivolity and fun to war and death.

Afterwards, Lloyd and I caught up with Rufus and he took us backstage and we got to stand on the stage and see how it was all put together. It took me right back to my youth theatre days - the smell of it all, the atmosphere - it was all there. I really miss that.

As a sideline, the production team also runs a monthly Kit Kat Klub night at Too2Much where you can join the cast members and other West End celebrity guests after the show. The house band will support a changing roster of top performers singing songs from teh shows and also new materials and classics from the likes of Marlene Dietrich, The Rat Pack and Ella Fitzgerald. With a cosy atmosphere, you're own MC and a DJ, it sounds like a lot of fun. The next ones are tonight, 2nd March and 6 April.

So Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome - im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret. Go see it!