Heroes of Mobile London Podcasts & Round-Up

Didn’t we have a lovely time, the day we went to Mozilla’s HQ last month to talk about mobile. We did three lovely sessions and they were all recorded so even if you weren’t there, you can have a listen. I’ve also included links to some articles about the sessions and the day as well in case podcasts aren’t your thing. This is cross posted from http://mobileheroes.net.

State of the Mobile Nation was chaired by Russell Buckley who is now running Ballpark Ventures and the session was sponsored by Hotwire PR. On the panel we had Eamonn Carey of Kiip, Benedict Evans from Enders Analysis, Azeem Azhar from PeerIndex and Roberta Lucca from BAFTA award-winning Bossa Studios. The group talked about the future of computing, additive printing, mobile innovation, consumer trends and a whole lot more.

 

Hotwire’s Andy West did a comprehensive write-up of the session here.

Next up was Mobile Advertising will Eat Itself. Again chaired by Russell Buckley, he was joined by Chris Bourke from Qriously, Stephen Upstone from LoopMeMedia, Greg Isbister from Blis Mobile, Denise Breslin from Mobsta and Nicky Spooner from O2 Media (now Weve). They talked innovation (or not), explained a bunch of acronyms, covered location based services and talked about how the landscape has changed over the years and what’s coming up and uncovering some of the opportunities in the sector.

 

And last but not least, we had (Mobile) Money Makes the World Go Around. Tim Green of Mobile Money Revolution chaired the session and he was joined by industry veterans Roy Vella (who will always be remembered by me for sharing the real meaning of the acronym NFC. For those of you not in the know, it’s ‘not for commerce’!), Martin Harris from Bango, Matt Dicks from BlueVia and John Maynard from mPesa. I’m not sure we drew that many conclusions but a lot of ground was covered and many issues raised. Well worth a listen.

BlueVia covered the mobile money session here.

We got covered on an interesting email discussion thread here. Thanks Bernard Tyers!

Guy Southam from The Lab at O2 covered the whole day here.

Many thanks to Hotwire PR for sponsoring and to Mozilla for hosting us. A big thank you to Russell Buckley and Tim Green for chairing and to all our panellists. Also, many thanks to Kirsty Styles and Mobile Marketing Magazine, Harold Verhagen, Emma Brincat and Inspiring Interns, Sofiana Dewi and James Norris for their support for the event.

Videos coming soon…

The Harrods fake till scam

It’s always busy at Christmas in the retail world, especially for department stores. When I worked in Selfridges in 1990, I think they took on an extra 2000 staff for the season. That was in just one store. They’ve now pared that down but even last year, they took on an additional 1500 staff across their four stores. And come the first day of sale, everyone is on duty along with a bunch of people you’ve never seen before. The concessions will rope in extra staff from quieter branches and may even get additional help from Head Office staff who are usually sitting behind a computer screen for the rest of the year. It is pretty chaotic. We also used tills like the one pictured – although somewhat cleaner.

There was a story that went around at the time about a similar scenario in Harrods. A couple of thousand extra staff in store, and crazy busy with the general public eagerly buying their bargains. On the ground floor, an extra cash-only till was set up to deal with the additional customers. And then at the end of the day, it left as quickly as it had arrived. Full of money. It was a fake till. Some criminals had wheeled it in and it had been used all day by uniformed staff and then it and they left again, with thousands of pounds, no doubt. Or so the story goes. I don’t know if this is true or simply an urban myth. If it’s a myth, it’s easy to see how it could happen.

But that was 1990. Fast forward 20-odd years and we’re talking about a different in-store experience. I was at the Neoworks roundtable last night discussing the latest customer service issues in-store and on-line. One of the biggest customer gripes is having to wait in a long queue to pay. And hurrah, we can now issue staff with tablets so that staff can take payment where the customer is, there and then. With services like iZettle, Square and their ilk, taking payments like this is a breeze. Credit card swiped, confirmation of the amount and off we go.

Except, how do you know that it’s a real member of staff with iPad in hand? How do you know whether or not your card number will be secure? How do you know it’s not a scam in the same vein as the Harrods fake till story?

So before you rush in to adopting some shiny new technology, please have a think about some worst case scenarios so that you can work out ways to counter them so you don’t end up falling victim to some dodgy scam.

And if you’re a consumer, just be careful out there. Security risks are out there in the offline world too.

Mobile coupons: People are the weakest link

I’ve just been reading an article over on Monty Munford’s blog by Rob Thurner about the ‘three things that need to happen before mobile couponing kicks off’. They’re both friends of mine but as a veteran of the mobile couponing business, I feel I should add a comment.

Some of you already know that I have many years experience at the coal face of retail. For those of you who don’t know, I spent the best part of 10 years working in fashion retail and working my way up from sales assistant to store manager in the early years of my working life. I’ve worked my way from the wilds of Worcester High Street to the bling of the West End and Knightsbridge. There’s not much I haven’t seen from store openings to store closings to being held at knifepoint for refusing someone a refund on something they’d clearly stolen. Yes, really. I was also lucky enough to work at the world’s first mobile couponing start-up, ZagMe, where we sent text messages to shoppers at Lakeside and Bluewater shopping malls. I think I know a bit about how this couponing and retail thing works.

Couponing in the UK is nothing like at the obsession levels that you’ll see in the US. They have shows over there about ‘Extreme Couponing’. I kid you not. We still like a bargain here, but we’re not quite as bothered about it. But it’s still big business and seems to be made for mobile. Well you’d think…

Like many things, usability isn’t quite there yet. But there are workarounds. Back in ZagMe days, we sent coupons via text message. We couldn’t event concatenate the message (that means combine two messages as one). Some phones could only store 10 text messages at the time. Can you believe it?! We’re talking 2000 and 2001. Yes, that long ago. Mobile couponing is not new. The ZagMe texts we sent had a code in them which was generated based on your age, gender, retailer and time of sending. That meant you might see a different code to your friend who received the same message so it looked like they were uniquely generated codes. Now of course, it is entirely possible to put a unique code into a SMS. If you want to. But it really depends on why you’re sending the coupon in the first place and how it’s financed. Since most coupons and discounts are funded out of margin, it doesn’t usually matter whether or not the coupon is shared or replicated. Indeed, that can just reduce the costs for the retailer that they’re getting free distribution. So chances are, you don’t need a unique code necessarily, you just need a way to manage the coupon or discount.

The way to do that is to set up a discount barcode for the specific promotion and have it reside by the side of all of your tills. You’ll need to train your staff properly so they know what to scan and when. And in the text message, email or whatever other coupon format you want to use, you make sure you put in any limitations on the offer – this usually means the date. Don’t have an open-ended offer. And if there are terms and conditions, make sure those are available for both the customer (perhaps via a link to click in the message) and the store staff (at POS and included in the training for example), so there’s no question about when the offer runs out. As it happens, I still have an Ann Summers coupon lurking on my hard drive offering me £5 off any purchase. There is no expiry date. It’s just a gif file. Maybe I should try redeeming it….

In his article, Rob goes on to explain about keyed entry, scanning and NFC as redemption methods. These are all coming. Some retailers who are further ahead have already embraced them. And as each retailer reviews their EPOS systems, they’re going to be thinking about mobile, tablets and offer redemption as part of the new system so we’ll see more. But these systems don’t get replaced every year like mobile phones or school shoes. They’re in place for many years and replacing them isn’t easy and it’s expensive as they impact on the whole supply chain.

But there’s no need to miss out on mobile commerce via couponing for non-food retailers*. You don’t have to wait until you implement your fancy new EPOS systems. Think about workarounds. Think about how secure your couponing needs to be (in which case, you can turn to Eagle Eye for a solution). SMS can still work here and it doesn’t have to be complicated. Or particularly techie for that matter. You just need to think about the customer experience and how you’d like that to be and then work out how to achieve it. And I suspect that eight, if not nine, times out of ten, you won’t need to have something particularly complex.

However, you choose to implement your discount offer – be that on mobile, email or pigeon post – please remember to communicate to your staff. It is no good having the fanciest mobile couponing system in place if your staff have no clue what to do when a customer turns up wanting their £5 off. Your people will be the weakest link if they haven’t been brought up to speed.

*caveat – grocery retail is a lot more complicated than other sectors of retail and the couponing rules are different.

Is mobile couponing finally hitting the mainstream?

It seems like a lifetime ago since I had my first exposure to mobile couponing back in 2000 at ZagMe. Yes, it’s some twelve years ago since I helped invent location based sms couponing with fellow mobilist, Russell Buckley. I’ve seen many coupon projects come and go and I’ve seen many location based services come and go, but finally, we appear to be at the point where this thing is hitting the mainstream. And yet again, we have Apple to thank for it.

May of you will know that I do not worship at the altar of Apple but there’s no denying that they have changed our mobile world forever. And may well be changing the world of mobile couponing forever too with the introduction of Passbook. This is an app that helps you keep track of your mobile coupons, tickets and gift cards. With the added bonus of being location-aware (optional), it can nudge you when you’re near an outlet where you can use said coupons if that company’s app has that feature included. I don’t have a working iPhone so I haven’t tested this myself, but from the description here, it still sounds a bit clunky. But I have no doubt that the clunks will be evened out pretty quickly as there’s more take-up and developers work out how to get the best from the service.

This is first to market in the US, but the UK is catching up. We’re not as coupon obsessed in the UK as the US (where they have a TV show dedicated to the topic), but we do still like a bargain – Groupon and its ilk have been a success here and SalesGossip is also gaining traction. Meanwhile, Harvester has teamed up with Eagle Eye and Millennial Media to be the first UK company to use Passbook for their couponing.

Helen Worrall, Marketing Manager, Harvester said: “We are excited to be amongst the first in line to use this new way to distribute mobile vouchers to Apple Passbook users, offering our customers a better and more convenient experience. Not only does it provide us with a new way of engaging the iOS 6 iPhone users, but the benefit having one central point to digitally distribute and redeem vouchers in real-time means we have more control and visibility over our marketing campaign performance.”

I’m interested to see how this one plays out (you can try out the campaign for yourself if you go to http://tinyurl.com/harvesterPB from your iPhone) and I will be watching to see how the campaign fares as well as keeping an eye out as to how other retailers take on the challenge of digital couponing beyond the iPhone.

Dare I say it? Is this the year of mobile couponing?

Tuesday linkage

It is Tuesday right? And it is March already (how did that happen)? So it must be time for some links.

This is an interesting post from the Admob blog about iphone advertisers best practice. I would say that quite a few of those tips and hints are relevant for anyone doing stuff in mobile advertising. It’s not exactly rocket science (but then mobile advertising isn’t) but it’s good to be reminded of the simple stuff every now and then. And this is a great checklist.

Bango is also running an interesting experiment in running a mobile website, Mobislim. They have a real mobile website set up and are sharing all the analytics, results, learnings and more with their audience in a blog format. If you are a mobile webmaster looking to commercialise your offering, this is well worth keeping an eye on.

If stats are your thing then have a look at MSearchGroove’s post covering stats around mobile web traffic, mobile search and advertising. Peggy Anne Salz has some interesting insight and links to share.

There was a little flurry of excitement about Process Away recently and their iphone App. Agreed, it looks really good and looks like a great solution to be able to take payments at your live event without a huge investment in hardware, software, wifi and the rest. That I don’t doubt. But who are they and why would I trust them with my money? And even looking at the FAQs, that doesn’t reassure me much. Seeing as folks making business decisions about technology are very often  not technologists, the technology jargon about security is meaningless. Some explanation of who you are, some reassurance that customer’s money is safe, some reassurance of how the service is underwritten and this could be a real goer. Or am I being a curmudgeon here?

I’ve been asked to be a judge for 2009’s Mobile Messaging Awards which is very exciting. Get those entries in! I’m also judging this year’s Webby Awards… still very North American in its focus which is a shame as I firmly believe there is mobile talent beyond those shores. I guess there’s always next year to enter…

Technorati Tags: links,mobile,statistics,m-commerce,m-payments,m-retail,m-transactions,awards,160characters,mobile web,mobile internet,admob,mobile advertising,iphone

Tesco supports m-retail... or does it?

For those of you who don't know already, I spent the best part of 10 years of my working life in retail - mostly fashion, and mostly in and around London's Oxford Street and Knightsbridge. Later on in my career, I worked for ZagMe, the location based marketing company who marketed to customers via SMS at Lakeside and Bluewater shopping malls, and much of that time was spent working with retailers creating and running campaigns for them. So I have more than a passing interest in things retail.

So I've been keeping an eye on the m-retail or m-commerce world and was very interested to see that UK grocery retailer, Tesco has joined the world of m-retail after successful trials of ordering flowers via mobile for Valentine's Day and Mother's Day.

As an aside, Tesco also claims that it's wap portal is a great success attracting over 300,000 customers in December last year. And not only that, but that's it's customers are hungry for ads.

"Banner advertising served up on the portal delivered a click-through rate to tailored WAP campaign sites of between three and seven per cent, said Tesco. Brands advertising on the portal included Bee Movie, ITV, Nivea and Teletext.

Tesco said the user-base of the portal has a strong segment of female household budget owners with an average age of 36 - a demographic it said is particularly valuable for fast-moving consumer goods such as toiletries and cleaning products.
According to a survey commissioned by Tesco, more than half (60 per cent) of portal users are female and the same percentage said they visit the portal at least once a month, while 69 per cent claimed they would click on a relevant advert."

So this all bodes well for entering the world of m-commerce. So I thought I'd check it out.

Alas for me, going to http://www.tesco.com/ from my mobile takes me to the main Tesco website with no adaption for the mobile screen whatsoever - large file sizes (well comparatively large when dealing with mobile), navigation required up/down and left/right so you can't actually see anything properly.

It occurred to me that they'd probably done a mobile specific site so I also tried http://www.tesco.mobi/ and http://m.tesco.com/ and neither of those worked.

So it looks like I can't do a review of the service for you.

I then thought, well maybe it's for Tesco Mobile customers only (Tesco Mobile being the pay as you go MVNO with O2), especially since their wap portal has been such a success.

And then I saw how much data charges were on Tesco Mobile... £4 per megabyte. Yes, that's right, a whopping £4 a megabyte. And there's no mention of whether or not access to the Tesco Mobile Portal is free of charge or not. In fact, there's no mention at all of any Tesco Mobile Portal or any Tesco mobile shopping service.

There's a free Tesco sim offer on at the moment, I may give it a go although I really don't fancy spending £4 a megabyte to check out their mobile portal and m-commerce offerings.

On the commercial side of the equation, I know that 02 is heavily pushing mobile retail services and is touting Tesco as it's major success story and case study (there's even a video I've seen about it). But if you're going to make your shop invisible and then charge for entry, isn't that just a bit daft?

Hmm. What's going on?

If anyone can shed any light on what's going on with Tesco m-retail and Tesco's wap portal and relevant data charges, please let me know either via the blog or via email.

And on a parting note, I think this quote (via Silicon.com) from Ashley Schofield, head of customer management at Tesco Mobile, is somewhat ironic:

"Our customers are showing a real appetite for more products and services
through the mobile internet. Delivering more great experiences and value through
our portal is a priority for this year."

Ashley, I'm not sure how you can deliver more great experiences and more value through the portal when you're charging £4 a megabyte.

Thursday thoughts

Well for thoughts, read links!

Over at SMStxtnews, Ewan tells us about Voxpops which has just launchedwith their library of research video voxpops and a very neat idea it is too. Worth a look.

The mobile internet made easy from Mime. Find and share links and create your own mobile site with those links in to make it easy to navigate and retrieve the stuff you like on your phone. I've just tried it from my PC at www.usemime.com and there are a selection of popular sites to choose from and the option to add your own and then you can sort out the order (although I'd have liked to categorise and not just put them in order) and then get a link sent to your phone via SMS or wap push (although I don't know anyone outside the industry who would know the difference). Works really fast and it's useful, but of course there' a rather large Mime logo at the top followed by a large banner ad which detracts from where your links are but apart from that, it works for me. But will I remember to use it? Time will tell.

Under the Radar is looking for mobile startups to join the party in the US. The application deadline is looming even though the event isn't until November across the pond in the US. Via SMStext news.

Do you charge UK customers for stuff from their mobile phones? If so, are you payforit compliant? Well, it's worth checking with those nice folks at Bango who have produced a guide to help you through the process. And what's more, the guide is free!

Monday musings

• Bill Thompson discusses security risks in the new i-phone and the wider implications of a networked customer base and how the corporates need to adapt to our needs and not the other way round. I think he has a point but it's a challenge.

• The BBC suspended all phone competitions last week and is under scrutiny from Ofcom for malpractice over the phone lines and fake competition winners to a variety of programmes including Children in Need, Comic Relief and Blue Peter. The media has also responded.

• Any phone can be a credit card as the clever folks at Masabi has come up with a new way to manage secure transactions using your mobile phone using just 3kb of handset memory.

• Desperate for the loo? Don't know where your nearest one is? Then help is at hand with Mizpee. Trouble is it only works in the US and I find it hard to believe they have every single loo in the US on their database. But hey, maybe they have. Anyone tried it?

• User generated content, social media and how to make money from it. Well these were the topics tackled by the w2forum last week. Unfortunately, no-one had any definitive answers as it's still too early to know how best to monetise this area.

"Roy Vella, Head of Mobile Payments at PayPal, summed up the feeling in the room when he pointed out that none of the best-known social networking sites on the web, such as MySpace and FaceBook, were initially about monetisation, and that “the monetisation stuff” is only happening because there are so many eyeballs.
“You want to know how do big companies make money out of all those eyeballs” said Vella. “The answer is, I don’t think we know yet.”

Vella also warned brands that they would need to exercise caution if they were going to try to establish a presence on social networking sites, mobile or otherwise. “If you threw a party and a corporation showed up, how would you feel about it?” he asked. “It’s a new space, and we all have to tread carefully. The way to succeed is the way it has always been – to delight customers.”

• Half a million web 'n walk users on t-mobile in the UK and expected to rise to 1m by the end of the year.

• Nokia has launched a mobile gig guide for Leeds and Reading festival.

more Monday meanderings

but this time from Mike Grenville at 160 Characters... a few articles worth a read:

A new place to share ideas has been created, aimed specifically at NGOs, charity and NFP organisations to pool their ideas and resources about how to implement and use mobile technology effectively for social change. Shareideas.org is a wiki style community and blog with some very interesting stuff on there. It's refreshing to read about activity outside of the UK and USA, especially with a social or environmental bent.

How many sims do you have? And what's the impact on the *real* statistics about mobile usage? Informa's latest report might just have the answer. [I have 3 active sims - 2 contract, 1 pay as you go, and many pay as you go sims waiting to be activated when I need to test something].

Wap payments are more reliable than SMS payments according to those in the know at Bango.

A short history of telecommunications. Did you know it is 170 years since the first signal was sent by telegraph starting a period of rapid expansion of a communications network in the nineteenth century?

What's new at Vodafone?

Well, a few things it seems as I've been browsing their website this morning. First off, they've launched a very interesting report on m-transactions, mobiles and developing countries. I've written up a short piece about it over at the Mobile Messaging 2.0 blog.

Then I found this press release about good value roaming data charges with their Connect Abroad tarriff. Yes, Ewan, you did see that correctly! It looks like a pretty good deal to me and takes the worry out of how to connect when you're abroad. Yes, it means you have to have an active Vodafone sim card, but if you do much travelling, this has got to be a good thing to get.

"Laptop users will have a reliable and competitively-priced alternative to WiFi starting this summer, when from 2 July Vodafone drops its laptop data roaming prices to EUR12 per day (excl. VAT) for wireless roaming across Vodafone subsidiaries in Europe, Egypt, Australia and New Zealand, and with partners in France, Switzerland, Austria and Belgium"

If I was doing more travelling, I'd definitely be up for this.