What does the skills gap look like in the mobile sector? Have your say!

As a long-serving veteran of the mobile marketing, advertising and media community, I have seen how the sector has evolved over time from its lowly beginnings with SMS. I spend time mentoring and meeting under-graduate and post-graduate students of business and marketing and I'm always surprised at their lack of awareness of the opportunities in the mobile sector. I'm also painfully aware of the lack of teaching on the topic at undergraduate and post-graduate level. And I'm wondering if that is having an impact on the innovation (or lack of) in the sector and in turn, if that means we're missing a trick somewhere. And that's why I've set up this survey.

A couple of years ago, the Mobile Marketing Association published a report on the opportunity in the mobile sector in the US, and as part of that, highlighted the skills gap. I can remember thinking it looked pretty stark at the time - a huge opportunity on the one hand but not enough people with the right skills and attitude to deliver on the other.

I know this is partly addressed by companies with their own in-house training, but I'm wondering what else can be done to both make the sector more attractive to both new graduates and more experienced people looking for a career change and also make sure that the people coming into our industry have the skills and tools they need.

To that end, I have a first meeting with a senior academic from one of the fastest growing universities in the UK on Monday 10th October 2016 to discuss the skills and teaching gap in mobile marketing, mobile advertising and mobile media and to see how we can address that. And I'd like to hear your opinion on what they are.

Whether you're a seasoned professional with a decade of experience under your belt, or you're new to the sector, I'm interested in your point of view. If you are hiring, what skills are you looking for? If you're new to the sector, what would have been helpful for you to learn before you started the job?

Although this questionnaire is geared towards the UK market, I'm also interested in hearing opinions from our friends in other countries since it's a global industry.

This questionnaire will remain open past the meeting date so don't worry about filling it in after 10th October! The conversation will be ongoing, as we work towards understanding and addressing the skills gap. If the form below doesn't work properly, please use this link instead.

Revisiting proximity marketing

I cut my teeth in mobile marketing in location-based services, or proximity marketing as it's now known, way back in 2000. I was Head of Customer Experience for a new outfit called ZagMe (now long gone) where we sent SMS text messages to customers at Lakeside and Bluewater shopping malls while they were out shopping. We were not only pioneers of mobile advertising, we were also pioneers of location based mobile advertising, and we were way ahead of our time.

Fast forward 16 years and proximity marketing is making the headlines again. Retailers are experimenting with geo-fencing, location based targeted advertising online and beacon-enabled apps. It has been a couple of years since I last took a good look at the sector. You can see the video here of the interview I did with David Murphy from Mobile Marketing Magazine talking about the history of location based services.

If you have an interest in this technology and its practical application, you my be interested at this upcoming Mediatel event, sponsored by Proxama, that I'm participating in on the morning of Monday 12th September in London. I'm looking forward to hearing about up to date case studies and I'm hoping brands and agencies have learned the lessons from the past. We'll see... 

You can find out more about the event and how to attend here.

And if you'd like a history lesson in how mobile proximity marketing began, here are a couple of videos from BBC News and Channel 5 explaining how ZagMe worked. 

#TBT From the Archives - On this day in 2006

On this day in 2006, I wrote about Coca Cola embracing mobile marketing in Japan. That's 10 years ago! The gist of the service was that they could pay for Coca Cola in vending machines using an app that was NFC enabled or by using a personal QR code. They would then earn loyalty points for each purchase. To think we're only just seeing mobile payments here in the UK...

You can read the original post here.


Off hours mobile usage is covered in this short post from 10 years ago prompted by the Puzzler Media project Tom Hume was working on at the time. That is, usage of mobile devices at home in the wee hours of the morning rather than the received wisdom at the time of mobile being used mainly 'on the go'.

And the final one I'll share from the archives today is this one about Carling and a campaign they were running 10 years ago. There's a text in call to action and you get a wap link back (we are talking the days of Nokia N95 handsets and their ilk). Then there's a bar finder and a mobile game you can download and play. As a campaign mechanic, it's probably not that different from a lot of the campaigns we see today. The main difference is the call to action. Then it was SMS to WAP and now it's more likely to be a banner ad or social media triggering the download.

And the winners are....

The magazine supplement for this year's #emmas (Effective Mobile Marketing Awards) award winners dropped into my inbox today from David Murphy at Mobile Marketing Magazine. The awards were last month so some of you will already be familiar with the winners but in case you missed it, it's worth a look.

What struck me most about the range of winners and campaigns is that mobile marketing has grown up - mainstream brands doing large-scale, innovative campaigns. I guess it's about time, 15 years on, that this is happening.

So if you're after some inspiration about what's possible with mobile marketing, then take a look at this year's winners and check out their work.

A short history of proximity marketing

A couple of months back, I took part in Mobile Marketing Magazine’s Making Sense of Proximity Marketing event. Some of you reading this will know that I first got into mobile marketing by way of joining a start-up called ZagMe back in 2000, with Russell Buckley, where we sent promotional text messages to shoppers at Lakeside and Bluewater shopping malls (two of the largest malls in Europe at the time). In this video interview, I explain how ZagMe worked and what I learnt in the process and how it applies to our current world of proximity marketing.

If you’re interested to know more about ZagMe, what worked, what didn’t and best practice recommendations, download Russell’s free white paper here. It was written 10 years ago, but it’s still relevant.

There are also more videos from the event from some of the other speakers which include some useful case studies if you’re looking at implementing beacons, indoor GPS, local couponing or other location based initiatives, these videos may prove useful.

End of term reports from Adobe and BDO

It’s December 2013 already. Christmas is in the air and the TV is awash with Christmas TV adverts. So it’s only to be expected that there are some end of term reports from some of the big guns. And I’m afraid I’m reading them with mixed feelings which I’ll share with you.

Let’s start with BDO’s Retail Compass 2013. The survey “examined the opinions of 100 chief marketing officers at leading retailers located throughout the USA. The retailers in the study were among the largest in the country, including 11 retailers in the top 100 based on annual sales revenue. The telephone survey was conducted in September and October of 2013”.

The survey covers all aspects of retail but there is a section about mobile marketing.

In the press release, the focus for retailers is on traditional channels rather than mobile:

• 38 per cent of retailers are including mobile in their marketing strategy this year—down from 50 per cent in 2012—those who are embracing it are ramping up their efforts.
• Last year, mobile comprised an average of 5.9 per cent of retailers’ overall marketing budget; this year, that number has jumped to 15 per cent.
• With eMarketer predicting a 15 per cent rise in mobile shopping volume this year, the mixed survey results suggest that retailers remain divided as to the platform’s growth potential and its ability to convert sales.
• One strategy on which retailers are not divided, however, is print advertising: a plurality of CMOs (41 per cent) are investing most of their holiday budgets in traditional print ads, which have been a consistently popular medium over the last 4 years.
• And CMOs still believe in the power of TV to reach a wide audience: 29 per cent say they will spend the majority of their holiday advertising budget on broadcast.
• Retailers are looking towards social media, but don’t know the right mix (and probably don’t realise how much of it is on mobile and how that impacts on conversions if their offering isn’t mobile-friendly).

So good news for broadcast and print in the US, and for those who are working on mobile campaigns for retailers, it’s good news as the budgets are bigger – just fewer of them by some measure compared with 2012. I have to question what the decision making process is behind this when the growth in mobile and mobile commerce is rising at a very fast pace. Of course, I don’t know how the question was asked and it may be that the retailers are ahead of the curve and have a great mobile site and/or a range of mobile apps and that the assumption is that mobile marketing in this context means mobile advertising which maybe they feel they don’t need as their mobile offering is so strong. I live in hope of that anyway! I fear that retailers may have their heads in the sand and have not yet woken up to what’s happening under their noses and are missing out on opportunities today.

Download the full report here http://www.bdo.com/download/2972

Now let’s look at the UK. Adobe and The Guardian have just published a survey looking at the mobile marketing attitudes of 1427 executives in the UK. The free report makes for quite depressing reading about the UK state of play.

• More than 50% said their organisation had a fragmented approach or no strategy at all when it comes to mobile
• Most respondents are unconfident about their organisation’s ability to measure the success of their mobile channels (which I’m guessing is a hindrance to offering them at all)

YET

• Most respondents felt their businesses would benefit from mobile marketing

AND

• Respondents expect to see a significant shift in the number of customer interactions supported or driven by mobile

So why aren’t they taking the plunge?

Well, rather worryingly, a lot of respondents felt that mobile wasn’t going to overtake the desktop at all or within the next two years. Many don’t have the funds to support mobile initiatives or don’t believe their business would benefit at all.

That last point worried me so I took at look back at the kinds of organisations the respondents came from. As this was run by The Guardian, there were a disproportionate amount of responses from the public sector, the arts, charities/not for profit and education. I’m not entirely surprised that those organisations aren’t as clued up and/or don’t have the funds or willingness to go mobile, at least not yet. I would hope that the results would be more positive if there were more brands, agencies and retailers who had responded.

You can read more here.

I guess the good news for us working in mobile marketing is that there’s still plenty work for us to do. Need to get your senior teams up to speed with what’s going on in mobile marketing and media? Get in touch. I’ve done workshops with a variety of media owners and agencies in the UK and the Nordic region. Maybe I can do one for you?

txt a Monster 2 win! Another one from the archives

I still rate this campaign for its creative use of voice and SMS, especially as it is from 2002. At the time, it was only 12Snap who were running campaigns that combined IVR (Interactive Voice Response) with SMS (text messaging) from what I can remember.

It seems pertinent to share this one with you now as the new Monsters University film is out this summer – 11 years on from the original.

The mechanic of this campaign was pretty simply. You bought a packet of fries from McDonald’s. You opened the door to reveal a special phone number and code. Text the code message to the phone number given. You get a text message to say if you’ve won or lost. If you won, one of the Monsters called you back and screamed at you (which is in keeping with the original film).

This was the biggest mobile marketing campaign ever at that time and was printed on 13 million fry boxes. There was a tiered prize structure with all players being advised whether they had won or lost by text message. Premium winners also receive a “monster MobileCard” (this was using IVR – interactive voice response – and was the monster screaming at you). Intermediate prize winners get a mobile ringtone or logo (those were the days when you could offer these as a genuine prize to customers!). Non-prize-winners got a text message from a monster asking them to play again.

It was run via T-Mobile’s servers and they struggled under the volumes of messages coming through due to the popularity and large-scale of the sales promotion. At the time, McDonald’s was one of the brands pioneering mobile marketing.

The companion website can be seen here on web.archive.org

Kenco Rappor–mobile marketing from the archives

Below you will find the front and back scan of a sales promotion leaflet that came with Kenco Rappor packs that were new to the market back in 2002. It tied in with the theme of the recent TV campaign that was used to launch the product the previous year. The innovative element of the product was about the new pack format on offer – the fact that the instant coffee granules were in stick format to offer a single serving and designed specifically to appeal to younger customers. More on that rationale about the campaign here. An example of one of the TV ads used can be seen here if you’re interested.

Anyway, it’s fair to say that mid-2002 is still very much early days for mobile marketing. Errors in execution were certainly made – even with the limitations of the time. For example, we already had shortcodes and the mechanic was a bit complicated and fairly meaningless if you hadn’t seen or remembered the TV advert. And the leaflet was folded really really small to fit in the tiny sample size packs they were giving out.

Feel free to discuss what you would do the same or differently.

You can see larger versions of these graphics on flickr in my mobile marketing set.

The Drum: Mobile Top 50 nomination. Vote now!

I had a lovely surprise a few days ago when I got an email to say I had been nominated for this year’s The Drum Mobile Top 50 list. They say

A shortlist of 100 individuals has been compiled by The Drum's editorial team but we need your help to decide who will make it into the top 50. The final list will highlight the key players in the UK mobile industry, ranking individuals in order of their contribution to the world of mobile.

I took a look at the list and I’m certainly in good company. There are so many friends, colleagues and current and former Swedish Beers and Heroes of Mobile sponsors and participants on the list that it almost looks like they raided my address book to choose.

Anyway, voting closes this Friday 21 June 2013. You can vote for your three favourite from the list of 100. It’s free to vote, you just have to register and then you can pick three names. I don’t know how you’ll manage to pick just three names though as there are so many good and worthy recipients on the list. Anyway, YOU decide!

Read more and vote at http://www.thedrum.com/news/2013/06/13/drum-launches-online-voting-decide-most-influential-individuals-mobile-marketing#vjWI8Qml4y4EYsss.99

Think luxury brands can’t do mobile?

Well, think again. Luxury brands have historically been a bit sniffy about getting into mobile feeling that it wasn’t their thing and that mobile media, specifically, mobile advertising, wasn’t appropriate for high-end brands – the banner ad is too small, SMS has no visuals, how do you convey the brand without the large-scale visuals you see in glossy magazines.

Well, British luxury firm, Vertu, who hand make their high-end handsets in the UK, would beg to differ. They worked with Amobee for to drive traffic into their new stores and promote their new smartphone campaign and it was both highly successful and won a rather fabulous Communicator Award. It was a smart campaign using location targeting, rich media, SMS (targeting customers who had roamed – as in travelled abroad and used their mobile – 3 times or more, customer insight and sponsorship to reach its goals. View more about the campaign in this video.

Not only that, but British Vogue is getting in on the act. (There’s a theme here… maybe Brits are leading the way in luxury on mobile?) This lovely video, ‘Typecast and Vogue’, is from the recent Brand Perfect event in New York where Paul McKeever talks very eloquently about British Vogue’s acclaimed digital revamp and how cross-platform typography helped it break new ground. Highly recommend watching even if you’re not a luxury brand.

Working in the luxury sector? Not gone mobile yet? Then these links may be worth a read too.

http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/top-10-luxury-brand-mobile-campaigns-of-q1-luxury-daily

http://www.luxurydaily.com/what-are-luxury-marketers-missing-on-mobile-web/

Hanging on the Telephone–round-up

This podcast is from the recent Hanging on the Telephone panel session in London I ran a coup[le of weeks ago. If you were there, then remind yourselves of what was discussed and if you weren’t there, this is your chance to catch up. And since most of my readers are interested in mobile marketing, I thought it was worth cross-posting from the Heroes of Mobile site.

Mobile Marketing Magazine did a bit of coverage of the event. Evens in Berlin next week and then London at the end of May and early June. Subscribe to the Heroes of Mobile newsletter to keep up to date.

You can download or stream the podcast at your leisure. Feel free to share with friends and colleagues.

 

Session Moderator: Helen Keegan, Heroes of Mobile
Panellists: Rube Huljev, Infobip; Stephen Jenkins, Millennial Media; James Cooper, Soko Media; Amanda Singleton, Qustodian;

mobileheroes.net/2013/04/18/new-e…n-the-telephone/

A Heroes of Mobile Production.
Audio production by Mark Bridge from TheFonecast.com

This session was sponsored by Infobip infobip.com and Qustodian qustodian.com

Harvester Restaurants’ couponing success

I missed this case study first time around, but since I seem to be thinking a lot about mobile and retail at the moment, I thought it worth sharing.

Harvester is a chain of family-friendly restaurants with 200 outlets across the UK. They’re open seven days a week and offer grills, sauces and sides, as well as a brunch menu and vegetarian options at very competitive prices. I haven’t been to Harvester restaurant in almost 30 years, so I can’t comment on the quality of the food but I have friends who enjoy it.

To attract new customers and to build repeat business, they rely on regular offers and you’ll see their website shows the latest offers and the latest menus. When the Apple Passbook arrived on the scene, mobile advertising firm, Millennial Media, teamed up with mobile couponing firm, Eagle Eye, to create a campaign to drive customers to store.

According to Gavin Stirrat, MD EMEA for Millennial Media, they served display adverts to iPhone 5 users and those who had upgraded to iOS 6, with a skew towards families. When you clicked the banner, you reached a landing page communicating the offer - £5 off when you spend £30 or more -  and the call-to-action to add this to your Passbook. Eagle Eye then pushed the individually coded coupon to their smartphone. No additional customer details were required making the process as seamless as possible.

Once the voucher was loaded into Passbook, you could redeem the voucher in the restaurant via the restaurant’s existing Chip & Pin terminal. In this way, it was possible to measure redemption rates and ROI. The campaign ran for two weeks and in that time, 16,000 vouchers were issued and around 700 were redeemed offering a 4.4% redemption rate. As the offer was for a minimum spend of £30, it drove at least £21,000 in revenue. And remember, this was just marketed to a subset of iOS customers who had iPhone 5 or iOS 6 so they had the improved Passbook functionality.

It seems that even iPhone 5 customers like a bargain…

More on Millennial Media’s site here and here. Press release on Eagle Eye’s site here.

Further reading on how digital can drive customer engagement, footfall and loyalty in the High Street from Eagle Eye’s Andy Smith in British Retail Consortium’s Winter 2012 publication. (It’s one of those magazine reader thingies so it won’t work on a tiny mobile screen).

Hints & Tips for Winning Awards

I’m very lucky to judge many different awards ranging from mobile industry specific ones like the Meffys and the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards to ones that are not immersed in mobile like the Sony Radio Academy Awards and the Wirehive 100 to innovation awards like Vodafone Mobile Clicks and Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessibility Awards. As such, over the years, I’ve seen many awards entries and see what a winning entry looks like.

Since it’s the run up to the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards, David Murphy, Editor, Mobile Marketing Magazine, asked a selection of judges to join a Tweet Chat to discuss this year’s entries – what was good, what was lacking and what we’d like to see more of. It was a really interesting discussion with Rob Thurner, Russell Buckley, myself and James Cameron. You can see the collection of tweets over on Mobile Marketing Magazine http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/awards-preview-judges-twitter-panel

Some common mistakes creep in to these things. Often the task of filling in the form is delegated to someone junior or someone who has not been hands on with the campaign. I still see a lack of evidence. Saying something along the lines of ‘the client was really happy with the results’ just doesn’t cut it. You could have the coolest sounding concept, but if you can’t tell the judges what the results were, then we can’t judge you and your entry will be discarded. I also see entries that have not answered the questions and also have clearly been cut and pasted from a case study or press release which means it can be harder to discover the nuggets of information that you need to judge one entry over another. And I see entries for categories where I really can’t see the connection at all. So my advice is, keep it to the point, answer the questions and justify why you deserve to win the award with actual demonstration of innovation, originality, effectiveness etc. And include the numbers. The information is kept private and is not published. Be proud of your work and take the time to communicate why it’s so good with the judges. Make our jobs harder each time!

If you’re interested to see who made the shortlist (and there are some fab companies and campaigns on that list), you can find more information here http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/awards/ and you can also book your tickets to the Award Ceremony on 29th November. I think there are a handful of tickets left. If the last two years are anything to go by, it should be a good night.

I recently talked about this stuff for the MEFFYs too on video which you also may find useful.

So for the next time you enter an award, best of luck and don’t let yours be the entry that gets discarded for not completing the entry form properly.

New York Times–a look at their business model

Many of you know that I work with media owners as a consultant to help them navigate their way around the new mobile and social environment. As such, I like to keep up to date with key insights and information which is why I enjoy reading the Monday Note. Today’s Monday Note article about the New York Times was particularly pertinent and reiterated to me a few key points.

• Advertising revenues are dropping. It’s a case of ever-diminishing returns – whether that’s print or digital. For the NY Times, ad revenues are down –9% across the board, print is down –11% and digital ad revenue is down by –2.2% (for the second quarter in a row).
• Costs are not decreasing. Increased people costs coupled with increased cost of printing
• Circulation is up - hurrah – by 7% on last year. This is mainly due to the rise in digital subscribers – double hurrah! This sounds like good news, doesn’t it? Well, unfortunately not. Circulation figures do not offset the the loss in advertising revenues. Jim Follo, CFO, says on their business model ‘When advertising revenue goes down, 90% of the decrease translates into a margin loss, but circulation revenue gains generate additional costs’. Oh dear.

I don’t know if at some point those figures change and the circulation model does eventually offset the advertising losses. The article suggests that the paywall strategy is a work in progress and that growth abroad, particularly in China, may yield results.

I wonder if we’re not being brave enough in our thinking. I wonder if it’s time to reinvent advertising altogether. Mobile advertising is huge and growing. Yes, we know that, but since there is limited screen real estate. That means there’s a limit to how many ads can be served and the old metrics just don’t wash and actually, the formats and metrics feel a bit tired. And I have seen nothing around measuring the serendipity of advertising – i.e. the ad that wasn’t targeted for you but was relevant in that moment as you needed to buy someone a gift or had a very specific, unexpected need that wouldn’t fit your big data profile.

Equally, I’m hearing anecdotally, that young people are tuning ads out and actively ignoring them. This begs the question of how are they going to find out about new brands (for the young in the UK are hugely brand savvy), new trends, new music, new whatever if they’re limited to their social streams? And what does that mean for marketing in general? Does advertising still work anyway? And in a perfect world, what would advertising and marketing look like in say, 2030? We are lucky to be living in an age that can invent its own future. So why isn’t advertising being reinvented?

Will it be down to context, location and big data? AR, QR, rich media formats, is that enough? Can you even remember an advert you saw in the last day, week, month? Will discovery of new stuff be reliant on a few key trendsetters in our circles being given ‘perks’ and freebies via the likes of PeerIndex, Klout and its ilk and then they talk about those things in their social stream (admittedly early days for these services but you can see where they’re going)? Are innovations like kiip, qriously and LoopMe enough? If we are questioning the future of newspapers and media in general, shouldn’t we also be questioning the future of advertising too?

References and resources:

The Monday Note: The New York Times Shifting Model http://www.mondaynote.com/2012/10/28/the-new-york-times-shifting-model

LoopMe Launch http://mobhappy.com/blog1/2012/10/29/loopme-unveils/

Mobile Marketing Magazine Issue 11. Off Deck (last page): Helen Keegan calls for mobile advertising to reinvent itself http://issuu.com/davidmurphy/docs/mm_issue_11

Newspaper Extinction Timeline (PDF). This shows the death of newspapers in their current format by country. It’s a sobering infographic http://futureexploration.net/Newspaper_Extinction_Timeline.pdf

Newspaper Death Watch blog http://newspaperdeathwatch.com/

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?

Carnival of the Mobilists #277

 

Yes, it’s come around again and I’m this week’s curator of the Carnival of the Mobilists and what a week it has been. Plenty going on in the world of Nokia and RIM. Innovation is being supported with various awards and accelerator programs. And mobile is still most definitely big news. So here’s my round-up.

Awards and other Programs for Mobile Entrepreneurs

The Annual Effective Mobile Marketing Awards are open for entries until 10 August. There are 20 categories and they are free to enter and are global. Disclaimer, I’m a judge and I co-hosted the awards last year.

The 9th Annual Meffys are open for entries until 19 July. Just a few days to go so don’t delay. These are global awards with special categories and prices for start-ups. More details here. Disclaimer, I’m a judge.

Russell Buckley tells us about UK accelerator programme, Springboard, why he supports it (including investing in it) and what the opportunities are for mobile entrepreneurs this year with the very first mobile-focussed accelerator. Closing date to apply is 22 July so not long to go.

QPrize is now open for entries too. This is Qualcomm Ventures seed investment competition. I don’t know much about it yet (I’m doing a bit more research into it), but just highlighting it for reference.

Handset Wars

Goodness me, watching the demise of Nokia and now RIM is not a pleasant experience. The chatter about both is endless at the moment. How to you make head or tail of it? Are both dead in the water? Will we see them fight back? Will they be bought, die or rise from their ashes like a phoenix? …

Tomi Ahonen thinks Stephen Elop is the worst CEO of all time. With Nokia’s share price at an all time low of $1.92 at the time of writing, Elop and the Nokia board certainly have some serious questions to answer. This one isn’t so much as a blog post as an essay so don’t expect a quick read. Grab a cuppa and set aside some time to read this one and take in the comments too. I have friends at Nokia. I have friends who have been made redundant from Nokia. I have a drawer full of beloved Nokia phones. I like Windows Phone too. I don’t want to see Nokia die but there’s no denying they are in deep, deep trouble.

And then there’s RIM. Another one who has been in the wars lately. Delaying the BB10 launch is a bit of a nightmare. There were 5,000 enthusiastic developers who went home from BlackBerry World in Orlando and many hundreds, if not thousands returning home from various BB10Jam meet-ups globally with their prototype devices and told their friends and family they were excited about the upcoming launch of BB10 for Christmas. BlackBerry hasn’t just let down their developer community, they’ve let down their loyal customers who are desperate for an upgrade if they haven’t jumped ship already to Android or iOS. There are three articles of note I’d like to point you to on this one. First is untether.tv’s post which takes a look at the numbers and thinks RIM needs to focus on saving the company, Terence Eden ponders how to solve a problem like BlackBerry and Michael Selvidge thinks RIM can be saved in three easy steps. What do you think?

Then there’s the story of Maemo from Randall Arnold. Do any of you remember that OS? I do. I had a Nokia 770 and if I remember rightly, Rovio of Angry Birds fame was developing games on that platform. Is there hope for Maemo to come out smiling out of the Nokia warzone?

Mobile Marketing, Advertising and Commerce

For the first year at Cannes Lions, there was a section for mobile. Finally, advertising agencies are catching up with their clients and taking notice of mobile as an integral part of any marketing campaign. This is a major step forward. Hey, I may even be tempted to take a trip to Cannes next year to check it all out. In the meantime, Andy Favell from MobiThinking has done a very comprehensive round-up of the winning entries (including their videos and case studies) and also the stats behind the awards. Both make for a good read. Again, this is something worth setting aside some time for but if you’re in the mobile marketing game, this one is for you.

Global Mobile Commerce: Removing Payment Friction & Boosting Customer Engagement by Diarmuid Mallon is a guest post on Mobile Groove and is the first of a series of articles which will form part of the Mobile Commerce Guide 2012. Common sense tells us that by making it easier for customers to buy they will buy more. You wouldn’t have a front door to a shop that took five minutes to open so why would you make the payment options overly complicated? It’s very, very easy to click away from a purchase.

Mobile Apps and Games

Here are a couple of good articles that should get app developers thinking and help then on their way to making more money for them and their clients. First up is a piece from CodeNgo which looks at the opportunity of making sure your app is available in different languages. The stats make sense to me. Next is one from the mainstream Techcrunch, but it was a good one so I’ve included it: 8 Ways Mobile Developers can Make the Most Money on Apps. Sensible advice indeed.

Missed out on Google I/O? Never fear, Tom Hume was there and he’s got some thoughts about the new Google Nexus tablet and the role it will have. A game changer? Maybe… have a read.

Mobile Games has been a hot topic recently around Technokitten Towers, not least, because I was helping the Mobile Monday Shoreditch team get set up and their first event was the A to Z of Mobile Gaming. You can read a round-up of the evening here and it includes links to video vox pops from the night too. We also enjoyed some AR gaming on the night and playing games on BlackBerry Playbooks. Well, MobyAffiliate has gone the extra mile and taken a comprehensive look at the companies in the mobile and social gaming space and written it all up for you to create a guide to the sector ‘The World’s Top Mobile Social Games Developers, Publishers and Platforms’.

Further Food for Thought

A couple of podcasts you might be interested in having a listen to or watch are the Disruptive Social Care Podcast where I was a guest last week and talked about the role of mobile in healthcare and the importance of making websites and services accessible on mobile and accessible to those with disabilities or impairments amongst other things with Shirley Ayres and Stuart Arnott.  Then there’s this one from Hashbang TV where Elizabeth Varley tells the TechHub story. OK, the latter isn’t mobile specific, but it’s still relevant inasmuch as it’s the story of an entrepreneur focussed on supporting tech start-ups. And both podcasts are about disruption in some shape or form.

And finally, some food for thought from Antoine RJ Wright. Were Mobile Phones the Wrong Turn? Antoine ponders if we haven’t missed the point with mobile technology and that perhaps it needs a rethink as we’re asking devices (read battery life and bandwidth) to do more than it can really deal with.

Post of the Week

My post of the week has to go to Andy Favell for such a comprehensive round-up of the Cannes Mobile Lions. It’s in my sweet spot of mobile marketing and it’s great to see it entering the mainstream in this way and it’s great to get up close and personal to such a variety of case studies. What’s your post of the week?

Next week

Next week’s Carnival will be hosted by Martin Wilson of Indigo 102. And you can also support the Carnival of the Mobilists by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter or sharing this post.

All photos sourced from Flickr and used under Creative Commons Licence.

Brand Perfect hits San Francisco–a round-up

I was fortunate enough to be a facilitator for last week’s Brand Perfect event in San Francisco. I’ve worked in mobile marketing for 12 years now, but I still enjoy hearing about case studies and examples from other parts of the world. It’s also very useful to understand the differences (and similarities) of creating and running mobile marketing and media initiatives in different parts of the world. And there was a good crowd there to explore all of that.

The event was organised by Monotype Imaging. Not necessarily a familiar name to the mobile industry but perhaps it should be. They have several mobile solutions for network operators, handset manufacturers, creative agencies and app developers. Worth a look, with flexible pricing structures and solutions.

Anyway, I digress. The day involved a selection of keynotes looking at design, what’s happening in the mobile sector, the challenges of running mobile services, some insight into what’s possible and a look at the role of typography. In the afternoon, we divided up into groups to work on an actual brief from the University of San Francisco. This gave us a chance to put some of the learning from the morning into action – to think about design in a wider sense beyond look and feel, to distil the brief into the most important points and to focus on those and to think creatively in cross-disciplinary teams to come up with a solution. It was a fun thing to do and something I enjoyed being part of.

I’ve done a storify of the day collating some of the best tweets, resources, pictures and video clips. There are further videos to come – they’re in editing at the moment. And I’m hoping some of the presentations will make their way online too. I’ll add the links as and when that happens. In the meantime, have a look at the storify and the flickr photos below.

Personal lessons learned and some reflections on the day:

• It’s still early days for mobile marketing and media and there is still much to experiment with
• We need to do more experimenting. We have a great opportunity to reinvent marketing and advertising with this medium. It would be tragic to miss out on that.
• There’s a knowledge gap with brands, marketing people, retailers, media owners and traditional agency types. Developer relations programs from handset manufacturers et al tend to focus almost exclusively on programmers and the technical end of the spectrum. These are not always the decision makers and they are also not necessarily the ones coming up with the creative ideas. Developer relations needs to adapt and extend to other communities of interest.
• We need to forge better relationships between designers, developers, brands and commercial teams. We cannot work in silos when it comes to mobile initiatives as these touch too many parts of the business. There is a translation process that needs to happen and we need to learn and benefit from understanding the differences and being able to play to each others strengths. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
• It’s very easy to get hung up on ‘mobile’ being just about the web, apps and banner ads. There’s so much more to it and we do need to remember that. There’s another level of data and tracking available with mobile usage and additional features and capabilities that are simply not possible from a standard laptop.
• The mobile phone is the primary digital access point for a great swathe of customers and growing. Are we really taking this into consideration when designing products and services.
• Mobile services are not one-offs – they need longer term support and management for them to succeed.
• Be useful, relevant or entertaining. Customer service is a winner. We are dealing with people here ultimately. Let’s humanise the experience rather than reducing it to ones and zeros.

The event will be heading to London in the next few months and further cities around the globe. More info at http://www.brandperfect-tour.com/

 

Brand Perfect Tour's San Francisco set

Created with flickr slideshow.

Brand Perfect Tour hits San Francisco

I’m very pleased to tell you that I will shortly be heading to San Francisco, on of my favourite cities to visit, and while I’m there, I will be one of the facilitators at the Brand Perfect Tour event on 8 May 2012. I was involved in the London event last year and this time, we’re in search of seamless brand experiences on mobile. The event is aimed at brands, retailers, media owners, agencies and developers. And whether you’re a veteran or a newbie to this world of mobile marketing, you’re sure to get something out of it. With a mix of keynotes, discussion and hands-on exercises, there’s plenty to get your teeth into.

We’ll be talking with major brands, agencies and expert developers about where opportunity in the mobile channel really lies:

• How should a brand view the mobile channel in their marketing mix?
• What are the challenges and rewards?
• What are the success stories that show the way forward?
• How do you plan and implement a mobile strategy to reach the mass market that’s on-brand?
• What are the technologies involved and what can brand owners expect to be able to deliver?

Then put it all together by working in cross-disciplinary teams with your peers covering the business, design and development elements of creating a mobile experience based on a real brand brief. You'll not only have plenty of great ideas by the end of the day; you'll have made a lot of new friends tool.

The event is free for brands, retailers and media owners to attend.

If you're an agency or developer and you bring a brand buddy with you, then you both attend for free.

If you're a journalist or blogger and would like to cover the event, please get in touch with me for a press pass. I have a few available. Otherwise, the ticket price is USD395

Registration is required: http://www.brandperfect-tour.com/events/next-stop-on-the-tour/

Spread the word and see you there! You’ll also find Brand Perfect Tour on Facebook, the event is also listed on Facebook and LinkedIn to make it easy for you to add to your calendar and share with friends and colleagues. And you can follow the twitter action here.

Oh, and there are some super pictures from the London event in November for you below from photographer Paul Clarke. And you can view some of the London presentations here.

Created with flickr slideshow.

Swedish Beers–the Heroes of the Mobile Fringe Festival Edition

As some of you know, I do like a good party, and the annual road trip to Barcelona is a great excuse to have one. So Swedish Beers is back with a vengeance and is now part of the Heroes of the Mobile Fringe Festival too. It seems to be a lot of people’s favourite networking party of the week and so we’re back to bring you more beer, more cheer and more chat. We’re in danger of this year being better than ever thanks to our very generous sponsors. I know for a fact there’ll be even more beer for starters. So let me introduce them to you…

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Our lead sponsor this time around is Millennial Media. They're big fans of Swedish Beers and sponsored our London come back party in the summer. And in return, we’re big fans of theirs too. The company is really going places and the team will be on hand to chew the fat about mobile advertising and will have a bountiful supply of free beer tokens. As lead sponsors, it really will be a bountiful supply! You couldn't be in better hands with Gavin, Stephen, Mack and the crew. They definitely know how to have a good time. http://millennialmedia.com/

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Next up is AQL. So good they had to sponsor us twice. And we're very glad they did. Adam Beaumont and his fine team will be there to talk all things mobile messaging and voice communications with you . There's not much he doesn't know or can't do with mobile messaging. Oh, and yeah, he'll have one or two beer tokens in hand too. http://aql.com/

Newcomers to Swedish Beers are Pearson. Yes, that's right, the parent company of FT.com, Penguin books and much more besides. They're exhibiting this year at Congress and are particularly interested to talk about mobile technology in emerging markets as well as innovations in eBooks and the like. The FT.com team will also be on hand to tell you about their adventures in HTML5 and their dealings with the behemoth that is Apple. http://pearson.com/. We're also very pleased that they're sponsoring the overall festival too.

Up next is Apadmi. Fans of Swedish Beers for many years and now it's their turn to join the party as a sponsor. Garry and the team build mobile apps and solutions and very experienced at it they are too. They're also great fun and have kick-started the mobile networking scene in Manchester by taking the lead in setting up Mobile Monday Manchester. http://apadmi.com/

Madmaker is launching very soon and is a do-it-yourself mobile ad maker - you see what they did there with the name? I've seen the system in action and it's really very neat. Oystein, Andy and the team from Boost are behind this new product and will be at Swedish Beers to give it a proper Nordic vibe as they hail from Norway. Oh, and they know a thing or two about mobile marketing as well so will be happy to chat away about that with you until the wee hours about what's hot and what's not in the sector. You'll also find them at 2F33 in the MWC exhibition too.

Like our previous events, this is a relaxed evening, no formalities, no presentations, no business cards thrust in your face as soon as you arrive. Just come with an open mind, be prepared to see friends old and new, talk nonsense, enjoy a drink or five and have yourself a good time. Oh, and leave the ties, the corporate personas and the sales spiel at the door please.

The Swedish Beers crew will be on hand – Helen, Jenny, Gabriel, Shafiq, Cat, Sarah, Russell - and the friendliest bar staff in town at our regular haunt, Dos Trece, are all waiting to welcome you. The venue holds about 300 or so folks at any one time so there’s plenty space for everyone. There will be bars upstairs and downstairs so please make full use of both floors so that more people can enjoy the fun.
No need to RSVP unless you want to. There's no guest list, no tickets and there's no guaranteed entry. Just come and go as you please. But if you would like to RSVP, you can over here on Facebook. You'll see some familiar faces there I'm sure.

It is likely to get a bit busy at times. But don't worry, people will be coming in and out all evening. That’s kind of the point as we know there’s always a lot going on and you might want to check out more than one party. If it's very busy, there's no need to queue to get in. Just check out one of the other bars nearby and come back a little later when it's a bit less frantic. Dos Trece is where the action will be. We'll be open from 7pm until the wee hours so there'll be plenty time for you to drop in and say skål.

We don't have a cloakroom so we don't recommend you bring your laptops or briefcases with you - it's a liability in Barcelona I'm afraid – especially at this time of year and they’ll just get in the way of your enjoyment of the evening. Drop them at your hotel or apartment first. You won't need them anyway what with this new fangled thing called the mobile phone ;)

So just to recap:
What: Swedish Beers Mobile Networking
When: Wednesday 29th February 2012 - 7pm until we run out of steam
Where: DosTrece, Calle Carme 40, 08001 Barcelona

DosTrece is behind La Boqueria market and the nearest metro station is Liceu. Just walk up La Rambla, walk past La Boqueria and Teatro Grec, then take a left at Calle Carme (or Carrer del Carme) and DosTrece is at number 40 (Google map here). (They also have free Wi-Fi if you want to demo your latest phone app.)

**********Keep in touch***********
Email: Just add your email address to the Feedblitz box at the top of this blog and you’ll get all my blog posts (and therefore event notices) to your inbox. Or go to http://swedishbeers.com and your email address to the Feedblitz box at the top left there.
Twitter: Follow us at http://www.twitter.com/swedishbeers
Facebook: Like us http://www.facebook.com/SwedishBeers or join the group

Swedish Beers is proud to be a Heroes of the Mobile Fringe Festival event.

A short history of location-based services

I was invited to speak at Mobile Marketing Magazine’s mRetail Summit last week to talk about the history of location-based services. Some of you may or may not know that I spent my early career in fashion retail and then some years later in 2000, joined the mobile scene at ZagMe, where we sent text messages to shoppers at Lakeside and Bluewater shopping malls while people were actually out shopping. My retail experience certainly came in very handy there. Anyway, I was lucky enough to be, not only at the birth of mobile marketing, but also at the birth of mobile location-based services.

I’m not sure my slides will mean much without the dialogue, but they’re here if you want to take a look.

A short history of location-based services

View more presentations from Helen Keegan.

I suppose the key learnings for me from that time are

• Customers wanted a permission-based offers channel for their local shopping mall
• Once they’d signed up to the service, people assumed we knew where they were (we didn’t, we spoofed the location bit) and expected us to send them relevant messages
• We were at least 10 years ahead of our time
• It’s not about the technology, it’s about the application of technology. Understanding how to communicate with customers is essential. Understanding how retailers and retail staff operate is critical.
• The ZagMe concept is still sound, but despite several services attempting to do something similar in the last 10 years, they’ve all failed. My guess is that it’s because they focussed on the technology and thought that retailers would change the way they do things to adapt to the technology rather than the other way around.
• Location information is mostly useless without some context
• Past behaviour is not a good predictor of future behaviour. A recent example to demonstrate this… I’m going to Barcelona next month. I searched extensively on Google to find my accommodation. Now the only ads I see are adverts for accommodation in Barcelona. If you really did understand my behaviour, you’d know that the time to serve me those ads is in December and early January. By the end of January it’s too late. But behaviour predictors don’t have that level of granularity. But I guess that conversation is for another day.