I am Helen Keegan, a veteran of mobile marketing, advertising and media since 2000. This is my diary and musings about mobile since 2004. I am part consultant and part events organiser in London, Barcelona and beyond (Swedish Beers and Heroes of Mobile). I write here about mobile technology and media and other things I'm interested in like theatre, art, crafts, business and life.
Retro house phones in a hotel in Los Angeles. May 2016.
I have rarely been without a mobile phone for the last 16 years of my life. When I first got one, talking on the phone was the thing I did most of. Mainly because that's what the devices were designed to do and I didn't know any different having been brought up with a landline where it was the height of extravagance to listen to the charts on the phone using Dial-A-Disc (no really, we did do that and you can read about it here). I also used the alarm clock every day. I occasionally used the FM radio and did a fair bit of texting - but I was ahead of the curve on texting back in 2000 as I was working for a company whose only focus was on SMS marketing. If I hadn't been working for ZagMe back then, I'm not sure I would have been as quick to embrace SMS.
Fast forward 16 years and I can count the number of phone calls I make each week on the fingers of one hand. And when I receive a phone call, it's such an infrequent occurrence, it can sometimes feel like an intrusion of my private space. With messaging of all kinds, be that email, Facebook Messenger or lowly SMS, it's asynchronous so I can reply as and when I choose to and it's fair to say, I'm overwhelmed with written communication much of the time - especially email. A phone call is in real time, hence the feeling of intrusion. And if I need to get hold of someone, calling them feels like I'm intruding into their day unnecessarily. Although, that could just be call reluctance.
I'm not alone in this. A recent survey from GiffGaff (sample size 1,500 adults in the UK according to their PR team) showed that not only are we Brits spending 3 hours a day on our phones, but that less than a third of us use our phones mainly as a phone for making and receiving actual phone calls. The UK is a nation of texters with 36% of the 1500 respondents stating messaging (SMS / Messenger Apps) as the main use of their phone. Browsing is surprisingly low at 16% and Social media at 11%. I'm wondering if the last two were under-reported?
Also of interest, depending on the device you own, your use of that device will vary. There were 13% of respondents who own a Nokia device and more than 50% of them said they used their phones for phone calls. Apple users (29%) were the least likely to use their phones to make calls and most likely to play games on their phone. I'm guessing many of the Nokia owners have simple phones that do calling better than anything else and that's why their owners bought them as they have no desire to push their finger around a glass screen aimlessly.
It's something I've been thinking about for a while now. This song that my older readers may recognise comes to mind, Cliff Richard's 'It's so funny how we don't talk any more'.
So what happened? How come we fell out of love with talking? I used to spend hours on the phone talking to my friends after school. Is today's teenage experience with messaging and social media as rich? Do we need to be encouraged to talk more with an updated version of BT's 'It's good to talk' advertising with Maureen Lipman playing Beattie?
Of course, this survey was UK specific so usage trends are likely to be different in different countries, and especially in countries where literacy levels are not as high as they are in the UK. And communication in any form is a good thing - whether that's written or spoken.
The main impact of all of this, especially for marketers, is about understanding people's preferred forms of communication and playing to it. If I want to get hold of my Mum, it's a phone call. If I want to talk to my friends, it's probably Facebook Messenger. For business contacts, it's Skype or email. And if you really want to cut through the clutter, a hand-written letter will do the trick.
Much as I love written communication, I think there is still a place for voice. A friend called me on the phone the other day. She knew I was having a rough patch so she took the time out to call me. Like people used to in the old days. And I'm grateful that she bothered as it was a much richer experience than the equivalent in SMS or email would have been. I need to remember that and maybe pick up the phone more often, for you know, phoning people.
Or at least that was the title to my 6-minute talk at yesterday's Future of Mobile conference at Kensington Town Hall. I was one of the 6 x 6 bloggers (alongside peers Vero, Andrew, Ewan, Whatleydude and Jemima) and I had 6 minutes to wax lyrical about any topic I liked.
There was a sharp intake of breath as I announced there was no future to mobile. As you might imagine, as an advocate of all aspects of mobile technology, and especially mobile marketing, advertising and media, it was not a sentence the audience expected to hear coming from my lips.
There are 6 reasons why, if we carry on the way we are going, there will be no future to mobile.
1. We carry on focusing on technology rather than people
The technology is a hygiene factor and not the raison d'etre. The technology needs to be reliable, affordable, usable, fast and context relevant. There are very few folks out there who care which gizmo or platform you're building on. They just want it to work. The technology needs to be invisible and seamless. And of course that's a challenge to developers and service providers, but the fact still remains that this is all about the people and not the technology.
2. We continue to have silly mobile tariffs
Why are mobile tariffs, let alone data tariffs so complicated? Why are the tariffs, in particular data tariffs, focused on contract customers who are prepared to commit to an 18 month contract when 60% or more of the UK's mobile customers are on prepay phones and either won't (it's too scary, don't know what to expect, or are transient) or can't (poor credit rating) change to a contract. But more than that, why are they going to switch to a contract to use mobile data if they have no idea what the experience is going to be like?
Back in the early days of the internet, internet service providers, like Freeserve (now Orange), revolutionised internet access by introducing the penny a minute tariff up to a maximum of £12.99 a month. You knew that if you were online for 10 minutes, it would cost you 10p. You knew it would never cost you more than £12.99 a month. You didn't have to have a contract and therefore it removed the risk. Admittedly dial-up could be a bit flaky, websites could be a bit slow to load (sound familiar huh), but still folks could try it risk and commitment-free. And it meant a huge increase in internet usage.
3. We create applications and services for people like us
There was an excellent turnout at the Future of Mobile and I'm guessing that 99% of the people in the room were Promobs - as in professional or "super" mobile users. You know the type - have a N95 in one hand whilst checking their email on their blackberry in their other hand and live streaming qik at the same time.
The trouble is, the market is full of people who are *not* like us. Our customers are normal people. The ones who use their phones for talking and texting. The ones who have no idea that they may need new firmware or may need to change their handset settings. My family is a case in point.. bearing in mind I've been working in the mobile industry for more than 8 years, you wouldn't be able to tell that by my own family's usage of mobile technology...
My sister, well she's just about changed her ringtone and clings on to her Nokia 3310.
My brother has a Motorola Razr and when he got it, thought it was a seriously cool phone (and more to the point, thought I would think the same).
My parents are just too elderly now to get their heads round mobile technology. It's too complicated to learn, their fingers aren't as nimble as they used to be and they just don't have a need. They've lived their long lives without mobile technology. In fact a lot of their lives was lived without telephony in the home at all.
My nieces - well it's all about SMS and to a lesser extent listening to music (and sharing music files via bluetooth). The perception of mobile data to them is still that it's scarily expensive and a £5 a month commitment just so they can check facebook is just a step to far to the average teenager or twenty-something.
And my Auntie, well she just loves to chat. Whether it's a landline or a mobile, she doesn't care. She just wants to talk.
So my question to you is how do we create useful, relevant, entertaining, interesting services for Normobs so that we can bring them into our mobile world without dragging them there kicking and screaming in pain at the experience? How do we create that demand?
4. We continue to nurture the culture gap
Yes, there is. There's a culture gap between web people and mobile people. I've met a lot of people in both camps on the development and the commercial side and in the main, they really don't talk each other's language. Web centric folks can't understand why mobile folks put up with the complexity of the development task let alone trying to access the internet via a 2 inch screen. And then add in the disconnect with the handset folks and the web and the mobile development folks. And then add in the network operators. And then add in brands and agencies and we have a melting pot of folks who just don't understand each other. And in many cases don't even want to play nicely together in the playground due to perceptions about each other that are largely unfounded.
So I have a request that we are more open with each other. That we try to understand each other's points of view so that we can all move forward together in this brave new world.
5. We remain Western-Centric
The next billion customers are not going to come from the USA, the UK or the rest of Europe. The next billion customers are not in the West. This means that the "rest of the world" is not bogged down with the feeling that the internet on mobile experience is second best to the full fat internet on a laptop or desktop screen. It means that they can leapfrog technology rather than go through the evolution that we are still experiencing. And it means that there will be innovation based on needs today and solving problems today rather than working on 'the next big thing'. The speed of growth of mobile penetration in India, China, Africa, South America is phenomenal. This is where we'll see innovation. This is where we'll see real people come up with new ways to use mobile technology to solve their day to day problems or enhance their day to day lives.
6. We forget that the mobile phone is a communication device
It was designed for us to talk to each other. It was designed for us to be able to communicate with our friends, family, colleagues and lovers by voice, text, instant message, email, facebook, twitter, whatever. But it's about communication. In every region of the world, mobile data traffic is largely driven by social networking - whether that's Peperonity, Cyworld, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter - it doesn't really matter. It does mean that it's the human communication that's important to us and drives the desire to explore mobile devices further in order to find other ways to communicate with loved ones.
The mobile phone is personal, it's precious, it's an object of desire and it's our access to the outside world. It's also a necessity and a basic tool to participate in UK society (according to the latest Joseph Rowntree report).
So please, don't abuse my mobile life by clogging it up with stuff that doesn't work, stuff that is memory hungry, stuff I don't need or want. Think about the real people who are using real phones in real life and make their mobile life better. And maybe then, just then, there'll be a future of mobile.
Update: After my session, I did a short audio interview with the lovely Jemima Kiss discussing my talk a little more and it's now live on The Guardian.
Update 2: My talk was video-recorded by Mauricio Reyes. He also caught my fellow 6 x 6 bloggers.
It seems the Independent didn't get it *quite* right when they ran a story claiming that mobile phones were the cause of the mass disappearance of bees in the USA and Europe. The real story is here. That puts my mind at ease... a bit.
