Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Women in Mobile Series
Well I'm very pleased to say that I'm woman number 4 in Rudy de Waele's 'Women in Mobile' series of interviews over at his m-trends blog. I'm very happy to be sharing the limelight with Sabine Allaeys, Darla Mack, Julia Palatovska and Debi Jones. And yes, that means I should be number 5 except that Rudy started with zero. Happy reading.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Another string to the mobile marketer's bow?
My article is now up on Mad.co.uk's Technology newsletter regarding adding the Sony PSP to the mobile marketer's toolset. It's an extension of the posting I made before about Sony PSP and FHM offering free content for it. Hopefully it all makes sense! I do firmly believe that wi-fi enabled entertainment devices such as the Sony PSP will be an important part of the mobile marketing mix going forward, and potentially will be the way to go for 'mobile TV' - not least because the screen quality is so much better and you're not paying ludicrously high rates for data downloading.
A Lump in the Road
I went to a West End Film Premiere on Saturday night with Lloyd Davis (yes he of naked vlog fame over at Perfect Path). It was at the Curzon Soho and the film in question was 'A Lump in the Road' produced by my friend Stuart Reid - civil servant by day, film producer by night.OK, so it wasn't quite a red-carpet celebrity fest but it was just as enjoyable I'm sure. A Lump in the Road is a short film (less than 7 minutes) and shows a mother and daughter taking an imaginary car journey to far away places and in doing so, brings them closer together. It has been accepted for the Mid-Ulster Film Festival 2006. And if you do get chance to see it, then do - you'll enjoy it!
The evening kicked off with Jim Holland's Barenzirkus which is an 8 minute reworking of a 1960s super8 film of a Russian bear circus. It was disturbing to see these beautiful animals dressed up in silly costumes performing complex and skilled circus feats - suitably enhanced by the music soundtrack. One wonders what it took to train the animals.Also showing was Curl up and Dye which is a celebration of the wit and humour of the UK's hairdressers and barbers which you can see online at Supershorts. My favourite is The Godbarber.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Are you a texty thing lecture about mobile marketing
Well, against all the odds (burst water mains, fire alert, security alert, terrible weather), I finally arrived at the University of Hertfordshire where I lectured on mobile marketing to the Business Studies undergraduates. I was delighted to see that the lecture hall was full of students (so much so that they were sitting in the aisles) and a few lecturers too. They seemed to lap it all up - after all, this is the mobile generation.
I really feel for them though. The marketing landscape is getting ever more complicated. And as new technologies emerge and existing technologies evolve, their job, as the marketers of the future is going to get harder and harder. Then what happens when we add location based tracking into the mix? That's going to throw a cat amongst the pigeons when it comes to targeting and will make postal-based direct mail look like a walk in the park to manage. It will no longer be about who you are and where you're at in your head, where you're at in your lifestage, but also where you're at physically (work, school, gym, pub, nightclub, shopping mall, wherever). Gender, age and postcode just won't cut it for very much longer.
Still, by spreading the word now about mobile marketing and getting the topic on the agenda, I'm quite sure some bright spark will come up with a solution at some point. Here's hoping anyway.
I'm off to run a workshop next week too at the University of Westminster as part of the Masters Course in Integrated Marketing. Guess what, I'll be talking about mobile marketing! And I've been booked in to run more courses for the IDM next year too.
It feels like, at long last, marketing folks are beginning to take thismobile channel seriously. Who knows, maybe even James Eadie, marketing manager at Coca-Cola, will get it at last. He was recently reported at the Mobile Marketing Conference this week as saying that the mobile channel showed great potential but
"Until such time as the digital platform [ie mobile] can help us connect emotionally with consumers, in the way we can with a 30-second TV commercial, we are always going to struggle."
Ho hum. He really doesn't get it yet. He seems to think that there's nothing emotional about a text message, let alone other mobile content. Well I guess he's never been dumped by SMS or maybe his partner never says 'I love you' via text as Russell Buckley points out over at Mobhappy. He also was not running campaigns at ZagMe (where we sent texts to shoppers at Lakeside and Bluewater) 5 years ago where our customers out at Lakeside and Bluewater loved us so much, one of them even dedicated a record to us at Capital FM. Other feedback included things like:
"Hello ZagMe How R U today"
"ZagMe iz cool Text me back d:->"
"ThanQ ZagMe team 4 my lovely b’day txt, I had 1 sweet day X"
"Thank you for the £10 voucher"
No emotion indeed! Everything's possible. It's not about the technology, it's about how you use it. Let's hope tomorrow's marketers start learning this lesson now before they hit the marketplace.
btw, if anyone is interested in learning about Mobile Marketing - what it is, how and when to use it, what not to do it etc. Then I'm your woman. Please contact me for details of mobile marketing training course outlines.
I really feel for them though. The marketing landscape is getting ever more complicated. And as new technologies emerge and existing technologies evolve, their job, as the marketers of the future is going to get harder and harder. Then what happens when we add location based tracking into the mix? That's going to throw a cat amongst the pigeons when it comes to targeting and will make postal-based direct mail look like a walk in the park to manage. It will no longer be about who you are and where you're at in your head, where you're at in your lifestage, but also where you're at physically (work, school, gym, pub, nightclub, shopping mall, wherever). Gender, age and postcode just won't cut it for very much longer.
Still, by spreading the word now about mobile marketing and getting the topic on the agenda, I'm quite sure some bright spark will come up with a solution at some point. Here's hoping anyway.
I'm off to run a workshop next week too at the University of Westminster as part of the Masters Course in Integrated Marketing. Guess what, I'll be talking about mobile marketing! And I've been booked in to run more courses for the IDM next year too.
It feels like, at long last, marketing folks are beginning to take thismobile channel seriously. Who knows, maybe even James Eadie, marketing manager at Coca-Cola, will get it at last. He was recently reported at the Mobile Marketing Conference this week as saying that the mobile channel showed great potential but
"Until such time as the digital platform [ie mobile] can help us connect emotionally with consumers, in the way we can with a 30-second TV commercial, we are always going to struggle."
Ho hum. He really doesn't get it yet. He seems to think that there's nothing emotional about a text message, let alone other mobile content. Well I guess he's never been dumped by SMS or maybe his partner never says 'I love you' via text as Russell Buckley points out over at Mobhappy. He also was not running campaigns at ZagMe (where we sent texts to shoppers at Lakeside and Bluewater) 5 years ago where our customers out at Lakeside and Bluewater loved us so much, one of them even dedicated a record to us at Capital FM. Other feedback included things like:
"Hello ZagMe How R U today"
"ZagMe iz cool Text me back d:->"
"ThanQ ZagMe team 4 my lovely b’day txt, I had 1 sweet day X"
"Thank you for the £10 voucher"
No emotion indeed! Everything's possible. It's not about the technology, it's about how you use it. Let's hope tomorrow's marketers start learning this lesson now before they hit the marketplace.
btw, if anyone is interested in learning about Mobile Marketing - what it is, how and when to use it, what not to do it etc. Then I'm your woman. Please contact me for details of mobile marketing training course outlines.
Women in Mobile Data Lunch at The Sloane Club
was very good today so well done to Lisa Modisette who heads up the Women in Mobile Data Association for organising it. Annette Stimpson from Logica CMG was our guest speaker today and she gave a talk on the recent market study they did around content services and making money. There are some interesting key facts to note...
LogicaCMG also predicts that the content download market will be worth 7.6bn Euros globally next year and that within a year, the number of customers having experience content services is set to triple.
Europeans have the largest wallets and are most willing to pay for services but are the most conservative. The Asian market shows the most enthusiasm for new types of content with one in ten expected to be downloading full feature films to their handsets in 12 months time.
We'll be holding our next event in Barcelona (sponsor permitting) to coincide with 3GSM in February. And then I expect we'll be running a UK based event a month or two after that. So if you're a woman and work in mobile data then you might be interested in joining us. Details of how to get in touch are on the WIMD website.
- 20% of mobile phone subscribers worldwide have already downloaded content to their mobiles
- User key concerns are [unsurprisingly IMHO]: Price, value for money, security and fraud
- User key requirements are: Ease of use, ease of payments, ability to share information and the speed of the download
LogicaCMG also predicts that the content download market will be worth 7.6bn Euros globally next year and that within a year, the number of customers having experience content services is set to triple.
Europeans have the largest wallets and are most willing to pay for services but are the most conservative. The Asian market shows the most enthusiasm for new types of content with one in ten expected to be downloading full feature films to their handsets in 12 months time.
We'll be holding our next event in Barcelona (sponsor permitting) to coincide with 3GSM in February. And then I expect we'll be running a UK based event a month or two after that. So if you're a woman and work in mobile data then you might be interested in joining us. Details of how to get in touch are on the WIMD website.
A very exciting morning
My tickets for the Electric Picnic 2006 arrived this morning. I'll be going with my festipals Sarah and Deirdre, oh and Lozzer's bought his own ticket so he'll be travelling with us across the water to the ol country where we shall set up camp and enjoy the shenanigans that is the Electric Picnic [check out Eyebrowy's new picnic animation here].
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