Big Picture Advertising

The mobile disconnect between consumers and business

 In yesterdays Sunday Times the Vodafone CEO talked about tourists he had watched in Rome;

Technology, he noted, was changing their habits. “Some of them were with the guide who was holding the little umbrella but following a map on their phone as well,” he said. The smartphones that Vodafone had been selling for five years or more to business customers had finally permeated into the mainstream.

The facts are now pretty clear - consumers are using smartphones as the remote control for their life - accessing mobile services and content as they need to solve problems - which way is the Museum?, what's the football score?, i need to order some groceries, i have 5 minutes to kill etc.

Yet there is a real disconnect here - business seems a little slow to get with this programme. Research suggests few Fortune 1000 companies have a mobile strategy - and we believe that even amongst those that have, mobile is being viewed as an acquisition channel. Classic Big M Marketing - focused on promotion.

But what about the opportunities for what we call small m marketing - reducing the cost of servicing customers through enhanced self service, lowering transaction costs, increasing barriers to churn, facilitating advocacy etc. This type of service issue is perfectly suited to mobile yet few mobile marketers seem to focus here.

Why? Well the panel I ran at the Mobile Marketing Forum in Berlin suggested that clients think Agencies don't get mobile. Speakers from Coke, P&G, BMW and Lufthansa talked about their success stories and it was clear that the client is taking the lead.

Resolving this disconnect between consumers and business is a huge opportunity. We believe that the answer is addictive services and content that solve consumers problems - branded utility made real by mobile.

There are few brands that can't benefit from this approach - we note that Vodafone have a churn problem too

Some 18% of its better value contract customers quit in the past year. They cost £350 each to recruit.

They need some addictive services and content too.

Smartphones dominate

The new stats from the Admob team confirm the dominance of smartphones.

Looking at what proportion of ad requests they see, Smartphones account for 37.1% of worldwide traffic. The figures for their key markets are;

• India                        29.9%
• Indonesia                 28.7%
• Philippines               25.%
• UK                           40.3%
• US                           37.3%
• South Africa             19.1%

Interestingly whilst the iphone is the dominant handset Nokia is still a key player with 32% of the worldwide smartphone - reflecting the fact the iphone is still niche in Asian markets. To be fair the data is a little skewed as Admob exclude the ipod touch from the smartphone figures.

This dominance is further evidenced by this quote from a very interesting GigaOm post

The spread of the iPhone continues to boost data usage for those operators that distribute the model with O2 reporting that 40% of its data traffic in UK comes from the smartphone market.

Research on Mobile - green shoots

Over the past few days I've seen some interesting pieces of research that suggest mobile is gathering momentum.
Emarketer reported what US consumers would like their phones to do - most of which is feasible - and lots actually happening in Japan.

They also published some data on what UK mobile users are doing with their phones; as ever we believe these figures would be even more impressive if they focused on the fast growing smart phone users - but 9% browsing the internet daily is interesting.

Another emarketer reports looks at the high proportion of mobile users who trust mobile commerce.

Given this data it shouldn't be too surprising to learn that a high proportion of marketers are feeling optimistic about mobile - and planning to increase their spend.
So perhaps this quote isn't quite as radical as it sounds;

"Apps will be as big if not bigger than the internet," according to Ilja Laurs, chief executive of GetJar, a leading independent application store.

New Ofcom report - Mostly Mobile

Those clever people at Ofcom (the ones David Cameron wants to fire) have published a very interesting report called Mostly Mobile.

Its a 195 pages so I have a bit more to read, but found this very interesting;

Mobile data services on handsets. A growing proportion of mobile users within the UK use smartphones (22), which enable access to more advanced data features.(23) Research suggests smartphone owners are more likely to use mobile data services than owners of other handsets.(24)

22A category of advanced mobile handsets; they run complete operating systems and have relatively large screens and powerful ‘PC like’ processors.

23 23 per cent of all UK handset sales in 2008 were smartphones, compared to only 13 per cent in 2007.

24 Comscore, March 2009, http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2759 For example, 77 per cent of smartphone owners use email, 40 per cent use the GPS functionality, and 38 per cent use instant

Well worth a read.

You don't miss a good thing 'til its gone

Making the transition from corporate life to being part of the free agent nation has given me the chance to reassess some of this digital stuff we're always talking about.

My decision to wait for the new iphone led me to walking around with a useless BB for a week or so - with the data turned off you really understand the value of a smartphone;

• late for one meeting I decided to call -but didn't have the number - no problem - its on their email sig file - except I can't access my email - or google their web site to get the switchboard number
• looking for another meeting I decide to resort to Google maps - except I can't
• half an hour to kill in Bar Italia, so I can catch up on email - except I can't - and the annoyance of having to deal the email when you get back to the laptop ....
• and the way i stay in touch with smart thinking from my friends around the world is twitter - except I can't get that either........

Now back on the grid I realise just how much some people ( 300 million of them?) rely on being connected through their smartphone. So maybe there is something in this mobile thing after all.

You don't miss a good this 'til its gone

now, next

I'm moving on from Mindshare and wanted to tell you about my plans.

Despite all the doom and gloom around the economy - and consequently around some parts of the ad industry - it's still a hugely exciting time to be in this business. The web has changed everything, all around the world and we're seeing the start of structural changes to the marketing industry.

One positive result is that the friction involved in starting a business has never been less - technology enables a business to act globally from a handful of locations; talent is more accessible than ever before as more and more people embrace collaboration and an open source way of working. And new businesses can develop new business models where they get paid for being clever (ie effective), rather than for the hours they put in.

Where is the opportunity? To me it's all about Mobile.

Not mobile advertising, although that has a role to play. I see the most exciting opportunity as around mobile content and services - focused on smart phones. Over 300 million smart phones have been sold since the start of 2007 - and this is making the mobile internet a reality.

Looking back to the early days of the web, when we started Poppe Tyson in 1996 there were only 50 million people on the web - it wasn't until 1999 that the 300 million figure was reached. And by that time there was a huge industry helping businesses embrace the web to drive profits and reduce costs.

Another key piece of evidence is what people are now doing with their smart phones. Morgan Stanley data shows that Facebook has over 20 million active mobile users - who are 50% more active than non mobile users!

Now the mobile world has lots of really smart people, but I think the constant refrain "will this be the year of mobile?" has obscured the fact that there is now a really attractive opportunity around smart phones. And despite all the hype over iphone apps, few businesses are really thinking about how they can use mobile to improve their customer experience, reduce the cost of doing business, build real loyalty through addictive services and content and - yes - attract new customers.

Such a platform specific play might seem odd, given much of the web is increasingly platform agnostic, but I suspect that the changes that flow from the mobile phone evolving into the Pocket Computer, will be just as profound as those wrought by the last PC revolution.

So I'm spending the summer looking at the opportunities for a new business focused on content and services for smart phones. Potentially, my 5th start up. Over the coming weeks I'll be talking with old friends and new contacts across the mobile business to explore the possibilities for a professional services company that can help business really embrace all the potential of the mobile internet. If you'd like to join those conversations let me know and I can buy you a cup of tea.

I'm also interested in keeping busy through working with smart people on interesting projects (mobile or not), so if you need some thinking and/or doing let me know.

And if anyone has a spare desk for the next couple of months - either in the east end or central london -  again, let me know. I promise not to inflict my music taste on others.

I'm now off to Paris for a weekend to celebrate the end of one chapter and the start of a new one.

Bientot.

Peoples ingenuity with mobile

One of the many great speakers at this weeks Zeitgeist Europe was Jared Cohen from the US Secretary of State office. His panel was all about citizen politics and covered the way new media was being used by activists.
When talking about his time in Iran whilst a student he mentioned that he learnt young people used bluetooth to find others who shared their political beliefs. When asked whether they were worried about the secret police he was told no-one over 30 knows what Bluetooth is. You can read more about this here.
Whilst bluetooth isn't that fashionable any more  - and there are some issues on privacy - it's another great example of how people dictate what works and what doesn't.
Back in 2002 we wanted to use bluetooth for the COI sex lottery campaign  - tagline "Don't play the sex lottery. Use a condom." - and we came up with the idea of going to TigerTiger on Valentines Day and using bluetooth to 'drop' that line on peoples phone - emulating the alarming ease with which you can pick up something nasty. Unfortunately the client said no - but they did let us do our most successful viral ever - the 12 STIs of Christmas; over 2 million views in the days before YouTube

This is the future

Apps - this changes everything

Those nice people at Contagious have allowed me to share the article on Apps I wrote for their latest issue.Download Apps - Contagious march 09
As with anything moving as fast as apps it's already a little outdated - the founder of Dodgeball ( which I mention) has now launched foursquare and a number of the gaps I discuss have been filled.
But I remain convinced that apps ( be they on Facebook, iPhone or anywhere else )are a major opportunity for brands and will be a significant factor for some time yet.

Nokia app store to launch Mobile Immersive Experiences

With the Apple appstore rumoured to be close to 1 million downloads since its launch last July, the other mobile players are getting in on the act - RIM have just launched the Blackberry app store, Nokia launches their version - called Ovi - next month and Microsoft have announced some of the apps they will feature when they launch towards the end of the year.

Most of the apps that have done well are either functional (Krafts iFood recipe tool, North Face ski weather guide and LiveStrongs calorie counter) or games (including the addictive Drop7 from the smart people at AreaCode). The games sector is really interesting as we are seeing evidence that the iphone (and the similarly functioning ipod touch) are emerging as a serious gaming platforms.

But much as we love branded utility, few apps are what you might call creative - whilst we like the ipint we have yet to see this new tool used for really innovative thinking.

It looks like Nokia are excited about the opportunity to create addictive content that builds loyalty to their products. Having made a big push with music they have now partnered with Heroes creator Tim Kring to launch TEVA - something he describes as a Mobile Immersive Experience - through their app store Ovi. The concept seems vague - variously described as a cross between user generated content and a ARG, and a multiplatform interactive storytelling project.

"It's a very real-world idea," said Kring. "We are trying to invent a new genre here."

The beta version allowed people to bring up info when their phone camera was pointed at say a movie poster - maybe the trailer or directions to the nearest cinema. This combination of mobile with the real world will be a major theme  in mobile marketing - and validates the decision to buy a Nokia proprietary

"That's why we spent $8 billion on Navteq," said Anssi Vanjaki, executive VP of markets, at a roundtable discussion. "It wasn't just to provide maps or directions. Imagine 1 billion mobile phones contributing their location, and then what types of databases and services can be derived from that."

We're long on mobile - and remain convinced it will be a major marketing medium. And with the distribution inherent in the app stores making it relatively easy to get content and applications onto smart phones, we think the key mobile marketing elements will be app related. But as TEVA suggests, this doesn't has to be just about branded utility - the topic of conversation can also be about entertainment.

As brands recognise that interruption is much less effective than involvement, we believe smart marketers will look at mobile apps as a fantastic way of building a dialogue with people. And the really clever ones will use that dialogue to make their brand more important to these people – and make the people more important to their brand.