Pioneers of mobile services – who are you?

Look at the chart from Nielsen Mobile “Critical Mass” report published in July’08:

Is there anything confusing for you? Since for me quite surprising was that the biggest age group is the one 35-54. Wow, we have some new situation in marketing. Do you remember when Internet started to be popular? The biggest number of users then were teenagers, as usually when something new appears on the market. Young people are just more open minded and ready for novelties.

In case of mobile Internet the situation is upside down. The pioneers of change are the middle-age+ people – wealthy enough to buy expensive gadgets or using it as a professional tool.

We need to take it seriously, we need to stop thinking schematic. That’s a great chance to reach the group that is usually toughest to target. We need simple mechanics (older people frustrate quickly learning new things) and non-infantile approach to the TG. Fancy wallpapers or Madonna ringtones won’t encourage them to use mobile net.

Involve!

A few days ago there was a lot of publications about a ‘real’ interactive banner – campaign by Puca for Honda. Great job, fantastic experience for all the viewers.

Similar idea but in significantly bigger scale was used in Sony Bravia ‘Color Tokyo!’ campaign (by 777 Interactive). Selecting a color on your PC you could change the color of the whole Sony building in Tokyo. Imagine, you and your laptop can change Tokyo! What an excitement!

Both campaigns are successful because of one important factor – involvement. This is not enough today to give the consumer a chance to change a wallpaper on the screen, consumer wants to have a real influence on the reality. And this is what involves him/her (at the moment) the most.

SMS advertising – are we there?

Found today on MobileTechNews: Swiss Orange will introduce new model of SMS advertising. Instead of spamming the users, Orange will send advertising messages only to these clients who agree for it. The plus for client is special discount on the monthly invoice. So no more hard ‘push’ campaigns. That’s cool, however the future is still not so bright.

SMS advertising has for sure huge potential because of its reach, but also huge barrier because of its text specific. Some day I was told by some FMCG marketing director that the advertising starts when branding is there. And branding means logo for her. This approach is very harsh, but generally right. SMS is not a technology that can be used by every advertiser.

SMS is great for direct response campaigns. I.e. financial services campaigns in this channel may have great results, especially with click-to-WAP or click-to-call features.

What can we do in other branches? Can we run SMS campaign for every company? Yes we can, if we try to bypass the branding issue and start to use it more tactical (as an element of bigger campaign, as a trigger that start interaction, as a part of consumer journey). For sure we have to keep in mind SMS potential and try to find new ways of using it for the goodness of our brands :-)

More links:

http://www.amobee.com

http://www.marketwatch.com

Nokia MOSH – 1st anniversary

Mobile devices offer more and more features that may be used by their users. The problem is however that people are not educated enough to use them. This is one of the main barriers in mobile services development. One of the great ideas how to change this situation is Nokia MOSH project.

MOSH is a kind of social network that allows its users to share the mobile content they have on their hands. You can sign up and start easily searching software for your mobile phone. When you select in your profile the device you have (i.e. Nokia N95) the search will become even easier, since only compatible software will be presented (everybody who tried to find specific version of some soft for specific phone will know how useful this feature may be). Soft downloading is also very nice with two possibilities – download thru PC or request an SMS on your phone (download will start when the link in the received SMS is clicked).

Fantastic thing in MOSH is how easy you may have new content for your mobile and thus how quick and softly you become ‘an advanced user’ of mobile devices. Nokia educates MOSH users making them well educated in mobile technologies it such a nice way, they can hardly imagine something is changing. But it is, the revolution is progressing, and this crucial work is done.

All the best to MOSH and its project team (1st anniverary is coming), recruit next 500k users and keep it developing.