Mobile Marketing

From innovation in the posters to mobile marketing

There is plenty of innovation in the advertisement world. Not only a 73% increase of the French market of in 2005 but as well innovation of the classical on-street advertisement.

JCDecaux, one of the worldwide leaders in advertisement, is always trying new ideas to catch the attention of people. They installed a real dress inside the billboard.
See http://gregorypouy.blogs.com/marketing/2006/02/les_abribus_vol.html (fr)

When will the next step or full  mobile advertising become true? The mobile phone allows a good interaction with the user, it is a widespread device, easy to use.

There are already a few trials of live poster communicating with mobile phones. I visited the accinity booth at 3GSM Barcelona. This German company offers an interesting solution based on bluetooth or infrared communication. It is good to validate the concept but it is too complicated for the end user. He has to set up a wireless infrared or bluetooth link to the poster. Moreover, this is a breach in security and it could eventually open the door to viruses transmitted over this link.

Clearly, the future lies in pure contactless applications. No need to configure the handset, it is enough to simply  place the phone close to the poster (less than 10 cm) and that's it!
See the success of felica in Japan or the Navigo trial done by Bouygues, RATP in Paris.

In summary, the keys for the deployment of mobile marketing are:
- Easy to use –- no complex handset configuration
- Non intrusive - the action must be– triggered by the customer
- Cheap - the –use of RFID tags is preferrable to bluetooth modem
- Interactivity from the handset & the network - propose to download ringtones, wallpaper, to send SMS or to connect to special web site.

1 billion

1 billion songs have been legally downloaded from the iTunes Music Store and apple is organising a lottery to celebrate this success. 
The lucky music fan who downloaded the billionth song from the iTunes Music Store ­ won a new 20-inch iMac, 10 60GB iPods, and a $10,000 iTunes Music Card to jumpstart their digital music collection.

What a tremendous success! Who would have expected this 3 years ago? Who believed that people would pay to download songs that they can get for free on P2P networks?
Just another time apple was visionaire!

And the way apple communicates today and celebrates this billion is just another great lesson of marketing and communication. Much better than a press release!

I'm mentioning this news in my  blog because the mobile music is really one of the key applications. More and more apple is becoming an actor of the mobile world. They registered the brand "Mobile me!" last January. There is already an itunes client on some Motorola phones.

These major Internet players Apple, Yahoo, Google, MSN, e-bay, skype are now coming into the mobile com business very quickly. The traditional mobile operators need to be reactive and innovative if they want to survive. A very exciting and challenging future indeed!

Google exaggerates or big brother is watching you!

Crazy news... In the new version of the its google desktop 3.0, Google uploads your full hard disk on their server! You can imagine all privacy problems. Truly unbelievable!!!

A few years ago, while I found google watch, I thought that they were exaggerating and that they were paranoid. I realize now that they were right!!

In their trend to take over the control of your personal data, Google are going too far...

Extract from the general terms and conditions.
If you choose to enable Search Across Computers, Google will securely transmit copies of your indexed files to Google Desktop servers, in order to provide the feature. Google treats the contents of your indexed files as personal information, in accordance with the Google Privacy Policy.


source (fr) http://www.atelier.fr/article.php?artid=31586&catid=14
Another interested post on the topic: http://ymalakha.blogspot.com/2006/02/google-and-end-of-privacy.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-6041338.html
http://fr.techcrunch.com/2006/02/09/google-desktop-30-la-fin-de-la-protection-des-donnees/ (fr)

Connecting the next billion or the Logan mobile phone by Motorola

Today there are 2 billion mobile phone users.
One challenge of our industry is to connect the next billion users.

I really like the communication done by Motorola on the connecting the next billion in emerging markets.

Like Renault with the Logan, Motorola have designed a specific model for emerging markets.

Their messages are:

• we have analysed the needs and created a specific product, not just a cut-down version of the more expensive phones sold into developed countries.
• we created robust handsets, with good battery life
• no compromise on quality and the Motorola name
• features adapted to the user needs (e.g. radio and sharedphone)

This is exactly similar to the Renault approach with Logan - very challenging for engineers to design a cheap car, large enough for a family with a real trunk.

Back from Barcelona

I'd like to inaugurate this blog with my feedback after the 3GSM in Barcelona.
It was such a great fair that it gave the idea of creating this blog. I 'd like to share what I saw with others!

There were a lot of visitors and exponents, a lot of big and small companies coming from all around the world. This was much more interesting than Cannes in my opinion.

The major trend was obviously the convergence:

• in the handsets between GSM and WIFI through the UMA - handsets presented by LG and Nokia
• on the network side (HSDPA).

I was impressed by the number of Asian companies and visitors: not only the usual players like LG, Samsung but as well manufacturers such as Huawei or ZTE had a very big booth.

Regarding handsets, I liked especially:

• LG funny feature of video caller ID on Wibro (Korean Wimax). You take a picture just before calling and this picture is displayed instead of the caller ID.
• Ericsson M600 for business users promises to be a hit after the success of the walkman W800.
• Panasonic contactless application. How to buy a coke with your mobile!