Some advice to Agency and Brand Owners - The evolution of mobile marketing

You're going to need a platform, not just an cute application.
A longer term vision of what you want to achieve, a strategy that is integrated with CRM, sales objectives, meaningful marketing initiatives that drive value into your business.
Too often we see digital marketing agencies and brands come to us asking if we can make a cute game so their customers can play while there's a background message going on.
Often they will have developed this idea to where it reaches POS. Several of them will even have designed decals and have an idea of what to do in phase 2 after they have enjoyed rich success with their phase 1 app.
Problem is, most likely, unless the game idea is fantastically exciting, no one is going to play it twice (you'll get one timers, some people will try anything), but not many will GET it. this kind of play is usually the work of a ad agency, devoid of a genuine strategy, who is trying to "sell" their customer a newspaper campaign (and the app is just a by product).
Both the Agency and client would be much better served with a genuine mobile platform upon which to achieve their goals.
We recently spoke with a health care brand. their agency sold them a re-packaged beer brand campaign using augmented reality in a cute idea. The cute idea made the beer brand a lot of press. it was a cute idea. the health care brand bought it. It wasn't new, it wasn't relevant and it didn't get any press. But they did spend 250k on newspaper advertising and 50k on the "use once only game/app".
For 300k the health care brand could have built a long term customer engagement platform from which it would generate revenues, build customer loyalty, provide a platform of engagement from which to interact, learn and service its customers. What is more outrageous, is that the Ad agency would also make more money than it did from its creatives and media booking fee!
Digital pathways are fast emerging and the Cellcity platforms to reach out are in place for Agencies and Brands alike. But we are seeing a lot of roadkill along the way.

A quick check on the journey

I remember an encounter in 2002 like it was yesterday.

Mobile apps (or rather the platform to host them) i was told was the future. i had heard this mobile related "future" for some time.

but the thing that caught my attention was the number of games and apps this guy had on his phone. It was 2002. He was Korean. I was in Singapore. The iPhone was not yet conceived. what he showed me was barely understood, but not that different from a Microsoft, Bill Gates presentation vision of the future i had seen in 1995.

Now i didn't really understand what the hell was going on in his mobile phone, there was tv and cartoons and korean language messed up in what looked like something my dog coughed up, but he was pretty damn excited.

he also showed me some intel from KTF (Korea Telecom), that showed some pretty dynamic numbers on the increase of apps and games dev on mobile. so from a busines perspective he really got me thinking.

he also had one statement in his ppt that really caught my attention. I still love it. It was that if telcos dont change their attitude they'd become "just bit pipes" (nothing but data transfer lanes).

So fast forward. seems like the rest of the world started catching up. Asia first and then the not so wild west. at first it was just SMS (still is in some respects), then Nokia lurched forward to encourage developers but failed to adapt the hardware... other vendors started going smart phone oriented, governments started thinking, yahoo, google, MS started thinking, but they were all too slow. And then the iPhone happened, and the west started to have influence again.

Telcos started becoming bit pipes... some are getting smarter, but most are too slow.

Nokia should have been the pioneers in apps, but the Nokia bosses wouldn't listen to consumer demand. soon the best mobile phones in the world (they still make a better mobile telephone than Apple), would be marginalized by a slick application and game platform. it was too easy.

Apple's marketing and packaging expertise made Nokia and everyone else look like the kid at school with a booger hanging out of his nose! still do. look at the crap packaging Nokia puts its phones in. designed by some prat from nowhere. The iphone might be designed in China... but they are just improvising from a polished Steve Jobs led review of what is great.

In 2002, i started planning a strategy on mobile. it was always a platform oriented strategy. making apps was always connected to a platform.

In 2006 i met a young guy who was interested in alternative ideas. in tech and in mobile. together we built Cellcity (with the support of a whole bunch of great people along the way).

today we are one of the few companies to offer not only apps on iPhone but all platforms in our xPlatform strategy, upon which we offer our mobile coupon platform, ad serving platform, m-commerce platform and a host of services from consultation through to marketing and hosting.

i didn't see all that in 2002 (in specifics of what we would develop). the original platform was to enable Telco companies to deliver mobile apps. we did that. then we created a digital rights management platform to enable music companies to deliver music in the digital age (but music companies have still not switched on to digital sales and marketing), and then we started developing platforms as above to deliver whatever you want, any industry, any app anywhere.

flashback. the Koreans said ... we improvised. now we have.

YP Companies need to change their strategies and maybe their management

Many of the digital services are already available. Many YP companies own a sales relationship with tens of thousands of advertisers. These advertisers range from large brands to Mom and Pop corner shops. But who would not pay if you bring business to their door.

Take a look at some of the innovative mobile products Cellcity offers to the YP industry. Cellcity CheckOut, an instant way to provide YP companies with the capability to offer their merchant customers with their own instantly customizable mobile m-commerce store, iBid, a solution to enable the service industries (plumbers, electricians, removalist, home appliance mechanics, gardeners etc) to bid on job requests from a consumer, click to call, click to SMS, mobile advertising etc.

But how many YP companies are investing in new sales streams? Meaningfully investing? Very few. Not too many are really taking a good look in the mirror. They prefer to play the margin game on books and web.

Books will probably still work in many small towns across the world where 3.5G communication is not prevalent. Perhaps this suits many small communities in the US. It's not suitable in larger cities and certainly not in Europe or Asia.

Fact is YP companies own the historical relationship with companies who have been placing their money with YP for years. It's up to the YP companies to introduce the new sales vehicles. To start thinking like Google and offering Google-esque services in bundled packages the up-sells the engagement of what mobile (and other networked digital services) can provide.

So how do we take control of YP management/sales teams to get them to sell these products? we have customers in Asia, Europe, Brazil and Israel and there is movement and demand. But in the US... nada. At YP conferences we hear talk but see little action.

I imagine it is very difficult for non-digital aware C level management to navigate a digital and mobile future from a leadership position. But it shouldn't be.

Mobile platforms offer YP businesses a lifeline to the future. The cell phone is offering a whole host of new products that the consumer and the merchants are embracing today. And if the pace of mobile internet and mobile application adoption is rising so rapidly, why are these YP businesses being so slow in adopting solutions?

Cellcity can deliver a YP organization a mobile solution for iPhone within just weeks. A fully customized solution with 2 months, and a standard template-based local search offering within days. But it requires management to make a decision.

Groupon is an example of what you can do with coupons but by no means the only way of doing it. Customer engagement can take many forms utilizing mobile platforms from SMS and click to call to initiating mobile marketing activities to cross selling databases of consumers based on preferences and locations to advertising, coupons, m-commerce offerings etc.

Basic local search should and will be free. Google, Yahoo, Bing and businesses like FourSquare etc are basing their future businesses on giving this free search away for free. YP businesses need to embrace this concept and then add value by bringing the merchant and customer together and monetizing this. And as expressed above, there are many ways they can do this today and many more ways they will be able to do this in the future.

What I find really surprising is that adding these mobile products and services, these mobile marketing products and advertising solutions enable YP companies to extend their current business models. Yet going mobile is treated with such caution by the YP community. The Equity community should not be touching a businesses that doesn't have a robust mobile strategy.

YP Industry in Digital Denial

The YP industry worldwide seems to be in a state of digital denial. Only a few of the more insightful management teams have seen the light.

While the digital web still offers business opportunities, mobile digital strategies are savior of the industry. The entire YP industry runs in fear of Google, yet what it should be doing is embracing it and some of its strategies.

Google should be seen as an additional avenue through which YP can offer its services to its customers (as it can also do with Facebook and other online portals search portals).

Coupon-ing is a natural fit for YP companies going forward. It does not have to be Groupon, many companies such as Cellcity have mobile coupon technology that can help YP companies. But any such strategy should be part of a greater m-commerce and customer-merchant engagement strategy that YP can profit from by leading the engagement.

YP companies own an historical relationship with the merchant, it has the sales team and personal contact points to make this happen.

YP companies have to re-think their sales strategy to embrace a rampant mobile world that offers new possibilities the consumer world is already ready for. It is up to business to create the solutions to serve the consumer.

We've been banging the mobile drum for the past 2 years for YP companies to prepare and what we've seen (a complete lack of real commitment) from many of the biggest names in the YP industry should make YP business leaders cringe with embarrassment.

Getting an ROI from Mobile Apps - You'll need xPlatform, xDigital OS and an xMarketing Strategy

For much of the past decade using a cell phone as a corporate sales and marketing platform has been nothing more than potential. That's all changed in a heart beat and if you don't have a strategy today you are already guilty of burning money and wasting opportunity for your company and your shareholders.

Many smaller entrepreneurial companies such as Cellcity have been banging the drum about the potential of mobile as part of a unified digital landscape but few would listen. In a presentation in 2008, we even had one distinguished multimedia leader tell us "mobile was dead" - good call!

But we kept banging the drum. Phone vendors kept producing better and better hardware and software and we kept making better and better applications and the consumer's appetite grew and grew.

Initially led by Nokia and Blackberry, the real leap forward started with the advent of the iPhone and then exploded with competition from a host of other hardware vendors.

But the real change is coming from the application developers such as Cellcity who are evolving to help bring true digital solutions to the mobile with out disregarding the importance of the many other elements required to make a mobile strategy a success. We have several customers who initially were mobile focused but have increasingly become holistically digital focused as they see the potential grow.

There are many starting points a company can make. An iPhone, a Blackberry, a Nokia strategy. It'a all good, depending on the market you are in. But to reach all of your customers, its imperative that your solution can be available cross any platform.

Cellcity xPlatform, capability enables companies to do just that. To reach 100% of your potential customers who use a mobile phone. But it's not an easy thing to achieve.

And xPlatform it's not a WAP solution, the world won't be ready for a pervasive WAP until 4G is available worldwide. That's still 12 to 24 months off. WAP or browser based apps wont load pages fast enough using 3 or 3.5G to satisfy the user and while it is tempting to try, we are yet to see an example of success. That doesn't mean WAP should not be part of the xPlatform strategy. It should and must.

However, true xPlatform means creating an App that is portable to any other mobile platform, where maintenance is easily managed across all platforms. Without a long term maintenance capability, xPlatform would be too expensive to maintain.

The next component to be considering is a total digital strategy. When we speak about an xDigital Platform we are speaking about uniting a strategy across web, WAP, App, and for those with the capability across TV and other digital ready internet accessible devices. The growing access to a host of digital hardware platforms means Apps can now be accessed from a wider number of devices than ever before.

Imagine placing an order for a pizza on your TV using a remote control and then adding to the order via the same app resident on your phone as you walk to your car and then receive a welcome message on a TV screen at Pizza Hut that has detected your location as you walk into the restaurant. What's more, because the system knows your history it offers you relevant up-sell promotions by sending a coupon code to your phone. The integration capability is a reality today, the only thing missing is the go-to-market strategy.

To get there, companies are going to have to ask whether they want to participate by developing their own capability or rely on the platform of others.

All of the major mobile vendors are preparing platforms, service providers such as Google and Yahoo are preparing platforms, Telcos are preparing platforms, but few have the vision to bring all elements together.

The final missing component is in marketing and advertising. Ad agencies are have been dreadfully slow in adopting digital strategies. Appalling at advising their customers to go digital (because of the wide held belief in the ad industry it threatens their revenues from TV and newspapers). Nothing could be further from the truth.

Marketing is as important as the making of the app itself. whether mobile only or xDigital, marketing to the consumer is crucial. A strategy to get your mobile app to #1 in the market should be part of your initial plan and should be 80% spent on below the line strategies where you can reach out and interact with your target customers and spread virally with a shared strategy across media devices.

Thank you.
Dannie Francis
CEO Cellcity Ltd

Thanks Nokia

really appreciated the free app, thanks !!

if anyone is interested, Nokia is converting blogs to apps and putting them on the OVI store.

great way to get an instant app. not that i expect anyone will be searching dannie+francis to look for my app on the OVI store (except my Mum).

but not a bad marketing initiative from the folks at Nokia. is this a sign there are new smart initiatives on the horizon?

you could also find me on www.cellcitycorp.com

cheers

dannie

BB BBM

I'm excited about it, i just have to get everyone using a BB to be REALLY excited about it. we have to take down the borders. no more proprietary anything. Let the Mexicans in, take down the wall, open your doors.
no need for me to write, i just read pretzel logic. check this out http://www.pretzellogic.org/blog/2010/05/31/rims-bbm-the-iphones-achilles-heel/

Mobility Unlimited

Many mobile developers are discovering that going to market with junk apps is fast and can even be rewarding on platforms such as iTunes and the newly opened OVI store. But junk is still junk and eventually, these stores will start to behave like valued stores do in the real world and the junk will be thrown out, or at least put in the back of the store where it belongs.

Another curious thing we have discovered recently, is that open sourced capabilities to go cross platform are emerging. There's some very interesting developments going on, but true cross-platform implementations for single applications are the capability of very few. You want cross platform, speak to me.

And many people are speaking to us. If corporations or publishers are going to appeal to the entire market, they must be available to the entire market. So an iTunes-only strategy wont do you much good unless you are appealing to only 30% of the smartphone market. If you want to get to 95% of the mobile user market, you will need to be widget-based, Symbian (Nokia) capable, Windows Mobile-ready, Android-, Blackberry-, Java-, WAP-ready. So who can do that? Speak to me.

We're not ready to share our secret sauce as a developer, but we are ready to deliver cross market solutions to publishers, or ad agencies or corporate consumer brands that want to take advantage of the mobile revolution. When cellcity started, we created Mobility Unlimited. We stand by it today.

Who's your (mobile) Daddy

well i guess the OVI store was an interesting marketing act. all i can say is that heads should roll. for something so important to be this badly managed from a tech viewpoint is really beyond comprehension. heads should roll. just ghastly.

i, we love NOKIA. but they have to admit they can't market their way out of a wet paper bag. Hand it over mates, you need the Brits and Americans to take control.... or in ad agency speak... (you need the smart asses from Australia).

Take a look at what you could do.

speak directly to 40% of the world's population
send a message directly to 40% of the world's population
receive a message directly to 40% of the world's population

damn... am i the only one who sees the opportunity.

i think not.

iTunes is great but flawed. YOU have the opportunity to beat the bank. take it. or hand it over. Gate's used to say stuff like.... "if you didn't make the sale you stole it from me". ... because he had the best thing to sell.

NOKIA, you have the best thing to sell. MAKE OVI GREAT !!!!!

The Future of Mobile Marketing is Now

Widgets or small applications that reside on your phone either dormant of running silently in the background are going to cause a revolution in mobile marketing.

Again this week i had the displeasure of reading the latest from the Mobile Marketing experts speak about what can and cannot be done. So i am definitelt NOT going to the forum in New York in June.

Open your teeny weeny ego blinded eyes mobile marketing gurus.

To help make the leap forward....Think what you could do if everyone in the world owned an iPhone. A phone where there we no data charge limits. In a world where the carriers were starting to think about dramatic reductions in data charges and roaming charges in exhange for selling services and applications. Where using the mobile Internet is an everyman experience.

Now make think what happens when NOKIA starts making phones as good as or better than the iPhone (and all the other bit players come in too). But especially NOKIA. Now we are literally taking "everyman". This is what is before us. This is now. we are months away from a situation where the smartphone market is so substantial as to cross the border from corporate to consumer.

Now what can you do and how can you interact and make money from mobile marketing. the landscape is as vast as imagination itself.