mobile matters

edible apple has published and extensive piece on how the iphone is being used by artists like coldplay and lady gaga, movie studios such as warner brothers and paramount pictures, and comedian dane cook to market their work.

there are both well conceived and pathetic examples of the use of a mobile application to promote a new album, a movie or a concert tour. i won’t steal edible apple’s thunder in recapping here. i simply found the article to be well researched and informative enough to share.

of most importance is a quote from the article, by paul smernicki, head of snow patrol label, that i will “retweet” here as it is important for entertainers, agents, distributors and marketers to realize the full potential of a device like the iphone and develop accordingly. put out crap…suffer the consequences. so, a word to the wise… research thoroughly, design well, validate look & feel… then develop.

there’s a lot that we can learn from non-music applications. there are some really clever things going on with stuff like gps. you could follow bands on tour, map their tour around the world, and make live video or audio from gigs available. you might have interaction from the artist too, creating video diaries and reviewing the shows. there’s potential to create something that has a real function.

click here for the rest of the story…

spike at brains on fire writes in a brief but important post today…

quit thinking like a marketer. seriously. it’s runing you. well, at least sometimes it is. because when we bring marketing into a relationship, we damage it. as we’ve said before (and we’ll say again), nobody wants to be marketed to.

so i think it’s really, really important to remember to take off our marketing hats and just be a person thinking about how to relate to other people in a honest, open, transparent way.

i’m not going to comment much as spike says it so well in this quote above, and explains further in his post. i will just make the case, specifically, for relevant, conversational marketing. whether the mediums utilized are direct mail, tv, radio, print, online sem, mobile or social, the critical aspect to effective marketing today in building brand loyalty is engaging your prospects. i hate to even call them that… i don’t even like the term ‘audience’ as that’s so one-sided.

remember that what the individuals think and have to say, good or bad, on the other end of the ‘marketing conversation’ is just as important as what you have to say. if you’re going to drive more business, you need to know what people like and don’t like about your company, organization, product, service, event, etc. coincidentally, minutes after reading spike’s post, a saw a question on twitter from @unmarketer asking “which company makes u feel great/special that you’re a customer?” to which i replied in part, “…sadly, i cant think of any that do….”

anyway, i’ll stop chatting and let spike say the rest, please read his post. then, i’d love to know what you think.

there…the keynote for apple’s wwdc ‘09 has finally come and gone. i think a lot of apple mac and iphone fans were about to wet their pants in pent-up anticipation for confirmation of rumored enhancements to both platforms…phew!

while the realities of what is coming for the new iphone 3g[s] fell short of some expectations (no new colors, no zoom, no camera flash, and no front-facing camera), it does have a lot of cool new features that will continue its innovative lead over most other mobile devices.

what’s really wild though are the numerous new features that every iphone and ipod touch (with some limitations on the touches) will be instantly enhanced with as their owners update to the new 3.0 operating system available next wednesday.

the apportunities are enormous! gargantuan even! am i hyping it up too much? not a chance! three of the enhancements are most disrupting to a number of markets… good for apple, developers and consumers – very bad for competitors.

1. accessory communications — through both wired and wireless means using bluetooth, the iphone and bluetooth-enabled ipod touches will be able to communicate with virtually any electronic device. sensors, vending machines, cash registers, home appliances, industrial machinery, toys and much more can be controlled by, configured with, or provide status info to apple’s family of mobile devices. if there’s over fifty thousand apps now just to control two devices, multiply that by all the tv’s, hvac systems, servers, hospital equipment, microwaves, car washes, vending machines, parking meters, toll booths, self-check-out lanes and more that exist. how does fifty million apps sound?
2. in-app purchasing — the ability to buy digital content, such as e-magazines, game expansion packs, and live video feeds of sporting events from within an app will accomplish three goals: a) give consumers access to more content that previously was unavailable as no commerce system existed to appropriately compensate content producers/owners, b) provide incentive and financial resources to content creators to…well…keep on creating, and c) fatten apple’s wallet giving them greater ability to accelerate hardware and software development to make even better products available to us consumers. but, the real golden nugget is the ability to now also buy non-digital content… you know, real world stuff. take the first point, accessory communications, and combine it with in-app purchasing… imagine the result. i’ll just leave it at this… for many years, visa, verisign and other companies have tried perfecting for widespread adoption the ability to pay for items using a cell phone and near field communications — i think apple just figured out how to do it…right.
3. peer-to-peer communications — mesh computing at its finest will be possible with os 3.0. every iphone and bluetooth-enabled ipod touch will be able to communicate with each other to allow for multiplayer games, data sharing and group collaboration never before possible and without the presence of either a cell connection or wi-fi network.

there are many more great enhancements coming next wednesday, including innovative cut/copy/paste, three types of app activity/status notifications, and google maps integration in any app. the literally hundreds of new features will greatly propel apple’s devices light years ahead of the competition.

but, there is a downside… oh it is going to be so much more difficult for developers to get their apps noticed, to differentiate from the noise. it’s also going to mean that users are going to be expecting more and with greater quality. excellent app design, testing, marketing and revising will be crucial to take advantage of the apportunities.

dave friedman, president of razorfish america, penned a brief, but informative article on challenges of and solutions for blending digital and traditional media.

of particular note are the following two statements by dave…

“…consumers are receiving messages through numerous media touch-points but research models aren’t accounting for this, and are only giving conversion credit to one medium.”

“…old methods of research do not take into account is consumer influence. that is, how consumers are affecting each other — and through what channels. to fix this issue, it is important that modelers take into account a person’s “social graph” as part of the model of measurement in order to be relevant in today’s more social society. a social graph represents a person’s social network — those whom they influence, and those who they are influenced by (ranging from personal contacts to product reviewers online).”

building off this foundation of thought set by dave, i’ll add two of my own statements…

1. conversational marketing is key to capturing the consumer influence factors dave mentions. marketers need to act like the friends of their audience do in actually asking questions such as what, who, why, how, when, where of the consumer’s buying decisions. we often tell our family, friends and coworkers about products and services we are considering buying or have bought. as individuals we tend to inquire where an acquaintance may have bought a particular item that we see them using and why. only two-way engagement with an audience will make this insight possible.
2. mobile communications is really the only device or communication type that integrates into both digital and physical realms providing for an opportunity to present and receive information to and from an individual. the type of mobile exchanges to use depends on the audience, frequency of engagement, detail of information to present or receive and more.

i think both dave and i would agree that marketing as a start and stop campaign strategy may be appropriate for certain promotions, but is no longer a good approach for really generating strong sales and loyalty. instead, an entire conversational path must be identified for different types of consumers and appropriate touch points designed and implemented for maximum effectiveness.

enjoy dave’s article in its entirety here: http://chiefmarketer.com/advertising/digital/0519-digital-media-traditional-media/