Sparksheet’s Q&A with Melody Adhami at Dx3 Canada

Its been a full 3 weeks since Dx3 Canada wrapped up and the buzz around the event still remains. Although we miss all the excitement from participating, we’ve been thrilled to see all the takeaways from Canada’s first ever digital trade show.

One such takeaway? Custom mobile solutions are serving as a channel of engagement and communication between brands and their customers.

Watch Sparksheet, an award-winning multiplatform magazine, as they question Melody Adhami president and COO of Plastic Mobile, at Dx3 on the direction and successes of mobile commerce.

Two days, 3,469 Canadian Marketers and one remarkable event. That was this year’s Dx3. On January 25 and 26, the Toronto Metro Convention Centre was filled with tonnes of engaging conversations around Canada’s digital advertising, marketing and retail landscape.

Plastic Mobile was very proud to be a participant in the inaugural forum for Canadian digital innovation.

For me, some of the highlights included, Visa’s touchless payment transaction ice cream exhibit, which not only kept my team full of delicious ice cream, but also demonstrated to attendees the future of NFCs. Visa’s Derek Colfer gave a session on the future of NFC in the Canadian mobile industry, saying that it’s still going to take awhile for things to get going. He cautioned his audience to consider that it took nearly a decade to get the credit card chip and PIN rolled out in Canada, so we shouldn’t expect to see mobile payments rolling out in 2012. Nevertheless, the Visa booth allowed visitors to practice using NFC technology to get some ice cream. Pretty awesome.

Also, Doug Stephens, President of Retail Prophet Consulting, and Candice Faktor of ShopCatch began the second day of Dx3 with an interesting keynote on the retail space. Stephens was a man of the future, looking ahead into retail 20 years from now, whereas Faktor focused on present-day retail. Both speakers concurred that mobile has shaken up the retail industry unlike anything ever before seen.

Another exciting event was the startup “pitch-off” at the Intertainment Media Incubation Zone. Five contestants were given five minutes each to pitch their plan. The winner was the Toronto-based startup, Stylsize, who showcased their very cool online retail mobile solution with its advanced apparel-fitting technology.

Two interesting mobile-related myths that were actively debunked at the show were about group buying and broadcasting apps. There was a charge to make attendees better understand that the emphasis for group buying is not about “will I make a profit?”, rather customer acquisition. And that broadcasters are missing the mark by creating apps that just copy their TV experiences without adding value and making them “Mobile friendly.”

And of course Plastic Mobile was there, bringing the mobile-retail relationship to life with our interactive candy shop, which was the talk of the Dx3 highlight list.

After such a great forum this year, we can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2013.

The inaugural Dx3 was a huge success! A pat on the back to the team that worked so hard to bring this digital forum together for the very  first time.

Also a resounding success at Dx3 was our Plastic Mobile Candy Shop, a creative exhibit illustrating the growing relationship between mobile and retail and the future of m-commerce. Our candy shop was the talk of the show (not to brag) and so much fun for our whole team – possibly because they sailed through the whole forum on a serious sugar high!

As well, a shout out to bNotions, who’s team of developers stayed corralled in a boxing ring for 48 hours until they completed a program. Whoa. That’s digital determination. We like to think our candy helped them get through the crunch, but whatever stimulants they  used to complete the job, amazing work!

Plastic Mobile’s CEO and COO, Sep Seyedi and Melody Adhami, had a great time speaking and being interviewed about their thoughts on the future of mobile and commerce and their team’s awesome booth. Plastic Mobile can’t wait for next year’s Dx3 – who knows what we’ll come up with next?!

Shame on you if you missed the first-ever Dx3, but check out this video of our slightly silly, totally interactive and undeniably adorable mobile candy buying experience.

Every Friday, Plastic Mobile brings you a video blog that answers some of the burning questions surrounding mobile, e-commerce, the future of retail and other exciting mobile topics. Watch the “Queen of Apps,” Melody Adhami, and other industry experts, squeeze their answers into “60 Mobile Seconds” (or, close enough, anyway).

What happens when you don’t go mobile? Well, you can ask Sears and K-Mart – that is if you can find a store that’s still open (was that mean?).

Sears recently announced it would be closing between 100 and 120 Sears and K-Mart stores because of abismal holiday sales numbers, and the blame fingers are pointing at e-commerce, mobile and social technology, among others.

An article in Forbes suggests that brick-and-mortar stores are becoming little more than showrooms for shoppers to see, hear, touch and smell (?) the products in real life, before they turn online to make their actual purchases. The article also states that the depleted economy is partially to blame, suggesting that recession-shocked shoppers are looking for the best steals and deals to make their buys, which can often be found online. Take for instance Amazon’s most recent app that actually encourages consumers to walk into retail stores and quickly and easily compare costs to the online giant’s low low prices. Greedy or genius, one thing is certain; Amazon saw an opportunity to use mobile commerce to its advantage, and boy did it take it.

So how can real-life retailers marry their needs with consumer needs to better battle the inherent advantages of online? One answer lies in the many benefits of mobile marketing and social media to bolster brand presence and awareness.

The fact is, the mobile space is developing at an amazing pace. And, more and more brands such as  Lexus and American Airlines are finding new and exciting ways to harness the power of mobile to increase the value of their brands through providing better service and consumer experiences.

It should come as no surprise that consumers are relying more and more on their mobile smart devices – haven’t we all seen someone nearly walk into someone else (or a lamp post, if you’re lucky) while they talk, text or play on their favourite pocket pal? In an Oracle research report published in May of 2011, the stats showed that mobile commerce is growing dramatically and that that three in 10 consumers are making mobile purchases, and close to half are researching and browsing products and services on their mobile devices. The simple conclusion: mobile is becoming a connector of all other shopping channels.

AND, the beauty of the mobile arena is that it still remains largely untapped, so the potential for innovation is boundless. With the financial resources available to large big box stores like Walmart and Best Buy, finding new and exciting ways for people to utilize their mobile smart phones could be a critical move to their future.

Had Sears better adapted to the evolving digital space, making it easier, cheaper and more convenient for shoppers to get what they wanted from retail locations, maybe they wouldn’t be looking bleakly into a similar fate to the dodo.

What do you think? Could Sears have saved itself some stores, and possibly some $, if they had innovated using e- and m-commerce?

A recent InsightExpress study suggests that mobile and print would make a great team. The company found that mobile users are also print junkies: “Based on our findings, it’s clear that brands and retailers should be incorporating mobile into their print strategies,” said Joy Liuzzo, vice president and director at InsightExpress.

Print and Mobile, sitting in a tree...

Liuzzo goes on to say that there’s more to this relationship than just a little QR coding. There are a number of ways to strengthen this bond, including article archiving or sharing and information gathering. The company specifically focused on QR codes and user engagement, finding that smartphone owners who use their mobiles for six or more daily activities were also reading or subscribing to print publications. These users are a hot target for advertisers as they have diverse tastes extending even beyond their reading mediums to any number of lifestyle routines (eating, shopping, etc.). The study found that these people were also more inclined to connect with companies via their mobile devices. “The biggest surprise to me was with the segment of smartphone owners that do six or more activities on their phone every day and their print media consumption,” said Ms. Liuzzo. “This group is both subscribing to, and reading more, print materials than any of the other groups (smartphone or regular phone owners).”

According to our friends over at Mobile Marketer, InsightExpress then delved into an investigation of this market’s varying reading behaviours and discovered that magazines came out on top in terms of user engagement. For example, tearing out articles or tracking down a product mentioned in an article or ad.

Turns out, traditional print media isn’t out of the game just yet. It just needs to get wiser and learn a thing or two from it’s new young partner. From here, who knows where this dynamic duo can go? What do you think? Are print and mobile a match made in heaven? Tweet us your comments to @plasticmobile.

A recent study conducted by Javelin Strategy & Research and PaymentOne of online and mobile buying behaviours discovered that four out of five consumers would spend more online if there was a more secure alternate method of payment. The survey suggests that online merchants are missing out on an annually, aggregated revenue of $110 billion.

Whoa. Talk about a commerce gap.

An article in cellular-news noted that the survey found that consumers believe – at a whopping ratio of four to one – that direct carrier billed mobile payments are more secure than online credit and debit card digital purchases. Phil Blank, Managing Director at Javelin Strategy & Research, said “If digital merchants simply offered consumers an alternative way to pay, such as mobile carrier based payments, 79 per cent of decisive consumers indicated they would spend more, driving significant new incremental revenue from subscriptions, transactions and purchases. 300 percent more survey respondents perceived carrier billed mobile transactions, where financial information is never shared or loaded onto the phone, to be safer than “mobile payments” requiring consumers to input credit or debit card info.”

While 95 per cent of consumers surveyed had mobile phones, only 36 per cent had used them to purchase something. We suspect that will change very shortly. A note to merchants everywhere: drop your lengthy, arduous credit card forms  (known for timing out…grrrr) in favour of a mobile carrier alternative and, well, jackpot, my friend. Jackpot.

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