Plastic Mobile Has Breakfast with Deloitte’s Duncan Stewart

…as well as about 750 other execs, media personnel and tech enthusiasts, but, whatever.

At 7:30 this morning, this odd pastiche of professionals piled into the SONY Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto, ON, to hear Duncan Stewart, Director of Technology, Media and Telecommunications, entertain and educate about Deloitt’e annual #TMTPredictions.

The tech arm of the professional services giant put together some very interesting facts and advice on what’s in store for our evolving industry in 2012. Among the most interesting prophecies were:

• continued growth of the ever-surprising TV
• the advent of data caps in many leading countries (i.e. the death of unlimited ISP deals. Le sigh.)
• the metamorphosis of our smartphones and tablets to “little PVRs”; and
• the immediate future of NFCs (hint: it’s not what you think).

One mobile prediction that really stood out was the hypothesis that the purchase of tablets would continue to increase, but that it would be less by new buyers and more concentrated by a secondary tablet in the home – apparently we’re not very good at sharing with our families.

Likewise, while the creation of apps continues to surge, Duncan Stewart pointed out that a great number of them are not unique - meaning that, while a number of new apps are being developed, so are existing apps being expanded to cover other operating systems. So, an app that was made last year for iOS, may this year be added to the Android and Microsoft markets.

According to Duncan Stewart, developing a mandate (like we have here at Plastic, not to brag, but we’re just saying) to develop cross-platform apps as often as possible, or as often as makes sense for our partners, will be crucial to increasing efficiencies in the future, and staying competitive in the mobile game.

Mobile has been under the thumb of skeptics ever since it arrived on the scene. It’s been a long time coming, but we think Mobile Marketing is finally being taking seriously. Consider these top three examples that support our hypothesis:

1. Brands bringing mobile in house – According to an article in Mobile Marketer, Walmart and e-bay, are following in Amazon’s footsteps and bringing their mobile markting development and management in house. This major move indicates they are ready to take the mobile space seriously: “These acquisitions are a welcome validation that competent mobile executions are critical to a healthy marketing program, and that expertise is in short supply,” said Brennan Hayden, vice president of WDA, East Lansing, MI.

While other big-name brands, like Lexus, who are outsourcing to agencies are still doing it right, these stores are being super-savvy in preventing their competitors from using the same tools. This bodes well for the future of mobile, but has the potential to be bad for business. Thankfully, we know that our quality work validates itself.

2. Brands that aren’t, are going down – Those big names that are not taking steps to incorporate mobile into their marketing plans seem to be feeling the effects of their negligence. For instance, we recently blogged about how e- and m-commerce were partially to blame for the demise of a number of Sears and K-Mart stores after grimm holiday figures.

Furthermore, in 2008, Kate Spade New York was a strugglin,’ but, when Craig Leavitt came on board as CEO, he woke up a sleeping giant and changed its outlook on online marketing. The result? Kate Spade is now one of the strongest brands supporting m- and e-commerce.

3. Facebook hearts mobile – The social networking behemoth was one of the first companies to jump on board the mobile train. They continue to bolster their mobile platform at ever chance they get, and are careful to always listen to their users. Thus, Facebook recently announced a new Comments Box plugin for mobile websites – a feature in high demand by business owners and website proprietors. The new plugin will make it simpler for websites to engage consumers regardless of where they are. Essentially, if the Book is doing it, you probably should be too.

There are countless other examples of how Mobile Marketing has finally grabbed everyone’s attention, but the bottom line is, if you’re not going mobile, you really should be. What do you think? Is it mobile’s time to shine?

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.

Last night my colleague and I are driving back from a digital marketing event when I spoted an enormous QR code covering half of a billboard on top of a building and I wonder….

On one hand it’s absolutely thrilling to see quick response codes becoming so readily adopted by mainstream marketers after having been locked up for decades in Toyota’s warehouses in Japan. It’s encouraging for us mobile marketing pioneers to encounter supporters of our cause as we pave the way for marketing managers to embrace the mobile space.

On the other hand I wonder who comes up with the idea of spending loads of money on developing a campaign, and buying the ad space only to put that QR code on top of a building where it can only be scanned by Inspector Gadget. I don’t just wonder, I mean I actually want to call the advertiser and ask ‘why?’, ‘what were you thinking?’ or ‘were you thinking? Or did you leave that up to the genius that decided that your marketing budget should be allocated to QR codes on billboards?’.

I don’t want to go on complaining about how QR codes are mis-integrated into marketing campaigns. Rather I think that the obvious evidence of the abuse and misuse of them can prompt everyone to just take a little step back to basics. Assuming-dangerous waters- that you (advertiser) understand what a ‘Quick Response’ code is and you’re not just compelled to use it because you think it looks cool:

First, review your objectives. Ask yourself why you want to use QR codes. Is it to engage customers? Is it to investigate consumer behavior? Are you driving customers to a specific action?

Second, explore the possibilities. Ask yourself how you’d like to implement them. Are you providing value-add info? Is there a survey or questionnaire involved? Are you giving incentives to take action?

Thirdly, know your customers. Who are you targeting? What do they need from you in order to respond appropriately. Consumers today are quite intelligent but even the intelligent need some explanation as to why there’s a strange looking square shaped black and white illustration on your print ad. Marketing basically boils down to communication and unless your target market learns the QR code language and can decipher the meaning and purpose by just looking at it, you aren’t communicating anything.

The news everyone has been waiting for has finally come out today: Nokia, the biggest handset maker in the world, both for “dumbphones” and “smartphones” announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft using its Windows Phone platform.

Based on Nokia and Microsoft’s latest deal, Windows phone will be the primary operating system for Nokia’s smartphones. This news shook up the mobile world, especially Intel that has just been thrown under the bus. The Nokia/ Intel strategic partnership a while back to create the MeeGo platform for smartphones was Intel’s effort to partner with the handset maker, but with Nokia dating Microsoft right now, it seems that Intel was just stood up!

Stephen Elop and Steve Ballmer announced the news on Nokia’s blog in a post. Below is the detail from the blog:

»  Nokia will adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone strategy, innovating on top of the platform in areas such as imaging, where Nokia is a market leader.

»  Nokia will help drive and define the future of Windows Phone. Nokia will contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support, and help bring Windows Phone to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies.

»  Nokia and Microsoft will closely collaborate on development, joint marketing initiatives and a shared development roadmap to align on the future evolution of mobile products.

»  Bing will power Nokia’s search services across Nokia devices and services, giving customers access to Bing’s next generation search capabilities. Microsoft adCenter will provide search advertising services on Nokia’s line of devices and services.

»  Nokia Maps will be a core part of Microsoft’s mapping services. For example, Maps would be integrated with Microsoft’s Bing search engine and adCenter advertising platform to form a unique local search and advertising experience.

»  Nokia’s extensive operator billing agreements will make it easier for consumers to purchase Nokia Windows Phone services in countries where credit-card use is low.

»  Microsoft development tools will be used to create applications to run on Nokia Windows Phones, allowing developers to easily leverage the ecosystem’s global reach.

»  Microsoft will continue to invest in the development of Windows Phone and cloud services so customers can do more with their phone, across their work and personal lives.

»  Nokia’s content and application store will be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace for a more compelling consumer experience.

Here is the video where Stephen Elop announces Microsoft partnership. Nokia & Microsoft partnership

Elop and Ballmer didn’t give any more details of the partnership so we don’t know what’s going to happen to Microsoft’s other partnerships for devices, such as HTC, Dell, and Samsung; or what’s going to happen to Symbian and MeeGo. We don’t know the answers to our questions yet, but we know one thing for a fact. As all the eyes are on the Nokia right now, if the company doesn’t get it right, this could send the company into freefall. We believe for Nokia, this is going to be tough; so let’s await the future and see!

Great ad and we’re all guilty of it.

Undoubtedly, the mobile space is drastically changing and particularly as a result of the changes that are occurring in the smartphone category.   With the release of the Apple iPhone and the growth of BlackBerry handsets, people are starting to browse more on their mobiles and data plans have shifted in Canada to allow for this.  Mobile company’s like us (Plastic The Mobile Agency) are really excited about this shift and see all the great possibilities that exist to expand and grow the mobile industry.  More and more we hear our competitors, clients  and industry experts speak about browser capabilities, applications and new technologies that are taking advantage of these better devices.

The technology and the possibilities excite our curiosities and stir our imagination but we also also have to consider the analytics.   How many people can be targeted?  What is the reach?  What is the engagement level? What is the ROI and what is the per user acquisition cost?  Unfortunately, we are at a time with little access to mobile analytics and looking at handset usage and penetration rates paints a gloomy story.  There are still millions of people who don’t use their phones to browse and even more people without smartphones so how can you really get maximum reach?  For this reason I still believe in the power of SMS and campaigns oriented around text-messaging.  In fact, SMS is superior to other modes of communication such as email or direct mail. There are many benefits to SMS campaigns and these can be used by brands to communicate with their audiences:

SMS allows you to:

• Reach a greater number of people as an overwhelming majority of mobile handsets are SMS enabled (95%+)
• Allows for better use of marketing spend. SMS is as very cost effective way to reach users and is far cheaper than traditional print advertising
• have effective campaigns since SMS campaigns are estimated to be 10x more effective than print advertising
• Track and evaluate your interaction with users whereas print advertising does not allow for responses.
• to targeted towards 13-35 age range.  It is estimated that about 1742 SMS messages are sent per month in the (13-17 age group) and 790 sent in the (17-24 age group). The third highest usage is  331 messages per month for the  (25-35 age group) according to Nielsen.

With a greater reach,  more user interaction, better response rates by your audience, better tracking and more cost effective, it sometimes blows our minds why some companies are not taking advantage of this great mode of communication.

Plastic Mobile Agency located in Toronto Ontario helps our clients evaluate their mobile needs and understand their targets.  We provide mobile strategies that are suited for our clients and suggest to them with the most effective use of their marketing budet.