MOBILE EDUCATION: ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE TECH NERDS

While Plastic Mobile has known the title of this blog post to be true all along, it seems the general population is also warming to the sentiment. According to the October 28th Career Mashup survey results, the popularity of a tech career is on the rise! In fact, 47% of those who were previously unsure about a tech career are now interested. The same applies to 24% of those who were previously not interested in the tech industry. Meanwhile, CareerMash also takes credit for driving the interest of those who were already inclined towards a tech career up by 64%. Plastic Mobile attended the event to showcase our Joomo program, and we can attest that the energy was amazing and was seemingly able to lay the foundation for changing perceptions around ICT-related careers.

CCICT launched CareerMash.ca for high schoolers and influencers on September 15th of this year, with TechnoCompétences launching the complementary MaCarrieretechno.com shortly thereafter. Between the two programs, outreach in Ontario and Quebec has exceeded all expectations and the message is apparently resonating with students. Consider the following metrics:

• Students at Roy Thomson Hall event October 28: 1650 (target: 350)
• Today’s careers mash up tech with anything you imagine
• They come in 4 categories: leader (jobs have doubled in 10 years from 100,000 to 200,000), innovator, builder and problem solver
• Tech jobs are in demand (only 2.5% unemployment) and lucrative (25% pay over $85,000/year), with many opportunities for personal growth
• Young women can find fabulous and challenging careers in tech

The great news is that the CareerMash campaign now plans to live long for the next few years. Hurrah! Plastic Mobile is excited and in full support, and will be participating in this important initiative to raise Canada’s performance and competitiveness in the digital economy of the 21st century.

It seems like a no-brainer to anyone who has even studied a day of marketing in their life:  If you can directly target a specific individual at a specific time, you are light years ahead of what is currently being done in advertising with direct mailers.

Direct mailers have been around for many years and I am sure the first man (whoever he may have been) to discover the power of sending communication about a brand or a product to a person’s sacred place of residence directly didn’t realize the impact of the discovery for so many years to come.  And why wouldn’t it be great to send your brand to someones house?

Here is why:  That may have worked in those days when dad owned the house and mom owned the kitchen and mom probably received the mail.  Who receives the mail today?  Dad goes to work, mom goes to work, kids come home sometimes but they definitely don’t check the mail and if they did they would dismiss anything in the mail box because their phone would probably vibrate with a text message in their pocket at that exact moment.

So who are we sending our messages and communications to?  We don’t know, but the direct mail guys wont tell you that.  They will give you some fancy statistics about “between 25-56″ and income level of “30,000-80,000″ and you are supposed to make serious business decisions on those kind of statistics.

We are past those days and we are slowly coming to this realization.  Why would I send a direct mail piece if I can target who I send to and when they may recieve it.  I am talking about mobile marketing and communication with customers on the go.  Michael Becker, vice president of mobile strategy at iLoop stated -“Consider this – the mobile phone number is a unique, personal, identifier,” he said. “One is not simply sending a direct marketing message to someone’s house, email account or place of business when practicing direct mobile marketing. Rather, one, when employing direct mobile marketing practices, is engaging an individual directly, literally, wherever the individual may be in the world” .  iLoop, a mobile company has joined forces with direct mailer Harte-Hanks to offer their clients the advantages of communication via the mobile channel.

We (Plastic The Mobile Agency) like to say that you are solving three very important questions when you pursue mobile initiatives- The Where, The When and The Who….