Plastic Mobile Teams up with TeamBuy

Plastic Mobile teams up with leading group-buying site TeamBuy to bring the power of shopping to your fingertips – literally! Plastic Mobile announced the launch of the TeamBuy app yesterday in a press release. Our award-winning mobile marketing agency and TeamBuy, a leading Canadian group-buying site, created a channel that allows smart shoppers to get great deals anywhere, at anytime, on the go.

With mobile commerce on the rise and more than 60% of mobile users shopping on their smartphones, the TeamBuy app allows savvy shoppers to get that amazing weekend getaway or a spa-cation deal without rushing to a desktop. The app uses geo-location to offer deals pertinent to the users nearby area and allows TeamBuy users to track their purchases and redeem them directly from any iPhone, iPad, iTouch or Android phone. Built directly into the app, the “Team Bucks” loyalty program ensures users keep coming back to the app for more.

Check out the video to learn more!

2011 was a big year for mobile and it seems 2012 is set to maintain the same momentum and push mobile even further. Let’s start 2012 by looking at two companies that are finding unique ways to provide added value and convenience to their customers. First we have Lexus – the luxury division of automotive giant Toyota – who has introduced myLFS, an iPhone and iPod touch application that allows Lexus customers to pay their bills online.

Building on the personal nature of mobile devices, Lexus has also found a great way for its brand to constantly stay in direct contact with its end consumers, providing them with company news and current specials. Although mobile payments are still some time from mass adoption, and there have been studies showing consumers are mainly hesitant due to security reasons, this hasn’t deterred Lexus. Instead, they have paid attention to consumer needs and tackled the problem head on by enhancing security measures incorporated in the app, and promising their customers that their personal information will be safe and sound.

Next, we have American Airlines. This organization is utilizing the mobile platform in their new ad campaign to allow consumers book and change flights. The ads run on TV Guide’s mobile app, and upon clicking the ad the consumer is redirected to a mobile landing page where they can enter their account credentials in order to book flights, change dates, check in or simply view their mobile boarding pass. With traditional media advertising costs so high, and the financial turmoil most airlines face these days, mobile advertising can be a great economical way to reach consumers, especially since more and more consumers are using their mobiles and their primary means of going online.

Both these companies have found different ways to harness the power of mobile and strive toward essentially the same goal. By providing their consumers with great service they are incubating brand affinity and increasing loyalty, allowing them to get closer to their customer’s true lifetime value.

Spending money on lavish items is fine, if you have the money. However, there is a limit to everything, and we say a $50,000 featurephone has definitely exceeded that limit! Pricey luxury items should at least try and justify why they are pricier – unfortunately, the Gresso Grand Premier does no such thing. Yes, there is about 150 grams of gold and 138.5 carats of sapphire crystals in each handset, but if that is what you are looking for, why not just buy some serious jewellery?

What really gets to me is the fact that this bedazzled phone isn’t even SMART (meaning, it’s not of the smartphone variety)! In a time where everything is moving towards mobile – from the way we communicate to the way we shop or entertain ourselves – Gresso has the audacity to design a phone with an ancient S40 UI and charge $50,000 for it! Who is exactly the target market here? We ask you.

Maybe it’s just me, but even if I had the cash, I would rather buy an iPhone and use the rest of the money to purchase a YAMAHA Disklavier Piano, a beautiful Arkiane Kephren fireplace and a 16 year old bottle of Lagavulin scotch. That way I could stare at my stunning fireplace and sip on my scotch while I ask SIRI to play me some Wagner on my Disklavier Piano.

Today was a big day at Plastic. The Marketing Intern brought in homemade chocolate chips cookies so we were all on a major sugar high for the launch of “ETF Central,” our latest app that was created in partnership with Claymore Investments, a subsidiary of Guggenheim Funds Services Group, Inc.

Because a part of our mandate is to pioneer innovative products and solutions that allow the financial industry to expand into the mobile space, we wanted to be sure that ETF (Exchange-traded Funds) Central met all of the user needs, in an engaging and easy-to-use format.

So, employing both tech and creative wizardry (our magical formula for super apps) we created a sophisticated tool that sets the bar for excellence in the financial space. Voila! ETF Central. A new, free, customized, dual-purpose mobile app available on BlackBerry, PlayBook, iPhone and iPad.

ETF Central satisfies both the need to better educate users unfamiliar with the relatively new exchange-traded funds, as well as allows them to manage their ETF investments easily and conveniently. The app puts all Canadian-listed ETFs into the user’s palm, allowing them to view market prices of all TSX listed ETFs, create and track their ETF portfolio, view ETF educational resources, link to all online brokerages to trade ETFs, track upcoming ETF events and more. Ultimately, it’s a pretty outstanding financial gadget.

The leading force behind the app creation, and our very own “Queen of Apps,” Melody Adhami was excited to launch ETF Central as ETFs represent a sizable industry, but public awareness about them has been limited. She and our team here at Plastic Mobile set out to create a tool that would both educate and manage ETFs for the average user/investor. To read the full media release, click here.

In the news:

Advisor

Investment Executive News

CNW News

Digital Journal

This week, the Internet marketing research giant and data specialist, comScore, released its MobiLens service data, revealing key trends in the Canadian smartphone industry. As of September 2011, eight million Canadians owned smartphones – a figure representing 40% of the total mobile market in Canada. The highly anticipated data reveals that the Canadian smartphone adoption rates are increasing aggressively; with a seven per cent increase in just the past six months! One surprising fact to come out of the comScore data was that RIM still leads the pack with a 35.8% market share, albeit, followed closely by Apple’s 30.1%. Also, although Google’s Android is sitting in the number three spot with only 25%, it is important to note that Android has doubled its market share during the last six months; corresponding fluidly with the global surge in Android device purchases within the past few months. (FYI: Android gobbled up more than half of all global smartphones sales in Q3 alone!) The dying fossil Symbian is ranked at the fourth spot, with 4.2%, followed by the new kid on the block, Microsoft (at 3.2%).

In terms of content use, it seems Canadians are using the phones to consume a very wide and diverse range of content and information, and of course to no surprise, the smartphone users are outdoing the feature-phone users in every form and aspect of mobile content consumption, as shown in the chart below.  With such a fast pace of smartphone adoption and such diverse and broad range of smartphone use, the Canadian market is shaping to be the perfect place for businesses to embrace mobile technology and provide the added comfort and value that the Canadian consumers are soon going to automatically expect.  Instead of waiting for mobile access to become a mainstream consumer service before you invest the necessary resources, which you will inevitably have to do, we suggest hopping on the mobile train in its relative infancy, and taking advantage of its current indie and avant-garde profile to garner some serious respect and up your street cred, or as we say in the marketing world “gain some competitive advantage by becoming and early adopter.”  For being so forward thinking.

In the News

Just some of the people who think we’re pretty cool (thank you!).

Bloomberg

Market Wire

Yahoo! Finance

Canadian Business Opportunities

Euro Investor

The buzz continued to circulate over the weekend about RIM’s future in the mobile space. Research In Motion Inc. is currently meeting with a stock price that values the company at less than the by and large regard of its assets. After myriad product delays and an international three-day service outage, RIM’s stock price has fallen more than 68% this year and was trading this morning at about $18.61 per share.

However, two weeks back an article in the Los Angeles Times suggested that, although the faster iPhones and Android devices have been raking in market share from Research in Motion’s once-addictive and adroitly nick-named “CrackBerry,” analysts and executives are not ready to count the smartphone out just yet.

Further commentary over the weekend seemed to imply the that upcoming BBX operating logic, which will run on a new line of RIM’s BlackBerry tablets and smartphones, might just be the company’s salvation, bringing a third contendor back into the current two-man race.

BBX Photo Leaked on The Verge

As reported today, “People reckon it’s a melting ice cube,” Leon Cooperman told  Bloomberg. ”We reckon the new operating logic is going to surprise people.” BBX, which is set to launch early next year, will enable apps built for Google’s Android operating logic to run on BlackBerry devices. The new line of BBX phones will also focus more on touchscreens and less on physical keyboards, which have been a hardware trademark of BlackBerry phones. Those fairly lacklustre items aside, we still know very little about the BBX. But that isn’t deterring Leon Cooperman, RIM investor and hedge-fund manager slash founder of Omega Advisors Inc., which bought a sizeable stake of about $28 million in RIM last quarter.

According to the Dow Jones Newswires, he also recently reported a purchase of 1.43 million shares in RIM in a regulatory filing, betting that the BlackBerry-maker’s new devices are attracting customers. “We bought (the shares) because we think (the stock) is undervalued, and we will be proven right or wrong in a few weeks when they report results,” Cooperman is quoted as saying in an article in businessmobilebriefing.com.

While we at Plastic Mobile love a tale of the underdog rising to acclaim, we’re not convinced we’d bet our beer money on the new BBX operating system.

Tweet us @plasticmobile with your verdict – will Cooperman and RIM be high on a much-needed success, or will they live to eat their BlackBerries?

This week, Royal LePage launched an innovative new mobile website, created by Plastic Mobile, which promises to change the way that users engage in real estate.

Using advanced HTML 5 solutions, Plastic Mobile employed GPS technology to access real estate location-based services and identify nearby properties. With a Canada-wide, cross-platform property search, users can simply and conveniently find available properties for sale in their neighbourhood of choice. This full-service, full-profile mobile website enhances the user interactivity, taking the house-hunting experience to a ground breaking new level.

Using their mobile devices, users can now locate nearby Royal LePage offices, as well as neighbourhood interests and amenities including schools, banks, grocery stores, restaurants and cafes. Essentially, Plastic Mobile’s website solution allows users to find everything that is relevant to making a purchase or sale decision as they stroll through the neighbourhood.

Prospective purchasers can then share, forward, bookmark and even add notes to the listing right on the spot. In addition, the mobile website features helpful resources such as Walk Score or Yelp, to provide a neighbourhood’s walkability score, user ratings and reviews.

This new mobile website makes it possible for Royal LePage to meet the users demands for time-sensitive information and conveniences from service providers, making them a leader in the industry, and bringing real estate as a whole to the forefront of the mobile space.

Visit http://www.royallepage.ca/en/mobile/index.aspx to take a look at some of the mobile website’s highlights and features.

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.