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The Marketing Edge, one of the longest running marketing and public relations podcasts.
Host Albert Maruggi weaves his 25 years of marketing and PR experience across business, technology and national public affairs in interviews with newsmakers, authors and business leaders.
Maruggi is a frequent speaker and conducts workshop sessions on new media. For more information or to discuss your business challenges and goals, e-mail him.
UPDATE 3/28/10; Since production of this podcast, I’ve learned of two other web-based platforms that have iPhone and Android services they are iSites and Motherapp
Mobile is everywhere and that means should your company be there? I hesitate to say yes because I don’t think mobile is a must be for every company. I think mobile is not a platform but a condition, a relationship between information, consumer, location, and reaction to that information based on when and where it is received. Now if you view your consumer in that light and you provide information that has value in a given time and space, then by all means proceed to go, collect $200 and give Mobile Roadie a look.
Mobile Roadie is the Microsoft BizSpark Accellerator winner for Business Social Media category at the 2010 South by Southwest Interactive Festival. I wrote about them last week. I find them to be newsworthy because they cover both the iPhone and Android platforms right now the only web-based development platform to do so. Android is the current darling platform, having gained market share against the iPhone in February
The research firm Quantcast says Android phones are taking off at a much faster pace. Android’s marketshare grew 44 percent during the past quarter and almost 100 percent the past year as reported by Ed Sutherland on the blog Cult of Mac.
Some developers will say that that iPhone platform is a tough nut to crack and the problem with being a successful application on iPhone is the platform’s success. It’s a cluttered space for a developer. They are looking at the Android platform as ideal to launch a blockbuster app because it’s hungry for apps. Andrew Kameka of Androinica has 11 apps on his wish list for Android this year.
Distimo an analyst firm that covers mobile applications has iPhone and Android as the two fastest growing applications stores with Android having 57% of its apps available for free. I’ve embedded a great presentation given by Distimo co-founder Remco van den Elzen at the CTIA Wireless Conference earlier this month.
Lastly, I readily admit, I was also impressed by Mobile Roadie’s team. Last week I sent a question to support during a very busy time of the South by Southwest music festival, they got back to me within the hour and when I asked about an interview, their CEO, Michael Schneider, contacted me the next day, so that’s a pretty responsive company.
What’s your take? Will a mobile application be this decade’s answer to another website or is mobile a unique platform that makes sense for a small segment of entities?
The Marketing Edge coverage of South by Southwest was supported by Verizon Wireless in the Midwest. Verizon Wireless participates in local social media organizations and is a sponsor of Mobile March held on March 27 in Minneapolis. The day long conference is sold out, but we’ll bring you coverage on the Marketing Edge podcast.
What if… No ifs about it, you can. As a corporate communications person, PR executive or marketer, you should be chomping at the bit to have your own live news truck. Just think, off to the scene of some speech by a senior executive, a product demo, major event that your company is sponsoring and you whip out a camera, throw up your antenna and upload a live feed.
Then you tap into the social commentary stream and engage in a dialogue by putting around that live video screen, a Twitter or Facebook feed with your appropriate hash tag, you know #Imageniusforthinkingofthislivestreamandchat or something shorter. It’s here and we did it on the #SxSw road trip.
Disclosure: Verizon Wireless was a client for this project and provided the devices, WIFI, and network. This was very, very cool.
Here’s what we did at a Tweet-up organized by Lisa Qualls the guest on this Marketing Edge podcast episode. We used a HTC Droid Eris for the video stream using the Ustream Broadcaster app we downloaded from the Android Market. We connected to the Verizon Wireless network on their MiFi 2200 device. That’s me holding the camera interviewing people around the table. Photo credit for the guy taking a picture of the guy taking video goes to Rick Mahn.
Then using a platform called Twitterface.com created by Qualls’ company Fresh ID we branded the event website and placed Twitter streams for our hash tage and following mentions of @albertmaruggi and my colleague @rickmahn on our way to South by Southwest. Below is a screen shot.
As a former broadcast news reporter this is nothing short of live broadcast feed capability that fits in your pocket. When you incorporate the ability to integrate social streams as you’ll hear in this conversation with Qualls, your mind starts thinking, “that would be great for…
I attended a Tweet up last week in Wichita, KS on our way down to South by Southwest. We talked about the integration of social media in mobile devices, including downloadable applications, using the mobile web to check online e-tailer prices while at a home town merchant, or making social streams from Twitter, Facebook and other networks part of your mobile home page as the Motorola DEVOUR with MOTOBLUR. An interesting take from a couple of folks was that local merchants can monitor the web for the lowest prices online for similar products that they carry in the local store, then be active with the local community online and those merchants will be able to charge the premium while building customer and community loyalty.
Another issue the Wichita covered was about how consumers are being marketers for brands. After all that’s the attraction of social media for many big brands, have customers do with credibility what marketers have tried for years. Wichita Tweet Up Mobile Apps and SxSw
We raised the case of TGIF’s Friday’s integrated campaign to get 500,000 fans in the month of September for their number one fan/spokesperson Woody on Facebook. If you became a fan everyone would benefit with a free Jack Daniels burger. Woody quickly met his goal of 500,000 fans by mid-September, presenting a problem of what to do with the remaining two weeks, and the ad buy. After the grumbling began online they doubled Woody’s free burger allotment to 1 million.
We put the question of marketing to your network and the Woody’s example to the Wichita group and the feedback was mixed. Some bought into the idea, if they liked a product they would share it with their network, others took a case by case approach, perhaps sharing with only a portion of their fan/friend/follower base, while others shrugged it off as part of the new dynamic of social media. Give a listen to the video. Apologies for some of the side conversation going on in the background.
We met at the Donut Whole, a fantastic place with outrageous donut flavors like bacon maple and chocolate cheese cake. I’m told by one of the employees that one of the secrets is the fresh spices purchased from a local importer. The donuts are worth the trip even from Minneapolis!
Special thanks to Cindy Kelly @wichitacindy for helping organize the Tweet up. I’ll donate a food item to a St. Paul, MN food charity for every comment we get on this blog.
Coverage of the road trip and South by Southwest was supported by Verizon Wireless.
The Mobile Roadie platform cut its teeth in the entertainment industry, being the platform for Ashton Kutcher and Taylor Swift, but they were quickly approached by a wide range of customers from businesses to churches. I use this event to underscore the increasing trend of smart mobile devices and the voracious appetite for information, entertainment, and social connections on-demand. That’s all mobile is, information on-demand. This is a natural progression for a society that inhales its fast food and as no time for the morning paper.
Scott Raney, a partner at Redpoint Ventures commented about SxSw in a Wall Street Journal blog saying, “Mobile in general was a big topic of conversation. People really do believe in these platforms and that they can do a lot of interesting things with them. You’ve got pretty broad platforms and faster network speeds.”
Mobile is a Condition
As you look at whether your business or organization should include a mobile application as part of its marketing mix, consider the relationship of the information you would offer, the consumer, the location of the consumer, and what the reaction will be once that information is obtained. In the case of SxSw, mobile apps like Levi’s Fader Fort highlights the popular hang out sponsored by Levi’s during the music festival in Austin, Texas. The Levi’s Fader Fort has a popular application built by Mobile Roadie.
The Levi’s Fader Fort is the setting for big name bands and those whose names are yet to become known. Given that attendees are always on the move, the best way to connect with that audience is with a mobile application. Information that has value in that environment includes band schedules at the Levi’s Fader Fort, sample songs, interviews with band members, and the social component for others using the app to comment. Thumbs up or down for a band performance may well change the direction of a small mob within a square mile.
Raney summed it up best echoing what many digital marketers are saying, “If I’m going to do something it’ll be predominantly mobile, or if it’s a traditional online experience, from the ground up I’ll think about mobile.”
Mobile adoption by businesses, venture capital, and developers is occurring at light speeds compared to other platform transitions, radio, TV, and Web, for instance. The SxSw Interactive panels and hallway conversations point the direction of where the consumer wants to go, the mobile web and applications is the next, like right now, big thing.
Is mobile in your planning either with an application or a mobile website ?
Provident Partners donates a food item for every comment received on this blog.
Verizon Wireless sponsored the Marketing Edge coverage of South by Southwest.
This is a two part series on the Marketing Edge highlighting mobile computing from the developers’ perspective and from the marketers’ perspective. I suggest that mobile is not a platform upon which to put information, but a condition that exists between data, a person’s location, and the action that person will take as a result of obtaining that information at that specific point in space. I could get into Einstein’s who spacetime thing, but you’d know I’d be blowing smoke so let’s not go there.
An example is if you received traffic information of delays relative to your location you are likely to take action. This is a different way to consider your information as a marketer, mobile becomes a dynamic concept of information in a specific context instead of a distribution channel. I also believe it further forces marketers to rank their information based on its value to the recipient rather than the quantitative measurement of eye-ball counting to determine effectiveness.
With that foundation, let’s first talk in part one of this Marketing Edge podcast about development with Minneapolis-based mobile developer Justin Grammens and founder of Recursive Awesome. He is one of the organizers of Mobile March, a day long conference on March 27 held in Minneapolis, at the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel.
Why should anyone care about development on mobile platforms? In part because more than half of web connections will be done over a mobile device by 2013, Gartner analysts assert the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones will exceed 1.82 billion units and will be greater than the installed base for PCs thereafter.
This means mobile is a trend not a fad. So why talk on the Marketing Edge about development? Because understanding the dynamic competition among development platforms will guide marketing decisions. There is a battle raging for the platform upon which to develop applications and 2009 saw Apple overtake Windows Mobile operating system and Android burst on the scene with the power of Goggle behind it making 2010 an awesome year to be buying a smartphone. This year choice abounds and applications and network reliability will be a factor.
Lastly, mobile is a growth area for careers. Mobile development is the 2010 answer to web development in the nineties. It’s more complicated however, with more complex programming languages to understand and some developers might even say more complex rules for getting your application approved and sold.
Win a Mobile March Pass
Provident Partners will give one listener/reader a complimentary registration pass worth $20 to Mobile March, enter the drawing by sending an email to MarketingEdge AT ProvidentPartners dot Net with the words Mobile March in the subject line. Do it before March 24.
Do you view mobile as a different distribution channel or a completely different relationship between information and user?
If you are business skeptical about social media here is a new way to look at it. What if someone wants to find a new widget (you make, sell or have something to do with widgets) and this person comes to your place. When they get there, they use their smartphone, one of more than 291 million sold in the third quarter of 2009 alone.
They will use an application for the Android and iPhone among others called Foursquare. This interesting application combines the use of the location of the phone, city maps, an increasing database of business, civic, and other locations, and taps the curiosity and competitiveness of human nature.
Here are some screen shots from Foursquare and how I use it. You can see when I check into a place, Starbucks for example, it give the number of times I have told others I am there, points for checking in, and when I do that more than others over a week’s time I can become Mayor of that location. A competitive or at least context reference point compared to your friends on Foursquare and others using Foursquare in that city. Foursquare has a variety of rewards like becoming a Mayor when you have checked in to a specific place more than others in that city, or earn badges for specific types of actions. In this podcast with Tristan Walker, vp of business development for Foursquare, we discuss ways retail and non profits are driving traffic to their venue.
Using the same incentive and reward concepts as scouting badges (or promotions, perks, and discounts, for big scouts) you can drive behavior. Hmmm that health insurance provider cutting those premiums for people who have the Gym Rat badge. The concepts are proven, the integration with other elements of technology and lifestyle are not.
The ability to share a piece of information when you are close enough to do something about it, that’s the logic behind Foursquare’s Nearby Special. I check in at a restaurant across from the Target Center in Minneapolis, and I see a message from the Timberwolves with a link to the game day media report and offers for that night’s game.
Today’s I’m attending the Social Media Breakfast Des Moines where will be talking about mobile applications and how the expansion of 3G networks and beyond, is creating innovation like Foursquare. Follow #smbdm on Twitter.
It’s early, so now is the time to push innovation with this application as a business. Foursquare is looking for what people, businesses, and organizations find of value in geotagging, crowd sourcing, consumer behavior, and demand creation. Foursquare will capture a marketer’s attention in the same way Twitter captured the attention of individuals. It’s a communications platform with plenty of potential uses, many of which are yet to be tried.
Robert Scoble reported this week on Foursquare releasing their API for developers to use with other applications. Ah, here is the catalyst of innovation, once you’ve created something people find interesting, give them the wherewithal to shape it to their needs. Innovation is like cookie dough, not cookies.
Scoble suggest in this post about how developers might use a Foursquare stream of individuals as a map of a lifestyle. Scoble refers to tracing the steps of noted wine expert Gary Vaynerchuk. I think if you are in New York City you might blurt out to your friend, ” Hey I’m going to have a Jimmy Fallon weekend,” and do the same things that he does an a weekend. Yes, this is a much better, honest form of celebrity endorsement.
Southwest. We talked about the integration of social media in mobile devices, including downloadable applications, using the mobile web to check online e-tailer prices while at a home town merchant, or making social streams from Twitter, Facebook and other networks part of your mobile home page as the 
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