7th Mass Media

And Ikea? use Augmented Reality to help sell furniture..

Yes yes yes, this is so cool and kind of 'obvious' use of AR technology. Ikea has started to use an augmented reality app to help customers view furniture in their own apartments. Very clever. Described by Mobile Commerce Daily.

Communities Dominate indeed - Giffgaff Scotland MVNO does user-generated marketing

I heard this from my friend John Blckney who is a consultant with Nokia Siemens Networks. He spotted a new MVNO in Scotland he thought I would like, and boy do I like it.. Its called Giffgaff, which literally in Scottish means "mutual giving" or something close to that. And how do they work? their idea is to take all of marketing, and 'outsource' it to the membership of the MVNO. Yes, all of it. Product design? we have seen that in Wikipedia and all sorts of crowd-sourced intitiatives from the computer operating system Linux, to SETI the search for extra-terrestrial life.. But the rest of marketing? Yeah, maybe we have seen some user-generated advertisements yes, some even used by the brands. So that is not really novel either. But all of it? Yes, pricing! User-generated pricing plans. This is brilliant. Who better know what price levels are competitive and what kind of special price plans can appeal to special segments. Customer care? Yes, the Giffgaff members are offered the chance to give some time to take customer care calls - and are of course compensated for this work. Brilliant! You are sitting in the bus for 40 minutes, nothing to do, take a couple of customer service calls on your phone, and be part of the calling centre and make some bonus money. Brilliant. Totally outsourced marketing, to your own customer base. That is communities dominate for sure. I am going to go dig for more about Giffgaff and will post a bigger piece about it at Communities Dominate blog, but first wanted to give you here at 7thMM a heads-up, to mention the company. This is quite radical. Thank you John for mentioning it, yes I love the idea!

Coco Presso Japan engagement campaign via interactive poster and vending machine

Gotta love them Japanese and what they can do with mobile advertising and marketing. My dear friend Lars Cosh-Ishii at Wireles Watch Japan reports on the hot chocolate flavored coffee drink Coco Presso, and their mobile phone engagement marketing campaign. Like Lars writes, it is a super-slick campaign.

Works like this. They have the Coco Presso available in vending machines (almost anything is sold via vending machines in Japan including beer, but thats another story). So, near the vending machine they have interactive posters. You come to the poster, it offers you a discount to the drink - and tells you that there is a Coco Presso vending machine right near to the poster. They shoot the discount coupon to your phone - that then can be redeemed at the vending machine (or any vending machine, if you are not thirsty right then) for that discounted can of Coco Presso. Brilliant. Lars shows pictures and describes his actual purchasing process at the Wireless Watch Japan site. Well worth visiting to see how good a mobile ad experience can be.

My Gamma uses member-generated translations

Quick note..

I met up with Dr KF Lai who is co-founder and CEO of Buzz City, the mobile advertising network who also run My Gamma, a mobile social network with four million users in several countries and offers typical mobile social networking innovations including gifting. The company comes out of Singapore, and we met up with Dr Kai when both of us presented at a recent strategy executive training project run by IBM for the Axiata group here in Asia. One of the issues that a mobile social network spanning multiple countries encounters, is problems with multiple languages. It can be costly to translate pages, and when non-familiar translators tackle a new industry, they may well use wrong terms in translations etc. But what of the users? My Gamma has invited their members to do translations and this has worked out very well. A great idea!

Board game Clue now with SMS alerts and clues

My very dear friend and author of the brilliant Mobile Marketing Handbook, Kim Dushinski, has blogged about a classic board game now incorporating SMS interactivity. It is the game Clue, and the gamers love the interactivity. Kim of course points out that this can also be used for engagement marketing via gaming. Great idea, read Kim's blog about it at Mobile Marketing Profits.

Victoria's Secret drives footfall with mobile in Chicago

Victoria's Secret, the lingerie store, is using a big mobile campaign in Chicago to drive visitors to its newest superstore, and also having prospective clients sign up to their newsletter and mobile website. They also have bluetooth-related proximity advertising. Dan Gacke (@DansMobile) Twittered about it with a lnk. See the campaign described at Mobile Marketer.

ITU says 4.6 B subscribers by end of year

I have several interesting items I need to mention. To start with, I have a series of blogs at CDB about the developing world and mobile, such as this article about the disabled in The Gambia. And I have another series of blogs about smartphones also at CDB. I will get back to some cool services for the 7th mass media here too, as I get a bit cleared on my urgent emails etc. But a note, a few weeks ago, the ITU came out with a prediction that by the end of the year we will hit 4.6 Billion mobile phone subscriptions on the planet. Wow, even in this economic climate, that is enormous growth. And obviously most of it is in the developing world.

Mobile vs PC based internet vs internet cafe, in South Africa

At the Picnic event last week, where I gave a keynote in Amsterdam, saw a great presentation by Vodacom of South Africa, which quoted numbers of South African internet use. The ratio of mobile users vs PC based users was about 6 to 1. The ratio of mobile users vs internet cafe users was about 5 to 1. Yeah, this figures.. mobile mobile mobile eh..

Hockey News Mobile gets 400K users, does not cannibalize print

Speaking at Toronto Mobile Media World event, heard Toronto based Polar Mobile CEO Kunal Gupta speak. One of his examples was a long-term fave of mine among print publications, The Hockey News. Mr Gupta said that after they launched the mobile version of THN, they achieved 300,000 subscribers on mobile who did not cannibalize print sales or web sales. And where almos all print titles globally see a decline in circulation numbers, THN has achieved modest growth in circulation after the launch of the mobile version. One more tidbit - Polar Mobile have released four versions of the service since its launch. You have to adapt a lot and listen to your audience if you intend to remain successful in mobile.. 

Back from summer vacation, doing presentations on 4 continents

am back from vacation and eager to go. this week been doing MoMo in Buenos Aires, RIM Blackberry Connects in Argentina and Venezuela. Doing MoMo here in Caracas on Friday. My immediate next public visibility is in Mexico City next week, keynoting the Toronto big media event the following week, then in Amsterdam the Picnic event and then have my two day workshop about Mobile, media and advertising in Hong Kong. If you come to see me and have one of my books, bring it along, am most happy to autograph it for you. Remember I do my Twitter updates as @tomiahonen