Blyk were invited to speak at the recent MobileSQUARED Permission-Based Marketing event, with just under 150 people from across Europe, US and the Middle East in attendance.

It was an event where virtually every presentation delivered a key message and provided deep insight into what is a burgeoning opportunity.

Blyk were there to talk about the power of delivering exceptional content and our belief in great media programming having the power to shift the dial from permission to full customer engagement.

At the event MobileSQUARED showed a documentary featuring many of the speakers from the day and their thoughts on the key developments for permission based marketing. Have a look!

Location Based Services, Proximity Marketing, Geo-Fencing – location marketing on mobile has many guises that may mean different things to different people – regardless it’s getting a lot of headlines at the moment, and rightly so. Identifying customers within a geographical area and pinging them an offer or coupon can be a very effective way of targeting potential customers.

Location based marketing is going to be big news, there’s no doubt, and I look forward to the launch of this service on Bright Stuff in the coming months. However, as with many shiny new products that hit the market there seems to be a rush to invest in location based marketing when location on it’s own may not meet the marketing requirement.

The same can be said when apps first hit the market, the world and his wife had to have an app whether it was actually useful for their business or not.

Let me give you an example, one close to my heart: if you want to sell a car do you think that targeting your potential customers as they walk past your showroom is the best vehicle, forgive the pun, for your advertising spend?

Is buying a new car really going to be influenced on an impulse triggered by your proximity to a showroom? Unlikely.

If you’re raising awareness of a new model of car hitting the market . . .

Continue reading » Location Based Marketing Should Be More Than Just Where You Are]]>

Location Based Services, Proximity Marketing, Geo-Fencing – location marketing on mobile has many guises that may mean different things to different people – regardless it’s getting a lot of headlines at the moment, and rightly so. Identifying customers within a geographical area and pinging them an offer or coupon can be a very effective way of targeting potential customers.

Location based marketing is going to be big news, there’s no doubt, and I look forward to the launch of this service on Bright Stuff in the coming months. However, as with many shiny new products that hit the market there seems to be a rush to invest in location based marketing when location on it’s own may not meet the marketing requirement.

The same can be said when apps first hit the market, the world and his wife had to have an app whether it was actually useful for their business or not.

Let me give you an example, one close to my heart: if you want to sell a car do you think that targeting your potential customers as they walk past your showroom is the best vehicle, forgive the pun, for your advertising spend?

Is buying a new car really going to be influenced on an impulse triggered by your proximity to a showroom? Unlikely.

If you’re raising awareness of a new model of car hitting the market or trying to encourage people to take a test-drive then targeting potential customers by a cross-match of residential postcode and showroom locations will likely be more relevant than real-time geo-fencing showroom locations.  But in either case, unless you’re using other profile information then you’re ultimately wasting budget.

The thought of knowing someone’s physical location is appealing to some advertisers but this targeting methodology falls short in understanding the real context of an individual’s needs.

If marketing messages are based solely on where someone is at a particular time, advertisers sacrifice the true relevancy that the mobile medium can deliver.

So, we need to evolve location-based advertising to go beyond the notion of where someone is standing or what showroom they maybe be walking past.

Understanding the context around someone’s location opens up a new door for mobile advertising – you can target an ad based not only on where someone is, but also who they are and what they are interested in.

This ability to target the right messages, to the right customer at the right time and place enables advertisers to leverage the carrier’s network in a way that adds real value to a customer’s everyday life.

Cheetan Sharma in his excellent piece The Operators vs. the Media Brands: said: “To be successful in the long term operators should focus on the unique elements that only they can provide, such as location, presence, user profile and device information”

It is this intelligent use of network elements and targeting that will increase the value exchange between the consumer and service provider and will therefore ultimately drive higher engagement levels for the advertising community.

In conclusion, location is a powerful tool in delivering awareness in your marketing plan but it becomes what Sir Martin Sorrell calls the Holy Grail if you can add context and profile to where your customer might be at any given time.

In my last post I wrote about the developments that we all see coming in mobile technology and I argue, with myself mostly, that these developments will jumpstart mobile ad spend and the long awaited revolution in mobile advertising.

Let’s have a look at one aspect of this revolution in a bit more detail – mobile payments. Now, retailers, as well as consumers, stand to benefit from the mobile payment revolution.

Through fast, contactless transactions, retailers can greatly increase footfall into their stores. The speed of mobile payments is substantially faster than messing about with your small change or chip and PIN systems, therefore mobile payments have the potential to reduce queues, improve the customer experience and allow more purchases to be made in a shorter space of time, lunch hours for example.

Furthermore, since tickets and coupons can be sent directly to NFC handsets via mobile messaging, retailers will need to spend less time and money printing and posting tickets to customers, which is also much more environmentally friendly – tick!

The effect of mobile payment technology on consumers will also be revolutionary. The technology will allow transactions to become faster, easier and more straightforward to monitor.

Transactions are secure because a PIN can be embedded into the handset in the same way as many consumers are already doing within many apps.

Consumers will also be able to . . .

Continue reading » The Mobile Wallet]]>

In my last post I wrote about the developments that we all see coming in mobile technology and I argue, with myself mostly, that these developments will jumpstart mobile ad spend and the long awaited revolution in mobile advertising.

Let’s have a look at one aspect of this revolution in a bit more detail – mobile payments. Now, retailers, as well as consumers, stand to benefit from the mobile payment revolution.

Through fast, contactless transactions, retailers can greatly increase footfall into their stores. The speed of mobile payments is substantially faster than messing about with your small change or chip and PIN systems, therefore mobile payments have the potential to reduce queues, improve the customer experience and allow more purchases to be made in a shorter space of time, lunch hours for example.

Furthermore, since tickets and coupons can be sent directly to NFC handsets via mobile messaging, retailers will need to spend less time and money printing and posting tickets to customers, which is also much more environmentally friendly – tick!

The effect of mobile payment technology on consumers will also be revolutionary. The technology will allow transactions to become faster, easier and more straightforward to monitor.

Transactions are secure because a PIN can be embedded into the handset in the same way as many consumers are already doing within many apps.

Consumers will also be able to store coupons, vouchers and store or operator loyalty schemes in one place, their handset.

The implementation of mobile payments across the UK requires banks to extend contactless infrastructure to support NFC.

Companies such as Eagle Eye Solutions and I-Movo will also need to get their products integrated into many the big retailers. The recent announcement that Sir Terry Leahy had invested in Eagle Eye Solutions and joined their board is a real statement of intent in this space – the ex CEO of Tesco would seem to know his way around the retail space!

In addition, consumers will demand a choice of handsets that support NFC transactions. Orange have recently started selling the NFC enabled Samsung Tocco, and other vendors are starting to make significant investments in the technology. Juniper Research predict that 25% of all smartphones will be NFC enabled by 2014.

Of course Google have spotted the opportunity here and they have launched their operator agnostic Google Wallet that NMA’s Ronan Shields describes as leading a gold rush in mobile marketing.

Completely independent of this I’m sure Everything Everywhere, O2 and Vodafone have also just announced a Joint Venture to create a standardised platform and coherent measurement system for mobile contactless payment that will roll everything I have just described into a one stop shop for advertisers and agencies.

Tom Alexander, ex-CEO of Everything Everywhere, commented: “This ground-breaking new business will unlock the true potential of commerce in the wire-free world.”

Examples of big business getting behind mobile money are endless it seems but one more for fun – PayPal president Scott Thompson in a June 29 post on the company’s blog “We believe that by 2015 digital currency will be accepted everywhere in the U.S. – from your local corner store to Walmart. We will no longer need to carry a wallet”.

The company is so sure about its no-cash prediction, it is asking five of its San Francisco Bay area employees to “use only digital currencies to pay for all their purchases” in a pseudo-competition (read viral marketing stunt) that will be announced on July 11. Perhaps something for the good people at Blyk HQ to consider in Q4 this year – one for our Monday morning company meeting I think.

The next decade will see mobile payments become an everyday reality. Today you pay for things by cash or on your credit card. Tomorrow, you’ll use your mobile to buy the things you want, whether that’s on the high street or the internet.

Aggro Santos is a 22-year old Brazilian-born English rapper, who recently shot into the fame with his debut single “Candy”, featuring vocals from ex-Pussycat Dolls member Kimberly Wyatt. The Coca-Cola company, on the other hand, is the world’s largest soft drinks’ company with over 500 brands, notably Coca-Cola. What could they possibly have in common?

As a recording artist Aggros is in the business of selling music, concerts and other experiences related to his persona.

Joe Tripodi, the Chief Marketing and Commercial Office of the Coca-Cola company recently blogged in the Harvard Business Review about the company’s shift in media measurement from impressions to expressions. To Coca-Cola, an expression means “any level of engagement with our brand content by a consumer or constituent”. As ordinary consumers can now generate more content than marketeers ever could, Joe suggests to support the “wave of expression” with brand content that touches consumers’ passion points, like music.

In my view, both Aggro Santos and the Coca-Cola company are therefore brand owners who engage consumers and sell their products through content. “Content” is no longer the exclusive domain of the so-called content industry. Today, rich multimedia content plays a great role in awareness creation, service or product discovery and driving sales for a range of brands, including Coke.

In mobile, the possibilities for delivering rich multimedia content are largely driven by the handsets. Across Asia, most phones in the consumers’ . . .

Continue reading » The similarity between rapper Aggro Santos and the Coca-Cola company]]>

Aggro Santos is a 22-year old Brazilian-born English rapper, who recently shot into the fame with his debut single “Candy”, featuring vocals from ex-Pussycat Dolls member Kimberly Wyatt. The Coca-Cola company, on the other hand, is the world’s largest soft drinks’ company with over 500 brands, notably Coca-Cola. What could they possibly have in common?

As a recording artist Aggros is in the business of selling music, concerts and other experiences related to his persona.

Joe Tripodi, the Chief Marketing and Commercial Office of the Coca-Cola company recently blogged in the Harvard Business Review about the company’s shift in media measurement from impressions to expressions. To Coca-Cola, an expression means “any level of engagement with our brand content by a consumer or constituent”. As ordinary consumers can now generate more content than marketeers ever could, Joe suggests to support the “wave of expression” with brand content that touches consumers’ passion points, like music.

In my view, both Aggro Santos and the Coca-Cola company are therefore brand owners who engage consumers and sell their products through content. “Content” is no longer the exclusive domain of the so-called content industry. Today, rich multimedia content plays a great role in awareness creation, service or product discovery and driving sales for a range of brands, including Coke.

In mobile, the possibilities for delivering rich multimedia content are largely driven by the handsets. Across Asia, most phones in the consumers’ hands are still feature phones of some sort, the ruling elite has the latest high end-gadgets, and then there is a strongly growing segment of smartish mid-end phones. Because of this device fragmentation, marketeers need to look for efficient solutions across the different mobile platforms.

Of course it’s quite trendy to build an ‘app’, but then due to handset limitations ‘apps’ are not available for the majority of mobile consumers in Asia. Further ‘apps’ must first get downloaded and then you need to continuously motivate the consumer to use it. As we all know, app discovery and maintaining usage remain a challenge.

Mobile browsing is a further alternative but despite its far superior performance to digital display advertising, many brands are yet looking for much more effective methods for engaging consumers. In recent years we have therefore seen the rise of permission based marketing programs that deliver content directly into mobile consumers’ phones through SMS, MMS and video MMS.

Both Coca-Cola and Aggro Santos are using Blyk’s permission based mobile marketing channels to successfully do so. To see how we at Blyk did it, please refer to the following Prezi.

The lesson we have learned from Coke is that strong, relevant brand content can engage the audiences, and as a brand owner you don’t necessarily need to be a recording artist à la Aggro Santos to use this strategy. But if you are Aggro Santos, then by all means go ahead as well.

Secondly, it is possible to deliver rich media content via SMS and MMS — even with video – to nearly all phones, provided that consumer’s permission and preferences are respected.

Furthermore, we at Blyk recommend to embed the branded content into broader editorial programs, like Blyk on Aircel in India. The media & content programs provide touchpoints for topics that consumers are passionate about and make it easy for brands to engage their target audiences. So whether you are a saint or a sinner, why not give it a try?

***

See Susanna’s interview at the CommunicAsia on June 22nd, 2011 in Singapore.

Susanna Hasenoehrl is responsible for Blyk’s expansion and business development in the Asia-Pacific region. Covering this highly versatile geography, she’s is focusing on mobile solutions for brands that work on most people’s phones. Read more about Susanna at Blyk.com

Back in the days you’d either be online by your computer or out there. Now you’re online even when you’re out there. That changes things, massively.

In the old days it would take some time before a nightclub could become reasonably successful, because it would take weeks before clubbers would have told enough friends about it. Or then if the bar got lucky, there was enough press coverage to make it locally reknown.

Today you just publish on Facebook with or without Foursquare that you are in Bar Llamas and that it’s great, and within an hour all your friends ‘out there’ surfing online with their phones know about it and might even join you.

Location sharing is at the edge of becoming a big thing. Strategy Analytics estimates in their recent report that location based services will be a business opportunity worth $10 billion by 2016. Foursquare says they have 10 million users with 3 million check ins daily (information from April 2011).

For location sharing to be a significant success will depend on three factors:

Currently sharing is quite easy if you have a GPS phone. It might even get easier if you could . . .

Continue reading » Leaving a digital trace?]]>

Back in the days you’d either be online by your computer or out there. Now you’re online even when you’re out there. That changes things, massively.

In the old days it would take some time before a nightclub could become reasonably successful, because it would take weeks before clubbers would have told enough friends about it. Or then if the bar got lucky, there was enough press coverage to make it locally reknown.

Today you just publish on Facebook with or without Foursquare that you are in Bar Llamas and that it’s great, and within an hour all your friends ‘out there’ surfing online with their phones know about it and might even join you.

Location sharing is at the edge of becoming a big thing. Strategy Analytics estimates in their recent report that location based services will be a business opportunity worth $10 billion by 2016. Foursquare says they have 10 million users with 3 million check ins daily (information from April 2011).

For location sharing to be a significant success will depend on three factors:

1. ease - how convenient ‘location sharing’ and ‘check in’ actually is
2. personal control - how easy it is to control privacy
3. benefit – the outcome of sharing and receiving other’s location info.

Currently sharing is quite easy if you have a GPS phone. It might even get easier if you could just touch a mark with the phone in the location using NFC technology. One improvement would be to take advantage of the operator cell id to determine location – would make it easier for phones that don’t have inbuilt GPS and would not drain the battery.

Privacy control is a difficult area. Folks at Foursquare have gone through significant effort in trying to make it transparent. But privacy does get a bit complicated, when the point is to share in the first place. So currently there is quite open sharing as default, and if the user wants more privacy, that’s possible. However, as default is open sharing, a potential user might be turned away when (s)he sees that searching by name in Foursquare generates a list of regularly visited places, a photo, and all tips that user has written.

The benefit of sharing is that one of your friends might be nearby and you have the opportunity to say hello. Or you receive discounts in the nearby businesses. And you tell your friends about you in return for reading their personal posts (or am I the only one who feels I am cheating when not publishing but only reading friends posts?). You can also read what others have said about the location, what’s the best item on their menu etc. That’s all great. And if more people start using it, then it becomes even more interesting.

We at Blyk have been trialling with what you can do with the public non-private information that Foursquare is capturing and sharing for developers. We automatically create lists of where to go at 7 PM on a Friday night or 9 PM on Saturday night in the city you live based on check in statistics. And share that real time via SMS, when the user wants to know it.

I think that’s cool – when I did that for Helsinki I got to know what is trending right now, information interesting for an ex-city dweller current family suburban. That’s great mobile media content – relevant, at the right time. Just how we like it.

***
Veera Siivonen is responsible for Blyk’s media and user experience. Veera joined Blyk in 2007 from Nokia, where she was phones portfolio manager for Europe and prior to that, manager of marketing investment optimization in global mobile phones business. Read more about Veera at Blyk.com

Some of the discussion on this panel session centred around which channels mobile ad dollars would start to move from. There’s no doubt that more spend is required in mobile and soon. Mobile will no doubt become what Tomi Ahonen calls the 7th mass media but not all brands and agencies are freeing up large sums of cash to support this growing market. It’s growing fast, but I for one am looking forward to getting past the ‘tipping point’.

There are more mobile devices in the world than people right now, to be precise 6.920 billion connections versus 6.915 billion people (or something like that!). So, make no mistake, mobile is going to be a significant player in the media mix. Advertiser dollars will always, without exception, follow eyeballs and we are talking about a hell of a lot of eyeballs here!

Perhaps the answer here lies in advertiser ROI. At Blyk we already know that investment in messaging is investment in clear, personal and accountable engagement. However, I am becoming more and more convinced that developments in mobile coupons, NFC and mobile payments will be the catalyst that fires a significant shift on mobile ad spend.

Once these developments kick start bigger investment the benefits and case studies will then prompt mobile . . .

Continue reading » Bridging the gap between mobile eyeballs and mobile ad spend]]> An interesting challenge presented itself to me at the excellent Media Playground 2011 event recently where Blyk were a sponsor and member of the mobile advertising expert panel in the afternoon.

Some of the discussion on this panel session centred around which channels mobile ad dollars would start to move from. There’s no doubt that more spend is required in mobile and soon. Mobile will no doubt become what Tomi Ahonen calls the 7th mass media but not all brands and agencies are freeing up large sums of cash to support this growing market. It’s growing fast, but I for one am looking forward to getting past the ‘tipping point’.

There are more mobile devices in the world than people right now, to be precise 6.920 billion connections versus 6.915 billion people (or something like that!). So, make no mistake, mobile is going to be a significant player in the media mix. Advertiser dollars will always, without exception, follow eyeballs and we are talking about a hell of a lot of eyeballs here!

Perhaps the answer here lies in advertiser ROI. At Blyk we already know that investment in messaging is investment in clear, personal and accountable engagement. However, I am becoming more and more convinced that developments in mobile coupons, NFC and mobile payments will be the catalyst that fires a significant shift on mobile ad spend.

Once these developments kick start bigger investment the benefits and case studies will then prompt mobile messaging in all it’s formats to form a central part of buyers and planners thinking rather than, in some cases, being an after thought.

Layer on top of this the huge amounts of data that can be used to enhance the consumer experience and show complete tracking and accountability to the advertising community and this is simply too compelling to ignore.

Comscore have recently released a whitepaper that adds the to the already compelling case for moving the dial on mobile advertising spend. Here are some of the highlights:

• Over 13 million consumers accessed retail content on their mobile phone in a given month; 2.2 million accessed some sort of retail content almost every day.
• Consumers rely on their mobile devices to guide them through every step of the purchase process, from determining if they need a product (52% of respondents), to making a purchase (38%), to evaluating a product post-purchase (12%). Advertisers can capitalise upon this behaviour to reach consumers on mobile, regardless of where they are in the purchase funnel.
• 21% of survey respondents made a purchase using their mobile phone in the last month

Juniper have also produced the statistics below from a recent research piece that shows how they see mobile commerce growing in the next 18 months:

What we are talking about here is creating the market place on the mobile phone. Once we prove, and prove we will, that the mobile phone is set to become the ultimate advertising channel the size of the market will take off, and fast.

There’s a great piece by Peggy Anne Salz from Mobile Groove just out on the “State of Mobile Advertising” by Jumptap (released March 2011). The survey aggregated responses from nearly 350 mobile advertising executives including brands, agencies, publishers, and technology enablers. Among the findings are the following:

• Mobile takes a bigger slice of the pie: For those with near-term mobile marketing plans, 60% intend to draw their mobile budgets from their current online budgets. An additional 20% said that mobile will be an entirely new line item.
• Opportunities in mobile CRM: Advertisers were evenly split between direct response and branding campaigns with 51% citing awareness/loyalty and 49% citing customer acquisition and retention.
• New verticals emerge: Entertainment is the category that publishers expect to generate the most mobile ad revenue in 2011, followed by technology and automotive.

So, there’s certainly evidence that momentum is building. Developments in what mobile can offer might be what kicks the snowball down the hill.

Profile a customer through preference, send that customer a coupon via a media channel like Blyk, allow that customer to redeem that coupon in store and then go on to make a purchase using the recently released Barclaycard mobile wallet via an NFC device like the new Samsung Tocco. Then, report every single transaction back to the agency or brand – you get the idea!

In my opinion these developments will start a revolution in the way brands reach out to their consumers and in the way consumers will buy on the high street. Viva la revolution!

***

Alex Franks leads Blyk’s UK business and the strategic partnership with Orange. Alex joined Blyk in July 2007 to help launch and manage the MVNO business in the UK. He has over 10 years’ experience in digital and traditional media before Blyk. Read more about Alex at Blyk.com.

Fast track to 2011 and today we live in a global community. Everything is global – movies, music, media, and meltdowns all come from that place we call ‘global’. To support this we look to other markets for lessons on KPI performances, case studies and and best practice to import to our own business. Equally we all communicate in global speak.

Last year I was lucky enough to spend some time in the globally mighty United States of America as a guest, come missionary, of a UKTI organised trade trip. (Check them out at http://www.ukti.gov.uk) The purpose was to connect some of the best small and innovative digital interactive UK companies with our best, albeit much larger, counterparts on the West Coast. The fact that over 100 companies applied for the 16 coveted places and Blyk was selected makes me enormously proud of what we have achieved and confident that our proposition will . . .

Continue reading » Thinking Global, Acting Local]]> When I started out on my career path in the world of marketing & media we were still listening, watching and reading local media. Local businesses were the kings of consumer engagement and local advertisers underpinned many balance sheets. We lived in a big old world but local issues dominated consumer attention. The ongoing and enduring appeal of the BBC’s Eastenders should tell you this is right. How else could such a miserable TV program remain the nations favourite for so long.

Fast track to 2011 and today we live in a global community. Everything is global – movies, music, media, and meltdowns all come from that place we call ‘global’. To support this we look to other markets for lessons on KPI performances, case studies and and best practice to import to our own business. Equally we all communicate in global speak.

Last year I was lucky enough to spend some time in the globally mighty United States of America as a guest, come missionary, of a UKTI organised trade trip. (Check them out at http://www.ukti.gov.uk) The purpose was to connect some of the best small and innovative digital interactive UK companies with our best, albeit much larger, counterparts on the West Coast. The fact that over 100 companies applied for the 16 coveted places and Blyk was selected makes me enormously proud of what we have achieved and confident that our proposition will be a winner on the global (!) media stage.

We were in San Francisco, California. A State that houses the rising and global gargantuan media houses of Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter. Actually we were in the ‘Valley’ as I now know to call it where there is a reported $140bn of investment liquidity held by some 12 companies all eying the global market for smart people, smart ideas or smart solutions. Of course my new best friend Apple sits on nearly half of this ‘honey pot’ and it was interesting that pretty much everybody I met carried Mac over PC. Toys of choice are iPhones, iPads, Powerbooks. Everywhere. The amount of venture money available means ideas can really get tested with funding. No need for Dragons Den out there, just park your Mac in a coffee shop, check into Foursquare and chances are someone will approach you promising riches in return for at least 3 years of your life.

We met with the aforementioned Facebook and Twitter. These 2 businesses must take line honours in securing the most media column inches across the world. Both play on a global stage, and are successful in engaging the largest brands either as advertisers, friends or tweeters.

Equally we met with Yelp. This is a terrific business with some innovative opportunities for regional and local advertisers. If you haven’t come across them get a quick fix here.

And then it struck me that they all have stuff in common – all these globally rich, expanding businesses are building locally relevant features and making their money from local businesses in the long tail and not the globally strong brands that feature prominently in events like The World Cup or The Olympics.

As businesses we want to know what is going on in other markets. And yet as consumers we still want to know what is going on around us. Yelp, Foursquare, Groupon all play to this consumer need. We want information, opportunity and financial savings on our doorstep, rather than a ‘carbon unfriendly’ flight away. Indeed witness the most recent rumours about Groupon and Foursquare potentially playing the dating game for more evidence that these businesses do have something special.

I wonder what is driving this shift back to local – certainly rapid development of technology is ‘enabling’ a better and indeed faster consumer journey. But then, ultimately I believe consumers need to equally drive a change in business models rather than the other way around. Our own data tells us that ‘where I live’ is an easy to capture profile point and allows us to serve a multitude of locally relevant content and advertising. ‘Where I live’ will merge into ‘Where I am’ at some point soon and further opportunities arise from any number of bricks and mortar businesses.

If so – we in the exciting mobile industry are well placed to win the hearts, minds and marketing dollars of brands as they too seek to find a local fit with consumers. For a great example take a look at a wizzy business in the aforementioned valley – Placecast who are betting their silicon funds on ‘local relevancy’ sticking around for a while. Having met these guys I for one would place a few dollars on then succeeding in this new local world.

If you are reading this and care please feel free to pen me your own thoughts.

***

Christopher Bennett is responsible for Blyk’s media and business development. He has 20 years of commercial media experience with both traditional and digital media companies. Read more about Chris at Blyk.com.

Now, I have nothing against scepticism, I have been known to have my own moments of scepticism in my time that’s for sure — I once questioned the sanity of Arsène Wenger when he spent £11 million on Thierry Henry and also didn’t get into The Wire until about episode 5 and nearly binned it — proved wrong on both counts and happy to hold my hands up.

What is important is to understand what the results are telling us. Here at Blyk we have been clear on what we have been able to achieve in terms of consumer adoption and engagement as an MVNO and what we continue to achieve in partnership with operators.

There’s a pretty simple formula to achieving consumer engagement with mobile advertising –

Permission + Preferences = Engagement

I don’t think this is rocket science, which is why I am sometimes surprised that people doubt that consumers will engage, and yes, enjoy, relevant communication from brands. Prove it! I hear you cry. OK, some examples that Blyk have recently run with our Bright Stuff audience on Orange in the UK:

As part of the media program that we run on Bright . . .

Continue reading » Mobile Advertising and Consumer Engagement – Let’s take a look at the evidence shall we?]]> Much has been written recently about permission based mobile marketing and the results that Blyk and other players share in terms of engagement. Some of what is written is supportive of what we are trying to do in the mobile messaging space, some more sceptical.

Now, I have nothing against scepticism, I have been known to have my own moments of scepticism in my time that’s for sure — I once questioned the sanity of Arsène Wenger when he spent £11 million on Thierry Henry and also didn’t get into The Wire until about episode 5 and nearly binned it — proved wrong on both counts and happy to hold my hands up.

What is important is to understand what the results are telling us. Here at Blyk we have been clear on what we have been able to achieve in terms of consumer adoption and engagement as an MVNO and what we continue to achieve in partnership with operators.

There’s a pretty simple formula to achieving consumer engagement with mobile advertising –

Permission + Preferences = Engagement

I don’t think this is rocket science, which is why I am sometimes surprised that people doubt that consumers will engage, and yes, enjoy, relevant communication from brands. Prove it! I hear you cry.

OK, some examples that Blyk have recently run with our Bright Stuff audience on Orange in the UK:

As part of the media program that we run on Bright Stuff consumers are profiled by interest group; sport, film, music, fashion, you get the idea. Our brilliant creative and content management teams curate content relevant to consumers that have profiled themselves into these interest groups.

Survival of the Fittest is an in-house content stream that we create as part of our media programming. The in-house messaging and content provided by partners such as Condé Nast sit alongside our commercial campaigns to form a compelling media program for our consumers.

The campaign had a simple objective; to maximise engagement with the Health and Fitness profile group of consumers.

Results — Delivery rates for this profiled campaign were 94%.

The message received an incredible 50% response rate, proving that using profiling is a brilliant way of optimising targeting to increase engagement, customer satisfaction and response rates.

Mobile offers the opportunity for brands to engage in real time with consumers. Permission and preference must form the backbone of your mobile marketing strategy and when they do there really shouldn’t be much of a surprise that we see the sort of results we do — saying that, 50% response surprised even me, almost as much as the amount of goals Henry scored for Arsenal (226).

Once you add the possibility to create a marketplace on your mobile phone through mobile coupons and then the ability to purchase products and services instantly through inbuilt payment mechanisms, you start to tap into a genuinely different media channel. Our UK partner Orange today announced the launch of Quick Tap, the UK’s first nationwide contactless mobile payment service. Sceptics beware!

We have a number of case studies to share and I will be back soon to present the evidence.

***

Alex Franks leads Blyk’s UK business and the strategic partnership with Orange. Alex joined Blyk in July 2007 to help launch and manage the MVNO business in the UK. He has over 10 years’ experience in digital and traditional media before Blyk. Read more about Alex at Blyk.com.

Of course, where there is fashion, there is youth and where there is youth, there is Blyk. Recognising this natural connection, Blyk entered into a strategic content-sharing deal with the FDCI and became the exclusive content partner for the mobile and Internet spaces.

Blyk pushed Fashion Week content to youth across the country and built interest and awareness around the event. Blyk also shared a repository of model pictures, videos, designer sound bytes, and so on. On the days of the event, live web streaming was done, sponsored by Blyk. Along with the FDCI site, the live streaming was also done on the Facebook pages of Blyk India as well as that of its operating partner Aircel India.

The response was enthusiastic and emphatic. In just three days, the number of fans of the Blyk India Facebook page grew by 500 percent. To just two updates, there were 791 Likes and 79 comments. And the live streaming page, in five . . .

Continue reading » Keeping it simple in Social Media]]> Facebook, fashion and a fun engagement with Blyk

Asia’s biggest fashion event. A showcase of the best in India—the best designers, the best runway talent, and of course, the best display of glamour. The Wills India Fashion Week, organised by the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) – the official body of the Indian fashion industry, has become one of the most anticipated fashion events in the country. It is also witnessing growing international interest.

Of course, where there is fashion, there is youth and where there is youth, there is Blyk. Recognising this natural connection, Blyk entered into a strategic content-sharing deal with the FDCI and became the exclusive content partner for the mobile and Internet spaces.

Blyk pushed Fashion Week content to youth across the country and built interest and awareness around the event. Blyk also shared a repository of model pictures, videos, designer sound bytes, and so on. On the days of the event, live web streaming was done, sponsored by Blyk. Along with the FDCI site, the live streaming was also done on the Facebook pages of Blyk India as well as that of its operating partner Aircel India.

The response was enthusiastic and emphatic. In just three days, the number of fans of the Blyk India Facebook page grew by 500 percent. To just two updates, there were 791 Likes and 79 comments. And the live streaming page, in five days of streaming saw more than 18,000 hits. Clearly, it was a winning formula!

More than just the numbers, this simple exercise gave Blyk India a chance to come face-to-face with its members and get to know them better. It also served as a base to build on for Blyk India’s social media properties. Individual and customised engagement is, after all, what Blyk is all about.

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Shubhodip Pal leads Blyk’s India business. He has 14 years of consumer marketing experience in launching, building and managing brands from consumer durables to the banking and computer hardware sector. Read more on Shubhodip at Blyk.com.

Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application

New Media Age recently reported on the focus that Operators are placing on mobile coupons and the success that they are having for brands. Blyk Media are powering this initiative for Everything Everywhere in the UK.

Clare Messenger, Everything Everywhere’s Head of Mobile Marketing, said:

“Working with the coupon system in Blyk’s media platform, and with some newly signed redemption partners, we’ll be able to provide a great coupon offering”.

We have recently extended our relationship with our partner, Everything Everywhere, and plan to offer our mobile couponing technology to advertisers imminently.

With a Blyk sales team supporting Orange Shots in the UK market we expect to achieve fast results for our advertising partners.

We believe we have removed the biggest objection to messaging as an . . .

Continue reading » Mobile Coupons Powered by Blyk]]> To get an understanding of the scale of the worldwide mobile revolution, consider that 4.1 billion people subscribe to a mobile phone service, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which is part of the United Nations. More than half of the world’s people are connected, right now. If you have a mobile, you have the capability to send and receive text messages — no need to mess about with downloads or installations. With the ever-increasing choice of unlimited messaging plans, texting has become the mobile communication option of choice for young people.

Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application

New Media Age recently reported on the focus that Operators are placing on mobile coupons and the success that they are having for brands. Blyk Media are powering this initiative for Everything Everywhere in the UK.

Clare Messenger, Everything Everywhere’s Head of Mobile Marketing, said:

“Working with the coupon system in Blyk’s media platform, and with some newly signed redemption partners, we’ll be able to provide a great coupon offering”.

We have recently extended our relationship with our partner, Everything Everywhere, and plan to offer our mobile couponing technology to advertisers imminently.

With a Blyk sales team supporting Orange Shots in the UK market we expect to achieve fast results for our advertising partners.

We believe we have removed the biggest objection to messaging as an advertising medium – scale. Russell Buckley, who has just been appointed as CMO of mobile coupon specialists Eagle Eye, wrote last year in his excellent piece MMS Officially Huge:

“Blyk gave up in the UK as it claimed to get great results, but could only offer contact with a relatively small number of people. Advertisers buy Reach, then Targeting, not vice versa”.

Well, we haven’t given up, we have just changed model! I think we have cracked the scale question now with an opted in audience of significant scale, Everything Everywhere have 28 million customers in the UK that’s scale right there.

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Alex Franks leads Blyk’s UK business and the strategic partnership with Orange. Alex joined Blyk in July 2007 to help launch and manage the MVNO business in the UK. He has over 10 years’ experience in digital and traditional media before Blyk. Read more about Alex at Blyk.com.