By susanna, on April 27th, 2011 In contrast to Captain Picard, who commanded an army of obedient subordinates on Starship Enterprise, marketeers today face a different challenge with engagement.
Wikipedia defines engagement marketing as a way of connecting consumers with brands via a two-way cooperative interaction. It is therefore essential to move away from the traditional one-way mass broadcasting to dialogue based communication with individual customers. Ideally, they turn into influential advocates for your brand, as Benckenstein suggests.
Arguably quite some consumer engagement is already happening in the digital space. Brands are present on social networks but unfortunately many of them are still trying to figure out ways to leverage on the existing platforms beyond just having a fan page (strategy, anyone?). On the other hands, some brands like Zippo’s are already very successfully engaging consumers, especially through high-end mobile devices.
However the penetration of smart phones and tablets remains low in many emerging markets in Asia. The potential is huge, but as example in the Philippines, the smartphone penetration is currently only 1% out of all phones in use. The message to the brands is that if your target group is in that top 1% category, fine, your agency will be delighted to build you the (soon) million’th app and you can give it a try. However, if your target group is anywhere in the remaining part of the population, you need to look for alternative ways. Not everyone of us has access to a smart phone or a computer. Not now, and not in the next years. Clearly there is a need for other ways to engage consumers.
Even in countries where smartphones are scarce, even ordinary mobiles can be used to create consumer engagement. Here is an example from Blyk India.
There are two things to note about this video: the communication channels and the context.
Continue reading » Engage, engage, engage!
By alex, on April 13th, 2011  Blyk recently ran a campaign asking our young Bright Stuff audience how they were going to be affected by the planned rise in university fees in the UK. We have always made dialogue with our members a core part of our service and felt this was an ideal topic to give our young people a voice.
We asked: ‘How will the rise in University fees affect you and people you know? Have you changed your mind about going to uni?’
The depth and quality of response was staggering. 66% of respondents said that they were going to be affected and 18% of those actually said that they had decided not to go to university as a result of the policy.
This in itself is interesting data but we wanted to take this one step further. Through our partnership with Educate a meeting took place with Simon Hughes MP the governments’ Advocate for Access to Education. He was interested in the feedback on fees and there will now be continued dialogue with government on the impact of fees. We will be going back to our members to gather more information for these discussions this summer.
Dan Beynon, Commercial Director at Educate says
‘Educate work with the UK’s universities and colleges helping them to recruit students. Since 2009 we’ve had great success working with Blyk, offering our clients the opportunity to run highly targeted marketing campaigns via mobile using Blyk’s sophisticated media capabilities. Now that Blyk have partnered with Everything Everywhere in the UK there’s the opportunity to add Orange and T-Mobile’s powerful brand presences and significant reach to the mix. The push messaging campaigns that we’ve run have delivered our clients fantastic response and been hugely successful in promoting attendance at Open Days as well as increasing applications’.
We remain true to our values when talking to our members. It’s not just about sending brand communications one way and not having a back channel for our members. The targeted media proposition and the opportunity for our members to have a platform is what we think makes Blyk different. We are proud to be able to give young people a voice through our messaging format.
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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.
By shubhodip, on February 11th, 2011 
Whenever we see a new technology or service arrive, it always starts by doing the same thing that the older one did, a little better often on just one aspect. It takes some time before people realize its potential to do different things rather than just doing things differently. For any new technology or service, it is important that we follow a simplistic but yet intelligent approach and the case with Mobile Advertising is no different.
We need to understand that we can’t just translate desktop internet ideas to the mobile screen because we operate in a space which is more personal and operated by one user at a time. Although mobile advertising is an extraordinary technology; it becoming synonymous with spamming world is a clear threat for its existence. We need to understand that the most important principle of Mobile advertising lies in respecting the wishes of existing and potential subscribers and providing services which would actually benefit the user & this technology long-term.
The Indian mobile advertising market witnessed an annual growth of 217 per cent in 2010, as compared to 93 per cent growth in global mobile advertising traffic. This clearly suggests a huge scope for mobile advertising market in India, but it still has not started yielding maximum results despite various numerous attempts being made by a number of mobile operators. The need of the hour for Mobile advertising in Indian market is focused technology attention and innovation followed by customer segmentation and usage pattern analytics.
Continue reading » Understanding Mobile Advertising & Beyond
By jorma, on January 18th, 2011 
Spamming, or sending unsolicited messages in bulk, continues to be a problem with e-mail and it has in recent years also entered the mobile domain. The cost of sending SMS or even MMS messages has become so low that it is viable to extend spamming to mobile messaging also. The term “spam” is derived from the 1970 Spam sketch of the BBC television comedy series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. Check it out from YouTube , it’s pretty good.
When compared to e-mail spam, mobile spam can be even more irritating to customers because of the more personal nature of SMS than e-mail and also because of the consumers may be charged for mobile messages received in some markets and when roaming. According to ENISA expert Pascal Manzano more than 95% of all e-mail traffic was spam in 2009. I could not find the figure for mobile messaging. It would be very interesting to know that.
Of course, different countries have taken different approaches in curbing the spam. EU has pretty much made spamming illegal but in some countries it continues due to non-existing legislation, insufficient sanctions or because of lack of enforcement of the rules. EU took a pretty strict line and introduced consent-based marketing back in 2002. That requires consumers to “opt-in” before they can be sent SMS or MMS messages from an unrelated party. So you will need to consent to receiving messages rather than you needing to “opt-out” from messages that would otherwise be sent to you. Continue reading » Spam leaves a nasty taste for consumers
By laura, on January 12th, 2011 
I met my friend in a café the other day. She looked pale and tired, not like her usual happy self at all. Oh no, what has happened, I thought, and went through all the typical horror scenarios of boyfriend trouble, sickness, work stress etc. in my head, before having the courage to ask, if everything was ok with her. – “Never better, just a bit tired,” she replied. – “I was reading this great novel until very late last night. Very inspiring!”
Sometimes asking is the best way to get to know the answer. Especially if you want to know someone better, a question is the method to go with. This is true in creating meaningful relationships between people, or indeed between people and brands.
At Blyk, we take questions very seriously: dialogue is the core of our media experience. With a simple question, you can start a conversation, and with an ongoing dialogue, you can really get to know someone.
Of course dialogue marketing has its downsides and it does not work for all types of advertising. You may not get answers to get a dialogue started, you may not always get the reply you wanted, or you may get much more than you expected. We’ve run several campaigns asking our members about their views on different topics, and I am often taken by surprise with the responses: young people on Blyk are very smart, and can express their views very well.
Continue reading » Question is a great way to start a conversation
By michiel, on January 11th, 2011  At the start of the new year the “top whatever lists” are popping up everywhere. I like these lists because the good ones can give inspiration and food for thought. Despite the possibility you have developed a certain fatigue for these lists let’s add my own one on the mobile battlefield.
The top 10, looking back at 2010 first:
1. Mobile handset sales worldwide: Nokia 36%, Samsung 20%, LG 10%, Motorola 5%, Sony Ericsson 5%
2. Countries with 3G penetration: Japan 87%, South Korea 71%, Australia 52%, Singapore 41%, Israel 39%
3. Top 3 Mobile commerce retailers: Taobao, eBay and Amazon
4. Usage of mobile phones after calling: SMS is the No. 1 in Europe by 82%, then take photos at 57% and then online on your mobile with 26%
5. The number of mobile users worldwide will pass the 5 billion in 2010. That means that 70% of the world has a mobile. The growth is led by China and India
Continue reading » The mobile Top 10 of 2010
By juha, on December 23rd, 2010  It is Christmas time. Here in the Blyk Helsinki office, in the land of Santa Claus, we asked our colleagues from all the Blyk countries to collect all the Christmas wishes from Blyk members in India, Netherlands and United Kingdom. Before delivering the wishes to Santa himself, of course.
We wanted to be Santa’s little helpers – but also to have a sneak peek on our members answer to a simple question: “If you had one wish, what would that be?”
We are delighted about the results. No matter what is the country and the culture, the most important wishes from the young members of ours are the same: Have the closest and loved people around and good things happening to them. Immaterial wishes top the list, such as finding that special someone or wishing luck for your family. The conclusion is that the youngsters are more or less the same in different parts of the world.
Continue reading » Christmas wishes from Blyk members
By gavin, on December 14th, 2010 If you are looking for information on the Bright Stuff service, visit www.orange.co.uk/brightstuff.
Having worked at an operator for 8 years before joining Blyk in 2007, I am all too sensitive to their perennial concerns about protecting customers from anything which might trigger dissatisfaction. So I have been very sympathetic to the diligent and exacting evaluation we have been constantly under since launching our first two ad funded media propositions on Orange here in the UK.
In 2009 we launched Monkey Messages, which is an ad funded media proposition fully integrated into the Monkey PAYG tariff. This launch passed its tests and earlier in 2010 we moved on to launch a more strategic proposition called Bright Stuff.
Bright Stuff is a cross-tariff service, which means its scale potential is unlimited by particular tariff performance. In time Bright Stuff can develop into a huge audience, richly segmented, offering incredible value to the widest range of advertisers.
We have just been given some more feedback by Orange on the performance of Bright Stuff after a particularly significant evaluation process concluded recently.
The findings are outstanding in our eyes. Stats like 35% of the users state that Bright Stuff has improved their opinion of Orange (while 64% stated their opinion remained the same, giving fully 98% whose opinion has improved or remained the same).
Continue reading » Never mind protecting, what about enhancing operators’ subscriber investments?
By juha, on December 1st, 2010  When I joined the Blyk team in 2007, the MMS was still in its infancy having started in 2002. We witnessed lots of promises unkept, ongoing promotion by both the infrastructure players and the operators but with only limited immediate success. Most people in the industry felt MMS was proving to be a disappointment.
Another year passed by and iPhone came out without MMS capabilities. End of MMS?
But what has happened since then? Today, most high end and mid range phone models include a camera and the people are willing to share their snaps immediately. Apple did include MMS in iOS. Equally many companies have started to use MMS to deliver tickets, confirmations, QR codes and other content to their customers. According to Tomi Ahonen, the estimated worldwide earnings of MMS are 34 billion USD for this year. Roughly two billion people in the world use MMS. Enough of the discussion regarding the end of MMS. It seems the world has adopted MMS in big scale which you can see also in the figure below.
Juha Meronen is responsible for the Analytics and Insight domain at Blyk striving for excellence in utilising the data to develop Blyk Media. Read more about Juha at Blyk.com.
By susanna, on November 26th, 2010  Banner ads – even in the mobile space – seldom deliver impressive click-through rates. In the greater picture of things, one in a thousand or even a hundred can hardly be considered a great achievement. In order to achieve significant brand impact, it is a game of millions of impressions. But things also work on a small scale when the effectiveness is higher. So what really makes consumers ‘click’ with a brand?
We at Blyk think a number of things are needed to make this happen. My colleagues Juha and Laura blogged about the importance of great long-term user experience and that of relevant & personalized content to which the ads are attached. Michiel made it clear that you have got to ‘text them to reach them’ so it’s a question of using the right channel, notably when talking to the youth.
In addition, it needs a certain rhythm and the right feeling.
Continue reading » Playing music
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