Xellular Identity - All About Mobile Content & Marketing

Super Tuesday - Super New Mobile Apps!

A big day like today brings cool new mobile apps!

First, let me share my own news:

As you know, I recently joined MyFrame Inc., who offers you a cool new mobile application called Flixwagon. For those of you who don't know what Flixwagon is, Flixwagon enables anyone with a capable 3G/WiFi mobile phone to broadcast live videos to the internet.

So you're probably saying, "ok, new mobile gig, where's the news?". We partnered MTV. Today, MTV's street journalism team will broadcast from 23 states to ThinkMTV using Flixwagon. Throughout the day, MTV will regularly break into programming and showcase news features from the live reports.

James Whatley from SpinVox shared that that SpinVox has partnered with WNYC Radio to enable greater listener interactivity during the station’s ongoing coverage of the multi-state primary Super Tuesday. Voters will be encouraged to contribute thoughts, comments and observations by speaking messages to a special phone number set up for the radio station. Those messages will be converted into text by SpinVox and will dynamically become a part of the coverage in real time. Hockenberry and Udoji will report on voter sentiments and read select text on-air.

Interesting to see how new means of communication take part in one of the biggest political events. Will follow closely.

Video Content Not Only For The Masses

Chris Albrecht from NewTeeVee reviewed a new start up called Big Think. According to Chris, 

"Big Think wants to become the YouTube for ideas. The site has experts like professor Steven Pinker, author Deepak Chopra, and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer answering big questions on topics like identity, politics and media. The video answers to these questions are supposed to kick-start discussions with people like you and me who can post responses or comments."

"In a world in which everyone’s a pundit, it’s nice to see someone recognizing the value of experts, but I just can’t see Big Think taking off. It’s just…so…heavy. Questions like “How are language and identity connected?” or “Has capitalism run mmok?” require too much brainpower when I’m multi-tasking with my computer, and the answers are snippets, so the topic can’t be more fully explored. While I haven’t watched all the videos, the only “fun” on Big Think I came across was “Writing for the Harvard Lampoon,” and “What is the most lavish party you have been to?” It’s like I’m reading cartoons from The New Yorker — clever, but fun in a way that’s elitist. Ultimately the whole thing feels like a big Ivy League club that I’m not welcome in."

Putting the writers' negative impressions aside, Big Think have a very smart segmentation, aiming to the higher-end of the population and not necessarily to the masses. When evaluating start ups or new websites, one must differentiate between the relevance for him\her and the relevance for the target segment. Although Big Think might make some people feel as if they are in a big Ivy League club to which they are not welcomed, many others might feel at home. This is exactly what segmentation is all about – specifically tailoring products and services for designated populations. Of course people who do not belong to the relevant segment might feel left out. Otherwise it wouldn't be segmentation at all. This is precisely the reason why adults might feel left out when their children play with Barbies, or action figures. Or why career driven businessmen might feel out of place in a cooking course. Good segmentation. That's why.

The segment of choice for Big think, the higher-end, is a segment that spends hours online and is always on the search for quality resources and quality content; i.e. the high-end segment is also part of the addressable market for video content. While this segment might have been consuming "light" content, it is well-equipped to enjoy more complex messages and will probably appreciate "heavy" content.

Some examples of successful segmentations have already made their way into marketing textbooks (such as manufacturing different car models to address different segments). Video content as a market has already reached the masses (YouTube, MetaCafe etc'), therefore segmentation is the natural next step. Lately we started to see some players addressing specific segments, like 5min and now BigThink. So, if you feel left out, don't worry – some player will target your segment soon enough.

This post was originally posted on The Flixwagon Blog.

Ringback Tones Promotions

Hi all,

Xmas is right around the corner with its creative ringback tone mass media campaigns... But before that, I didn't want to leave without acknowledgment a few RBT campaigns from the last two months.

First campaign is brought to you from Colombia. The Colombian mobile operator Tigo has partnered Sony BMG to promote its content in a leaflet inside CDs and DVDs. Now Colombian CD\DVD buyers can simply send the short code that appears on the leaflet via SMS and get their own Backtone (Tigo's service name for ringback tones). The most crucial factor in this campaign is the offered playlist -- it would be very clever to offer music of the same type as the bought CD\DVD.

The second campaign is brought to you from the US. American mobile operator Cingular the mew AT&T launched a huge "Win a trip for 2 to meet Fall Out Boy, 50 Cents or Taylor Swift" campaign. AT&T users are encouraged to "Find Your Tone-ality to Fit Your Personality" and download an Answer Tone (AT&T's service name for ringback tones) and apply. Then, "if the artist calls you and hears his or her own song, you've won!"

And I can't wait to see this year's ringback tones Xmas campaigns... now that's a treat :)

Radiohead: Name Your Price for the New Album

The fact that a music band releases its new album as a digital download two months prior to its traditional hard-copy release didn't strike us by surprise. but the news about Radiohead releasing its new album and enabling its listeners to name their own price for downloading the album via its website, is a huge deal!

"There's no label or distribution partner to cut into the band's profits — but then there may not be any profits. Drop In Rainbows' 15 songs into the on-line checkout basket and a question mark pops up where the price would normally be. Click it, and the prompt "It's Up To You" appears. Click again and it refreshes with the words "It's Really Up To You" — and really, it is. It's the first major album whose price is determined by what individual consumers want to pay for it. And it's perfectly acceptable to pay nothing at all."

shortly before the band started writing new songs, singer Thom Yorke told TIME, "I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say 'F*** you' to this decaying business model."

[via Times]

It will be very interesting to see how "naming your own price" will work as Radiohead's business model.

College Students Are More Open to Mobile Advertizing

According to a new study from Ball State, "Technically oriented college students are increasingly receptive to receiving advertising via text messages on their cell phones and other mobile devices".

"An analysis of mobile communications by college students during 2005-07 found that 56.3% of respondents would accept ads if they would get something free, said Michael Hanley, a Ball State advertising professor and mobile marketing researcher.

About 37.4% of college students said it would only take the offer of a free ringtone for them to would accept advertisements on their cell phones while 21.4% preferred a discount or coupon to a restaurant, movie or grocery store and 20% wanted free minutes, upgrades, access to the Internet or music."
[via MobiAd Network]

Update: Continuing on the search for analysis about mobile advertizing I found this (which I think supports the findings from above):

Acording to a study by media agency Universal McCann "people always complain about things that are interruptive - it still works in traditional media but in this environment consumers have so much choice where they source content from and if it detracts from the experience they will go elsewhere.

The survey, which covered 9,500 people with a mobile phone and an internet connection in 21 countries from the UK to Mexico, suggests the marketing opportunity to reach gadget users is bigger than ever.

Consumers in the developing world were the most receptive to advertising, particularly Mexico, China and Thailand, while the US, France and the UK were the least receptive markets. On a mobile phone, the best forms of advertising were opt-in Bluetooth formats that provide information or vouchers direct to the mobile, popular with 72% of the global sample, and sponsored search results. Adverts on mobile internet pages and TV adverts on mobiles were rejected by 61% of respondents.

For podcasts and videocasts, sponsorship was the most valued form of advertising, followed by brand recommendations from presenters. Adverts at the beginning of the clip were acceptable but interruptive ads in the middle of a video or audio clip were not."

[via The Guardian]

Harnessing Blogs for Marketing Campaigns

Hi all,

I was invited to give a presentation about blogging from a marketer's perspective. As a blogger, I get many press releases sent to my inbox everyday, hoping to get featured. However, many of them are irrelevant to my field of expertise and to the topics I cover at my blog. Eventually, many of those press releases find their way to my trash can...

At the ordered lecture, I want to present examples of smart and creative marketing campaigns that harnessed the power of popular blogs for marketing goals. I started to search the web and found this amazing story at Word of Mouth Marketing Association website:

"Toyota recently completed a campaign in which it engaged a team of Greek bloggers to spread the word about its new hatchback model, the Auris. Toyota wanted three things from its Greek Auris campaign. One, it needed to be digital. Two, it needed to put the car's interior -- its "cockpit" -- front and center. And three, it needed to inspire test-drives and get consumers into the driver's seat.

To achieve its goals, Toyota decided to let its customers market the Auris for it. It invited 15 Greek bloggers to test-drive the car for a week, and encouraged them to post their findings to an official Auris Blog as well as to their own blogs. The results:

* Bloggers wrote 55 posts about the Auris.

* Readers posted 175 comments to the bloggers' posts.

* The Auris Blog received 52,000 visits from 41,000 unique visitors.

* The campaign generated 2,000 test-drive requests -- 50% of all test-drive requests."

[via WOMMA]

If you have more examples of this kind of marketing activities - please contact me. I promise to give you full credit for it :)

Blogference: Om Malik's Presentation

Om Malik gave an outstanding presentation, focusing on his insights as a professional blogger.

“The early traffic trends of Gigaom made it clear: you can build an audience of a magazine that costs many $M with a laptop, a cellphone and a broadband connection.”

However, to meet these goals you need to:

1. Define your mission statement – what is your value proposition for the end reader?
2. Have an answer to “why are you blogging”?
3. “If you screw up – say that you did, otherwise people would move on to the other 20M places that exist on the web.”
4. “Remember that your readers are smarter than you think and smarter than you think you are.”
5. “People should behave in blogs the way they behave in real life.”
6. “People who disagree with you are more helpful to you in the long run - they say something about you.”

Om also provided some insights for the PR and marketers among us:

1. Marketers don’t put the time to read the blogs and think about the reasons of bloggers to write\think as they do. So, you should invest the time to learn the blogger and only then communicate on one on one basis.
2. Do your homework - sort which blogs you should pay attention to.
3. You have to treat every blogger as a newspaper journalist.
4. Give him\her an opportunity to talk with your CEOs.

As an example of business reaching to blogs "the right way", Om presented the case of Joost. Joost offered GigaOm’s readers 20,000 invites; by doing this Om not only provided an added-value to his readers in the form of his insights but also gave them 20,000 invitations. Joost, on their side, got 20,000 tech savvy users who were eager to take the app for a test drive. It is clear how everybody wins… 

As for GigaOm, Om was asked about his shift from the online media, Business 2.0 magazine, to his private-held blog\business. His answer was that while he was a Senior Writer at Business 2.0 and writing GigaOm (on the same time) he realized that the blog was getting more readship, as well as more recognition and more alert discourse was being held through the blog. And the rest is history...

Putting aside the profession for a moment, I have to say that I was very impressed of Om as a human. There is so much for to learn from him... :)

And last quotation – “Thanks to blogging, I take other opinions more seriously.”

Mix Sherpa: A New Mobile Music Discovery Service

Hi all,

Today I wanted to review a very creative campaign done by Sprint to promote its new mobile music store called Mix Sherpa.

Sprint was looking for a way to create buzz and raise awareness for their recently launched Music Store in an already very crowded space with Verizon's, T-Mobile's and The New AT&T's (Cingular) music download stores. Also, the audience of "Advanced Connected", which Sprint wanted to reach, is extremely averse to traditional advertising and blatant promotion.

So how did Sprint manage these challenges?

The human\social angle - Sprint invented a whole story about 2 characters:
Ias Westbury, a washed up pop star from the 1980s running a record store on Melrose and DJ Supahboy5 who works at Ian’s store. To make the story seem more real, Ian even has his own myspace page and a music video for Ian’s one and only hit from the 80s called “Under the Moon” [which was directed by the music video legend Nigel Dick, (Tears For Fears, Guns N’ Roses, Britney Spears)].

The added value to the user - Sprint integrated a discovery and recommendation engine into the story about Ian:
Users engage with Ian and the DJ by creating their own playlists and in return getting an “expert” review of their choices. Users also get recommendations based on the newly created playlist. The added value for the users is the discovery of new music that fits their tastes and the reaffirmation of who they are and what their musical taste says about them.

Finally, piling a playlist and getting exposed to new music while interacting with a cool character will (hopefully) generate Sprint music downloads! Who wouldn't want to take the playlist to the mobile? Especially if the recommendations will prove themselves as precise, or in Ian's words:

"You go to the site and select your own custom playlist. Through the magic they call a “logic engine” - I'm able to analyze your playlist - and maybe analyze what's going on in that head of yours too. I'll offer you everything in my arsenal with humor, wit and charm - naturally. My longtime employee DJ Supahboy5 is also online to interject with his own opinions on songs and styles. We've got information on bands and songs, and links to download everything you need to take your mobile phone to the next level“.

As for the mobile part, Sprint offers "Sprint Music Manager" which is PC client that helps you sync your music from your PC to your mobile using a USB cord. As I don’t have a Sprint phone (I don't live in the US) I asked to get a demo account to try the new service. However, if someone gets the opportunity to play with it in the meantime, please share your experience and insights! :)

Ringback Tones: The Future Digital Music Distribution Channel?

"The overall value of the worldwide music industry has been in decline for several years, falling from a high-point of $39.7 billion USD in 2000 to just $32.1 billion USD in 2006." This is the main drive for the music labels to look for new outlets. One of them is the mobile music market. Lately, we have been witnessing a new marketing approach on behalf of the music labels; the ringtone and ringback tone have started to replace the old single played at the radio stations. Music labels now have been providing exclusivity for new singles mobile operators for a limited time, many times before the album has been even released.

What are the benefits of using this method?

• For the users - users are attracted to the exclusive and hot ringback tone and want to have the latest and hottest new song;
• For the operators - operators create more awareness to the ringback tones service, they generate more usage and hopefully more penetration of the ringback tones service. Also they are perceived as innovative, cool, updated with the current music… And, let's not forget that later on, after the exclusive ringback tone expires, they will notify the users and offer a new ringback tone and so on…
• For the music labels - music labels get the public to spread the word about and play the new release, i.e. increase awareness to the new song and drive sales later on when the album is out.

In Malaysia,

"pop singer Misha Omar released 2 singles as a digital single/truetone, some three months before the scheduled full album release. "This is the way the industry is moving. It looks like we will be doing it for all of our artistes," said Sony BMG managing director for Malaysia, Adrian Lim. Warner Music's new media development manager Wong Mei Chen said the company is also walking down the same path. "That's the trend that the business is going into. You'll be seeing more of that. You'll hear it as a ringtone before you hear it on radio." Wong cited examples like Linkin Park where the ringtone for the What I've Done single, which was released two months before the Minutes to Midnight album in May."

[via The Star Online, Thanks Gabi!]

However, this trend is not limited only to the more advanced Asian markets; some popular international acts are even beginning to sell more ringtones than albums: The Pussycat Dolls, for example, sold close to 80,000 ringtones of songs like "Don't Cha and Beep" while their album only sold about 50,000 copies."
[via The Star Online]

Also, In the past, I presented here another 2 international examples:

• American operator Sprint has used this marketing strategy when it offered, EXCLUSIVELY, Pearl Jam's "World Wide Suicide" single both as ringback tone (Caller Tone) and ringtone.

• And Orange France offered Johnny Hallyday's new ringback tone (Fun Tone) "La loi du silence" exclusively to its users. And here's the clip:

Seems like ringback tones might be the future digital music distribution channel. Any comments? :)

T-Mobile With A Music Offering For UK People

Hoping to captialise on its "Street Gigs"* events and Channel 4 music series  "Transmission", T-Mobile is extending its offering beyond T-Mobile customers for all music fans. How? T-Mobile is launching of a new music site named ARTISTdirect.com/uk. The site will go live on Monday morning and fans will be able to access exclusive content from StreetGigs artists such as The Fratellis, Mika, Badly Drawn Boy and the Arctic Monkeys.

T-mobile has teamed up with US-based ARTISTdirect.com, the largest site for independent music online. Based on the US version of the service, the UK partnership hopes to offer subscribers the chance to download content from its live music events 'Street Gigs' to the mobile and consume more mobile content. The new website will be dedicated to the UK market solely.

Music fans on T-Mobile will be able to download music via T-Zones, and non-T-Mobile customers will also be able to access news and get tickets to secretive StreetGigs and Channel 4's Transmission with T-Mobile.

[via press release]

What I like in this initiative is T-Mobile's understanding that as a consumer brand, it must have have an attractive offering to a wide audience; but even more important is to find the way to engage people which are not nesesarily T-Mobile's subscrubers. By providing them a reason to access the T-Mobile's website and incentivize them to visit recurrently, T-Mobile will build its public image and hopefully will draw more subscribers.

*For the non-UK readers, T-Mobile's "Street Gigs" is a unique series of live music events.

mobileYouth: A New Website

mobileYouth, a part of the Wireless World Forum, has a new look for their website. After getting the word from Josh I looked around and there are two things which are really worth the time to pay a visit:

• mobileYouth people now present videos from "on the street" interviews they run with teenagers. Many players in the mobile industry (and elsewhere) try to target this segment, but what do we really know about it...? This is our opportunity to watch, listen and learn.
• A series of podcasts covering the topics of teens, mobile, marketing and more...

And here is one of the videos about what youth think of mobile marketing. Enjoy!

Cingular (The New at&t) Pumps Up Revenue with "American Idol" (Part II)

Continuing with a very interesting study case of Cingular's long success with sponsoring the "American Idol" TV show, today I want to present the huge success Cingular had in the SMS arena. In case you've missed the first part of the Cingular study case - just follow the link.

For many years, the US was a backwater of mobile messaging in comparison to other regions of the world. However, looking at Figure 1 reveals a remarkable growth; Cingular has doubled the number of sent SMSs within a year (in millions):

Figure 2 might provide an explation for the striking growth: the SMS voting for “American Idol” which has been doubling itself from season to season caused the growth (in Millions)!

However, Cingular has done a lot more than offer SMS voting, it has been very creative with a diverse SMS offering:

1. Voting
All voting are done by texting the word ‘vote’ to a different number to vote for each contestant.

Who can vote?
Anyone calling or any Cingular Wireless subscribers that text message from within Continental US, Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico can cast their vote for the next American Idol. 

According to Cingular’s press release, “it has set a new record for wireless text messaging in the fourth season of "American Idol". The company recorded more than 41.5 million text messages throughout the show's 12-week voting period, which is believed to represent the largest volume of text messaging in a single campaign in the history of the U.S. wireless industry.”

Season 3 had an 80% increase over season 2 with more that 40% of all participants had never sent a text message; and the most outstanding fact - from the first to the last voting episodes, text votes increased by nearly 700%! (According to “The Future of Mobile Media” by Lucy Hood, News Corp Content & Marketing, April 27, 2005). It would be only fair to say that “American Idol” taught the American nation how to SMS!!

2. Vote Reminder

Cingular offers its customers to sign up to a vote reminder. Customer then receives a recap of the contestants and their voting numbers just as the voting window opens. To sweeten the offering, customers who sigh to the vote reminder service can earn 25 bonus sweepstakes entries and get standard message rates apply to all messages sent and received.

3. Trivia Game

Cingular offers a trivia game about the idol’s facts. To play, customers need to register for the weekly game. Registered customers get 20 new questions each week direct from the show. Each question answered correctly gives 1 point, answer incorrectly and they get 0 points! The top 30 scores are available at Cingular’s web site. Signing up and playing is done by SMS, messages sent and received while playing American Idol Trivia are charged at your standard messaging rates.

Amazed? This is not all... wait for next Sunday to read about Cingular's offering beyond the SMS arena!

Cingular (The New at&t) Pumps Up Revenue with "American Idol" (Part I)

A dear friend of mine just finished writing a very interesting study case of Cingular's long success with sponsoring the “American Idol” TV show. After reading it I thought this would interest many of you; so I asked and was kindly given an authorization to publish the study case at Xellular Identity.

Background
Cingular Wireless, now the new AT&T, is the official and exclusive telecom sponsor of American Idol's 6th season, started on Jan 07 after a huge success as the telecom sponsor for the last four years (2 years under the name AT&T Wireless).

“American Idol” is a televised singing competition which seeks to discover the best young singer in the country, through a series of nationwide auditions. The outcomes of the later stages of the competition are wholly determined by public voting. The format features three judges who critique the contestants' performances in order to facilitate the voting.

“American Idol” has become one of the biggest TV hits: it is the number 1 hour and number 1 half hour show on the American television for the third consecutive season. Also, the TV show won the 2006 People’s Choice Award for Favorite Realty Show/Competition and was nominated for the Emmy 14 times! The successful format was sold to many stations around the world, among them are South Africa, Poland, Germany, Australia, Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, France & the Pan-Arabic region.

Measured by ratings, American Idol was the No. 1 show in America in 2004 while AT&T Wireless managed to reach the 10th place in the top 10 brands of 2004:
 

By 2006, Cingular reached the 7th place(!) and “American Idol” kept its reign as the most viewed TV show:

This case study will show how Cingular has been increasing usage and revenue by sponsoring the show. Don't forget to tune in next Sunday for the second part of this series!

Music Discovery Channels and The $1M Question

The first five items in the “top ten list” of mobile music downloads usually represent about 40% of all downloads. This outstanding figure raises two paramount questions asked by all players in the music industry: how do people discover new music and how can the players help people discover more and more? For the players in the music industry, discovering more music means consuming more. So how do we really get exposed to new music?

One of the main channels for exposure to new information as well as to new music is the mass media. In other words, who hasn’t listened to the radio while driving and got to hear the new single released by the most popular artist? Another channel of exposure is recommendations. Everyone has a "broker" in his social network, who is someone that really knows music and recommends new music and music worth listening to. Brokers are regarded as unbiased, authentic and reliable. Brokers are people that you trust and like their taste and they can be friends, broadcasters, or even music critics...

So heading to the million dollar question, how can these channels be leveraged to promote more mobile music? The first example of leveraging mass media to discover music comes from South Korea. Korean operators invested in new technologies in order to create a more convenient user experience for buying ringback tones. Both KTF and SKT use QR codes. QR codes are 2D codes which are published in newspapers, bus stops, billboards etc’ and contain information which is captured with a cameraphone (like in the illustration above). The cameraphone reads the information stored in the QR code and the user gets his\her new ringback tone (for a commercial of QR codes follow this link to Youtube). The second example is using video clips on a music channel. While the clip is playing, a bubble of information appears on the screen offering the viewers to get this song as their new ringback tone by sending a short code via SMS. Both examples leverage existing user behavior as well as impulsive buying.

A more “techie” channel of exposure is through several web based applications. These applications are actually the technological equivalent of the recommendation mechanism mentioned above. By this I refer to many cool companies like Pandora and Musicovery that developed web tools to discover new music based on tagging, categorizing (Pandora’s music genome project is really worthy of note) and community’s recommendations (usually done by ranking). Musicovey took it a step further with links to iTunes and Amazon.

In the mobile arena, one of the pioneers is MyStrands which just launched its Social Player last week. MyStrands offers a “music player for mobile devices (Symbian Series 60, 3rd edition) with two main characteristics: it is a music discovery tool and a strong community builder”. As a music discovery tool, it provides real-time recommendations of songs that are similar to the currently-playing song. Also, 30′ clips of the recommended songs can be streamed to the mobile device, and users can always learn more about the songs on MyStrands mobile website. To watch MyStrands' demo and more just follow this link.

Hopefully, in the future we will see more of these discovery applications in the mobile arena. If operators and content aggregators would enter this field, we could enjoy a wide range of new services. Imagine getting exposed to new music through the mobile and then being able to set it as a ringback tone in just one click…

Interviewing John White on Digital Music (Part II)

Welcome to the second part of the digital music coverage. Today, John White of Portio Research Ltd will be visiting here.  If you missed the first part you can follow the link.

Let's welcome John:

Hi John. Thank you for coming back, how are you? :)
Hi Xen, thanks a lot, I’m doing great thanks.

Who are the big players in the global music market? Are there new players in the neighborhood at the era of digital music?
Obviously the music industry is dominated by the big 4 record companies - Universal, SonyBMG, Warner and EMI. Much of the decline over recent years has been attributed to the rise of digital music and the increase in unlicensed file sharing (first Napster, then LimeWire and so on) and illegal peer-to-peer file sharing. It goes without saying now that the music industry looks at developments online very seriously. With the rise of YouTube and MySpace and similar sites becoming major players in the marketing of music, and with increasing numbers of mp3 download sites available, some online players stand to become very influential in the music market. If MNOs get it right and build market share in the download market they too stand to become quite significant in the music market.    

What is the future of retail music sales in comparison to the mobile music?
We forecast physical CD sales to continue declining and digital sales to grow steadily.

What are the estimates for music handsets market?
Without giving away too many of the details from our new study, we forecast a very strong future for the sales of mp3 enabled mobile handsets. We estimate that there will be over 1.7 billion mp3 enabled handsets in circulation by 2011, representing a little over 40% of handsets in use worldwide at that time.

Will the mobile kill the stand-alone MP3 players?
Not exactly, no. We believe that the mobile handset will become the primary portable music device for the mass market, but as the whole digital music market grows, so sales of stand alone mp3 players will continue to grow also – so it’s good news for everyone! There will also remain to be a hard core of dedicated music fans who will carry both, as the stand alone players will maintain a lead over mobile handsets in terms of playback quality, storage capacity and so on.

What can you say about the importance of music to the mobile telecoms industry and the impact of digital music on 3G services?
If the services are structured right and priced appropriately, we believe that digital music has the potential to become a fairly substantial ARPU booster for operators. Music will never generate the kind of revenues that SMS makes, but as a value added non-voice service music could become a great revenue booster for operators.

Any examples of marketing best practices in the music/mobile music industry?
Yes, but we’ve written another entire report about that, called ‘Strategies for Creating End-User Demand for Mobile Data Services’, so readers will have to check that out on our site for more details!

What can you say about the positioning of major players and advertising opportunities in the digital music market?
We see substantial opportunities for major brand advertisers to use mobile music as a way to move more advertising spend onto the mobile platform. We believe there are great opportunities to sponsor or subsidize downloads and we think youth-focused brands could make a real impact here.

What are the key drivers for mobile music appeal?
The appeal of music is widespread. To be fair, as with most other services on the mobile platform, the youth segment will surely lead the market as the early adopters, but it would be foolish and short-sighted to think the market starts and ends there. Music is widely enjoyed by all ages from 9 months to 90 years old, so mobile music services should be designed to appeal to all age groups and demographics. Services need to be easy-to-use, cheap, quick and reliable, and the spread of content on offer must appeal to all tastes. Driving the uptake of OTA services will need innovative marketing, which may be where the advertisers come into play, and mobility will need to be positioned as complimentary, not competitive to wireline services. If consumers can believe there is little difference in price between downloading OTA or on the PC at home, they will download OTA whenever they feel like it.

Do culture and orientation influence mobile music consumption? How?
Sure, in all the obvious ways that culture influences taste in music.

Which are the most developed mobile music markets?
Japan, South Korea, the UK, the USA is fast coming on.

What is going to be the next *big thing* in the mobile music market?
Seeing if the price is right!

Also, I just thought about it, do you want to say something about the new iPhone?
OK Xen, I'll tell you what I have to say about the iPhone - but you'll have to tune in next Thursday for it!

Thank you John!

Prepaid Ringback Tones

Today I want to present a very creative strategy for marketing ringback tones and ringtones: the Fun cards.

Hutch is advertising new Fun cards for ringtones, Caller Tunes and a card for Caller Tunes Shuffle. These cards have a 16-digit code which users can buy in shops. There is a wide selection of cards with different tones. After taking the time to choose, users scratch the Fun card for the code and SMS it to 123. Within seconds, they will receive the ringtones or the caller tune they had requested to play on their Hutch phone.

What's in it for the mobile operator you ask?

First, and most important, the Fun cards marketing strategy enables impulsive purchase of ringback tones (i.e. short decision making and leveraging the need for immediate gratifications). Second, it increases ringback tones’ visibility in points of sale. Third, it positions Hutch as an innovative, creative, dynamic and cool mobile operator.

Also, this form of buying ringback tones enables a subscriber to purchase a Fun card for any other mobile subscriber, friend or family and give it as a present. And you can always use it yourself :)

To view Hutch's ad click here

Myxer: Sending Your Web Content to the Mobile

Myxer.com (a service of mVisible), the place where you can easily make and share mobile content, has announced the launch of MyxerMagic - a free download that lets you send any online image to your mobile or your friends’ mobile right from your web browser.

The browser extension can be downloaded for free. After downloading you’ll find the “Myxer - Send image to phone!” command on your right mouse-click menu. Also you can re-size, re-shape and manipulate the image to best fit a phone’s display before sending it. MyxerMagic works with ANY mobile device that accepts MMS regardless of your operator.

“Myxer is about more than just customizing your mobile phone with ringtones and wallpapers - it’s really about leveraging the respective strengths of the internet and the mobile phone to make digital content easily discoverable and accessible anywhere you are […] MyxerMagic completely rewrites the rules of how user-generated content is consumed, because for the first time ever, all digital content is one click away from being mobile content.”

I took Myxer to a test drive and really liked Myxer! However, there are two points to be considered: the copyrights issues and spam. A few more things intrigued me so I asked the Myxer people, and here are their answers:

What is your business model?
Myxer: mVisible's main sales channels are the selling of advertising on its Myxertm Web site and on mobile phones, as well as offering content providers the option to sell premium content. 

How is Myxer positioned in this market?
Myxer: mVisible's main competitors are the existing mobile ecosystem and an uneducated market that needs to be informed that Myxer provides greater access for both content providers and mobile phone users alike. It offers more diversified content, it works on any mobile carrier, and it supports a free marketplace. While there are other companies dabbling in the "off-deck" mobile content space, mVisible is the only company to provide the full range of proprietary Myxer technologies and services combined.  Other companies doing parts of what Myxer does include JivJiv, Xingtone, PocketFuzz, Phonezoo and MyNumo.

What are the barriers to users' adoption of Myxer?
Myxer: The biggest barrier to adoption is the lack of standards that exist on cell phones today.  Each cell phone and carrier combination can present to the user a completely different user interface for downloading ringtones and wallpaper from that of a different combination. We spend a great deal of time and effort on user education in this area so it really has become lemonade out of lemons because this has become a unique company advantage for us. The standards and user education problem is becoming and will become less acute over time because there are improvements being made to the user interface and the users are becoming educated in how this works for their particular environment. 

Thank you Lynn, the most dedicated PR manager I’ve met so far! :)

Interviewing John White on Digital Music (Part I)

I'm happy to welcome John White from Portio Research Ltd to review the market of mobile music here at Xellular Identity.

John White is Business Development Director for Portio Research and has over 17 years experience in the technical publishing industry. Working in the IT sector previously and in the telecoms industry for the last 9 or 10 years, John has extensive experience in the mobile sector. John has been Editor and contributing author for the newly-released Digital Music Futures 2007-2011 report. 

So first, let's meet John:

XM: Hi John. Thank you for visiting Xellular Identity :) How are you?
JW: Hi Xen, thanks a lot, I’m doing great thanks, I hope you are too?

XM: I'm great thanks, great things are happening lately! What brought you to the world of mobile?
JW: I spent a lot of time working in IT and publishing, and I came into the world of mobile through that route about 10 years ago, as a publisher.

XM: What takes up your time other than mobile?
JW: Mostly my three kids, but also my wife, my dog, running, kung-fu, a lot of reading, a bit of rock climbing, fixing up the house, trying to keep my family as ‘green’ and environmentally friendly as possible, enjoying watching lots of movies and many more interests besides…when my children allow me time for them!

XM: Well, heading going to the music market, what are the estimates for mobile music market for the next years?
JW: Overall, we forecast 5 or 6 years of healthy growth for the entire digital music market. How much of that market is mobile will depend on a number of key factors, not least price.

XM: The guys at Mobhappy predict that: “Full-track music downloads over mobile will largely fail, leading operators and content providers to finally realize there are other aspects to mobile music”. What do you think?
JW: Reading that article, I can only agree that IF price and user-friendliness are not sorted out, full-track OTA downloads will never take off as a mass market service. Operators and record companies need to work together to set the price at the right competitive level to stimulate demand. OTA downloads cannot command much of a premium over wireline downloads, as the value-add is pretty minimal. Maybe some teenagers may think that downloading the latest music track from a certain artist is an essential activity that cannot wait a few hours, and so those few may be prepared to pay a substantial premium for the service. But, for the majority of people, if an OTA download is twice the price or five times the price of the same track bought online using a wireline connection, then most people will be happy to wait until they are at home and can download the track for much less. With iTunes setting the $0.99 USD / £0.79 GBP price point as an industry benchmark, we believe that MNOs will be limited to pricing OTA downloads in the $1 to $2 Dollar (approx £1.50 GBP) range in order to remain competitive. MNOs may think this sounds low, but if it successfully stimulates high demand and the MNOs then manage to win considerable market share, establishing themselves as a major route to market for record companies, then the prices should lead to a solid boost to ARPU through growing volumes of downloads.

XM: Lately, I hear many speak about the decline in the ringtones market, is this correct? What is the reason for this trend? What about ringback tones?
JW: Yes, we believe so - let’s face it, if full track downloads are priced at only 1 or 2 dollars, who will want to pay $5 bucks for a ringtone? Of course, we do not forecast instant overnight destruction of the ringtone industry, no, as there will still be huge (and growing) demand in markets where music download services are not yet available. Ringtones and ringback tones will continue to grow in the huge Asian markets (China, India, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc) and in other regions, but in 3G markets such as Western Europe, as OTA music download services proliferate, ringtone prices will surely collapse. Demand for ringtones will diminish in these regions over the coming years.

XM: How does the mobile music industry affect the global music market?
JW: The overall value of the worldwide music industry has been in decline for several years, falling from a high-point of $39.7 billion USD in 2000 to just $32.1 billion USD in
2006. However, we believe that the value of the global music market is set to reverse and grow again back to $38.8 billion USD by 2011. The reason for the growth in the market is the increased consumption of digital music. Revenue from physical sales of music (CD singles and albums) will continue to decline, but the value of digital music will grow over the coming years. Mobile will contribute to this growth, but as mentioned previously, it all depends on getting the price and marketing right.

John White will be here next Thursday for more talkin' about the music market. If you can't wait, you can read more info regarding the report on Digital Music Future by Portio Research, you can follow the link.

Thank you John and see you next week! :)

Communication Technologies in Fiction

I was going through Cellular News and found the following:

"A novel in which the entire narrative consists of mobile phone text messages was published Wednesday in Finland. "The Last Messages" tells the story of a fictitious executive in Finland who resigns from his job and travels throughout Europe and India, keeping in touch with his friends and relatives only through text messages.

His messages, and the replies, roughly 1,000 altogether, are listed in chronological order in the 332-page novel written by Finnish author Hannu Luntiala. The texts are rife with grammatical errors and abbreviations commonly used in such messages."

[via Cellular News]

This made me try to remember if I have ever read about a mobile phone in fiction (not in professional literature)... I couldn't think of any examples... However, I do remember that the first and only time I've ever read about an IM conversation was in Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" written back in 1995! I don't want to spoil the fun so go grab the book, be amazed from the prehistoric IM chat session described and enjoy.

If you happen to know who was the first author to describe\write about the telephone, mobile phone, TV, PC etc' in fiction\literature please comment or drop me a line. Thanks :) 

Ovum: The Market of Mobile Content - long, hard slog!

Hi everyone,

I'm happy to welcome Michele MacKenzie from Ovum to review the market of mobile content here at Xellular Identity. Michele is a Senior Analyst and a Service Manager for the Ovum advisory service and Practice Leader for Ovum's Consumer Practice. Michele has over seven years' experience in the telecoms industry, specializing in mobile communications and wireless Internet.

Michele, the stage is yours:

A few years ago the mobile content market grew quickly, but growth was fuelled solely by a special kind of content: personalisation, that is ringtones, logos and wallpapers. People regard their phones as highly personal items, and content for making them even more personal quickly proved to be highly popular.

However, in the more general content areas such as news and music, mobile has taken longer to develop and has grown more slowly. Mobile operators have had to deal with big challenges in re-purposing themselves as content media, in terms of technology, internal organisation, relationships with other businesses and relationships with their customers. Progress on all those fronts has been slow, and it is not over yet.

So although the availability of mobile content has taken big strides forward in recent years, we expect revenue growth to be steady rather than spectacular over the next few years. We forecast that global revenues will grow from around US$31bn in 2005 to US$55.5bn in 2010. In 2005 and until the middle of the forecasting period, personalisation applications continue to dominate. But from 2007/8 onwards other application groups such as Alerts and mobile TV and video will increase their contribution to revenue growth. Ovum expects revenues from rich content - music, games and video and TV - many of which are core 3G applications, to drive wireless content revenues from 2008 onwards.

The market place for mobile content was dominated, in earlier years, by the closed portals of the mobile operators. Those days are over now. We estimate that in Europe 50-70% of content revenues are driven from outside the operator-branded portal. The figure is lower in the US, around 40%, but is growing fast. Operators need to move fast in order to capture and maximise these revenues, by putting in place a well thought through off-portal strategy. An on portal and off portal strategy are not mutually exclusive, they complement each other and are both needed. The walled garden is no longer viable: a single portal will not meet all of consumers’ growing demands. And operators benefit from off-portal content too: it drives revenues from data traffic, and we believe it will also help open the way for advertising revenues going forward.

On the global level, mobile content, including data traffic, is around 5% of total consumer service revenues at present. We expect this to hover at around 5 or 6 % throughout our forecast period. The wireless content market still faces a huge number of challenges. Many of the new higher value services such as music, video and mobile TV will go through a bedding down phase and will take some time to reach the mass market, not least of all because of low handset penetration supporting the new services and other key enablers such as DRM. Many players have now made those initial investments and have done the groundwork to either launch the service or prepare for launch. Many are now addressing the early market and looking at how to bring those services to the mass market. Two new areas of great potential are social networking and mobile advertising. These two key areas are intrinsically linked: mobile social networking services can drive mobile advertising revenues. But both are embryonic at present, and wireless players are still grappling with the issues they involve: they are a long way from mass-market uptake.

The key challenges that wireless players are facing when it comes to growing the wireless content market are:

• Increased competition in a convergent world
  Consumers are targeted with content and entertainment services by their TV providers as well as their fixed and broadband service providers and in addition by their mobile providers. On top of that, they may well already have their email or instant messaging account with one of the large Internet portals such as Yahoo! which will also be offering them a range of services. This is where mobile players need to think more carefully about a multiplatform strategy and partnering with other players out there. The market is very crowded with many players looking for a share of both the end-user revenue and the advertising revenue.


• Wireless players move out of the comfort zone
  Providing music and TV services is a different business to personalistion. Wireless players are now exposed to greater competition (see above) which means lower margins. Many will struggle to differentiate and build the business and some will do well to take on the facilitator role rather than compete head on as a service provider. These roles are not mutually exclusive.


• Wireless operators need to harness the off portal opportunity
  There is a growing trend for wireless operators to absorb or subsidise the traffic charges for on portal services. This of course is an area of contention for off portal players, many of whom are reviewing their options having seen increased barriers to entering the rich content market due to prohibitive traffic charges. In order for the rich wireless content market to grow it will be critical for the wireless operators to look at a wholesale data strategy for third parties or flat rate data packages. If you don’t do it somebody else will so it is better to plan your strategy early on.

Do’s and Don’ts To Promote VAS On The Web

Today everyone is talking about viral marketing methods and the importance of a good PR agency... I was going through a few operators' websites and realized that while there are many good examples of web marketing, many operators don't really use their websites to build users' awareness to VAS. So here is my list of 'Do's and Dont's' to promote your ringback tones on the web (you can use it for other VAS as well):

1. Think of your users in everything you do

Some users probably don't know what a ringback tone (Caller Tone/ Caller Tune/ Answer Tone/ Funtone) is, while others never have set it before and need a simple and clear explanation how and where to set it. Some users were looking for something else at the operators' websites and made an impulsive decision to buy while others know what a ringback tones is and entered the website with a planned purchase. Keep in mind that you need to address all these different scenarios and more.

When Verizon Wireless’ users enter Verizon Wireless’ website they see a menu containing a list of features (Music & Tones/ Video/ Wallpaper etc). Also they see a short description of the ringback tones service.

There is a high correlation between content rank and number of selections. So being taken to the “Top 10” lists when pressing on the “Music & Tones” section is smart.

Also note the “What’s Hot” section - there are featured artists like Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera which leads me to the next tip:

2. Leverage existing consumer behavior

Justin Timberlake's or Christina Aguilera’s fans would be driven to press the link and look for any available content, whether it is a truetone, a ringback tone, a wallpaper or a video clip. Operators should leverage the emotional involvement with the artist and the existing user behavior to drive the need and drive the impulsive purchasing to download new content.

3. Bundle ringtones, ringback tones & other services together

When a user selects one of Christina Aguilera's ringtones offer (pop-up window or other way) her ringback tone as well. Other ideas for bundling content: 2 for 1, ringtone + ringback tone + wallpaper etc'.

4. Use of existing communities’ assets to promote services

Emotional involvement with the Manchester United soccer team for example, drives the fans' need to download. It also acts as a trigger for impulsive buying. Look for existing communities’ assets to promote your service.

5. Keep it short and simple

T-Mobile's users need to go through a lot of web pages to get to T-Mobile's mobile content.

Also, T-Mobile's users need to go through a lot of text to understand what a CallerTune (ringback tone) is and click through many web pages to get to the song catalogue.

I hope you find the insights I’ve shared here of value... :) Also you're MOST welcome to share your reactions/ thoughts/ ideas/ experience...

Relevance Marketing - The Messengers

Sony Pictures is a great example of clever segmentation of target audience and a great example of leveraging segments’ needs and behavior to promote a new product; in this case, the upcoming thriller movie "The Messengers".

According to The Hollywood Reporter:

“To promote the upcoming supernatural thriller "The Messengers", Sony Pictures has included in its dossier of digital-marketing tools a ringtone only young consumers can hear.”

"The ultrasonic ringtone -- ringtones that are audible to teenagers but not adults -- are a featured aspect of the film's promotional campaign, which is geared toward a teen audience.”

Understanding youth’s need to belong to a peer group and the place the mobile phone holds in the lives of youth as a tool to make a personal statement about themselves, Sony Pictures is promoting its new movie through a ringtone that only teens can hear. Besides having a thematic relevance to the movie since “the movie's story line about a young female protagonist insisting she hears voices that her parents cannot hear”, the ringtone has huge relevance to youth’s psychological and behavioral needs.

And Sony Pictures don't settle down with just ringtones to promote the movie,

“Along with the thematically-integrated ringtones and online interactivity, Epstein [executive director, worldwide digital marketing strategy, Columbia TriStar Marketing Group] also noted a blog on the Weblog community Xanga and an eventual 1-800 number as other communicative features tied to the film's marketing efforts. The hope is that it feels like one continuous conversation with Jess [the main character in the film] -- you see her profile on a social networking site, you call her and IM her -- as she draws you into her current situation," said Epstein, noting the intent of the campaign is to have users transcend a couple of digital mediums.”

And if you're interested in more about relevance marketing and youth - here's a link and my previous thoughts about the ultrasonic ringtone.

Youth Mobile Trends Summary

Hi everyone,

Many have asked me to summarize the very interesting and value-added knowledge resource published here during November; so here are the links to the mobileYouth interviews:

• Nick Wright on: What is Mobile Youth?
• Jan Kuczynkli on: Mobile Music and Youth
• Savka Andic on: Mobile Marketing and Youth
• Nick Wright on: Mobile Services and Youth

Enjoy! :)

Understanding Mobile 2.0

An excellent piece written by a friend and mobilist Rudy De Waele of m-trends.org titled Understanding Mobile 2.0 at Richard MacManus' Read and Write Web :

"Mobile 2.0 is not "the Future." it is services that already exist all around us. These services are maturing at an amazing rate and what they are doing is effectively knitting together Web 2.0 with the mobile platform to create something new: a new class of services that leverage mobility but are as easy to use and ubiquitous as the Web is today. These services point the way forward for the mobile data industry."

Interviewing Savka Andic on Mobile Marketing & Youth

Welcome to the third part of the mobile youth trends and behavior coverage. Today, Savka Andic, Research Associate at the Wireless World Forum, who is also the co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report will be visiting here!

For those of you who missed the first 2 part of the mobile youth trends coverage here are the links: Nick Wright talked about mobile youth trends and Jan Kuczynski talked about mobile music and youth.

And now, let me welcome Savka Andic!

Hi Xen and all my readers, I’m Savka Andic, colleague of Jan and Nick (who spoke with you previously on Xellular Identity) and co-author of the 2006 mobile Youth report. A relatively new arrival to both the UK and the world of mobile, I completed my BA in Political Science and French  in the mountainous city of Vancouver, Canada earlier this year and, degree in one hand and British passport in another, was lured to the urban bustle of London. Shortly thereafter, I joined Wireless World Forum as a researcher.

-How are you?
I’m great, Xen. Very busy, but I guess that’s not always a bad thing.

-What brought you into the world of mobile?
My job, essentially! Only a few months ago, I knew less about mobile than some of the youth I now interview for research. However, my background is in politics and the social sciences, so I find the social implications of mobile, marketing and social media very interesting.

-Other hobbies, fields of interest?
Politics and international relations remain two great passions of mine, along with skiing, traveling, world music and a rather taxing branch of yoga known as Hot Bikram. I also indulge in the occasional bout of cocktail mixing (and drinking), my favorite being the marvellous Mojito.

-Something interesting to share with the world about you?
This isn’t particularly interesting, but I can read words backwards in full sentences, as if it were forwards. Don’t ask :)

Mobile Marketing

-There are many successful marketing tools. What are the key elements for mobile marketing's appeal?

Good question Xen - you’ve gone to the heart of the matter. In fact, one thing we found over the course of our research is that many marketing tools that were previously very successful are not so effective with youth anymore. There are two reasons for this: the huge volume of advertising messages that youth are exposed to today, and the decreasing time which youth spend exposed to traditional media such as TV.

Youth are exposed to hundreds of advertising messages per day (up to three or four more than 40 years ago), with the result that day-after advertising recall rates have plummeted, from 26% in the 1960s to 7% in 2005.  Compounding this is the fact that youth today simply spend much less time exposed to traditional broadcast media such as TV and radio, and much more time online and on their mobiles. In the UK alone, there has been a 16% TV watching among 16-24 year olds constitutes a 16% drop since 2001. In sum, not only are youth less exposed to traditional media and therefore to the marketing messages which appear on these media, they are less likely to act on the messages they do receive if these messages are not directly relevant to their needs and lifestyles.

Basically, marketers today have a problem getting through to youth. This is where mobile comes in: We can identify three specific areas where mobile will prove invaluable to marketers. Firstly, its ability to deliver highly relevant and targeted advertising on a personal platform; secondly, its ability to build communities around brands, and thirdly, its ability to act as a linchpin between a variety of different advertising channels. More on this topic later – this answer is getting way too long!

-Mobile marketing so far has focused on SMS. Is there more to mobile marketing?

Xen, you’ve raised a great point and highlighted a major obstacle to creating successful mobile marketing.  In our report, we distinguish between two approaches to marketing, “reach” and relevance”. Reach is the traditional marketing approach, whereby the success of a campaign is basically judged by how many (potential) consumers it can reach. On the flip side is relevance marketing, where success is measured not by the scale of the campaign but rather how relevant the message is to specific consumers.

Many consumers today associate marketing on the mobile with a stereotypically reach approach, largely because of the SMS push campaigns of the “text-to-win” variety. In fact, mobile today is the perfect example of a reach approach being applied to a relevance platform – that is, a platform with great potential for delivering individualized and targeted relevance marketing.

This skewed approach to marketing on the mobile is basically the result of a temporary incongruence between the medium and the message. Messages will gradually adapt themselves to best suit the vehicle of their delivery, but like any adaptation, it takes a bit of time and a bit of trial and error. In the question above, I outlined three key advantages of mobile marketing: its ability to deliver highly relevant and targeted advertising on a personal platform; its ability to build communities around brands, and its ability to act as a linchpin between a variety of different advertising channels. For example, marketers can set up permission marketing schemes whereby youth divulge valuable information on their preferences to advertisers in exchange for targeted mobile ads – in fact such a service specifically for youth (the ad-supported mobile) will be launched next year by the Finnish company Blyk.

Mobile also allows brands to strengthen youth loyalty by building communities. A good example is Coca Cola’s “Coke Fridge” in Germany, where consumers collect codes from promotional Coke packs which can be redeemed on Coke Fridge - on either the internet site, or a mobile JAVA application version. Consumers can exchange the points obtained for ringtones, wallpapers and mobile games or music downloads via iTunes. Coke Fridge also features an instant messaging application, which offers youth social benefits of communication and allows youth to invite friends, which spreads awareness of the site virally.

Finally, the portability of the mobile phone means it can fuse together many disparate advertising channels to create interactive marketing campaigns. The “Warren” campaign launched in 2003 by Virgin Mobile Australia was a good example of a successful campaign integrating mobile into marketing, as it combined aspects of TV, online, print, radio and mobile advertising to create an interactive and engaging experience for the consumer.

-Are there different marketing strategies when it comes to the youth segment? How?
Absolutely. As I discussed above, young consumers don’t respond particularly well to traditional reach advertising.  To resonate with youth, marketers must craft relevant marketing messages that speak to their specific interests and preferences. Even more so, marketers must create advertising that involves young consumers in some way - interactivity is a key component of successfully attracting and building young consumer loyalty. This is simply because interactivity makes products more fun and more real. Mobile marketing has shown a great capacity for fun and interactive marketing, which makes it an ideal strategy for the youth segment - both the Coke Fridge and Virgin Mobile “Warren” examples. I also said it’s important that products be “real”, ie. authentic. What authenticity really means is that youth feel they have a certain emotional investment in the product, and that it reflects them in some way. A good dose of interactivity always increases the authenticity of a product. A great non-mobile example of this is Jones Soda, a soft drinks company. Jones Soda encourages consumers to send in their favorite photos, selects the best ones and publishes them on the labels of its soda bottles. Young consumers love this, as they gain status from being featured on the bottle and feel an emotional investment in the product and hence greater brand loyalty.

-What are the challenges mobile marketing faces today?
There are three main ones which we talk about in the report: First is that the marketing industry in general lacks confidence in mobile marketing, and a shift in mindset is needed before mobile marketing becomes more accepted. Marketers are holding back from the mobile platform due to a lack of traditional reach-oriented data to confirm the success of mobile marketing campaigns. Change must come from reassessing the metrics employed for measuring “old media” marketing techniques towards metrics that suit the mobile platform more specifically. We have to start focusing on “share of customer” rather than conventional market share, meaning focusing more on knowing your customers well and targeting them with relevant information than simply trying to grab as many customers as possible with generic, watered-down advertising.

Another problem is that Mobile marketing so far has focused on SMS push marketing campaigns which were initially successful because of their novelty value but have ultimately become annoying.

SMS marketing limits the potential of the mobile to engage consumers. Direct marketing may yield short-term results but there is no motivation for peer-to-peer marketing which limits the lifespan of any marketing campaign. When consumers are motivated to market the product to others, target segments become smaller and the result is more sustainable, leading to long-term yields through organically growing campaigns. Generic campaigns, such as mobile banner ads or TV style advertising, will see diminished returns over time as consumers become less receptive.

The third problem is that mobile marketing is frequently isolated from overall marketing campaigns. Mobile is treated as a separate marketing channel with a more technological bent than other platforms, meaning there is little integration with holistic marketing strategies. Mobile marketers are often more focused on one marketing technology rather than a larger solution and the high operator charges discourage the kind of experimentation needed to view the larger mobile picture. Mobile marketing also remains an anomaly amongst advertising platforms in that the consumer is expected to pay to interact, which is likely to disappoint consumers both in terms of the brand advertised and the advertising medium itself.

-Any interesting examples of mobile marketing best practice?
In the report we have pretty interesting case studies, such as the following McDonalds example, proving how effective mobile marketing can be.

McDonalds Japan used the mobile as the principle marketing channel to target young female consumers for the launch of its limited edition Prawn Fillet-o burger.

Aside from contents relating to fashion and teen idols, the mobile site’s main feature was a flash wallpaper heart motif which consumers could download for free. Consumers could customize the motif, changing the colors used to match their mood and share their customized version with friends, giving the site a viral dimension.

Average monthly page views of the mobile site hit 49,000 and sales of the limited edition burger were nearly four times that of previous limited edition menu items.

Thank you Savka! :)

* *** * *** * *** *

Next week there will be a new guest visiting here and talking about mobile services and youth. Wanna know who??? - Don't forget to tune in next Thursday to find out! Have a great weekend!

Ringing Up Business - Orange Israel Case Study

The second case study of successful Ringback Tone marketing strategies led by mobile operators will be the example of Orange Israel with its successful practice of smart segmentation.

Orange IL is one of four mobile operators in Israel, having 32% of market share which are ~2.58M users out of population of 6.98M. In Israel, the total of mobile subscribers is 7.9M, which are 113% of the total population.

Orange has launched its Funtone service (Orange’s commercial name for ringback tones on the Comverse Fun Dial Platform) back in August 2003, being the first operator to launch the ringback tone service out of Asia. Having a strong believe in the service’s potential and being a major service in the company’s portfolio, Orange relaunched the service in September 2005 in order to gain higher users’ awareness and more penetration.

One of the brilliant ideas Orange had, and which I want to focus on, is to look for defined segments that have the higher value and the most effective viral influence. Orange has managed to increase its revenues by leveraging its current ringback platform and by providing a wider offering. Orange spotted the business segment as a higher value segment and provided its business customers with a suiting offering. Orange’s business customers are invited to change the normal dial tone with a corporate ringback tone. This simple idea turned the ringback tone to be another channel to reach a wide audience for big advertising campaigns. While big sized companies use the corporate ringback tone as another channel of advertising, small and medium sized businesses, which have smaller budgets for advertising, use their company’s ringback tones to position themselves as creative, dynamic, cool and promising companies. To get an example of what I’m talking about here, you can check Orange’s online business ringback portal and try some of the ringback tones.

To summarize, a simple approach like market segmentation together with creativity are very effective. Also, they made Orange’s business ringback tone offering into a successful service.

A special issue focusing on ‘how to turn a mobile service into cool’, with examples from the ringback tone market, will be published here next week so don't forget to tune in next Tuesday!

And to leave a good taste in your mouth, here is a cool ad of the Funtone, courtesy of Orange Israel. View Orange.mpeg

Interviewing Nick Wright on Mobile Youth Trends

For quite some time I was thinking about covering a wider scope of the mobile youth trends and behavior. Reading and looking for a body of knowledge, I got to know Nick Wright, a Research Associate at the Wireless World Forum, who is a co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report. Nick has a BA in English and has worked in film journalism, English teaching and publishing. He joined Wireless World Forum in 2006 after a year living and working abroad in Russia and Turkey. Having made an incredible gesture, Nick will be my special guest at Xellular Identity during the month of November. First, I will be publishing the email interview conducted earlier, and later on Nick has agreed to answer your questions(!)

Well enough talking, let’s give Nick a worm to the stage!

Getting to Know Nick

-Hi Nick, how are you?   
Great, great to be here :)

-What brought you into the world of mobile?
What appealed to me when I joined Wireless World Forum 2 months ago was the consumer focus inherent in their approach to research. I had just finished a period teaching English to kids in Russia and Turkey and I knew the importance of appealing to young people and getting their attention. When I joined I knew as much as the next person about mobiles but within a very short time I discovered that this was an area where huge leaps in development were possible on a daily basis. It’s an exciting area to be involved in and it’s rare to see an industry so passionate about the possibilities that their medium offers. What we are trying to do with the mobileYouth report is refocus that passion to keep it relevant to the youth consumers so that all that energy isn’t lost.

-Other hobbies, fields of interest?
I’m an avid film buff but I temper the long time spent sitting in front of the screen by keeping active though running, rowing and yoga. Recently, it’s been an exciting time for me since the London Film Festival has been showing all over the city. The new, the strange and the classic jostle for attention around London and I’m frankly spoilt for choice. Last Sunday it set a world record for showing its much-anticipated, completely unknown “Surprise Film” on 50 screens at the same time (including a hospital, a prison and some lucky person’s living room). It turned out to be Robert Altman’s hilarious and touching new film “A Prairie Home Companion”, his first for 5 years. It was worth the suspense!

-3 birthday wishes?
1) A solution (or a basket of solutions) to solve the climate crisis we’re facing right now. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth comes at an all-too convenient time.
2) The persistence to train for the London marathon for next year
3) The Complete Stanley Kubrick Collection on DVD.

-What did you get for Christmas last year?
A Russian chapka from my parents: I was in Moscow teaching English and the benny hat wasn’t doing the trick any more!

mobileYouth

-High influence of the peer group, the need to build an independent personality, search of identity… adolescence was always about those burning questions, so what has mobile to do with it?
The relationship between youth and their mobiles is not necessarily based on being “fun, cool, or entertaining”. It’s a key social tool employed in the dynamics of the peer group. Youth consume mobile products - as they do others - to make statements about themselves and their relationship with their peers.

Self-expression is such a key aspect of young people’s lives that they would rarely choose a non-branded alternative over an identifiable brand. 98% of teens for example would choose a brand/logo designed T-shirt over a plain one.

Mobile is most importantly a symbol of belonging to a group, both as a physical product (you must own a phone to be part of our group) and its communicative possibilities: texting is essential to youth not because of the content (very limited) of the texts themselves but because each text is a reaffirmation and a reminder that “I’m with you”.

If mobile operators are to make the most of this underlying desire for social interaction amongst youth peer groups, then they need to ask how they can benefit youth and improve their communication. So far the emphasis has been more about giving young people things to play with on their phone which don’t enhance or build on existing behaviour. The result is, at best, small-scale adoption and faddish blips but no long-term successes beyond texting.

-How is the mobile phone changing the lives of teenagers?
A pretty broad question! I think it’s fair to say that it’s allowed youth to remain hyper-connected at all times, to the extent that 14% of US mobileYouth surveyed admitted that they couldn’t live without their phones. Other surveys point to the fact that an increasing number of young people are bing admitted to clinics as “text-addicts”. Overall, youth may be building up a dependency on mobiles which have increasingly become a sign of social status and self-esteem: many admit to feeling depressed if they pass a whole day without receiving a text.

We found something similar in the recent vox pop survey we caught on camera last week. One person admitted that he didn’t know “how people survived before mobile phones” and almost all admitted that they loved texting. If you’d like to see what other information we gathered from the video interviews please visit this link.

However, overall it is fueling the more extrovert and allowing shyer teens to communicate more easily. One of the more interesting findings is that mobiles have come to take the place in youth culture traditionally held by cigarettes. They provide or allow private communication, the activity is carried out largely unsupervised and they effectively create a rare private space for youth to interact in.

The most popular aspects of the mobile are features that can be adapted to suit the needs of youth. Texting is easily understood (though it needs practice to reach the blurry speeds of some of the more proficient) and adaptable to the stage where adults find the language unintelligible. Wallpapers and handset choice allow for personalization which allows youth to express themselves and advertise their identity as part of their peer group.

One of the reasons for the low adoption of new mobile services is because youth cannot access the service easily either due to budget or the difficulty of setting up the service to begin with. One of the key factors in reaching the youth mass market is the ease of use of a service which allows it to become widely accepted across peer groups.

- Is there a special usage of the mobile phone when it comes to youth? Usage patterns? How youth’s usage/consumption of mobile services differ from other segments?
Youth are compulsive texters, as I have explained. Globally they spend four times as much  on texting  as the average mobile phone user (US$ 6 a year compared to US$ 1.5 across all ages). 29.8% of their ARPU is on data services, compared to 11% across all age ranges. There is a lot of room to exploit future data services for the youth market as long as operators exploit existing youth behaviour rather than churning out technological features that have little relevance to kids’ lives.

-What is the market size of mobileYouth?
Currently youth from 5-24 make up 28.1% of the mobile phone ownership market. They spend US$ 130 million on mobiles which is 24% of the total spend on mobiles for all ages. Youth spend on data services is US$ 38 million and, importantly 80% of that spending is on texting. Youth spend on data services is 43% of the total, which shows just how heavily they rely on text as opposed to voice to communicate.

-Do culture and orientation influence mobileYouth behavior? How?
Although we argue that the underlying social drivers behind youth consumers are broadly similar, there are superficial cultural differences that have often been given too much emphasis when, for example, some industry professionals dismiss Korean and Japanese youth markets as “gadget-obsessed”.  These markets are far more developed in their adoption of the mobile internet and the uses of camera phones but these are all easily explained in other terms that the Japanese being obsessed with technology.

Japanese and Korean youth have even higher levels of mobile data service ARPU than youth globally: 47.6% of mobileYouth ARPU was data, compared to the global average of 29.7%. One of the most popular mobile services in Korea is a mobile social networking site named Cyworld, which is essentially an extension of MySpace in that it allows youth to create their own virtual rooms and literally buy furniture to decorate it. It’s hugely popular (90% of Koreans in their 20s have used the service) and provides a perfect environment for youth to fulfil five of their basic social needs, as we identified them: Social Networking, Communication, Status display, Personalisation and acting as a Behavioural Platform.

To explain: Social networking essentially allows youth to keep connected to all their friends, reconnect with older friends (as in the case with Bebo, a UK-based social networking site for school students, for those children forced to move school) and meet new people with similar interests.
Communication is simply the ability to communicate via as many routes as possible: text, voice, IM, PM, e-mail etc. Cyworld allows consumers to interact in all these ways.

Status Display and personalisation are shown by the ability to adapt and personalize in a way that shows off the young author’s identity, likes and dislikes (specifically related to music), friends, profile and the customizable room. As in real life, the virtual world holds virtual objects that convey status in the same way as branded Nike trainers or ownership of the latest music does in real life.

Ultimately, since so many youth are on Cyworld, it essentially forms a behavioural platform for youth as well. By this I mean it presents a set of rules, perameters and structures for youth to interact around. A great way for youth to advance their status is to become a master of a certain behavoural platform. Specific sport varieties are also behavioural platforms so, for example, if you are a great skateboarder you will be given a higher status amongst your skater peer group. In the same way, collective familiarity with a certain platform, when everyone has access to it and understands the “rules”, tends to strengthen peer group bonds and the attachment to the platform itself.

Thank you Nick! :)

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For the second part of the interview and more insights about the mobile youth behavior, the mobile music market, and the future of this market - don't forget to tune in next Thursday!

Mobile Communities on the Dance Floor

A dear friend and fellow mobilist, Rudy De Waele of m-trends, pinged me about a very cool social programming tool called partyStrands. partyStrands is designed for bars, clubs, and other socializing venues or private/public parties. It allows partygoers to influence the music being played all through their mobile phones.

-So how does it work? -partyStrands starts to run on a playlist chosen by the bar or club owner. Then, partygoers can influence the music by sending an SMS containing an alias + favorite artist. As more people join in, the sequence of the songs is influenced by the collective tastes in music of the people who join that party.

To create a seemingly online community experience, partyStrands runs on a screen that displays the current playing song, album and the messages that the partygoers send via SMS. It can also display photos sent by MMS, and several other innovative features such as cool animations targeted to the audience, and what I personally liked (the reason is obvious) - is the ability to display member’s avatar :) Also, the playlist, partygoers, and SMS is accessible on real time from the party's webpage which can be visited during or after the party.

For the partygoes, partyStrands brings the virtual experience of online social network to the physical space (and vice versa). On the same time, advertisers, venue owners, music labels and operators enjoy the newly created context of consumption and the newly created place to advertize and

promote mobile and music services/products. Smart!

Korean Avatars Market Review - Part IV (Mobile Avatars Offerings)

Recently I was asked to give a presentation about the Korean avatars market, trying to understand the craze and predict other mobile markets’ behavior. Knowing it might interest some of you, I’ll be publishing the content of the presentation at this blog. Due to the length, I’ve been posting it in a few parts every Thursday. If you missed the opening, here’s the link to the first part, second part and third part.

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Mobile Avatars Offerings

The medium of avatars is naturally focused on community, since users need an audience to present their character. As such, avatars can increase operator's attractiveness using its viral affect to mobile operators. Also, operators can use avatars in order to utilize the loyalty established by online communities.

However, the mobile industry had stumbled upon barriers to provide a mobile avatars offering: the mobile internet hasn’t reached the web’s speed, latency, and user interface. Also there’s a big difficulty in implementation.

Having said that, there are already some players in the Korean mobile avatars arena. The first player was NEOWIZ which began supplying mobile avatars to KTF in August 2001, to LG Telecom in April 2002, and SK Telecom in August 2002. According to company’s reports, mobile avatar sales grew to over 2 billion won per month in 2004 (which are about $1.5 B).

The second player was NATE. SK Telecom's Nate launched its avatar service in October 2002 and provides avatar service similar to those provided by web portals. This move was the result of the wired-wireless convergence with SK Telecom’s acquisition of a Korean web portal. Nate offers clothing brands for avatars, providing its users with replicas of the genuine clothing lines. The fashion and consumer brands companies enjoy the advertising by increasing actual product sales, while NATE profits from avatar sales.

What avatars demonstrated to the mobile industry is that mobile phones are a strong extension of self for many users. By personalizing the mobile with avatars, the mobile becomes much more than a communication tool. It has become an extension of either how the user views himself\herself, or would like to.

To summarize, avatars should be linked with other services and not just be a cute application to play with. Avatar service has been generating sales related to community-based services like gaming, forums, chats, IM, and minihomepies. Integrating the web and mobile increases the usage of avatars provide the ability to use the digital identity created practically everywhere.

Exploding Anonymity

The IHT reports that the Chinese government

“intends to require its estimated 17 million bloggers to register under their real names, the official Xinhua news agency reported Monday.

“Under the system, bloggers would be allowed to continue using their online pseudonyms, but must register with the authorities under their real names. The requirement is an "unavoidable choice" if China wants to properly develop its blogging community, Xinhua quoted Huang Chengqing, the head of the Internet Society of China, as saying.”

[via IHT]

It is clear that the Chinese government is afraid of freedom of speech, which lies in the essence of anonymity. Anonymity sets people free from inner restrains... Anonymously, users can be what ever they want to be.

However, expressing ourselves is a basic human need, so it will find the way to come out. If blogging isn’t the ‘right’ or ‘safest’ mean, people will find other means for communicating what is in and needs to come out… Here are a few ideas for other means of expressing oneself: the MMORPGs (massively multi-player online role-playing games), forums, chats, comments… It’s like a natural dam in a river - eventually the water will create a new path, a detour, and keep on streaming to the ocean...

Korean Avatars Market Review - Part II (The South Korean connectivity culture)

As I told you last week, I was asked to give a presentation about the Korean avatars market, trying to understand the craze on the web and predict other mobile markets’ behavior. I started to post it in a few parts every Thursday. If you missed the opening, here’s the link to the first part and now let’s move forward to the second part:

                                           ***

South Korean connectivity culture

South Korean users were the first to adopt avatars as their web representation and very quickly it has turned to be a very prosperous market for avatars providers. To understand this phenomenon we should look into the South Korean connectivity culture.

South Korea has quickly become the world's most wired nation. A friend of mine who just got back to Israel after being relocated in South Korea for 1.5 years shared that he "couldn’t grasp how much the web had to offer until I got to Korea. You suddenly realize how FAST it can be! An average South Korean apartment has a high-speed Internet connection of 8 megabits per second” - which, just for the comparison, is 8 times the typical broadband speed in U.S. households. That's FAST!

But we’re not only talking about the speed. Korean broadband penetration leads the world being one of the fastest, and its subscription rates which are among the lowest in the world. 78% of the total Korean households or some 11 million homes, have broadband accounts. This makes Korea a fertile land for broadband services.

Massively multi-player online role-playing games or MMORPGs are one of the beneficiaries of Korean broadband’s high penetration. These games form entire fantasy worlds (and economies), where players meet, interact, and even fight (together or against one another). All is done by using their avatars, their web representations. MMORPGs where the first arena where the need for having a personalized self-representation was understood and answered.

The demand for avatars has grown with the fast adoption of online social interactions in a bodiless, ageless and sexless sphere (at MMORPGs and elsewhere on the web). This amorphous presence has evoked the need to establish a visual presence by nominating a visual representant.

Service providers, on their behalf, entered the avatar market to upgrade their web offerings, recognizing that avatars can increase revenues by promoting more frequent and longer visits and by serving as a bridge to additional services; wherever you go, you take your avatar with you. For the different Korean Avatars offerings you'll have to tune in next Thursday... :)

Music Is Out, Reality Is In

After Lukas Rossi was crowned as the winner of a music talent reality contest and is now the lead singer of Rock Star Supernova I’m pretty sure that we will see more of this mixture of reality and music in the future of the entertainment and mobile industry.

A short brief for the non U.S. among my readers:
Rock Star Supernova is a CBS reality TV show where in its second season drum player Tommy Lee (Mötley Crüe), bass player Jason Newsted (ex-Metallica) and guitarist Gilby Clarke (ex-Guns N' Roses) were gathered together on the search for a rock\metal lead singer. To find their rising star, they had a big contest with all the reality sh*t (sorry) of: accommodating all contestants in the same huge mansion so they can fight each other, eliminating a contestant after a live show every week, decision making done by a combination of viewers' voting and the band's decisions. And, of course, a big prize to the winner - to record an album with the band and go on a tour. On first impression - it’s pretty much like the hard rock version of “American Idol”. Wait.

Entertainment in the last few years is more and more about process and less about content. Being a little nostalgic here I would say that in the past, bands were about the music they made (content). They had to struggle for public recognition and success. If we examine Rock Star Supernova for a moment, the band is practically a weird bunch of musicians scraped together. They wouldn’t have joint together under any other circumstances; and they could never succeed without the show because their music is meaningless and uninteresting from a musical point of view. Yet, in reality, Rock Star Supernova was a success even before it had a single song or even a lead singer…! Nobody really cares about the future band or even worse - about their music. While the process in which people compete, fight, excite, stimulate, win and lose is much more interesting and traffic generating. It’s all about elimination, who gets voted off, who hates whom. Furthermore, even the band itself doesn’t make artistic\musical decisions but economical ones: if a talented contestant wouldn’t generate enough traffic, the band will eliminate him\her, even if he\she is favorited by the band. Why? Because eventually, they all need to sell and attract the masses later down the road. Decision making comes down to plain economics of benefit vs. cost. The money maker isn’t necessarily the outcome (music, tour, album) but the process (rating, SMS traffic). So I can sum it all up to this: Music is out, reality is in.

How this has happened? The "reality" concept which was integrated into the music industry has changed the way music is made. Instead of “the making” being hidden and the music being public, it has become the other way around. It's more profitable. This generates buzz about the band when there is no real content yet. Also it produces emotional attachment and huge interest before there’s a music product to sell to the masses. And most important - it enlarges sales: now we consume the process of “the making” and we consume the power to keep or eliminate contestants. We do it by voting by SMS and by consuming mobile content like ringtones, ringbacks, wallpapers and clips all by Verizon, before there's an album or a concert... The outcome: the mobile and entertainment industry make more $$. So, who’s gonna give up on another season of the show?!

Classical and\vs. Mobile?

“Scores of cellular phones trilled and twittered, beeped and burbled all at once inside a concert auditorium in this community outside Chicago. The orchestra onstage was unfazed. The composer was delighted.”

"Paul Freeman, the group’s music director, told the audience beforehand, “This is a great moment in history, when we can say to you, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, turn on your cellphones.’”

[via NY Times]

David N. Baker, a composer and professor of music at Indiana University, made history with his Concertino for Cellular Phones and Symphony Orchestra. Baker found a new way to make the audience a part of his music, excite and entice them. Instead of fighting what lately seems like a lost battle againt mobile phones ringing during concerts, he found a way to reverse the effects of the worst enemy of live performances – the ringing mobiles.

Previously, scholar Todd Gitlin wrote that one of the ways media and culture cope with undefeated enemies is by taming them. The hegemonical culture provides the shrew a stage to convey its message but only within a limited space\time-frame and under the mediation of the hegemonical culture. In this example, we see Classical Music aknowledging one of its biggest enemies, the mobile music (short in length, pop in its nature, digital…). Classical Music attempts to contain it inside but under limitations - the maestro (or the composer) decides when the ringtone will ring.

-So who’s higher in hierarchy…? -Right. :)

P.S. You can also check out the NY Times audio slide show of the concert.

Korean Avatars Market Review - Part I

Recently I was asked to give a presentation about the Korean avatars market, trying to understand the craze and predict other mobile markets’ behavior. Knowing it might interest some of you, I’ll be publishing the content of the presentation at this blog. Due to the length, I’ll be posting it in a few parts every Thursday.

***
Email, IM, VoIP, P2P file sharing, online social networks etc’... we all use these to communicate with other people. It makes our lives easier, it extends our availability (and our working hours) and it makes us manage more "mediated" relationships than we used to have in the past; meaning we communicate more through emails\mobiles\IM and less in person, face to face. Having said that, we should examine the influence of these medias on our lives and what we gain from them.

One of the key attributes of the internet is that users are liberated from their body, age, sex and occupation. For many, this is a major attraction while others loathe the lack of boundaries. Either way, users need to supplement information that otherwise can be gathered easily, like age, sex, personal traits etc’. To do so, users adopt a personal referent that stands for them over the web. It can be a screen name, a user ID number, an email address… Yet many users find that a graphical representation provides a better service for this purpose.

That graphical representation is what we call an avatar. An avatar can be based on the user’s physical appearance as close as possible, if not identical, to how he\she is seen in real life or, in contrast, present a desired but imaginary appearance; a manga fairy, a medieval warrior, cute Hello Kitty... Anything or anyone. Thus, avatars empower users. Avatars are users’ alter ego.

Also, users can change their avatars frequently to better fit their mood and the actual settings.

Scholars have found major interest in the self-representation over the web mechanism, and dealt a lot with the following questions:

• Does web self-representation resemble to the real-life self-representation?
• How users manage consciously and unconsciously their self-representation over the web?
• What message users want to promote about themselves?
• How users read and decode this visual information?

Moving to South Korea...

South Korean users were the first to adopt avatars as their web representation and very rapidly it has turned to be a very prosperous market for avatars providers. To understand this phenomenon we should look into the South Korean connectivity culture. So don’t forget to tune in next Thursday for the second part.

Introducing Comic-Blogging: Interview with George Sfarnas of Being Five

As a visual communication fan, I really like how blogging has been taking some interesting directions into different means of communication, like posting pictures, videos, ads..., other than plain writing. About a month ago, NRG, one of the Israeli web portals, brought a coverage of geek\techie comic strips (*note: the post is in Hebrew yet you can still follow the links for the comics). I followed the links and found out that almost all of them use blogging platforms as their publishing tool. Apparently blogging has turned to be a great vehicle to convey comic strips as well.

A little more investigation around the web brought up Being Five, a cool blog strip about a five years old boy who blogs using voice recognition software, by the cartoonist George Sfarnas. What I really liked about this strip (besides sweet Georgie) is the artistic decision of having two visual medias, blogging and drawing\illustrating, interlaced one inside the other. Sfarnas created something way more ingenious than two medias one inside the other: he writes a blog (1) where he posts comic strips (2) about a boy who blogs (3) using a visual face recognition (since a 5-yrs boy can't write). In other words, it’s visual blogging (through the innocent eyes of a child) inside a comic strip inside a blog. We get meta-blogging, a blog about blogging!

So, I decided to ask George a few questions about comic-blogging and other things. Here is our email interview:

Getting To Know George

Who inspires you artistically?
Honestly, I'm inspired every day by cartoon art I see. Maybe on a cereal box at the store, or on a billboard, or the net, wherever I see cartooning that catches my eye, it inspires me.            

How do you define your art?
Simple drawings that tell a story.

What brought you into the world of comics?
I enjoy the freedom of doing a comic strip. It's like shooting a little movie without having to raise a budget or hire a crew. It's all at the end of my pencil.

Other hobbies, fields of interest?
I just like to draw comics all the time, I'm pretty boring that way.

3 birthday wishes?
1) Another birthday next year.
2) Hope someone remembers my Birthday
3) World peace, of course :)

Comic-Blogging

When did you start blogging?
When I debuted Being Five in April of this year. I find the blogging community is pretty cool as a whole. There are a lot of well written, interesting blogs out there...like yours :)

Why did you choose a blog to be the stage for your art?
The main character in Being Five, Georgie, has a lot to say, like most five year olds, so I thought it would be funny if he could share his thoughts with the world. Blogging was his vehicle.

What apps\ software do you use to draw your comic strips?
I first draw on paper with pencil, then I scan the drawings onto the computer and do my inking and coloring with a software program called Xara. I used to ink by hand but now I enjoy doing it on the computer. A lot of clicking but no messy spills. 

How long does it take to draw a strip?
About 4 hours, more or less.

How\Where do you get ideas for your posts\strips?
Sometime it's topical, what would Georgie say about this or that. And sometime I just doodle and draw funny facial expressions, or poses, and then something comes to mind. 

What can you say about the balance between text and illustrations?
I like them to compliment each other.  In some strips the picture says enough and sometime it's the dialogue. It's just something I try to do by feel.   

Why does the story line always contain 3 frames?
3 frames seem to work well for Being Five. Georgie sets it up in the first frame, then he thinks it over in the second, then he delivers in the third. I drew a comic strip, called Prune Juice, for several years and 4 frames worked well for that strip because there were usually two or more people interacting, as apposed to Georgie working as a solo act. 

What is the hardest part in the process of making a comic strip?
Well, like Charlie Chaplin once said, thinking is the hardest part. But I can honestly tell you that I enjoy each stage of the process.

Why did you choose blogging as the media that Georgie uses to share his thoughts with the world?
Georgie thinks of "the blog" as his friend. He's not thinking about the prospect of people reading it from around the world. It's just his friend that he hangs out with. Kind of like talking to a stuffed animal. 

Getting to Know Sweet Georgie

I read that your 5 year old boy is the inspiration for the character of Georgie. Do you feel that Georgie will grow up as your 5 year old does? Will his front tooth eventually grow? ;-)
It is true that my son was the inspiration for Being Five.  The stories and explanations he tells me are so full of energy and life that I wanted to capture it in this comic strip.  The character, Georgie, will remain in a magical time warp of being five for as long as I continue the strip. I think the last Being Five strip will be Georgie's sixth birthday, whenever that will be.

Is Georgie a hidden side in you?
I can remember my childhood really well, so I like to go there in my mind and remember the fun stuff. In that respect Georgie is a reflection of me.

What did Georgie get for Christmas?
His cell phone, so he can blog on location.

3 birthday wishes?
1) That he can marry his neighbor, Becky.
2) That his dog Charlie learns to catch a frisbee
3) That his Grandmother stops leaving comments on his blog.

Thank you George for having this interview :) If you have more questions for George, you can leave a comment. And, for more of 5 years old Georgie, head up to Being Five. Enjoy!! :)

Web 2.0 Awareness

A little off topic link I got yesterday (thanks Darren!) of a cool self test built by Scott Schiller, to determine how web 2.0 aware are you.

Have fun people :)

WP: Monetizing The Blogroll

Jeff Burkett reports that a new, experimental Sponsored Blogroll Service was announced by the Washington Post:

"A very small number of blogs enjoy hundreds and hundreds of inbound links - the A-list, as it were. But almost all others have very few sites pointing to them.

Basically, all of the B-list and C-list bloggers (who may well be very talented) link to the A-list blogs in hope of getting noticed. All this accomplishes is making the A-listers more powerful, while the B's and C's stay where they are.  It is very hard to break through the clutter, as many of you know.

Some bloggers are open to putting advertising on their site, so why not strike deals with them and help them do that. The revenue gets shared (in the bloggers favor of course) and we throw in one additional component... A link to their blog on the homepage of washingtonpost.com. With the potential of 8 Million monthly visitors seeing this link, it could very well be the catalyst that them noticed.

Admittedly, right now the index box is a little small and may not be in the most prominent position on the page. Okay, so its definitely in the ghetto position, but its a start. If the blogosphere embraces this and we see a lot of interest from quality blogs we will grow the size of the index and give it better positioning on the page. We'll just have to wait and see."

[via Media Landscaping]

Besides being a great way to tighten relations between the WP and bloggers, the WP Blogroll actually helps the newspaper to put a foot in the door of bloggers' balance of power; a balance that was being kept by the blogsphere among itself until now. I wonder how will quoting a price tag for a link (i.e. for being featured in a blogroll) will affect bloggers' link exchange policies and interactions... If a newpaper with ~8M views per month can set a price tag, why can't other A-listers do just the same?

Are 1000 Words Worth A Trailer?

Off topic yet it was very interesting to read how the publishing market harnesses the visual media and the video sharing web communities like YouTube et al to promote new books with trailers.

And there's a very smart business model since:

"The Web sites run the videos as content, not advertising, so the publishers do not have to pay for every click. And, unlike ads, the videos often have an afterlife in searchable archives, long after they have left the main home page."

[via IHT]

With low production costs (according to the article), the only remaining question is would people buy a book by its trailer? Would you?

[thanks Dan for the link!]

Lost and Desperate

"Klonies Blogging Idol" is still running and kicking... who's gonna win this close competition? Before the final results, let's welcome the last contestant, Nissim Bar-Siman-Tov, a.k.a. D.J. B., who's a dear friend and a gifted software developer. Well, enough said... Nissim, the stage is yours!

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Recently, ABC announced its free broadcast of new episodes of rating-dominating TV series like Lost, Desperate Housewives, Boston Legal and Alias over the web. This announcement followed a former one which stated that “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” will be provided for Verizon’s mobile devices supporting Web 2.0 for $2.99 for each episode added to the $5 Mobile Web 2.0 monthly access costs, just to watch Eva Longria on the go.

In the 3G world, most of the business models depend on broadband-supported content to gain back the billion $$ invested in 3G networks. However, I don’t think they expected their business models to fail so quickly. Most of the content offered by mobile providers can be obtained freely from the web or through other media networks, and can be downloaded to mobile devices very easily. Any user who has a broadband can access any multimedia content and either store it on his/her PC, view photos, listen to ripped CDs, watch pre downloaded movies, pre recorded by PVR or even watch live TV according to cable/satellite subscriptions. All that thanks to the “Media Shifting” technology, which has reached its matureness. With this brilliant technology, why would mobile users pay twice for multimedia content they can download from their Computer/TV at home?? All they really need is an unlimited internet package for their mobile device!

Yahoo! declared its intention to be a major player in this huge promising market with its recent acquisition of “Meedio” (Yahoo! Go!). This service provides content both to PC and to Mobile devices with the same interface. However, Yahoo! Was preceded by Orb networks which seized the business potential and offered an excellent service of “Media Shifting” for some time and allowed its users to have their multimedia on the go…

Realizing that these business models might not survive in the long term, mobile operators should seek other ways of expanding their services. One way is to make the most from call-related content, like ringback tones, forward tones and branded Avatars. Since the media shifting’s hype can jeopardize current mobile content business models and change the world again, better be ready than sorry.

Technorati Tags: Nissim Bar-Siman-Tov, mobile, mobile content, mobile operators, mobile TV, media shifting, Meedio, Yahoo! Go!, Orb networks

"Share" Your Personality

Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with a new friend who shared some of his views about the future of mobile personalization. For Gilad, mobile personalization is all about presence and content sharing. You probably ask – what those have to do with personalization… I’ll explain :)

Remember the days, when the mobile was a newborn, batteries had very short life and we had mentality of wired communication? Oh, we used to turn on the mobile to make a call and then turn it off right away… funny. Thanks to technological changes and improvement of battery life (we still complaint, and yet, they’ve improved…), today we carry it everywhere and always available, sometimes switch to ‘silent’ (still available for SMS) but always ‘on’. It’s interesting to follow how it influences our mobile culture, how our grasp of ‘availability’ changed. First we used the mobile only in emergency, then we demanded everyone to be reachable 24-7 (“why didn’t you answer me when I called? Ha?”). Feeling unpleasant when screened and feeling intruded being called on all hours, we realized availability is fluid and has more then 0-1 sub categories.

BUT… tatatata - imagine that you could get the status (available or unavailable) of friends you want to call without initiating any kind of communication (call or send sms), just like we do today on IM? Even better – imagine that we could get the ‘emotional status’ of them: busy, on the phone, driving, on a date, tired, or maybe pissed off (pls call)… whatever they would want to share about themselves. There’s no doubt that end users would benefit from sparing wasted money on unsuccessful calls, for operators, it’s more complex…

All communication relies on personalization: all I need to do is personalize my profile, express my availability and emotional status and choose who can see/ be subscribed to my profile. As my friends/buddies/contacts, you will probably be moved to see my status changes from ‘cool’ to ‘pissed off’ or even from something very ordinary like ‘at work’ changes to ‘back home’ and initiate communication. Next you could subscribe to my list of 5 last downloaded ringtones/realtones/ ringbacks, learn that I’ve changed my wallpaper and see it, see my location, my last moblog rss… the sky is the limit! Sharing this info with friends is far more reaching self-expression, since more people get to see this mobile content. And from operator’s perspective it could be beneficial too - it urges users to get and share mobile content (the best sales agent is your friend).

Last thing to bear in mind – this is self expression in a non-invasive way, because my friends/buddies/contacts need to subscribe in order to view my content, and I can determine the access or restrictions to it. I guess some of you think – “it’s too much of exposure”… hey, look around at today’s teenagers, the MySpace etal generation, this is how they socially communicate… Be prepared.  :)

Technorati Tags: Gilad De Vries, mobile, personalization, presence, connectivity, availability

ICQ: Fly Ads\Users Away

ICQ is launching a new advertising platform, called Broadcast To User (B2U) which enables broadcasting commercials while users are chatting on real time. The commercial is broadcasted to the dialog window after one of the users has sent a message and is waiting to a response from his counterpart. After an appearance of 10-17 seconds, the commercial gets smaller into the size of an icon and remains on the top right of the dialog window, serving as a link to the advertising company. ICQ people see this new platform as a powerful tool to have a real dialog with their wide audience of teen users.

Picture yourself the following situation: you’re IM-ing about some private stuff with your friend. Let’s say you’re crying about a not-so-long-ago break up from your b\g-friend. And there you have ads popping on your dialog screen, preventing you from seeing the last sentences you just wrote. After 10-17 seconds, the ads fly to the side of the text - but stick there. How would you feel about that? -pissed off that’s how! You get ads on the banner (I can live with that), on the message banner, on the contact list, on the welcome screen (they should have a law against that annoying thing), on the extraz page and now instead of your conversation text you’ll get flying ads! Doesn’t that remind you those hideous pop ups before the days of Google AdWords?

I don't see how this brings ICQ any closer to "having a dialog with their teenage users". All they really tell them is "fly away to other messengers"!

Technorati Tags: icq, B2U, im, marketing, advertisement, pop ups

Welcome To The First Signs of Maturity

""It got too fake," 18 year old Summer Stoker said. "You have all these people saying they want to be your friend. It's just a waste of time.""

[via Star Telegram]

well, there are some more mature and more self-aware teenagers... Great news :)

Technorati Tags: myspace, web comunities, web, youth

Perspective

The WSJ compiled some movie scenes about the internet. Very funny to look at the vague idea we had about the web back in the 80'-90'.

Technorati Tags: WSJ, Hollywood, internet, movies, media

“Shooting People is Fine. Showing Bloody Brain Matter Splattering the Wall is Not.”

Hi everyone,

Let me introduce you to my second guest at my little "Klonies Bloggind Idol" effort to look for blogging talents in our group and get them blogging. Welcome Avner Ronen, the man who brought the Klonies to the world and he's also known as our "spiritual father" at the Avatars Group. Well, now let the genius man speak for himself :)
                                     **********

the wsj had a story yesterday (subscription needed, sorry) of a preemptive move by Cingular and Verizon Wireless to prevent the FCC from starting to regulate mobile content. so in order to stop the regulator from getting involved, they came up with their own set of rules, which seem much more restrictive than what is applied to network television and broadcast radio.

Both carriers have draft policies that go into what types of content is decent enough to be accessible to their subscribers. they also list words/phrases that can not be used in ringtones. for example, according to Cingular’s new policy a ringtone can not include the following words (partial list…):

Ass - Balls - BJ - Breasts

Condom - Corn-hole - Fart - Fornicate

Fudge packing - Insemination - Laid - Lesbian

Masturbate - Naked - Nipples - Nutsack

Orgasm - Pee pee - Penis - Piss

Porn - Puberty - Ruby red bag - Scrotum

Semen - Sex - Shit - Sit on my face

Sixty-nine - Smegma - Teabagging - Testicles

Uncircumcised - Uterus

Verizon Wireless had an even more exhaustive list (with many terms i did not understand..)

it must have been interesting sitting in these meetings and debating whether to allow users to hear a ringtone that has words like “camel jockey” or “spank the monkey”. there must have been heated debates on the merits of each phrase.. now that’s the type of brainstorming i’d like to take part in. they probably brought in teenagers as experts on the subject matter, to make sure something like “poontang” does not escape their blacklist.

they go into further detail, defining what type of images may be displayed (”no nipple, no nipple covers, no nipple shadow…” - it seems they really investigated the nipple issue in this post wardrobe-malfunction world), what could be included in the name of the images (no “Bootylicious”), what names for ringtones (no “Grandma pregnant with uncle” ??), what type of video content (i thought the quote from the title of the post is great).

it seems like a very tough task, keeping up with all the indecencies around us. and how to cast a wide enough web to catch them all. Verizon Wireless tried to address the challenge by dividing the problematic content into categories such as “Lingerie - Female” and “Medium Short Rear Nude - Female”. For example, in the definition of “Medium Short Rear Nude - Female” it says that the image “can include a full rear view, but not with legs up or apart”.

i think this is INSANE and troubling. probably the best example you can get of why the carriers should not have such a level of control over the network. just to be clear, this is not talking about the content that the carrier publishes, but rather rules that will apply to ANY content provider that wants to offer content to the subscribers of the carrier.

it is also a good example why the most affective form of censorship is self-censorship fueled by fear (e.g. China..). the carriers are taking an ultra conservative approach, just to keep the FCC off their backs.

i think a much more reasonable approach would be to require content providers to notify subscribers accessing their site that it includes explicit content, so they can choose to go somewhere else. that’s it. without going into the details of defining what is decent and what is not, and censoring free speech in the process.

If you want to take a look at the guidlines - here they are: Download wireless_guidlines.pdf

Technorati Tags: avner ronen, cingular, verizon,mobile content, policy, self censorship

The Raise and Fall of Medias - A Note to Dave

Well, I don’t want to burst the bubble BUT - thinking that having the internet would free us from the need of having the media as “the middlemen” is daydreaming…

Dave Winer of THE great Scripting News forecasts that:

“In the future we won't need middlemen.
Why?
Because the Internet disinter mediates.
Which is a fancy word for "gets rid of the middlemen."
Or, if you prefer, "gets rid of the media."
All that's left when we go through 2.0 and 3.0 and 4.0 is nothing but information and people and lots of more efficient ways of connecting them.”

I’m sorry to let you down Dave, but the internet is another media(!) [Maybe even a mass media, but that’s another discussion]. Meaning, different means of communication rise and fall (Bonfires, the railroad, post, Morse, newspapers, landline phones…) but the media itself never falls. We always have some kind of mediation between ourselves and the endless amount of information.

These Medias organize (professional term would be “frame”) the information so we could better understand and utilize it in our daily lives. We need that framing since we can’t know it all (what’s going on in the other side of the world, how to forecast the weather, how wanted-ads are ordered, etc…).

But being the “pipeline of information” and having the “framing position” gives the media a lot of power in hand: what gets in-or-out and how it would be presented (in the news, in the headline, in the encyclopedia…). For example, the term “gay” (referring to a homosexual man) can’t be found in the dictionary which is practically a consequence of an editor’s decision and his\her (social) power. The “pipelines of information” which control the flaw and give it its form, generate the big money and obviously hold the greatest power.

I agree that the internet has brought many changes to the world of information, to our accessibility and to our part in the process of producing information (web 2.0 blah blah…). But don’t be too naïve thinking it’s not a media (a.k.a. "a middleman") and thinking that internet itself(!) would help in getting rid of that unwanted mediation…

I couldn’t resist the temptation to end this post with Marshall Mcluhan’s most famous quote - "the medium is the message”... :)

Technorati Tags: dave winer,scripting news, media,