In my lonely vigil supporting Location Based Services, I came across this interesting, if a little dry, article about LBS, tourism and hotels in Hospitality Net.

The basic idea is that hotels will be in a prime position to promote LBS hotel concierge services to tourists (which includes business travellers in this definition). Therefore, they can also influence what these services might be. The study was conducted among only 323 tourists in Lausanne and Geneva, Switzerland, so we should be careful about extrapolating this to a worldwide audience. But the conclusions are nonetheless interesting, if a little unsurprising.

Here’s the main chart.

The two audiences most likely to take up services are traditional business travellers and “techie male travellers”, who are more likely to have PDAs or smartphones and are used to getting information online.

But, for me, the most promising element about the study is that no one seems to question IF people want LBS concierge services. It’s more of a question of WHAT they want and WHO will use them initially.

I think we can also take what services they think they say they want with a big pinch of salt. The interesting applications have yet to emerge for LBS, so they end up choosing those that they can imagine a use for today.

For instance, anyone who has ever traveled alone on business knows that eating on your own is a pretty boring business. So social/business networking software could really come into their own here. As an aside, I’ve also always thought that this would be a nice opportunity for airlines and business travellers. If you complete a short online profile, they could seat you next to people you might find interesting to network with - or put you with other people who specifically didn’t want to talk.

The other opportunity that seems to be missing in the hotel survey is adult services, but since Carlo is our resident porn specialist (FleshBot just lurve linking to his posts), maybe I’ll leave him to explore this another time.

Quite the most bizarre “blog” I’ve ever seen. I’ve kept returning to it all day with the kind of macabre fascination that you might have for a really bad car crash.

What do they think they’re trying to do? Which agency managed to persuade this client that they understood the first thing about blogging?

Lord Hanson famously said “If you can see a bandwagon it’s too late”. But these guys have seen a bandwagon lumbering down the street, tried to jump on it and missed it completely.

I’m sure it won’t be up for long before sanity prevails. So get your rubbernecking in while you can.

It’s been funny watching operators’ ideas about mobile music change. First, in typical fashion, they assumed they’d make their music stores closed systems — any music you listen to on your phone will be bought from us, and any music bought from us will only be listened to on your phone. While pretty much anybody could instantly recognize that wasn’t going to fly, it took operators a bit to catch on. The next groundbreaking realization was that people might actually want to listen to music they already own on their mobile phones — again, what a surprise. While there’s a lot more that needs changing, least of which the problems DRM causes, I guess we can take some solace in the fact that they’re learning, no matter how slowly.

One significant “innovation” was dual-delivery mobile download systems, where a user that buys a song from either a mobile or Web store gets it delivered both to their mobile device and to their PC, letting them use it both places. Sounds good enough, but some carriers still manage to find a way to mess it up.

Vodafone Germany is touting its download service, which features dual-delivery. It’s already at a disadvantage to rival services — its songs cost 1.49 euro, compared to what seems to be a relatively standard price of .99 euro. The real devil is in the details, though: “Depending on your tariff, additional connection charges may be payable for surfing in the portal and for the download.” So on top of the 1.49, there’s traffic charges too? That’s pretty ridiculous.

This has always been a problem with third-party content, but this is on an operator’s own system. Data charges are still problematic because it’s hard for users to figure out exactly what things are costing them. So when downloads are already 50 euro-cents more than competitors before a mystery traffic charge, don’t be surprised if they’re unpopular.

There’s an election coming up in Germany, in case you hadn’t been following European politics. And one of the promotional tools has to go down as one of the oddest I’ve seen - certainly since a “Win a Trip to our Abattoir” on a can of pork luncheon meat (honestly!).

MobHappy reader, Irakli, sends in a story where the Chairman of one of the parties, Edmund Stoiber, will call 1,000 “selected” people on their mobiles, urging them go out and vote. Well, actually, it’ll be a recorded message of the great man sent to 1,000 people’s mobile phones.

This would be mildly annoying if you were one of the recipients - being phoned by a computer is pretty intrusive to most people, no?

But the reaction the party is expecting is that people are going to be so delighted that they’ll volunteer their friends’, colleagues’ and family members’ mobile numbers, so that they can get the same call from dear old Edmund too. And this will snowball into hundreds of thousands of calls.

I think someone needs to go back to viral marketing school. Or maybe it’s a cultural thing and Germans will be ecstatic to hear from Edmund and be only too pleased to involve their friends.

But I can’t see it myself.

Image from Wikipedia. Edmund Stoiber is not the one on the left of the picture.

Another analyst’s made another prediction about the mobile music market, saying that Europeans will spend just $640 million downloading full tracks to their mobiles, but that the market for real music ringtones will be $1.2 billion. I have a theoretical problem with these studies that lump ringtone and full-track downloads together, as although they’re both music, they’re significantly different products that satisfy completely different ends.

This prediction is a lot lower than some of the previous guesses we’ve seen, but also makes a common mistake in overestimating the value of the ringtone market moving forward. Already, there are plenty of phones that can use mp3s and other audio files for ringtones. Why will realtones remain a viable market, particularly at current pricing, where users can download full tracks for a fraction of the cost of a ringtone?

Om Malik reports that Google have launched Google Blog Search - a search engine that sticks to searching blogs only. Hence the rather clever name.

There’s clearly a massive gap for blog search, especially as Technorati seemed to lose the plot a couple of months back. While services like Feedster and IceRocket valiantly stepped into the breach, neither offer anything like a comprehensive service.

But I can’t help feeling that Google’s missed the point somewhat.

I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that the major (or certainly a major) use of blog search is by bloggers themselves. And much of the reason for searching is to find out when other people are linking to your blog.

This isn’t vanity at all. Well, OK, maybe it is a bit. But mainly it’s so you can track conversations, respond to other posts and basically stay in tune with the Blogosphere. And it’s also quite cool when some A Lister writes something flattering.

But probably the most frequent linker to any blog is the blogger themselves. We’re constantly referring back to previous posts, which might embellish a point or supplement what we’re writing at that particular time. But, when I do a blog search, the last thing I want to see is all those links that we’ve made to ourselves.

But with Google Blog Search, the first 50 or so results for “mobhappy” turn out to be links from MobHappy. Which makes it next to useless, as far as I’m concerned.

The other issue I have with it is that it’s very easy to miss the RSS link to that search and I’m sure it’ll be overlooked by many potential users.

So as a day-to-day tool, it’s basically useless for my needs. But then, I may well have made the classic error of assuming that everyone behaves like me. So what do you think? Is it any good for how you use, or want to use, Blog Search?

As opt-out rates increase, we look at the implications.

It’s well-known that ordinary people (aka “consumers”) increasingly use tools like pop-up blockers and PVRs, like Tivo, to avoid advertising. This has led us to focus on changes in the advertising industry more than some of its less glamorous cousins, like direct marketing or sales promotion.

But it seems that UK magazine publishers are also experiencing “soaring” opt out rates by subscribers - of up to 70%. In other words, when someone subscribes to a magazine, they tick that little box that doesn’t allow the magazine to send them marketing messages from the mag itself, sister titles or the good old “carefully vetted third parties” - a euphemism for anyone who wants to mail you and has the dosh to pay them.

Now admittedly, when I read the word “soaring” my PR-speak radar clicks on and sure enough, there’s a consultancy behind the news who wants to advise publishers on how to reverse this trend. But that doesn’t mean to say that the claim isn’t true, by any means.

The fact is that people are turning away in droves from all forms of traditional marketing and it seems to be unravelling much quicker than you’d have thought.

People are simply fed up with being marketing AT and are savvy enough these days to understand that they don’t have to put up with it. They opt out of lists, join organisations like The Telephone Preference Service and The Mailing Preference Service (and their country-specific equivalents) and use technology, like browsers with pop-up blockers.

Of course, that doesn’t stop idiots (I won’t name them, as I won’t give them the bandwidth) from inventing pop-ups that get round pop-up blockers, which is completely missing the point. If I install a pop-up blocker and some tosser thrusts an ad in my face anyway, do they seriously think I’m going to go “D’oh…that’s an interesting product I must go and spend all my net worth on one of those”. Clue: actually, I’ll be mildly annoyed and make a mental note never to buy the product EVER.

MobHappy readers know that the new form of marketing is about engaging your actual and potential customers in a dialogue. While traditional advertising isn’t a very good channel for this, traditional direct marketing is - or should be. So that’s why it’s a terrible indictment of the magazine industry that they’ve had their chance to engage and blown it.

And the really scary thing is that when a customer opts out of your marketing dialogue, it’s terminal - the end of that relationship. The one thing you are specifically forbidden to do in the future is to ask for a second chance. So even if you suddenly convert to brilliant engagement marketing dialogue, you’ve lost the right to apply it to that customer for ever.

OK, there’s a chance that they might come back at some point, but how likely do you think it is that a customer who has opted out of a marketing dialogue will feel strongly enough at some point in the future to track you down and consent to opt in again?

Stranger things do happen, like eBay buying Skype for silly money. But I wouldn’t bank on it.

There’s also a lesson here for the new mobile channel gradually emerging from its pupae. Marketers need to be thinking long and hard now about how they’re going to use the channel and how they can convince customers that their brand is worthy of their attention. Trying to pump pap down the mobile isn’t going to hack it and will simply lead to more “soaring”.

However, it’s even more challenging than that, these days. You can’t rely on customers giving you the benefit of the doubt with your proposed marketing programmes. You have to convince them at the outset that a dialogue with your brand will be one they’ll enjoy and benefit from.

Ask not what the customer can do for your brand, but what your brand can do for your customer.

Image from the BBC - I’m not suggesting that they suffer from declining opt in rates or nuffink.

…your marketing stinks. Maybe mobile can make it better.

I’m not one to question the work of the marketing whizzes at Procter & Gamble (for a variety of reasons), but I’m going to anyway. I’ve been seeing the ads for some wonderful new foaming dish soap they’ve got, and being blessed with an old house that’s sans dishwasher, I’m always open to the latest and greatest in grease removal. The TV ads feature the URL for a web site for coupons, so I thought I’d check it out and use the $1 to try the new soap.

I surf on over, and find the relevant page, expecting to get a coupon to print out or something, maybe have to supply an email address. No — they want address, birthday, gender and for me to sign up for their spam, er, newsletter. The kicker? “Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery… We are excited about your request to try this sample, and want to get your feedback on how you used this sample. By selecting this sample, you are agreeing to be contacted at least once about the current sample.”

So, I wait 4-6 weeks to try it to save a buck, and you’re going to contact me too? No thanks. You’re lucky I still bought the soap (though I’m happy to admit it does work as well as advertised). Again, I’m no expert, but this seems pretty pointless. Somebody sees a TV ad, thinks, hey, that sounds good, I’ll try it, then you want them to wait 4-6 weeks, a period after which they may or may not decide that they really do want to buy your product. Couldn’t that cycle be shortened?

It seems like mobile could fit in here somewhere to make things better — maybe have people text a shortcode to receive a text message coupon back. With that coupon, you could ask people if they want to opt in for more offers, rather than making it a condition of accepting the coupon. Instant response, the opportunity for a further relationship, and it’s all opt in. Any thoughts?

For all our readers in Austin (if any!), just a reminder that the next Mobile Monday meeting is tonight at the IC2 Institute near UT at 6pm. Yours truly will be speaking, alongside three other great presenters on messaging. See the MoMo Austin site for more info.

For all our readers in Austin (if any!), just a reminder that the next Mobile Monday meeting is tonight at the IC2 Institute near UT at 6pm. Yours truly will be speaking, alongside three other great presenters on messaging. See the MoMo Austin site for more info.