One of the panels at the MMF that led to some lively debate was “What do Media Planners Want from Mobile Advertising?” ably chaired by Jim Cooke of MobiAd News.

I was going to share some thoughts, but then Jim wroteeverything I was going to say anyway, so head over there and read his write up.

One of the keynotes given at last week’s Mobile Marketing Forum was given by Adhish Kulkarni (Buongiorno) and Karim Khalifi of Vodafone Egypt, about the various marketing activities that Vodafone has been up to over there.

One of the products they talked about was the very clever “Please Call Me” service, which is available for advertisers to sponsor.

PCM grew out an engineering issue, but also as a result of some of the characteristics of the market. 96% of the 30 million mobiles are prepay, which means that in a relatively poor country, an awful lot of people will be out of credit at any particular time. One unofficial and popular hack to solve this, would be for the consumer to call someone they want to speak to, let it ring once and then hang up. The recipient would then see they had a missed call, put two and two together and call back.

The problem was that this caused a lot of network congestion and so PCM was born, where people can send a free sms saying “Please Call Me”. Not only is this a more efficient use of network resources, but it stimulates more paid-for call minutes. And space in the sms can be sold to marketers who’d like to be associated with this useful service.

So far, PCM generates 180 million sms per month, so it’s not insignicant, by any means.

It amazes me that this kind of service isn’t more widely available and hasn’t been extended to all operators in markets with high percentages of prepaid customers. But then, operator take up of that other ideas such as the ability to transfer credits to needy or broke pals, or the micro-topup idea pioneered in the Philippines never seems to get traction elsewhere either.

If there are any operators out there who can explain why, I’d be fascinated to know.

This post is sent via the free wifi service in British Airways Executive Lounge. I know T5 has received terrible press, but honestly, it’s rather good. Strolling though the retail concourse this morning, surrounded by electronic posters and general whizziness, it really was like stepping suddenly into the future.

I’m on my way to do a panel at Web 2.0 in San Francisco. Hope to see you there!

Nick Suckley of Agenda21, one of the agencies doing a panel at the MMF this week, made an interesting observation about the type of language we use in advertising and marketing, that had never occurred to me before. He described it as “war-like” citing terms like “campaigns”, “hits” and “targeting”. I suppose even “banner” harks back to knights of old and the things they fluttered from their lances.

Most intelligent observers of marketing would agree that the way of the future is to enter into conversations with consumers, as opposed to closing with them as if they’re the enemy. But if you think about it, the term most often used for this is to “engage” the consumer or “engagement marketing”. However, even this harks back to engaging the enemy and perhaps sends out the wrong signals.

Maybe we need a new and less adversarial language of marketing. This time to reflect that the consumer is firmly in charge from now on. And that it’s time that the language changed to emphahise authenticity, honesty and transparency - perhaps even courtship. Respect marketing?

Anyone have any ideas?

I was at the Mobile Marketing Association’s Forum in London this week, among other things, and it’s been hard to find time for blogging. But it was a great event, with lots of interesting presentations and I really recommend that you attend one in the future, if this is an area you’re interested in. Essentially, if your company earns advertising revenues or you rely on mobile advertising (and marketing) to sell your products, you’d learn a lot and anyway, you should be a member of the MMA.

I’ll try and give you a general impression and then write up a few presentations that struck me at the time. If I don’t get to write about a specific presentation it might have been because I missed it (sorry, but I still have meetings to attend and deals to do) or just don’t have time to write about every single one.

About 140 people attended, ranging from journalists and analysts, through vendors of mobile products to brands and agencies - pretty much the whole value chain. Google even turned up in the form of Christian Hernandez Gallardo, Head of Strategic Partnerships, which shows that mobile marketing is finally growing up. What’s more as Bena Roberts at GoMoNews wrote “But I nearly just had a heart attack as I have finally seen a Google presentation that is (wait for it) GOOD”. And it was indeed. Actually, it was the first one I’d seen that was both informative and didn’t patronise the audience to death as in “Hi, I’m from Google” (pause for grin) “and we do search!” Well done Christian - hope to see lots more from you.

The slightly disappointing thing for me was a lack of brands and agencies generally. And the ones that did turn up normally did so to do a speaking slot and then left pretty soon afterwards, complete with the prejudices they came with. If they’d hung around, listened to other speakers and done some networking, they may have learned a bit more.

A typical examples of a prejudice might be that “mobile advertising is still very niche”. Errr, AdMob has over 6 million pages available per day in the UK alone. And that’s meant to be too niche? It’s a major medium!

Someone from an agency who does really get it though, is Simon Andrews of Mindshare, perhaps better known round these parts as a blogger at Big Picture - though he doesn’t blog enough these days. Simon gave a presentation that showed a very thorough understanding of the mobile channel and a willingness to invest in it while it’s being established and while it’s also hard for agencies to make money.

I especially liked Mindshare’s “Value Exchange” concept for advertising in this new, new world: “Attention is exchanged in return for Entertainment, Relevance and/or Usefulness”. This is a very similar to the concept I was writing about a while back, when I suggested that effective mobile advertising should be based on an IDEA or giving the consumer one (or all) of the following:

Information
Deals
Engagement
Advertainment

So the Mindshare proposition resonated strongly.

The MMA also announced the appointment of a permanent Managing Director in the form of Paul Berney. While the MMA in EMEA has had a great first year, a full time employee focused on making things happen should mean a huge leap forward in 2008.

Congratulations to all the organisers and fellow speakers. But most important of all, I always judge the quality of a conference by the quality of the delegates who’ve paid to be there. And based on all the people I met in that capacity, it was truly a great conference, representing an exciting, vibrant young industry that has finally taken off big time.

Russell Beattie announced yesterday that he was giving up on Mowser, his transcoder startup, saying he didn’t believe in the mobile web any more:

In other words, I think anyone currently developing sites using XHTML-MP markup, no Javascript, geared towards cellular connections and two inch screens are simply wasting their time, and I’m tired of wasting my time.

He goes on to say that browsing on a mobile sucks without a decent, capable browser — which isn’t news, certainly not to Russ — and that without one, users aren’t interested. Bad news for Mowser, but, fair enough. I’d agree to a large extent: when the mobile browsing experience is awful, users aren’t going to bother. Again, I don’t think that’s news.

But that’s a far cry from “The Mobile Web is Dead” stuff that Russ’ post generated in the tech blogosphere. The other half of Mowser, Mike Rowehl, chimes in with his reaction to the reaction, and as usual, he pretty much hits the nail on the head: yes, the mobile web has problems, and Mowser had its own obstacles. The failure of the latter doesn’t automatically indicate the failure of the former.

Does the death of one startup equal the death of an entire market? Rarely. Mowser was a victim of many things, the crapness of the mobile web environment was one. The simplistic WAP-rooted mobile web might be dead — that is, if it was ever really all that alive. But more and more users have more and more capable mobile devices, and they want to access the web and online content and services with them.

This isn’t a shot at Mowser, which I think was a solid transcoder, but delivering web sites transcoded for lowest-common-denominator handsets and browsers isn’t likely to generate the best user experience for now and forever. If you’re using a really crappy mobile browser on a crappy device, the experience is still going to be generally crappy, in spite of how great a job the transcoder does. Even Russ says “Mowser was always meant to be a short term bet against Moore’s law”, with the transcoding just intended as an entry point.

So perhaps what we should take away is that the low end of the mobile market, where it’s just a dumbed-down version of some other content, rendered in a crappy browser with a terrible UI, is dead. But in my eyes, the rest of the “mobile web” — delivering content and services that delight mobile users, is only getting started.

Any thoughts?

As a footnote, Mike is looking to sell Mowser’s assets, while Russ is looking for a job, so get in touch if you know of anything.

A part of Russell’s ongoing separatista vs. convergionist battle is cameraphones vs. standalone digital cameras. You’re familiar with this angle: though most cameraphones aren’t of the same quality as standalone SLRs (or whatever), the best camera at any given time is the camera a person has with them.

Indeed, it’s true. I never would have been able to document the crazy tattooed guy I saw a few years back without my cameraphone, regardless of the quality. Fast-forward to this afternoon, when I found myself without either a standalone camera, or a cameraphone, as I’d run out on a quick errand and left my trusty N82 at home.

One of my favorite email forwards from my early working career was “the ghetto hands-free kit” — a picture of a dude with an old handset attached to his head via rubber band. I saw an older fellow at the grocery store just now with a slightly updated (and slightly more expensive) version: a pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones with a clamshell handset tucked underneath. He was happily walking amongst the produce, chatting away with his hands in his pockets. Just to reiterate: the Boses were, as far as I could tell, not plugged in to anything (certainly not the phone), rather just switched on to “cancel” the ambient noise.

Once I realized what the hell he had going, my first thought was, of course, the need to share the image with you, our beloved readers. I reached into my pocket… to find only a half-used stick of lip balm and my grocery list. To steal a phrase from MH pal Ewan at SMS Text News, arse. Total arse.

So I’m left to try and recreate the image for you — except I don’t have any Bose noise-cancelling headphones or clamshell handsets. So these only Sony cans and a Helio slider, plus your imagining me as an white-haired dude in a baseball cap, will have to do.

Moral of the story? Hm. Well, first, the very least you could do is pick up a Bluetooth hands-free, they’re quite reasonable these days. Second, I guess, is that it doesn’t matter if you’re a separatista or a convergionist when you’re forgetful.

A Chinese man has invented the world’s largest mobile phone.

Someone tell him, will you?

There’s broadly two schools of thought for mobile technology. The issue tends to polarise people and some can get quite heated about it all, for some reason.

First, we have what I call the Separatistas, who believe that a specialist device is always going to beat one that can multi-task. “I know phones can play music,” they cry passionately, “but not as well as an MP3 player!!”.

Then we have the Convergionists, who pragmatically point out that the same could be said about cameras, videos, calculators, watches and alarm clocks. A specialist camera is usually going to be better than a camera phone, but that doesn’t mean that the specialist camera industry hasn’t been decimated or that Nokia isn’t the leading camera brand in the world. This is in spite of camera phones only being 10 years old.

In fact, “good enough” and convenience is always going to trump the hassle of carrying an extra device that you only use occasionally - for most people.

The same may about to happen with the Personal Navigation Device. Business Week ran an article yesterday pointing out that both TomTom and Garmin, the leaders in this field, are having a bit of a downturn. Executives are blaming a faltering economy, the low price of the dollar pushing up retail prices, cheap competition - anything but the fact that the market is about to be subsumed by the mobile phone tsunami.

Now, I’m sure that there are plenty of PND owners who are passionate Separatistas and who will bring out the same old arguments. And I agree that current versions of mobile phone navigation systems aren’t as good as the specialist device. But it’s good enough, as anyone with the Google Maps on their phone will tell you.

The only real question in my mind is whether the mobile will take over the specialist in-car sector at some point, which is going to be immune from the slump for a while yet. I’d guess it will take over, as the concept of docking your mobile into your car, which has a special, larger screen and speakers, and then removing it when you park to get guidance within the last mile, will be very compelling. Certainly, a lower cost docking station is going to be more attractive, for most, than the full monty.

So my advice is that if you work in the navigation sector, get your CV or Resume into a handset manufacturer, before all your colleagues see the writing on the wall. I can’t see much of a future for the stand alone PND, I’m afraid. And just remember that if this sounds far-fetched, I’m sure plenty of people in the camera industry would have scoffed at the same idea - just 10 years ago.

Via MocoNews, the NYT has a case study on a test of mobile barcodes at an Ohio university. The test hasn’t proved very popular among students, despite the attraction of some of the services on offer, such as barcodes on bus stops that users can take a picture of to find out when the next bus is coming.

The big problems with uptake, as cited by the NYT:
- The cost to users isn’t clear. While the app and the service itself is free, prices differ depending on the operator, and whether users are on a flat-rate data plan. Even though the cost of sending the barcode and getting the info back probably isn’t particularly high, the fact that it’s not known up front makes people hesitant to use it.

- The CEO of the company running the trial created an uproar on campus when a presentation he gave in a class “devolved into sexist banter after he showed an image of a topless woman, back to the camera, who had a bar code on the back of her blue jeans.” Cue angry letters to the student newspaper, etc.

- And, of course, cost again. Some of the other services either are, or are perceived as, little more than advertising, leading to the inevitable comment from one student — “Why would anyone actually pay for advertising?”

So is the problem with the underlying technology (the barcodes), or the way they’ve been implemented and marketed? It’s a bit early in the game to damn barcodes, especially when companies are still figuring out how best to set them up and market them in the west.

Update: Note Raddedas from Techype’s comment on the MocoNews piece: “They actually needed to do the survey to work that out?

I think they have it basically nailed. All they need to do now is make the data cost reasonable and clear, the barcode reading mechanism transparent from inside the camera app and then find some compelling content to access.

Did I hear someone say something about thew diametrically opposite model in Japan, where they make lots of money because they’ve done this?”

If you don’t come here often, every month the nice people at getAbstract allow all MobHappy Readers to download one of their products - absolutely free. As a reminder, getAbstract produce really excellent 5 page summaries of leading books of interest to business people. I’ve avoided saying “business books” as their portfolio is much wider than that and today they have over 4,500 titles, normally only available on a subscription basis.

This month, I’ve chosen what might appear to be a slightly strange choice of title, given our mobile technology focus. It’s called “You: Staying Young” by Michael F. Roizen, M.D., and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D. The idea is that by doing certain things today, you can stay physically young and healthy for a lot longer. You can download your free copy here (expires 20th May 2008).

This means that you could be immortal, depending on your age and future choices.

This might sound an extravagant claim. But there’s a bunch of ridiculously bright people working on the fringes of AI right now, who are confident that an event called “the singularity” will take place in the next 50 years or so and maybe a lot less. You can read a lot more about it on Wikipedia, but the idea is that The Singularity will happen when computers’ intelligence greatly outstrips man’s and they decide to take over.

This need not be as sinister as it sounds and indeed, many thinkers agree that they’ll probably do a much better job of running the place than we would. No more wars, famine, car accidents and a lot of other cool things.

Other features of The Singularity, could be the end of death and eternal youth. So all you need to do is stick around long enough for The Singularity to kick in and you’ll be there for Mankind 2.0 - which has got to be a fascinating, if very scary thing, to experience. So read the Abstract and act upon its ideas.

If you’d enjoy reading more about The Singularity, there’s lots of links in the Wikipedia article above. But a classic, free short novel is The Metamorphis of Prime Intellect, by Roger Williams. Although is does have some extreme sado-masochistic sex scenes - nowhere near as bad as 2 girls, 1 cup stuff, thank goodness.

Cameron Reilly’s Podcast also has some great interviews with various Singularity folk, such as Roger Williams (above), Vernor Vinge, Jamais Cascio, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Aubrey de Grey, not to mention Ray Kurzweil himself.

So get healthy people, and hope to see you in Mankind 2.0.