The Death of the 'Smart Phone'

I recently visited a wireless store to see what was available for a basic phone. Nothing special, just talk and text. What do you think I found there?

When signing up for a 3 year plan, basic phones are available for $0. The sales guy behind the counter says he doesn't sell many of those. Most spend at least $50 for a more featured phone.

Without spending hundreds of dollars for an iPhone or a Blackberry Storm, a mere $50 spent with a new plan gets a pretty good phone.

As an example, the LG Rumour 2 is a 3G network phone, with talk, text, bluetooth capability, a colour screen, a 1.3 Megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom, MMS (multimedia message) capability, a slide-out full Qwerty keyboard, an MP3 player with headphone jack, USB-to-computer sync capability, and basic clock, alarm clock, organizer and calculator functions. Oh, plus also email capability.

While not as fully featured as a more expensive phone, this phone packs a pretty good punch for the average consumer. Just a few years ago, this phone would have been considered top-of-the-line; a smart phone from 2007.

Following this trend, we can expect a basic $50 phone two years from now to look a lot like the current top offerings from Blackberry or Apple. Essentially, ALL phones will be smart phones.

The term 'Smart Phone' will wither and die, as a moniker for differentiating certain attributes on phones will no longer be required.

Mobile Marketing in Canada

Amellie Lake, CEO of Vancouver-based Tagga Media, recently wrote about the state of mobile marketing in Canada. She suggests that Canada is very much behind the rest of the world in terms of mobile activities from marketers. This situation is strange, because Canadian mobile penetration is high, text-message usage is high and mobile browsing is high. This means that Canadians will probably experience an explosion of mobile marketing activities - likely soon, as the current economic recession appears to be winding down.

Read her full article here.

Doritos Text Messaging

A while back, I wrote about the Doritos Guru campaign. This was not specifically a mobile campaign, but I liked it so much that I wrote about it anyway.

Now, in the USA at least, Doritos is utilizing text-message based mobile marketing to help launch a new product. At least, that's what they claim. It appears to me that they are using the hype of the new product to build their mobile contact list. Something that I have recommended to all my clients.

Read the full article here.

Facebook Vanity URL

Our friend Phil, who writes on his Burning the Bacon with Barrett blog, reminds us all to go and get your own vanity URL from Facebook, before the one you want is taken by somebody else.

I got mine: http://www.facebook.com/steve.kibble

Proximity Marketing for Restaurants

I have previously written on Proximity marketing. While I believe that proximity is, for the most part, somewhat ahead of what Canadian consumers are ready for, there also exists a few opportunities for proximity right now.

One of those is restaurants. Typically, customers experience some idle time in restaurants, while waiting for a table, while waiting for their order to be taken and while waiting for their food to arrive. What better time to take advantage of a captive audience that these points in a restaurant experience.

A fellow blogger from Greece recently wrote about mobile marketing in restaurants on his blog. You can read it here.

Keep in mind that Greece, as well as the rest of Europe, has been engaged in mobile marketing activities much longer than North America. Many of the concepts he discusses are in the good-to-know-for-the-future category. But some of them can be executed locally right away.

My Other Gig

While I am primarily a marketer, I also have a little side job with the Canadian Auto Press. They arrange to give me a new press car from an auto manufacturer once in a while, and I write them an article about that car.

My first ever article was just published online:
http://www.carpages.ca/article/2009/05/30/2010-toyota-corolla-preview

It's a review of the 2010 Toyota Corolla. Coming up in the next few weeks, I have the following articles scheduled to be published:
- preview of BMW X5-M and X6-M
- 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee
- Mini E (all electric vehicle)

After this, I generally won't be posting on this blog about car articles, but if you want to find out when they are published, sign up for my twitter feed. That way you can read my new car articles, AND find out about new posts on this blog.

Twitter ID: 3rdscreenmarket

Outdoor Goes Mobile

For a time this spring I was contacting local radio stations, major daily newspapers and outdoor media companies to offer bulk text-messaging services, and suggest that they offer it to their advertising clients.

Text, as we know, is the entry-point for all mobile marketing activities. And certainly at this time in the evolution of mobile, and for most mainstream consumer products, text should be the primary mobile point of contact between the brand and the consumer.

As I have previously written, text does not work by itself. It does works very well when promoted via mainstream media - specifically newspaper, radio and outdoor.

So it was little surprise when I heard that CBS Outdoor Media in the US now officially offer mobile to it's advertisers. Their package offers a keyword and use of a shortcode, and allows their advertisers to start developing a database of consumers who are interested in their brand, and interested in receiving text message communications from that brand.

For an outdoor media company (or a newspaper or radio station), this is a no brainer. Corporate marketing departments and advertising agencies are going to be sourcing their bulk text messaging from somewhere, and it makes sense that they can get it in a one-stop-shop process from the media company that is going to carry the text-message call-to-action.

Source article on CBS Outdoor is available here.

Proof that I am Brilliant

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you'll find a lot of familiar themes in this video about the challenges of mobile marketing. Many of the things I have preached about in my writings are repeated by industry leaders in the USA.

Clearly, they have been reading this blog too.

Scream Cheese

Remember the Dorito's Guru campaign that I wrote about a few months ago? It's been executed and completed. And the winner was Ryan Coopersmith from Montreal, Quebec.

Ryan created the name Scream Cheese, and developed this really funny 30 second commercial. Not sure if Ryan is a marketing professional, but it's well done and right on target demo for Doritos.

And kudos to the Dorito's marketing team for developing this campaign which fosters consumer investment in the Dorito's brand.

Even More Proximity

Last week I wrote about proximity marketing in airports. Now, both Subaru and Burger King are experimenting with a different kind of location-based mobile strategy.

Instead of targeting consumers within a certain location, these campaigns are both designed to help the consumer find the retail location that is closest to them, at the time that they are interested in the brand.

Banner ads were run on various mobile networks. Clicking on them activates a location-based process that determines approximately where the consumer is at that moment (using cellular network towers) and offers the location of the closest retail outlet.

As mobile develops out of infancy, it is interesting to watch the exprimentation of different strategy models. It will be even more interesting to see which ones thrive, and which fall by the wayside.

Full article here.