The Future of Mobile
June 25, 2010
I’m around mobile every day – not only as a user (I have my iPhone and/or iPad with me at all times – and, yes, some call me an Apple fanboy), but also as a mobile strategist and implementer for Acquity Group’s clients. Because of this, I quite often review the broader mobile landscape to determine successful tactics, opportunities and trends that can be leveraged by some of the world’s largest brands. This post assembles some of my recent thoughts on the present and future of mobile…
Immediate Future (0-12 months): Location
- Devices & Solutions: Smartphone sales will eclipse feature phones; tablets will take off (based on not only the iPad’s success, but upcoming Android and other tablets); apps continue in popularity (the tablet’s popularity will help this); mobile ad networks consolidate and mature; location-based services (Foursquare, Gowalla, etc.) & augmented reality move from gee-whiz to monetization
- Brands: Businesses and brands realize mobile is bigger than desktop; leaders are already testing & engaging
- Carriers: Carriers scramble to offer 4G capabilities; iPad data plan spurs copycats
- Other Trends: Venture capital starts to flow into application developers and other mobile ventures; Privacy is on people’s minds
Close Follow (12-36 months): Always On
- Devices & Solutions: Mobile web (HTML5 and beyond) becomes more popular than apps; location-based services (LBS), mobile payment & m-commerce becomes ubiquitous; virtual payment systems & mobile “things” (location-aware objects, animals, sensors, environments, etc.) take off; always-on society leads to constant lifestreaming
- Brands: Many brands have already engaged in mobile marketing of some sort; we’ll see a general move to more complex mobile user experiences (via mobile web apps) because of more robust mobile devices; brands focused on deeper engagement & measurement
- Carriers: Carriers/networks initially falter then begin to increase bandwidth
- Other Trends: Privacy becomes a major user concern
Long View (36-60 months): Smart Lives
- Devices & Solutions: Smartphones are the norm (>50% of market); next generation of mobile devices (geniusphones?) introduced; need for aggregation, filtering and analysis of massive amounts of data; Google (or other) universal translation becomes popular (although still evolving); smart agents/concierges begin to automatically deduce requirements from context & location
- Brands: Brands focused on optimizing the channel and going through first major revision of mobile platforms
- Carriers: 4G speeds norm for carriers; next-gen networks begin to see light of day
- Other Trends: Based on privacy issues and ubiquitous nature of always-on “things,” globally “disconnecting” becomes a desire/trend
Obviously, I can’t capture everything happening in this rapidly evolving space. What have I missed? Where do you see mobile trending? Reply in the comments or send me an email and I’ll get back to you.
This post was submitted by tnawara.
why is advertising so gender driven
June 2, 2010
A friend of mine just asked a valid question. Why does so much advertising geared towards a specific gender. Wine and candles are always geared towards women. Cigars and condoms are gear towards men. Both sexes are equally inclined to buy all the above. Why advertise to only one sex when clearly both sexes purchase the products?
Condoms are used by both sexes, but its geared for men buying them.
For example if a guy buys condoms and has them when he meets a girl he is viewed as somewhat responsible. If the guy walks into her bedroom and there is a dozen condoms on the night stand she is viewed as a harlot.
So in closing we want to know if advertising is partially to blame for the clear mismatch.
Posted via blackberry
Walmart advertising test makes customers pay more for products
April 24, 2010
EDIT: Clearly we are getting reports that this isn’t just in one location, but from multiple locations in the North Eastern part of the US.
Walmart has generally been fairly honest with their advertising, but this is just wrong.
I am completely amazed at how well Walmart advertised this special. I want my Gain Laundry Detergent, and I am willing to pay full price. I don’t want the rollback price, I want the full price.
People were buying this… thinking it was a discount. Now taking the typical Walmart shopper the chances are they had a basket full of goods and this just looked like another discounted item, but to add insult to injury Walmart practically posts on the Rollback price “idiot, you’re paying $15 bucks for something that is only worth $12.77″
If you are going to make fun of people, at least just raise the price.. not advertise that people are not paying attention.
In line I saw several people with the item in question in their shopping cart.
There is two possible reasons for this.
1 – simple mistake
2 – advertising test
I have to state that by the way it was repeated though the store, there were too many instances to be counted as a mistake. The chances are very high that this was an actual advertising test, and the individuals making that test must have been on the floor laughing each time someone purchased Gain.
Honestly Walmart, care to explain how the in-store advertising test went?
So what’s the big bubble? Ad Agencies want to know.
March 17, 2010
Let’s face it, historically each recession has been brought out of via a big bubble. We were brought out of the 1991-1993 recession by the .com bubble. We got out of the 2001-2002 recession via the housing bubble. So what’s the next bubble? Ad Agencies all over the planet want to know…. mostly because now would be a great time to plaster that “we’re experts in advertising BUBBLE X” with BUBBLE X being the bubble of the decade.
So what exactly is Bubble X ?
Renewable Energy and Green Sustainability :
Some say green and renewable energy… but that’s a bubble that has been going on since the 1970′s … and we’re still hooked on burning dead dinosaur bones. Though I’ll admit we are closer now than ever to possibly moving off that, the chances are that it won’t be some “over night change” but rather a series of small improvements over the course of a few decades…. maybe faster if conditions on the ground change.. or slower if they don’t.
25 years ago, Honda CRX’s got 57 miles to the gallon … what happened?
Mobile Devices become your computer:
Let’s face it, people running around with a Blackberry, iPhone or Android are already seeing this happen. They are using their phone as their de-facto computer. E-mail, Camera phone, facebook updates, twitter updates, taking short videos and uploading them to Youtube… you get the idea.
What’s missing is a big screen, keyboard and mouse… as much as we like touch screens, most of us really don’t… it’s just better due to lack of space. At the rate of increase we have been seeing, this is possible… the problem is that we’re not sure if this is technically a bubble, we already have it .. and redfly’s sales aren’t actually flying off the shelves.
(yea it’s not a technical computer, it uses a blackberry phone as the computer, what you are seeing is literally a laptop shell around the blackberry).
So what else could be considered a bubble… something like “I need that house now” or “I need to mortgage my house to buy that .com stock before it goes public”
But what qualifies as a bubble?
Well first of all it has to create a bunch of jobs, meaning it can’t be monopolised by one company.. or else not enough people can get a piece of the action. Most likely won’t be a “bubble” when no one other than a handful of guys can get all the revenue.
The .com bubble happened because virtually anyone if they had the proper skillset could register their domain name, get a hosting account and bingo.. they are in business… just had to convince a few VC firms to throw money at them..
The housing bubble happened because anyone could start up a construction business… hence everyone was getting a piece of the action.
Hence why I am writing in this part it can’t be green or renewable, because most likely it’s going to be accompanied with a patent for something that will put a pin in that bubble, the same with the mobile devices… just one patent will stop the recovery from the recession.
So what can show up in the form of “something new” that there can be many players in?
During the last two bubbles the barriers to entry (in the beginning of the bubble) were sub $100,000.. IE: someone could build a circa 1990′s ecommerce site for under $100,000 … and contractors were building a $100,000 dollar home to resell at $250,000 or more…
So what can someone build, that can’t really be patented enough to STOP the bubble (remember Amazon.com’s 1 click patent), and could be done for under 100k?
Answer that… and you got yourself the next big thing.
US firms set to spend more on Search Social media than print this year
March 9, 2010
Companies will spend 119.6 billion dollars on online and digital strategies and 111.5 billion dollars on newspaper and magazine advertisements and other print campaigns, according to the study by California-based Outsell.
Finally it happened.. as stated 1/2 a decade ago… it overtook print.
Firms like Yooter InterActive one of the more popular search social advertising agencies have been growing during this recession with clients such as AOL and Zagat, whereas the holding companies haven’t allocated their resources to these fields. They still derive more revenue from print than search social.. showing an extreme disconnect and an extreme self imposed denial of existing advertising dollars.
enjoy the new reality.
Pot Calls Kettle Black – Microsoft to Google : you’re a monopoly
March 3, 2010
Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer says Google is a monopoly on Internet search. Microsoft is complaining after spending 50 cents on development and 3/4 of a billion promoting Bing / Live / MSN .
We’re actually not kidding on that 3/4 of a billion. Each iteration of the same search engine (Bing/ Live / MSN) was priced for advertising alone at about 1/4 of a billion spent on advertising for each failure. This failure was repeated 3 times so far. Already there is talk that Bing is a “failure” and another branding and domain name change is being discussed.. making it the 4th disaster in a row for the search engine… Trust me I know, I was there for the first failure. That will put the charge at 1 billion wasted on Advertising Alone…. because the root of the problem isn’t their advertising, the root of the problem is that Bing / MSN / Live (whatever you wanna call it) still is technically inferior .
Microsoft’s failure at search is mostly because they still don’t understand that the desktop isn’t online. They are glued to the proprietary model that utterly fails online.
Plus the fact that Bing still is the worst “large” search engine out there in terms of technical ranking of sites… many experts state (including myself) that Microsoft is 1/2 a decade behind Google in terms of technology.
So there you go, keep blowing money.. keep calling regulators… but at the end.. no one wants that Ford Pinto you call Bing… fix the search engine… don’t complain to the police. Seriously Microsoft you guys sound like foundem The company that’s ranking are horrible and call the police / antitrust department.
Just substitute the words “ranking” for “market share”
Churches, Colleges and Medical offices move into Vacant Malls
February 15, 2010
As some big-name businesses, such as Chick-fil-A and Waldenbooks, move out of local malls, nontraditional tenants – from a college to a church group to a dialysis clinic – are moving in. According to the Republican Herald
This actually changes all sorts of on site advertising agency issues. People going into the Mall to visit the Dialysis Clinic will still need to eat, but do they really want to start shopping at random stores? Does it make sense for car dealers to park their goods in the middle of the mall now? Considering more people would see it via a youtube video than in a mall today?
All those movie posters that are randomly put up in the center islands? Is that even a viable way to advertise anymore? Store owners generally try to place their stuff near related stores. The Arcade used to be always next to the movie theater for example.
The issue at hand is if this recession changed the very nature of the malls. Before they were lumped into the Walmart labelled downtown killers, but things are starting to change.
These malls are hurting, and hurting badly.
When these malls start accepting “Total Renal Care” (yes that’s one that is moving into the local mall) , U.S. Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration, and Frackville Foursquare Gospel Church where The GAP, Chick-Fil A and a host of other stores and food outlets used to be it completely raises questions on if the Mall model is still viable in this day of “order everything online”
High Rents, low traffic and a nasty recession is completely changing the entire nature of the Mall.
The Mall down the street from this location has a new Anchor “store” it’s called Alvernia College.
I want to stress I am NOT just pointing out the issues in this local area, these problems are throughout the entire nation. Every city, every town is facing these conditions.
This picture below actually represents about 90% of the US based malls in our current great recession. I’m sure JC Penny has a line out the door for people to buy their made in China stuff.
The Google Superbowl ad you didn’t see
February 9, 2010
Why Google ran the wrong ad. This is the ad that Google needed to run, but alas they ran the wrong one.
EDIT: Google pulled down it’s own ad… funny thing is about 10 minutes after someone there viewed this post… Why pull it down? Seriously Google why pull down your own ad from your owned Youtube?
This Video has been removed by the user.
Honestly the problem is that Google REALLY ran the wrong ad. The format was awesome (Google has been running these ads for 2 months now) .. but it was the wrong ad. They needed to run their Batman ad and not the one they ran for the superbowl
then begs the real question, why did Google run a superbowl ad in the first place? The chances are highly unlikely it will increase their already near monoploy status with search. Then why an ad during the superbowl about a love affair rather than a battle (IE: Batman) ?
The problem is the batman one is better suited for the target market, it’s more comical and more “slapstick” for the environment (a bunch of people sitting around the bigscreen TV).
Guys at that time don’t want to be hearing about dates. They are in a battle mentality at the time watching the game, Batman is all about the big fight.. whereas dating, some girl in France (where have the neo-cons are still smarting over the 2003 Freedom Fries) isn’t helping.
Apple Cofounder Steve Wozniak buys Google Phone
January 15, 2010
Steve Wozniak’s Favorite Gadget? The Google Phone according to Gizmodo.
Now that’s advertising (for Google), for all you that don’t know who Steve Wozniak is, he is the cofounder of apple, and honestly the technical brains behind the company during it’s inception. Unlike Jobs, Wozniak wasn’t into the business side of the company, he just wanted to build cool hardware.
Steve Wozniak came up with the computer that eventually made him famous. However, he was mostly working to impress other members of the Palo Alto-based Homebrew Computer Club, a local group of electronics hobbyists. It’s wasn’t really starting a company as per say and making a profit, it was more along the lines of “I wonder if I could get this to work”.
Basically Wozniak is a hero to all technical minded individuals.
In 1980, Apple went public and made Jobs and Wozniak multimillionaires. However, Jobs had refused to allow some employees of Apple to receive stock options, so Wozniak decided to share some of his founder stock with the rest of the team by either giving them away for free or at a heavily discounted price. This was dubbed “The Woz Plan”.
As we said before, Wozniak and Jobs are completely differing people. Wozniak is a true geek at heart… saw all this money coming in and was baffled why Jobs wouldn’t share it with the employees… so he gave his own money to them.
The man is amazing… and currently chatting it up on his Google Phone.
Johnson & Johnson – our advertising isn’t false – it’s photoshop!
January 7, 2010
Johnson & Johnson is facing some problems in Britain. Evidently the “Before and After” shots are considered misleading… and for good reason. Anyone know what ad agency made this?
A TV campaign for a face cream that promised to make skin look blemish-free has been banned by the advertising watchdog because the “after” shots were achieved using makeup according to the guardian
I have completely mixed feelings about this. Mostly because here are some before photoshop and makeup and after shots of supermodels.
So is the Johnson and Johnson ad ethical? well… only so much as the magazines on every single corner… as well as all the entertainment blogs….
enjoy.
Recognized by Advertising Age Magazine as top Power 150 news outlet for Advertising and Marketing.
Recognized and listed in Google News. Don't stress, we're Satire
Ad Agency Advertising
