Philip Sheldrake

8 October 2007 / 2 Comments

MMS – the perfect storm

According to Mark Imrie, formerly Head of Products for O2 and now Head of CRM and online capability, "MMS was a technology-led service that was rushed to market". Quoted in Billing World last month, Mark succinctly explains the lacklustre performance of MMS to date. But where next? What's required for MMS to take off in 2008?

I'd say it boils down to phone design, pricing and applications, and these three are coming together nicely to form the perfect storm next year.

The clumsiness of early camera phones is history, and user interfaces (with the potential exception of Microsoft's) have evolved to make MMS a joy. Coupled with improved optics and resolution, the modern mobile phone simply teases marketers.

And then there's the cost. As operators seek to monetise MMS indirectly, via us marketers no doubt, and as they get more efficient at shifting data round their infrastructure, flat rate data tarrifs are accompanied by flat rate messaging.

Lastly, the applications. Web 2.0 has spawned new opportunities and new applications of MMS. Moblogging, photo websites, social networking, all tempt the mobile phone customer to keep in touch; and a picture paints a thousand words. And marketers aren't hanging back. My favourite stories of recent weeks capitalise on similar technology.

Universal ran a promotion for the launch of "The Bourne Ultimatum" in August tempting fans to take a photo of the ad and send it in, receiving free mobile content in return. And Craze Production, the urban music specialist, is inviting consumers to send in pictures of a CD or gig poster which, with the magic of image recognition, rewards the consumer with relevant links to ringtones, video clips, concert tickets and other information.

If MMS features in your marketing programme, I'd love to hear what you're doing.

2 October 2007 / 1 Comment

The first post to the Racepoint intranet!

Wonder if this might prove useful? Here's some fun to start with, with your next holiday in mind...

VideoJug: How To Fold A T-Shirt In 2 Seconds - Explained

1 October 2007 / 0 Comments

The first post

Just had a look on the members page and found that the Marketing Director of The First Post, Mario Tilney Bassett, has joined the network. From their website:

The First Post is a free and independent daily online news magazine – a place to find out what the news means, a place to read about the issues of the day in short, sharp, informative articles.

I wanted to post about The First Post simply because I'm a fan. I think it has achieved one of the best online magazine formats I've seen to date.

29 September 2007 / 0 Comments

Permission marketing?

The attention economy is alive. Interruption marketing is dead. But are we getting permission marketing?

Tony Fish (the Mobile 2.0 man) and I debated the impact of mobile technologies on the attention economy at last week’s Mashup Event. We are particularly intrigued, although not entirely convinced, by the Blyk business model. Having been started by the former president of Nokia, Blyk could not have much better credentials for a new UK mobile phone service, but what are its prospects beyond the initial novelty value?

The concept of the attention economy is that human attention is a scarce commodity and therefore the approach to getting information in front of them is subject to economic theory. This scarcity is amplified by the increasing control we have over the media we consume. For example, simply interrupting the transmission of TV and radio programming with advertising is increasingly frustrated by the features designed in to consumer electronics allowing us to skip the ads.

The cure for this apoplexy of the advertising industry has consisted of product placement, procured content and permission marketing - a term defined by Seth Godin in his 1999 book of the same name. In simple terms, permission marketing seeks the target’s permission to advertise to them. Obviously, the advert has to have real value to the recipient for them to give their permission.

Blyk%20founders

So back to Blyk. The idea… give free SIM cards to 16-24 year olds with which they can make free calls. In return, the Blyk customer must complete a personal profile questionnaire which is used to determine exactly what products and services he or she might like to know about. Blyk then sells this channel to advertisers and forwards the adverts to their customers’ phones.

Is this permission marketing? Godin talks about developing a relationship with customers, “turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers”. To me, Blyk is not primarily about adding value through the content and information, but fundamentally about buying airtime. It may not be paying cash, choosing instead to make a payment-in-kind, but ultimately it is just buying a new kind of media space. I’m into digital photography, but with the day I’ve just had if you sent me an ad for the latest camera it would simply have got in my way.

Advertisers must ask themselves whether this is simply hyper-targeted advertising (of no insignificant value of course), or permission marketing. Isn’t it just simply that young adults want free calls? That’s where the primary value lies, not in the ads.

Interestingly, Blyk may have some big competition soon. Whilst Google has not publicly disclosed any intention to launch a mobile phone service, the fact that their job boards advertise for mobile engineers might betray their ambitions. Could a GPhone follow the same business model?

24 September 2007 / 0 Comments

Shepherds London

Having had my third client meal here recently, thought I'd add it as the first restaurant review on MarCom Professional :-)

Fundamentally, I find Shepherds to be a perfect restaurant for client entertaining. Attentive staff. Good location. And the good spacing between tables provides for relative privacy. There is also a private room at the back for larger groups, which from memory seats up to 20.

I particularly like Shepherds for US clients looking to eat English... fabulous sausage and mash!

20 September 2007 / 0 Comments

Mashup events

Attended the Mashup* event last night on "media and advertising agencies in a digital world". It was a wide ranging discussion, featuring Rod Banner from Banner Corporation, a presentation from AKQA's head of mobile, and moderated by Hamish Pringle, DG of the IPA.

Unfortunately, the questions from the audience were so diverse that there wasn't quite the usual cohesion found at a Mashup event, but nevertheless there were some real gems in there. Tony Fish's question on the attention economy put most people on the back foot, and I learned about Openads for the first time. Very interesting.

Coincidentally, I also met Giles Palmer for the first time, of Magpie Brandwatch fame that I posted about yesterday.

And lastly, here's a diary date for you. Mashup is running an event 26th November on Social Networking.

20 September 2007 / 2 Comments

Magpie Brandwatch

I've just stumbled upon this service, Magpie Brandwatch. As an engineer by training, nothing quite appeals to me more than a good looking chart, but I'd like to ask a question of anyone who knows more about these things than me... How do they disambiguate brand names?

In other words, when looking for commentary about Apple, how do they differentiate between Apple and the type you eat? What if you were trying to track where people are talking about Creative. Great brandname; very very difficult to disambiguate. Virgin? Next? Palm? Shell? Gap?

And if anyone has tried Magpie Brandwatch, it'd be good to hear what it's like.

19 September 2007 / 0 Comments

Feature list

Here's a list of things MarCom Professional could do next, in no fixed order.

Review list and status of invited colleagues
Create personal message boards on your own page where other members can leave notes and messages... these are fully public
Include comments in RSS feeds
Create the ability to post easily from mobile phones
Create virtual acquariums (only kidding)
Make it even easier to browse the whole membership
The options to be notified by email or IM or RSS when someone comments on my posts
What about integrating Twitter?!
When there's hundreds of posts a day, it would be great to have a more personalised homepage prioritising the posts from friends / colleagues
In the "New features in store" post, I like the addition of blogrolls and event posts. Guess the latter will help members set-up events and manage attendance
From that same post, I love the member-moderation idea; thumbs up / down voting on posts. What do you think to rationing the number of times members can give a thumbs up or down to try and stop the kind of fixing some people believe blights Digg?

19 September 2007 / 1 Comment

BBC hi-def: common sense prevails

So Ofcom has given the BBC the go ahead to start a high definition channel later this year. Whilst I recognise that anything the BBC does these days has to be scrutinised for "public value" by the BBC trust, but this decision also had to be reviewed by Ofcom with the purpose of assessing the marketing impact.

Ofcom has concluded that the launch of the free-to-air channel is "unlikely to have significant negative market impacts".

As we embark on the digital switchover between now and 2012, I remain flabberghasted that we didn't seize the opportunity to transition to HD digital rather than just plain old standard-definition digital. If there's one thing this country still leads the world on, it's telly; and we missed a prime opportunity here. So I'm delighted that Ofcom has reached the right decision here.

Now all we need them to do is dedicate the spectrum freed up when the analogue TV signal is switched off to Freeview high-definition broadcasting. Let's not get proprietary about this. Let's not fall behind the rest of Europe. As it is, we run the risk of being the least HD-ready nation in Western Europe when we host the Olympics in 2012, which is just slightly embarrassing.

Why not extend the pink tick accreditation, currently awarded to digital TV devices, so that they have to be digital HD devices?

And in case you were wondering, I believe the BBC is brilliant; one I'd pay my licence fee for if only for the Today programme.