Colin's Corner

If you're not mobile - you are not in touch with a whole generation

Excellent and informative two-part interview with Marc Mielau, Innovation Manager for Mobile Marketing at BMW. Part 1 , Part 2

Taking mobile marketing opportunities very seriously, BMW has established a cross-divisional group, the mobile marketing circle that meets every third week with the goal of building synergies across the full range of mobile activities.

Marc attitude - “I believe that it’s a short step from “mobile advertising” to “mobile everything”, which includes mobile advertising, mobile communications, mobile entertainment, and even mobile commerce”. “A multi-channel approach to marketing will be necessary in the future, and mobile will play an important role. We think mobile marketing is about trying to reach customers with added value offers. This is the focus of the Innovation group.”

BMW has been testing 2D bar-codes, the use of SMS to provide customers with additional information additional and also informational MMS to enable customers to get advice and recommendations from their friends

In the second part of the interview, Marc discusses some of the highly successful mobile marketing campaigns that BMW has run recently, in partucular the use of MMS in conjunction with their customer database to render for each customer, an individualized picture of their specific kind of car, it's specific color, and a specific recommended winter snow tire is applicable for their car together with a detailed price.

Marc's key take-away - for brands such as BMW If you're not mobile - you are not in touch with a whole generation.

Well worth a read by all those interested in seen how a major brand is successfully using mobile marketing campaigns.

2D barcoding poised to take off ?

While prevalent in Asia, especially in Japan where 76% of the population is familiar with camera‐phone based barcode scanning 2D bar-coding has been slow to take off in the US, largely due to the major carriers failing to agree on which standards to support. At last there is an indication that the mobile industry is close to reaching agreement. The CTIA Wireless Internet Caucus Code Scan Action Team (CCSAT) – has launched a white paper on Camera‐phone Barcode Scanning

The technical building blocks described in the paper are intended to kick‐start the market. In the near term, an effective 2D barcode service will requires coordination among code publishers, technology service providers and the carriers,

The CCSAT group has agreed to help provide standardized and reliable 2D barcode services in the United States. It has agreed to coordinate the creation of a Central Registry and Clearing House, the adoption of initial code symbologies, and rules governing the use of a Service Mark.

The two initial codes selected are the proprietary code, EZ Code and Data Matrix, an ISO supported standard code.

2D bar-code readers from companies such as Scanlife have started to become popular, on the iPhone

2D scanning is one of several initiatives to link the physical to the digital via the camera in smartphones - other technologies to watch include - image recognition from companies such as SnapTell, Mobiglyphs and other advertising enhancing services such as ShopText and SNIPP

Magazines such as Billboard and Car and Driver are testing out 2D codes

Apple iPhone is the fastest growing device in the world

AdMob, today highlighted the rapid and global growth of smartphone usage in their August 2008 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report.

The anticipated launch of new smartphones in the coming months, including the first of Google’s Android phones, the RIM Bold, and the Nokia N96, is a strong indication that this growth is likely to continue throughout the year.

According to the report, the Apple iPhone was the fastest growing device in the world last month and ended August with more than 2.9 million requests per day. Worldwide Smartphones accounted for 25.8 percent of traffic in August, up 3.4 percent since May 2008. The top five smartphones in the US – the BlackBerry Pearl, Palm Centro, BlackBerry Curve, Apple iPhone, and Samsung Instinct – generated 12.9 percent of all US traffic in August, a 2.4 percent increase over July.

Other highlights from the August 2008 report:

• Nokia has 62.4 percent of worldwide smartphone traffic in August, with more than 50 percent in every region except North America. In the US, Nokia does not have a top 20 ranked smartphone.

• RIM is in second place worldwide with 10.8 percent of smartphone traffic with the large majority of that coming from North America. RIM leads in the US with 31.2 percent of smartphone traffic and manufactures three of the top 10 devices.

• Motorola and SonyEriccson have a large share of overall mobile traffic, but neither has a smartphone ranked in the top 20 worldwide.

• Smartphones continue to increase marketshare in the US, accounting for 23.7 percent of traffic in August, up 3.5 percent since May 2008.

The full August 2008 report with additional details and all previous reports are available for free download at: www.admob.com/metrics

40 years of Computerworld on Google

Google announced yesterday their newspaper archive program

As noted by The New York Times Google is working with more than 100 newspapers including partners such as Heritage Microfilm and ProQuest, which aggregate historical newspaper archives in microfilm. Google has already scanned millions of articles.

IDG's flagship title, Computerworld is part of the program and all issues, stretching back over 40 years are available. Check out the first issue that was published on 21st June 1967.

Google's willingness to bear the digitalization cost and to share revenues made it an easy decision to allow Google to archive the content. Now, Computerworld in partnership with Google has been able to provide a great resource for those interested in researching the computer industry.

Google aims at the heart of Microsoft

The announcement that Google was launching a web browser to compete with IE, Firefox etc got the tech blogosphere all excited today. The majority of the early reports focused on Google Chrome's strength and weaknesses as a Web browser and replacement for current web browsers. Pundits such as TechCrunch blogger Mike Arrington suggested that it needed to be "nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete with Windows." Because Google has built its own JavaScript engine, Arrington suggested, Ajax applications like Gmail and Google Docs should "absolutely roar," When combined with Google Gears -- which provides offline access to Web apps -- Chrome becomes a potential "Windows killer," While, that's certainly an important by-product of the strategy, I believe that his and other commentary generally miss the long-term play which is all about mobile.

Futurists suggest that the real long-term play is around the browser and the applications that will run on the mobile platform (Android from a Google perspective).

Google has made little secret about attempting to dominate the mobile advertising space. According to Eric Schmidt “It’s the recreation of the Internet, it’s the recreation of the PC story, and it is before us — and it is very likely it will happen in the next year.” He postulates that Mobile advertising is nearing its tipping point because of features such as location-based advertising

While mobile is an immature and nascent market with limited advertising revenues today, Google is more bullish than most. Google fully understands it must set a strategy to dominate this platform. It took years for Microsoft to even recognize that it should be focusing on the Internet - and even after realizing where they should place their energies they were not particularly successful.

Now the chess board is being reset. Google has dominance in search, it has the largest ad serving platform utilizing both the premium Double Click Service as well as the Google Ad Manger, it can push ads via multiple mediums. Its got an open source browser that can be online and mobile based, it's building an analytics platform than can measure engagement and ROI - targeting ads to users' contextual experiences. Google is looking to ads in mobile search and location based service, in mobile video, in mobile applications and on mobile internet pages.

Building both online and mobile OSs and browsers, Google is aiming at squarely at Windows Desktop and Windows Mobile OS, IE, Microsoft Office, Live Search, Atlas Ad Serving, Microsoft Ad Center, Hotmail...............

Google will rightly argue that it's all about the user experience - that's the starting point - then it's all about the ad revenue.

Google Chrome - A New Browser

Taking aim at Microsoft, on Tuesday Sept, 2nd Google will formally announce an open source web browser to compete with Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Google announced that the beta version of the browser, called Google Chrome, will launch in 100 countries. Initially Google Chrome will be available for Windows users as part of a test-run to "start the broader discussion," Versions for Mac and Linux OSs are expected.

The news leaked out on Monday ahead of the official announcement.
A 38-page, online comic book that provided details about Chrome hit the blogosphere Monday morning, because Google had "hit 'send' a bit early".

According to Information Week, Google Chrome's debut answers a 16-month mystery: Why did Google buy GreenBorder Technologies?