Mobile Fix: Mobile, Social, Cloud & Global
Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive! (and a chair at this year’s Media Playground event), on the four ‘megatrends’ driving the digital space…
Back to the Fix after a break driven by Skiing and avoiding the Royal Wedding we found a few stories that sum up where our heads are at…
There are 4 megatrends driving the digital space (according to Fred Wilson, New York VC);
Mobile, Social, Cloud & Global
Whilst we live and breath Mobile First, we’re heavily influenced by the other factors and all our conversations with clients and agencies cover the first three – and we’re looking at projects outside the UK too.
Another article that really resonated was a look at a new Forrester study that nails the essentially pointless debate over whether apps or mobile web are best.
As with all technology debates, you need to look at the people you want to talk with and at the problem you are trying to solve for them. Once you have that clear the technology issues start to resolve themselves.
This quote from the article sums up what we do pretty well:
In the multidevice, multiconnection world, product strategists need more than a good product with a connection to win customer loyalty – they need to create a digital customer relationship and deliver that in a continuously connected experience across many devices.
And a McKinsey article looks at how HTML5 will drive a mobile revolution. Given how technology tends to trump creativity currently in mobile we liked this quote:
CMOs will need to push their teams to develop compelling mobile-advertising strategies that go well beyond merely inserting ads into applications, as many do today.
The situation in the UK though is that the Apps dominate the thinking of many brands. Too few brands have invested in mobile sites so when their customers use their mobiles to go to a brand site – either through search or – increasingly – from email they are let down by finding the PC website and nothing that recognises they are on mobile. In the US the situation is healthier – a much higher proportion of brands have sites that are optimised for mobile.
A new study from US agency Arc looks at mobile shoppers in some depth and suggests half of US shoppers are using mobile.
In the UK things are moving quickly too – Google and the British Retail Consortium have partnered to look at retail and online (and their new study highlights the growth of mobile).
Mobile searches accounted for 11% of total retail searches in the first quarter of 2011.
And more Google data on mobile and shopping looks at the Mobile Movement… So we have to ask: What people waiting for? How much more data do brands need to justify the modest investment in creating a mobile friendly site? When will brands look at their web analytics and decide that the significant number of mobile visitors are worth serving properly?
As Mary Meeker says: “Some brands will win big with mobile, whilst some will wonder what just happened”. It’s time to choose.
Places
Given that everything around location is driven by the fact your phone knows where you are we were surprised by how much coverage was given to the story the iPhone and Google tracks your location. People are easily spooked by privacy concerns so brands need to tread carefully in this space.
And privacy is sighted as major reason why only 17% of mobile users have checked in with services like FourSquare or Facebook places.
Promotions
In the other hot space around retail and mobile we found an infographic useful – summarising the numbers behind Groupon, Living Social and the new Google and Facebook plays.
There is another article that suggests that Groupon have a real fight on their hands with Amazon owned LivingSocial – a retailer tells of his real life experience with each of them.
Retail
Whilst we are watching Amazon carefully, we’re also conscious that Tesco is pretty active around mobile and digital. This was reinforced by the news they have bought 80% of BlinkBox – ready to take on Amazon (and LoveBox) and Sky in the streaming market.
Other retailers are also active. Walmart has invested $300 million in buying a social media startup called KosMix, improving their team knowledge of social and mobile.
And Amazon have been busy too, launching private sales fashion site MyHabit.com having bought Woot a while back as well as BuyVIP. As a very smart ecommerce player told us this week, they have picked a tough battle to fight. The private sale space is very competitive with French success story Vente Privee about to enter the US.
The key thing is this space is apparently good relationships with fashion brands – not a strong point for Amazon.
Simon Andrews is chairing the Mobile Advertising session at MediaTel Group’s Media Playground 2011 on 9th June. For more information and to buy a discounted ticket, click here.