Mobile Fix: Checking in with locations, content and brands

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January 14, 2011

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3 minutes

Simon Andrews Addictive is the full service mobile agency Simon has just launched, in partnership with digital media specialists Agenda21. addictive is the fifth agency Simon has launched. His first digital creative agency, in 1995, was a dismal failure – few marketers understood the internet then and even fewer cared. The next three were more successful – Simon was one of three partners who launched what became Modem Media in Europe – growing a business from six people in one room in Soho to two hundred and fifty people in London, Paris and Munich. He then joined DLKW in 1999 at the time of their management buyout and built DLKW Dialogue into one of Londons most respected digital agencies before launching Big Picture in 2005 which focused on emerging media such as mobile, social networks and newTV. He joined Mindshare in November 2006 where global chief digital strategy officer – focused on ensuring that key clients receive the best digital thinking – and doing. Simon was also highly involved in developing the talent, product and processes necessary to deliver this thinking and doing. This led to a key role in architecting the recent restructure that saw Mindshare embrace digital across all disciplines. He left Mindshare in the summer to work on the addictive launch. Before going digital Simon was media planning director of Young & Rubicam and Zenith Media, and then account planning director of Ogilvy Direct. Outside of work Simon tries to have his two sons Ethan and Isaac share his enthusiasm for obscure soul and jazz records and the increasingly obscure Leeds United.

In the second Mobile Fix of 2011, Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, says retailers with a smart mobile strategy will gain a competitive advantage over those who sit back and watch new tools and new players re-engineer retailing…

Integrating online and offline

Everyone we talk with is focused on reducing the gap between the online element of their business and the offline – and recognition of the ability of mobile to be the missing link between the offline world and online world is growing.

We talked about real time visual translation app Wordlens last week and this weeks piece of magic comes from Google with new capabilities for Goggles – including the ability to solve a Sudoku puzzle – it does need to be seen to be believed.

Combining the mobile phone eyes with the cloud brain is going to dramatically change behaviours and we think an early sign of this will be QR codes and tagging finally going mainstream in the west – albeit some time after markets like Japan and Korea embraced them.

Our friends at PSFK have an excellent new report out looking at how these technologies can be used – for example, how codes (barcodes, QR or tags) can be integrated with shopping. Checking in at Places, mobile vouchers driven by location and the emerging behaviours around using mobile for price comparisons and researching product specifications, reviews and provenance are all part of the rich melange of tactics available. You just need a strategy to seize the opportunity.

Questionable tactics seem to be behind a new fashion to include QR codes in TV ads in the UK – just how many people can leap out of their seats and get their phone against the screen inside 30 seconds?

But checking in on TV is growing and we see this as complimentary to the growing two screen world of TV. The key US players include GetGlue, Miso and Philo – and the hot new player Starling.

There is a round up of checking in with locations, content and brands (that we mentioned last week) which is definitely worth reading if you are interested in this area.

As is the TechCrunch piece on how the data opportunity of Groupon persuaded VCs to invest almost a billion dollars. Whilst Groupon is focused on SMEs we wonder which big brands will recognise the opportunity to leverage their customer base by delivering targeted deals – again it is just Sales Promotion reinvented, but with the ability to earn significant revenues and make your customer base more valuable as you learn more about them.

Retailers with a smart mobile strategy will gain competitive advantage over those who sit and watch these new tools and new players re-engineer retailing. Or those who just launch an iPhone app and stop there.

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