Real Mobile Web? How About A Regular Old Fake One?

I just came back from the cottage which is its own little island somewhere in the middle of nowhere, six hours by car from Toronto. The weather was awful. Lots of rain. Lots of mosquitoes. But like the troopers that we are, we made the best of it. The 9month year old did great. Happy as a clam singing away in his baby chair watching the rain fall come down as if it was an episode of baby Einstein.

To make us all feel better (the non-self-entertained babies) I thought I would bake a peach pie. We had the perfect peaches. And made a special trip for some butter from the watershed. And with all that effort and expectation, I realized that I couldn't quite remember the measures for the pastry.

No problem right? The mobile web. So i pull out my trusty cell phone to do a little mobile surfing.

Now this is not as easy as it sounds. Cell phone reception is sketchy at best and email only downloads a few times a day. To get the browsing capabilities it's a careful balance of angles and acrobatics as I stand on one leg on a rock that sits just off the front of the main cabin with my hands stretched upwards to get a signal.

As you can imagine, once i get Google up on my screen, I'm pretty happy and want to get my recipe information as quickly as possible as to not lose my reception momentum. I plug what I'm looking for and what do you think I get? Well, to say the least, the worst bunch of impossible to browse on a mobile phone websites you have ever seen. Downloading links after links that seem to go in mobile circles never quite landing at a simple page with my simple pastry for my potentially mood changing pie.

Read a post today about someone wanting a 'real mobile web', but dammit, i'd just be happy with a regular old fake one.

Just in case you're wondering, I winged the pastry. It wasn't half bad and the mood improved greatly.

Prediction For 2009 #4: Mobile Takes Bigger Role In Customer Experience

There's been a lot of talk in the past few years about the rise of the mobile device as an advertising vehicle. I've never bought that. Not in the traditional mass marketing sense. My mobile phone is too personal to me. I don't want push messages on there as I wouldn't have wanted them on my computer.

We all know the iphone has revolutionized the way we are starting to use our cell phones. Surfing the Web on mobile devices, Google searches, mobile apps, social mobile. And it will start to push mobile to the forefront of marketing discussions and will start to take some budgetary priority.

One of the biggest areas where we are going to start to see this practically emerge is the role of mobile in the overall customer experience. From marketing to customer service, we need to start working with clients to examine the customer experience life cycle and map where we can fulfill unmet customer needs through the mobile device. How can brands connect you with other shoppers through mobile? How can they create value added marketing experiences in retail (i.e. extend product knowledge on the retail floor?) How can they extend the actual product experience through needs based functionality?

Many clients were only starting to touch on these questions last year and hopefully we will start to see an explosion of examples where mobile starts to take a bigger and potentially even leading role in customer experience.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nobihaya/

Open or Die: The Value Of Robust Ecosystems

From a philosophical place sometimes it's hard beat how Google approaches product development. Let's take Android as a great example. For those of you unfamiliar, "Android...[is] the first complete, open, and free mobile platform."

Why is this so significant? As I discussed in a post long ago "Closed Ecosystems Die, Shouldn't Someone Let The Cell Phone Companies Know?", most mobile companies and handset providers have created closed ecosystems. Breaking in a new product such as Android in such a tightly controlled environment seems somewhat doomed to fail unless of course, you go in the opposite direction.

In Androids own words, "The concept is simple: leverage Google's expertise in infrastructure, search and relevance to connect users with content created by developers" which will be released in the Beta Android Marketplace...for what they are calling a user driven content distribution system.

Will Android and Android driven handsets be able to compete? The value of robust ecosystems and connecting with the developer community particularly in the difficult mobile market place will absolutely blow the doors wide open. Already hand sets with more robust browsers like the iPhone and the Bold are changing the way that people extend their desktop experiences to the mobile work force and economy.

And what will happen to the mainstream players who have up to now kept their ecosystems closed? Open or die will soon become the motto and that's not just what i believe. That's just an ecological fact.

Open Code Brand: Bloody Brilliant Marketing

Sometimes you've just gotta swear (*disclaimer to my 11 year old - no this doesn't mean if you see this that YOU are now allowed to swear).

I love the philosophy of what Blyk is trying to do. And the truth is, to launch a mobile phone company that is supported by advertising, traditional marketing approaches are going to fail miserably. Because you have to somehow attempt to make the notion of advertising on your phone a good thing...make the fact that you are getting something for free (i.e. you don't have enough money to pay) cool.... Well, enter Blyk's notion of an open code brand.

"When we started designing the Blyk brand we took a deliberately “open code” approach. By “open code” I mean, much like in open source software, that there is an initial hard core - the kernel of the operating system if you like - and that we allow and even encourage variation, iteration and interpretation of the brand identity. Our goal is to create the Blyk brand together with our members, to invite them to take part. I believe this is the best way for us to compete with the traditional “pay-for” mobile networks and to build a real emotional tie with our audience. This idea is carried into the illustrative style used in our launch visuals."

This is taking the notion that brands are customers and customers are brands to an entirely new level. Definitely going to be tracking this one.....