Why data brokering is losing ground...

As a future GOM myself I would like to think there is another reason why data prices are falling - and that is because demand is falling. More and more reputable companies are growing their own lists organically - not through data brokers - and then protecting that asset - not selling out their hard-earned relationships.

The world is changing from

• "selling out my customers to shady 3rd parties" - to
• "including my trusted 3rd parties in m own regular communications with my customers".

If I run a newsletter for my customers I am happy to include an article or even an ad from a trusted 3rd party. I am not willing to give my entire CRM database to my trusted 3rd party. This is the way forward for the data industry. Sell "space" - don't sell data. Think of your business evolving to one of media broker where your media consists of newsletters, e-mails and other forms of trusted communication between brands and their customers.

Brands will ensure that only the highest quality and most relevant ads are approved for their newsletter - because if they don't consumers will unsubscribe. And that is the last thing a brand wants to see. The list won't be over used. The list won't be used by questionable 3rd parties. And the consumer will continue to trust their primary brand relationship.

My GOM status is as much consumer as marketer... If I don't know you - then I don't want you to call me, mail me, door-drop me, e-mail me - nothing. And if you try to reach me and think my name is "Occupant" - You're really doing yourself no favors at all. How can you even think you have applied even the most basic of targeting if you don't even know my name.

Gone are the days when consumers will tolerate the land-fill-marketing of the last 50 years. Today is about being green, buliding a relationship with a consumer, engaging in a dialogue and establishing trust. By the way - in case the point was lost on you - if you sell my data to a 3rd party - you have completely lost my trust.

So come on folks - stop thinking about "selling lists" and start thinking about "selling media" You'll make a lot more money - have a lot more control - and protect your customer relationships!

Mobile Marketing 101 - Keep it simple

All I can say is, Read this - and then follow the advice.

A great article on things you should pass on to your development team when it comes to making your e-presence mobile.

Way to go!

Australians - Serious about SPAM

I was incredibly disappointed when the US CAN-SPAM legislation was hijacked by lobbyists and converted from serious legislation to address the problem of SPAM and worked on the basis that all marketing must be Opt-In - to detailed instructions on how you "can SPAM" your customers so long as you adhere to some basic guidelines.

Australians are clearly more focused on protecting the citizen from aggressive marketing than they are focused on keeping the lobbyist money coming into their campaigns.

If you send SPAM in Australia it can result in fines up to AUS$1.1M per day for repeat offenders. Now that's what I call a disincentive.

-- And speaking of disincentives --

I was recently traveling on a cruise and one of the stops was in Rome, Italy. The tour guide pointed to a man with a bunch of luxury hand bags spread out across a blanket on the pavement. "Don't buy anything." he advised, "It's illegal for you them to be selling the goods, but it is also illegal for you to buy them." I love it!

If you issued a £250.00 fine for everyone who bought Viagra from a SPAM e-mail - and made it very public - no one would ever buy Viagra from a SPAM e-mail again. And if no one buys the products from SPAM e-mail ( or mobile SPAM for that matter ) guess what - the problem goes away.

MMS - Recognizing the obvious

Mike Greenville from 160characters.org has a great article about how MMS is finally coming into its own and being recognized as a great delivery mechanism for rich multi-media content as part of e-commerce, marketing and advertising.

When MMS was initially launched it was thought to be ultimate revenue source for operators to recapture the revenue investment in 3G licenses. And as such the entire market was put under huge pressure to perform. The analysts and the reporters were put on-notice that they had to do everything they could to make MMS big.

Another aspect of MMS which is often overlooked is that it was born out of the success of picture messaging in Japan. The NTT Docomo ShaMail service was the first instance of consumers sending and receiving photos via their mobile phone. And if it was big in Japan then it must also be big in every GSM network in Europe. NOT!

I'm not sure what these guys were smoking, but it must have been some really good stuff.

1) The GSM networks decided that rather than follow the Japan model of mobile IMAP access to e-mail that they would develop their own standard and call it MMS. Think about it - if GSM networks hadn't suffered from the dreaded NIH (not-invented-here) disease we would have had e-mail access via our mobile phone as early as 2001! Only now are people realising the possibility of having access to e-mail via mobile as a true revenue driving opportunity.

2) Photography is popular in Europe - but when was the last time you saw a bus load of German's wandering around the Eiffel tower with no less than 3 cameras hanging from their necks. It might be a politically incorrect generalisation - but you get the message. Europeans are not nearly so photo-centric as the Japanese and this means the demand for photos was far less.

3) The MMS standard required that every message go through some level of transcoding to ensure the best display on the destination device. Transcoding is a non-exact science which at best can cause distortion and at worst can make a certain fast food chain's golden arches show up green and squashed. The ShaMail service simply delivered an e-mail with a photo attachment and left it up to the device how best to display the resulting picture.

So what is changing?

The big change is that operators have realised that person to person MMS will never be a significant amount of the MMS traffic on their networks and instead they are focusing on how to optimize the channel for use by 3rd parties as a content delivery channel. This means addressing the transcoding problems, improving 3rd party access for delivery and adjusting the pricing model to one which is comparable to SMS to encourage advertisers to take advantage of rich multi-media content delivery.

In short - they are starting now - in 2007 - what they should have been doing in 2002. Well better late than never --- but better never late.

Clean spot advertising

My mother always warned me that if I was going to wipe something off the counter I should be careful that I don't make a clean spot. If you make a clean spot it will show how dirty the rest of the counter is.

Marketers at Street Advertising Services have taken this concept and put it to good use by using the dirty London pavements to make a clean spot in the form of a stencil. Sounds like a great idea to me - but surely it will have a few Londoners up-in-arms about the filth on the streets which they hadn't really noticed before.

For now - good going!

Making SMS even more cool for kids

Comeks Shorts is an interesting Java application for kids to make text messaging even more cool than it is. But looking at this what I see is an appeal to kids who are under 12. As the service will be supported by advertising I think this may run very close to regulations covering advertising to children who are 12 and under. Teenagers would be more likley to use the service if the service was upgraded to a Laura Croft Tombrader character and you didn't call them shorts - but something more hip -- and as I'm not a teenager don't even "think" about asking me what it should be called!

Mundu IM

Geodesic launches Mundu IM

I've seen a number of instant messaging solutions over the past year - some that make more sense than others. Geodesic seems to be a solution which is truly addressing a market demand.

Within the GSM Association there is much speak of an operator based Instant Messaging solution. I've never been convinced of this approach - especially in markets where consumers have adequate Internet penetration to already belong to one of the major IM communities such as AOL, Yahoo! or MSN.

I mean seriously - who is going to drop their MSN messenger account in favour of a new IM account with T-mobile? - Why? -- Operators want consumers to do this because it creates another sticking point (read: lock-in) to discourage consumers from churning (moving to another operator). Consumers are smarter than operators give them credit for -- they will avoid these type of lock-in services for that very reason.

Mundu add support for communication across all the major IM communities - whichever one you belong to. Adds support for rich media sharing and in consumer focused. Operators won't hate this because it will drive consumer adoption and use of the mobile Internet services.

But the bigger question still remains: Will kids chat on mobile IM in the same way they chat on their home PC? I don't think so. When kids are on-the-go they use text messaging. And unless mobile IM becomes a LOT cheaper than text messaging mobile IM will still be a novelty service.