Nokia's mobile campaign "comes with branding"

For all who don’t know, Singapore is one of only 3 countries in the world where NOKIA has rolled out its “comes with music” service. All new owners of a NOKIA “comes with music” phone get unlimited access to millions of songs online from the NOKIA music store. Singapore as a market has over 3 million downloads in 2 months since its launch and whilst NOKIA has yet to release information on its sales figures, this is an incredible model of exploiting mobile usage behavior through relevant content.

A year ago when NOKIA first announced this exclusive and global first initiative, many observers were wondering why NOKIA would want to invest in what they considered a marketing gimmick. How would free music relate back to brand equity and sales? Was the cost of providing the free music carrot an acceptable one to bear? Recently, digital east Asia reported this quote

“The love affair between music and young urban Asian consumers remains inseparable and it’s no surprise that music continues to be an important part of their daily lives. Our overall findings showed that 25% were listening to music more in the last 12 months.
Ideally, the music industry should be working with telecommunications companies to deliver music via mobile phone while marketers and brand owners should be exploring or realigning their strategies by incorporating music as a platform to reach this fast-growing and digitally driven segment.”
– Steve Garton, Executive Director - Media, Synovate.

What NOKIA has now in Singapore at least is a market leading reach in consumers who actively enjoy music from NOKIA’s branded portal. This incentive will continue to ensure traits such as brand loyalty and WOM evangelism are alive and kicking with their core audience. Also, the fact that these songs are non convertible and only playable on NOKIA phone sets, NOKIA has also managed to offer more compelling reason for their consumers to throw away their old mp3 player and replace it with a NOKIA music enabled mobile phone.

I/We at MobileBehavior often talk about opportunities brands should take advantage of within the mobile phone environment. By offering value and content, brands can now be a part of a mobile user’s individual experience through their personal phone. From the Iphone/Blackberry applications to bookmarked WAP sites to Java games, the opportunities are endless and waiting to be explored. NOKIA’s “comes with music” mobile strategy also comes with branding, how about yours?

Song of the blog

The White Tie Affair "Candle Sick & Tired"

Thanks a Billion

Apple just announced the winner of its one billionth downloaded application and the lucky 13 year old from Weston will be walking away with a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod touch, a time capsule and a macbook pro. Apple has clearly exceeded all expectations with this staggering success but how do we put one billion downloads in marketing context?

If we look at the categories of apps available, you see everything from the farting app to mobile banking. The use of the app has far exceeded games, utilities or even information. Marketers are grappling with branding opportunities to develop applications they believe push their message closer to home. Automobile brands develop racing applications, Snack food brands put out calorie counting applications and so on and so forth. How do we go about measuring effectiveness on these applications and how else can an application work harder for our clients?

Sure we can measure downloads, but who’s tracking the retention rate? How successful is an application if it's downloaded once and banished to page 20 of our iPhone home screen? A successful branded application in my book needs to play within the boundaries of the mobile environment. It needs to serve a tangible value to the downloader. Branding should always be proceeded by action. This builds real brand behaviour which allows for consumer endorsement and evangelism to happen. The mobile application environment is a fantastic medium for an opt –in user experience like no other.

In this case study, we see Nationwide insurance building a free iPhone application that helps Nationwide customers find local resources, document the accident and submit claims information via their handset. This tells me Nationwide is thinking about its tagline ““I am On Your Side.”

By bringing real time value to a real need, Nationwide customers don’t just hear the marketing message. They actually get it. This branding effect results in a tremendous effect and benefit which will resound within that user’s sphere of buzz-influence.

And that to me, is an awesome way of putting 1 billion downloaded mobile applications into marketing context. Well done

Song of the blog "360 degrees by Asa"

Who the hell uses mobile for social networks anyway?

You might have noticed the blog has been quiet for about 2 weeks now, and although i would like to cite "lack of inspiration", twitter and procrastination probably answers it better. However, i just read an article ran on MobiAd on BuzzCity's founder KF Lai on his experience with MyGamma, a rapidly growing mobile social network.

MyGamma serves ads in over 100 countries and is rapidly showing a proven revenue model on the much lauded promise of social networks and location based targeting. In My Lai's words " mygamma is targeting “un-wired” consumers. In other words, people who do not have regular access to a PC and so their only means to connect to internet is through mobile." .. Wow.

Wow because for the first time, someone is making a point that demand based services on mobile isn't the only differentiating factor. THE ENTIRE MARKETPLACE is. We have been assuming the mobile target is an evolution of the 2.0 user experience. E.g we develop facebook mobile to cater to the facebook audience on the go , similarly for myspace etc etc.

But what Buzz City has done is to create a mobile social networking experience for the person that has no access to any wired device. And this is the essence of why his mobile community thrives. The difference is that once again, scarcity leads to demand. Not as a software but as a channel.

This is advantageous in so many ways. From barrier of entry fences to innovation adoption, having a purely mobile community is genius in my book.

How can we apply this? In developed countries where web and mobile is more interlinked, is it possible to find an audience that depends solely on mobile from an infrastructure standpoint? Maybe not, but let me try to challenge the demand marketplace again.

How about Taxi Drivers? Housing brokers? Insurance agents? Basically anyone who is mobile 3/4 of the working day. Will a mobile networking site that is productivity centric make more sense? A Taxi driver may not go home after a long day to update his facebook, but he may be enticed to update a cab mobile social network on traffic conditions, get updates on road blocks etc. Could this same driver be susceptible to location based ads?

It's certainly not proven , but what i hope you takeaway is that our assumptions on WHO mobile consumers and adopters are may need to change. How platforms monetize mobile may rely not only on services innovation but on channel innovation.


Song of the blog : "Run' by Amy Macdonald

Anytime, Anywhere, Anyhow?

I got myself a nifty Ipod touch last month and i am seriously addicted to all the apps you can download from the itunes store. What's impressing me on a daily basis however, is the internet browsing experience on this gadget. Hands up for all those people who have tried your phone's internet access and been really turned off by

1) The speed ( or lack of)
2) The design/layout
3) The speed

On the itouch however, with a wifi enabled safari browser, i found myself surfing web pages not unlike a netbook experience. This led me to realize the problem with mobile marketing isn't the device, it's the user experience. Remember i spoke about how i believe branding is formed by experiences. We have been fed the slogan "Anytime, anywhere" so many times over the last year, yet are we really consuming more mobile content anytime anwhere? NO.. and the reason is simply because "Anytime" and "Anywhere" is not "AnyHOW".

How we feel when we access those WAP pages and How we perceive communication over the mobile screen is just if not more important than anytime or anywhere. Whats the point of telling me its a buffet if the only thing on the table is boiled water and old bread.

Mobile phones are designed primarily to help us stay connected. We use calls, sms, mms etc to stay in touch. Social networks want us to be plugged into them 24/7. The natural affinity means social networks are learning to adapt from an online experience to generating good mobile ones. My experience with the facebook app on the ipod touch was absolutely spot on.

So, how about companies? Brands, services? If companies start embracing social media as a new way of conversation, then the mobile internet surely must be part of that plan.

Any comments or good mobile internet experiences to share?

Song of the day is by Lesley Roy ( she sings like she has a frog in her throat but its enjoyable)

"Unbeautiful" by Lesley Roy