So everything started this last summer. My bike was basically dead and I wanted to go biking with my son, so I opened an account with “Call a Bike” the renting bike service from the Deutsche Bahn (trains) here in Germany. Starting at 0,08 EUR/Min is not the cheapest service, but somehow convenient when you are bikeless. After registering online I was almost daily using the service. The whole process of renting the bike is a terrible pain in the neck. It should be easier, especially if you have an smartphone with you. I though this service needed an app to boost their business and make life easier for everyone.

A screen from my iPhone app
Click to enlarge

An app? yes. For starters finding a bike can be a challenge. Although they have many, people seem to use them a lot, so you have to find one that is free. The DB have on the Website a Google map that tells you where to find the bikes. One would think that if you are on the road it would be a mobile friendly website…think again. Frustrated by the service or rather the lack of it, I decided to create a concept for an app that could solve the problem and make the whole experience more pleasant.

I downloaded a Power Point presentation where the whole process and the customer journey is explained to the detail and used it as the basis for my concept. I was aiming for:

• Open a new account directly from your mobile phone
• Read a PDF with the more important info
• Do the whole unlocking process via mobile phone
• Have a bike locator
• Speed and minutes counter
• Street map and route recording for further sharing
• Guided tours around cities in Germany (these could be sold for extra)
• Also in two languages German and English (there are tourists that also use the service)

I rolled up my sleeves and went to work. All pieces where finish to put a presentation together. It was the end of the summer and I though it might be stupid to come up with such application now when people will rarely use this service in the next following months. So I decided to put it off to the following month: October. The app could be ready for next summer, I though.

Official Call a Bike app

Those of you with an iPhone and living in Germany probably know that an official app from Call a Bike was release recently into the app store just a few days/weeks ago. Developed by the company INOZ from Berlin, it became an instant success, featured in the top position of the app store. Tho, still in version 1.0, it features a bike locator and lets you via Click-to-call rent the bike. It won’t take long before they work out version 2 featuring what I mentioned above.

As soon as I saw the app my jaw fell to the floor. “Don’t leave for tomorrow what you can do today” , “The early bird gets the worm”… All these similar phrases came to my mind at once. With technology timing seems to be in most times the decisive factor. When is just the right time and when is not? Are you too early on the game or too late? I guess there is a lesson to be learn here but I don’t seem to grasp it. What I do know for sure is that as soon as I get a similar idea, I won’t hesitate to at least build a prototype as soon as possible. If the idea is crap it won’t survive anyway and if is good it will stand the test of time… No excuses, just business as usual: blood sweat and tears (well, maybe not the tears).

Very good and comprehensive report of the Mobile Life in Germany for the next few years. The report puts the whole German mobile market in perspective and what to expect in the years to come. Oh, and yeah that in the picture is Angela Merkel…

If you want to get it shoot out an email to Dr. Katrin Penzel (Katrin.Penzel@Goldmedia.de) and she’ll email it to you at no cost.

Phones for Fashionistas
Fashion labels like Prada, DG, Gucci, Armani and even ELLE Magazine are well into the mobile game already. Producing their own “Glamphones” together with companies like LG, Samsung, Panasonic, Nokia and Motorola. Don’t be surprised if you find Kate Moss and the likes chatting away in style with their phones flashing some well-known fashion logos.

This fashion fever is been around ever since the now deceased Xelibri series from Siemens came out in 2003. The design of the Xelibri series broke every standard there was at the time, treating the phone purely as a sophisticated fashion accessory. From that point on the mobile phone evolved from a communication tool to an accessory, to a fashion statement to finally, a status symbol.

Pimp my phone
Fortunately there are options for the Fashion victims of the world. The company Fashion Cell Shop for example specializes in getting you a glamorized spark for your phone, offering a wide collection of covers, cases and accessories to choose from. If this is not enough, with Sparks by Stella is possible to add the extra “Bling” some people crave for.

But personalizing and customizing mobiles phones is nothing new (remember back in the day the a Nokia 2100 with interchangeable covers?) what I am still trying to understand is to why carriers and mobile phone companies refuse to pick up on it even more. Other companies like Reebok, Nike or Converse, let you design your trainers, share your design and later on buy it. All according to your specifications. What’s stopping mobile phone companies from letting us do the same with our phones?

Seasonal phones
I recently found a Nokia phone selling here in Munich, referencing the super hit series of Sex and the City. Probably, the latest marketing trick to get rid of the left over models that didn’t sale.

Funny enough, I don’t personally like any type of customization other than the way it comes from the factory. I don’t own a case, or a skin or even tried to customize the interface. Then again, I own an iPhone, which is a model from a company very conscious about industrial design, user experience and “Kansei” (japanese word for engineering our senses and perception into objects).

Our phones are so dear to us that the level of “Aichaku” (japanese word for love to objects and your relationship with them) towards them is getting stronger every day. It is then easy to understand and empathize with people who want to treat their phones like something special knowing that the lifecycle of the device won’t be longer than a year or two. But fashion is about the latest, the hottest and the trendiest. What is “in” today is “out” tomorrow. I guess that in the mobile arena there are no “old timers” worth keeping around.

If you have a smartphone, video is certainly nothing new. Most smartphones offer the possibility to play local video or over the internet. The promise of faster connections seems to be around the corner, but we know already than in places like Japan (the mobile test bed of the world) superfast connections have made possible TV Channels on the mobile phones. It is not surprise that advertisers are eager to recycle their Ad spots and get them mobile. However this is not a good idea for a medium so personal, intimate and in which relevant content is expected. We’ve learned our lessons from the internet and we know that the 30 sec spot will not work.

MTV Networks is finally waking up to the fact that TV alone won’t cut it. They’ve already lost a lot of their audience by lagging behind during the whole Internet revolution. This time around they want to make sure to stay on the cutting edge once again. As part of their research on VOD (Video on the demand) together with MobiTV, MTV just aunched “The How To Show“. Made exclusively for mobile phones, this show brings celebrities to showcase their trade. You’ll get to see the occasional 20/30 sec spot to begin each episode. But since the whole thing still an experiment, I guess we can forgive them for the moment.

Some stats for the skeptics

According to Nielsen’s Three Screen Report 13.4 million Americans watched 3.3 hours of Mobile video in the 1Q of 2009 and the numbers will increase when bandwidth become faster and more available. Teens for example, between the ages 13-17 are avid viewers of mobile video reporting an average of 6.5 hours of video on their mobile phones each month. These figures makes them the premium target group for any mobile video campaign.

I couldn’t find the stats for Germany (reliable anyway) for video usage, but in a country with 80 million people and 70% market penetration, that’s a hell of a lot of users! Pretty sure a big chunk is watching video.

Why Mobile Video and why now? Obviously a video still the most compelling medium to reach any audience because of the storytelling power it can provide. However, television is static and turn the user into passive recipients of content. Not good. So, imagine how powerful it could be to create videos that are relevant for users and how companies can establish a REAL dialog with their consumers. The next logical level would be to be contextual, followed by more personal and relevant video content delivered to you. Content that is associated with the brand of your choice and that follows that sense of “Forever there” that consumers are looking for from their favorite brands. Nobody seems to listen that the time has come for companies to give meaning to their brands and stop trying to compete for attention. In this context advertising is no longer a competition about who can scream louder, but who can be present at the right time, at the right place and who can actually give something back in return for the loyalty. The 30 sec spots while convenient for an Ad agency to recycle and play it on your handset is not only intrusive but sadly ineffective. We are at the stage now, where the new medium tries to adopt the format of the old medium(TV/Internet), but new uses for mobile video is just around the corner. I’ll keep you posted

Proving that advertising is more about engaging people than click-through rates, the New york agency Ringleader developed an ad campaign using Click-to-Call to create some buzz for the horror film “The Signal“. The most notorious part of this film is a mysterius transmission sound that turns people into serial killers.  The campaign gave the option of clicking on a number to listen the distinctive horrific sound (of course the campaign was mixed with other elements like video and a mobile website to create the total experience).

Another good showcase for this technology was seen in the campaign developed for Nickelodeon’s go, Diego, go presentation at Rose Garden auditorium in Portland last year. The Click-to-Call was used in combination with a promotional code to receive a 3$ discount to see the show.

The Click-to-Call apps

Several apps are now dedicated exclusively to provide you with a large database of telephone numbers for you to call. Apps such as the Yellow Pages, German Telefonbuch, White Pages, Qype… available not only for the iPhone, but also for other platforms like the Blackberry, Android and hopefully the anticipated Palm Pre (though too early to say).

The most challenging aspect of Click-to-Call is not how many clicks you get or even how many calls, but how many of these calls will convert into actual sales. To measure this efficiently is at the moment is not very clear and from what I understood very expensive to correlate.  According to Richard Rosen – “Call measurement requires an investment in dedicated phone numbers and some type of usage charge in order to prove ROI to an advertiser. Pay per call requires an entrepreneurial investment by providers in the phone lines in hopes of generating a premium “per call” fee to recoup those costs”. Richard Rosen is the owner of the consulting firm Calling Strategies which specializes among other things in Call Tracking.

In the next post we’ll be talking about the use of video as an advertising tool on mobile devices.

In an industry dominated by SMS campaigns, MMS, shrunken banners mimicking the ones on internet, ring tones and some other primitive forms of marketing, mobile phone has acquired the reputation of been the underachiever of the media world. Undeniably, the introduction of the iPhone changed the way we think about mobile phones, the way we interact with them and what we expect from our devices. We are now living what is been called by some the “Post iPhone era” and every new smartphone that comes out in the market is expected to be better or at least have the same functionality. While innovative and cool, advertisers are worried that an offer that can be streamlined and sold by the pound is yet to emerge in this current innovative climate. Just like the early days of the internet a lot of experimenting is going on, but defined formats are not well established.

Branding and advertising go a lot deeper than just trying to trick or brainwash someone to buy a product with the typical no-brainer “Call to Action”(then again that is not the point of this post today). In this post we will focus on the devices and the different technical possibilities they offer. Here some of the most popular formats used for advertising on the smartphones:

Click-to-call: in this format while browsing the internet with a mobile phone, the user can click on a phone number just like it can click on a link and make a phone call. One significant benefit of click-to-call is that it allows companies to track when online visitors change from the website to a phone sales channel.

Video: many devices are able to play videos, which increases the chances of users to see the latest trailer, click on the number and book the tickets… There are currently many similar apps available including one official app from Sony.

Audio: with the introduction of radio on the mobile devices, traditional radio approach still a viable way of reaching consumers. Existing radio campaigns are pretty much alive. A more sophisticated model would be that of last.fm, pretty famous on the web already. They are a mix of radio and music store, offering a wide selection for free or introducing people to new music with a small preview. It gives the user the chance of buying the music online or download it directly to the phone via iTunes.

Location Based Services (LBS): uses the GPS feature of the phone to help people locate services in the area. Communities such as Qype include a combination of web2mobile where reviews about places can be easily found while on the go. Another good example of the usage of this feature was seen in the Virgin 1′s campaign “Terminate your Mate” made for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. You could send an SMS to your mates from a website requesting their position, soon after the user receives a terminator styled video telling them where they’ll be target for termination by no other than the Terminator himself.

Other applications include retails store locators and recently some “where-can-I-buy-this-product-around-here” from companies such as where2getit.com

Applications: My favorite out of the whole bunch. Finally companies are giving something in return instead of trying to compete for attention. Companies like NIKE have sucessfully combined  online communities of runners with mobile devices turning the brand into a meaningful experience. Another good example is CHANEL releasing one of the first iPhone apps to the market. It didn’t take too much time until others followed. Brands such as COCA COLA, STARBUCKS, RED BULL to mention a few, have their own apps ready to download for several different smartphones platforms.

QR-Code: every smartphone is able to scan these bad boys which can contain everything from a text message, a web address, phone number…You name it. Holding up to 4, 296 characters. Created in 1994 by Japanese automotive parts manufacturer Denso-Wave and called Quick Response (hence the name QR) to check their own inventories. In October 2008 MindMatics AG (now called CLANMO) launched the first European-wide campaign via Mobile QR Mosaic posters for the upcoming EA game, SPORE. Other have since followed.

Mobile Web: internet on the go. Basically all formats we find online with the exception of flash banners which are not supported by the iPhone yet. The Palm Pre will apparently be able to handle flash. The guys at AdMob seem to be the leader company in this type of advertising offering everything from mobile analytics, campaign management and mobile metrics, I also have to mention that they deliver on all formats I touch on in this post.

Blyk (We pay you to watch our ads model): Blyk is the first free mobile network funded solely by advertising and available only in the UK (for the moment anyway). The model is pretty easy, you tell them what you like and they send you advertising from several products in their portfolio. In exchange for you attention you can make free calls. Not such a bad deal.

In the next part, I’ll be talking more in-depth about each individual format and how they can be measured. In the meantime if you have any questions, please contact me or leave a comment.

Since 2005 the MMA publishes a set of Mobile Advertising Guidelines for the mobile web. Over the past three years, the guidelines have evolved to include display (mobile web and downloadables) and messaging (SMS and MMS). The release of guidelines is collaborative effort between the five continents and other supporting organizations including GSMA, dotMobi Advisory Group, IAB UK, IAB Mexico. The guidelines will be translated into local languages and will be release to the public every six months. In the meantime you can download the pdf document with the current guidelines here.