“Blyk is the new mobile network for 16-24 year olds. It links you up with brands you like and gives you free credit every month (£15)”

Basically you receive up to 6 adverts a day on your phone, usually SMS but MMS too. In return you get £15 to spend on whatever you like, calls, data and SMS. Sounds good right?

 Blyk have been billed as innovators in the mobile industry so I am expecting some good things.

Here is one of the most recent communications I received:

“Thinking of going to the cinema but not sure what to watch? Pick a film: 1) Fast anf Furious 2) Monsters Vs Aliens 3) Crank: High Voltage. 1/2/3″

Great I am thinking of catching a flick, i’ll pick 1) as I wanna see some cars crash at high speed and the options arent exactly huge (why only 3 movies??). I then get a text back with:

“Vin Diesel and Paul Walker go back to the streets where it all began. They are forced to team up to bring down a drug lord who uses street racers as smugglers”

Ok….is that it? Where is my trailer link? Where is my cinema discount voucher? Where is my link to buy a ticket? Where is my nearest cinema? Where is my wallpaper/ringtone/ANY content? What is the point of this communication apart from wasting my time? 

Not really sure who benefits from this unless the data is being stored to make the service better i.e if you pick an action film it will send you more related content next time.  I doubt this is the case.

Its such a poor utilization of mobile, so many different things could have been done to add benefit to the user. At least give a review or rating!

I’ve been asking a lot of Blyk users what they think of the service, It seems the same answers keep appearing:

“I keep getting the same ads over and over again”

“The ads are shit bruv”

“I use it as a second SIM, I only swap to it when i’ve run out of credit on my other phone”

Hmm i’ll keep you posted on further ads.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

It is early days for video in Flash Lite, version 3 is the first one to support FLV and you can notice it when trying to stream on YouTube, the lag is very annoying. However it’s great to see this functionality appearing in normal phone browsers.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Saw this on my news feed and realised I hadn’t checked Myspace for nearly 4 months. I’m wondering how much of a common thing this is becoming as Facebook passes 150 million users?

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Heres the blurb

First of all there’s guaranteed snow wherever you are, with the O2 snow shaker. Choose a pic from your library, give your iPhone a shake and let it snow, let it snow, let it… you get the idea.

With our second app you can get underneath the mistletoe with anyone you fancy. Hold your iPhone over their head and press the ‘smooch’ button while giving them that festive kiss.

Last but not least, you can jingle all the way through the festive season with our O2 sleigh bells app. Touch each bell or give your iPhone a shake to get them jingling.

Its a nice touch by O2. Check out the screen shots below:

I wonder how the operator is going to use the App Store next? Maybe something lined up for O2 Priority Club or Wireless?

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

A few weeks back Vodafone launched Live Guy. The idea was that this guy in a red jumper called Live Guy travels around the UK giving clues along the way so if you manage to find him you win a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook worth a whopping £263.

But how do you find him? Only those bloody all the rage websites that them kids are always on! Live Guy continuously updated his Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and Picasa pages leaving you to work out where he is in one of 11 cities.

So it seems like one big brand awareness ‘look at us we’re cool and down with this mobile shit, please don’t buy the iPhone’ type of campaign. Unfortunately it sucked hard.

How do you judge if this was successful? Well lets look at the stats:

Facebook Fan Page: 408 Fans (actual fans 365) and 23 wall posts.

Pretty poor turn out for the fan page. Only 408 fans of which about 43 work for Vodafone or its agencies. (could be more as not everyone states who they work for in their network on Facebook). This gives you a pretty good idea of how many people actually took part as Facebook was the foundation to get people interested.

Twitter: 275 Followers

Youtube: 25 Subscribers, 5 comments and an average of 300 views on each of the 9 Videos.

Especially low numbers on the Youtube video views apart from one with Lewis Hamilton on it but thats got high numbers for obvious reasons.

It looks like the total number of people that took part/cared was around the 350 mark. So is this a good result for the campaign?

Well lets look at the spend on this campaign.

It would have cost Vodafone an overpriced fee for the website to be built by their digital agencies. Include into that the Google Maps corporate license, project management and all the other bits and pieces (including Facebook ads) I think a good figure is around £100,000 + mark. A huge spend for 350 people.

The prize just wasn’t good enough to get people excited. Expecting loads of people to get up and leave work or their home for a £263 laptop that might not even be there is a big ask. The incentive isn’t big enough to care or keep track.

Games like Perplex CIty which combine real life and clues on the web got around 50,000 participates for a £100,000 prize. There was a massive buzz including press, forums and blogs reporting and spreading rumours stroking the fire. Imagine how good Find Live Guy would have been if it was a hunt for a man with £100,000 to give away!. Eeeveryone would have been talking about Vodafone and they wasted that money with the site and other crap so why not just offer it as the prize?? Do Vodafone know how human nature works?

You can’t just add Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to a campaign and expect it to be successful no matter how much you want to leverage these sites popularity. Vodafone even managed to get quite a few blogs writing about this and actually take part but that still didnt get enough people excited. The 350 figure would be even less if you took out the bloggers!

I can just see the chief exec of Vodafone gathering everyone into the board room saying “We need to get involved in this Facebook thing thats happening, oh and I hear people saying UGC alot so lets do that too”. Sure looks that way from Arun Sarins comments here.

Another big problem for Vodafone is that o2 are stealing all the limelight in network operator coolness with its popular o2 treats/priority programs (which everyone from 18-30 seems to be mentioning right now) oh and that iPhone thing too.

The agencies will argue that it wasn’t meant to be successful or was an experiement or whatever. But its a waste especially with O2 steaming ahead and sending customers something for nothing type of gifts via O2 treats/priority, what do you think those customers then do? Tell their friends. Better than any social networking campaign don’t you think?

I got the feeling that this won’t be the last attempt at this sort of thing by Vodafone. Stay tuned!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Its a pretty low key campaign, I only noticed because the Bluetooth logo caught my eye for a second or two. The billboard is so high and rotates through so much stuff it will probably be missed by a large amount of people.

The Christmas themed sign prompts you to activate your Bluetooth to receive a free gift.

Check out the picture below:

After several seconds my phone beeped and showed Coca-Cola was trying to send me a Bluetooth message. and what has the Coca-Cola santa given you for Christmas? A Wallpaper with the Coke truck on (see below). Wooowee.

I think most people wont really know whats going on and its not targetted very well but at least Coke are willing to give Bluetooth a go.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

A new price comparison service called Sccope has launched and aims to let you get prices for products when your out and about.

Consumers text what they want either by model number i.e “Samsung PS50A456P” or by type i.e “37″ Plasma TV” to 62555 then get an SMS back with prices or models matching that item from “leading retailers that consumers trust”. The more accurate your request the better results, so searching for “Fifa 09 PS3″ rather than just “Fifa 09″. The texts are charged at a standard rate, which is a good thing.

I thought i would test it out against one of the main competitors in this space, Kelkoo mobile (m.kelkoo.com). The difference between the two is that Sccope is SMS based and Kelkoo is Wap based.

Round 1

My first test was looking for the Samsung PS50A456P 50″ beast of a tv. I type the whole make and model number.

Sccope: Produces only 2 prices, Argos £859.98 and Homebase £859.98. Both exactly the same.

Kelkoo: Pulls in a whopping 11 results, the cheapest being Home Cinema TV £660.99 and Beyond Television £664.65 saving me £198.99 more than Sccope.

Round 2

My second test was looking for a 16GB Apple Ipod Touch.

Sccope: Sends me back a list of multiple results and asks me to pick one, the options are 16GB ipod touch 2nd gen, Apple 32GB Ipod touch 2nd gen and iPod Touch 32GB 2nd Gen. Even though I told it I wanted a 16GB iPod Touch it still asked me to pick a result, and the last two options are the same and not even the right version. I select the 16GB option and text back again, this time I get 7 results the cheapest being from Dixons £200.63.

Kelkoo: I get a selection of products with images showing the iPod 16GB first gen, second gen and the HTC touch. The pictures are a big help and I select the 2nd gen option. Im shown 6 results with the cheapest being £199.89 from Micro Anvika. A measly 74p saving but a better experience

Round 3

My last test was to find a Panasonic Tx32lmd70 32″ inch LCD. I type in the make and model number

Sccope: oooh massive miss!  sends me back prices for the wrong tv! A 26″ Panasonic LCD!

Kelkoo: 1 result from Iguana Direct £519.99

Conclusion:

Kelkoo has the ability to check out the full spec of the product and has an image displayed so you can be confident that you are getting the prices for the right thing. Product rating is also shown which is a great help however you can’t click to see reviews so you have to place your trust in Kelkoo getting the rating from its main site.

Another factor is that it cost me 20p to get the ipod results but only around a few pence to browse it on the wap site. It wasn’t actually any quicker to use Sccope than to use Kelkoo, even though Kelkoo it provided a richer experience. Although Sccope responds to queries quickly there can be a number of stages which can be annoying.

Sccope can also price compare books if you type in the ISBN but to be honest if im out and about I wouldn’t really bother with a book because I know its always going to be cheaper online by a few pounds.

As a consumer when you are out shopping you want to know if you can get that item cheaper online or if its worth buying it there and then. Your aim is to be as informed as possible and save yourself the most money. In this case Kelkoo wins hands down. It provides images, large results list, product ratings, detailed specs and is fast. The only advantage to Sccope is that if you find the mobile web confusing then SMS will be more attractive to you (although its providing you comparisons which you’ll then go check online, the mobile web cant be THAT confusing to you)

I wanted to test the Price Runner mobile application against these two, however the link has been dead for months. Sort it out Price Runner!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Well….no. As you can see from the picture, the intriguing2D barcode is batting its lovely eyes at you offering ‘Get a kick here’. Wow great! Ok so let me get my 2Dcode reader program open on my phone, wait, I don’t have one.  How do I get one? Erm it doesn’t say. Maybe I should put in this URL, but is it a mobile one or does it want me to go to my PC?

Thats the problem with this campaign, if you don’t have a 2D barcode reader (very likely for majority of consumers) then what the hell do you do to get one? Wheres text-in number so one can be sent by Wap push to me? Seems pointless having a 2D barcode to save time when the process of getting the reader is so painful.

I tried the URL and it is the Pepsi mobile site after all, but the process of downloading the reader was long winded as you had to go to one of the many partner sites listed to get it.

Im guessing most people are going to do what I did, finish the drink and throw away the bottle without finding out what the code does.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

If you run a SMS question and answer service its probably not the best idea to send out racist jokes to your customers.

The Metro (see image) reported today that the 118 118 text service sent a racist joke to a Muslim student after he asked for a joke to be sent to his mobile when he was bored. 118 118 have been quick to apologise to the student, however he is now considering legal action.

I would say that 118 118 text service is of much poorer quality than AQA (Any Question Answered). The answers you get back are badly written and often with no humour. 118 118 run a ‘pay for one question, get the rest of your questions in the day free‘ this is obviously affecting quality as standards are pretty poor.

Where is the moderation?

AQA charge £1 per message which is pretty steep but least i know im going to get a good answer back which makes me ask a better question. 118 118 charge 60p for unlmited questions for the whole day and if you check out the live feed here, some of the answers are just annoying and awful. Compare those to the ones on AQA here (scroll down). Why does 118 118 do that annoying ‘thx’ at the end of every text? The one good thing is that they dont charge you if they cant give you a correct answer (Although if you’ve already paid 60p for the day then maybe not so good).

Some of the question on the live feed are mocking 118 118 and asking the same racist joke they sent to the student. There is also a few questions about ‘Fisting’ which they are kindly answering.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Somehow because I purchased tickets online a year ago to Kinky Malinki they feel its ok to send me these texts every month. I normally tolerate it but this month it was too much. Friends who also booked online got hit with the same amount of spam.

I do not know why there is no opt-out but im going to report them to ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) and see if they get a big fat fine. I’ll Keep you posted

Check the images below:

Bookmark It

Hide Sites