The issue seems to be the rapid change of temperature a the trains entered the channel tunnel from the French side (freezing conditions outside the tunnel and the 25 degrees celsius inside).

The story “broke” on social media via Tech Crunch on Saturday morning via their post “As hundreds of Eurostar passengers languish, Eurostar ignores Twitter”

You can also see how traditional media such as the BBC reported the incident.

UK social media agency We Are Social posted a note about today’s Eurostar crisis on Sunday to summarise how they were helping with the response as Eurostar are one of their clients. 

In a refreshingly honest post, MD Robin Grant mentioned that they had actually suggested a real-time listening team to Eurostar and will be implementing this in early 2010 – as Robin posted below:

When we first met with Eurostar, as we do with all of our clients, we talked to them about the need for to put a real-time social media listening and responding programme and crisis plan in place, and proposed a conversation audit and consultancy project to help them implement such a programme. As is common with any business at the early stages of coming to terms with social media, they could see the long term benefits of such a strategy, however as adapting their existing processes had wider implications across the business they decided to start small by moving forward with the Little break, Big difference campaign, to learn from the experience of engaging in conversations in social media.

Interestingly people (on social media) are calling We are Social the “Eurostar PR agency” – this is probably not correct but it shows you that on social media people are not only hungry for information but also quick to blame (and that blame can be amplified quickly on sites like twitter).

In a review of the whole situation, perhaps Robin and the team at We Are Social could have quickly tweeted “we’re camped here inside Eurostar HQ getting you info as soon as we can” – to let people know they are on the case. 

There is nothing more reassuring to hear the wailing sirens of a the police/fire brigade or ambulance crew nearby to know that help is on its way – and it is time to keep clear and let the professionals do their work.

In this case, the sirens were off while everyone attended to the crisis, but Robin would not be defending his agency had he publicly put the sirens on.  This is not a criticism, but a key take-out to all the rest of us should we find ourselves or a client in a similar situation in the future.

One of the key observations of social media (and the web in general) is that now information is so freely available, sites like twitter can completely bypass armies of PR people.

The public can now easily sense if information is being withheld and therefore start to criticise those withholding it (or anyone else close by).  It is advisable then to be as transparent as possible via all mediums, and if you don’t know what is going on – say why – and suggest a reason.

For example, it has come to light that some of the communication issues were because of tunnel protocol where all incidents are under the control of Eurotunnel.  Compounding this is the fact that there are no mobile phone services in the channel tunnel – so citizen journalism is blacked out and we need to wait for the standard chain of command to update us – at the same time as they are effecting a rescue.

So what are the key learnings from this experience (and yes Mr/ Mrs/ Ms Communications Director of any size company you need to read this also):

• Social media is not simply an extension of PR.  Consumers hungry for information (and passengers in this case) as well as relatives waiting to hear about their loved ones stranded under the English channel on a train with no lights, power want regular, factual updates.  They can’t wait for a PR release to be written, approved by 2 layers of management, then provided to media outlets who need to format it for their channels and finally get it to air. Therefore because of the immediacy and direct nature of social media (it bypasses PR and traditional media) – you need to be fast and frequent with the updates.

Why not station someone in the operations team who is running the twitter channel in a crisis like this?

• Claim your brand on twitter  @eurostar is not currently owned by Eurostar, but in a crisis people wanting information will Google your brand to find your website, or go to twitter to try and find you.  @little_break is the only channel being managed for updates by the Eurostar/We Are Social team – easy to guess this one! This brings me to my next point

• Leverage all channels together. As of today, Sunday there is still no mention on the main Eurostar.com website of the @little_break twitter feed to check.  If you are on your mobile and at a railway station you also would want to access information via your mobile.  Eurostar do not have a mobile optimised website and when I checked at 12 noon on Sunday, on a mobile you still had to navigate through the country choice dropdown before you get to the service disruption message.

• Update early and update often – but get the information from the source.  The issue affecting passengers was an operational issue – so get the updates from the operations team – not filtered by the PR or marketing teams.

Dave Black said in a post back in September, and is completely relevant in this Eurostar case:

The answer isn’t marketing in the awareness sense, although that’s an important part. The real answer is operations, the place within an organization (often along with product management) where goods and services are created and delivered.

Marketing sets the expectation, marketing creates demand, marketing helps a consumer differentiate why one choice is better than another choice.

Operations delivers

Any gap between the two drives a conversation on the social web.

Over the last few months, I have struck company after company who KNOW they need to get into social media (as Robin’s quote showed about Eurostar), but they are not sure HOW.

The barriers faced (in no particular order) seem to be

• The PR department “is already doing this”
• We don’t have any budget
• We are not sure how many resources we will need
• We’ll be looking into it next year
• We have a few loud bloggers we wish would “go away” so we’ll do nothing and hope they do go away

Each of these statements deserves deeper analysis and will be the subject of a later blog post.

For now – let’s see what we can learn from the “Eurostar 19-12 incident” and use this as a template to help educate clients about what can happen when you think you should be doing something in social media, but don’t follow through.

As Rachel Clarke points out correctly, this is a communications failure not a social media failure, however all of the noise on social media (funny that) has pointed the finger at social media. 

I try not to point fingers, because they can easily be pointed back at me – and also I’m keen that we as an industry learn from this and also use it as a catalyst to promote genuine discussions with brands wavering about adopting social media.

I am sure in many meetings this week and into new year they will be discussing this and ways to avoid their own “Eurostar moment” in 2010.

For one – you need to

LISTEN > LEARN > ENGAGE > INTEGRATE and mind the social media gap.

Follow my updates on twitter @andrewgrill

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When I think back to where I was and what I was doing 10 years ago in 1999, and where I am in the world now – it has been an amazing journey.

10 years ago I was single and living in Sydney – working for Telstra Corporation in the Telstra.com area.  New Years Eve 1999 I will remember forever – we were at the Overseas Passenger Terminal on Sydney Harbour – directly opposite the Opera House and alongside the Harbour Bridge ready to witness the most amazing fireworks ever to welcome in the year 2000.

In 1999, Telstra had just launched a WAP service (no GPRS yet), and a while ago I pulled out a short video I made of the very primitive wap.telstra.com site.  Looking at it years later reminds me how far we as an industry have come in terms of mobile.

Facebook and twitter had not even been thought of in 1999, and “social networking” back then meant a night out at the pub.

Fast forward 10 years, on dawn of the next decade, and we have fast mobile internet in most markets with handsets to match, with a wide range of social networks that can be easily accessed on your mobile.  Also, now I’m happily married, and settled in London with a beautiful 3 year old  daughter.

Mobile internet adoption is still not mainstream yet (the reasons behind this would be the source of a whole blog post), but with Vodafone announcing Vodafone 360, and Orange with On you are seeing mobile operators taking mobile social networking seriously.

So…on with the carnival for the final time this decade.

The first entry comes from Ajit Jaokar who weighs in with his views on BADA and why he believes that BADA will impact Nokia

Peggy Anne Salz from MSearchGroove outlines the MDA initiative held on December 11th to send free MMS messages.

Volker Hirsch has an interesting post on “The Power of Open: Why Android is Big”

Dr Jim Taylor looks at the Psychology of Technology: On-line Communities: The Kindness of Strangers
 

Tomi Ahonen posts a thoughtful article about how the US midterm elections in 2010 can best utilize mobile phones and SMS

Raj Singh talks about the interesting issue of  “Geo-monopolies” and how the logos of Flickr, Twitter and Facebook are being used to sell mobile phones now (not the phone specifications any more).  In particular, Rak points out that these 3 social networking companies are all based in the one geography (the US).

Thibaut Rouffineau provides us a comprehensive comparison of all the app stores around – hey there’s an app for that!

Rudy De Waele is organising the Mobile Premier Awards,the largest open and global startup competition in the mobile industry. The awards are the point of reference in startup premiers during the Mobile World Congress on February 15, 2010 in Barcelona and are organized in collaboration with some of the main networks in the industry.

There have already been more than 200 submissions for the Mobile Premier Awards. Participation is free and open to any startup with a mobile angle. To sign up entrants simply need to create their own company profile on dotopen.com and select the awards they want to compete in. Visit how to sign up for the mobile premier awards and how to create a good company profile. The deadline for entry is December 31^st 2009.

To make the finalist selection as transparent and open to the industry as possible, the Mobile Premier Awards organizers are accepting applications to the finalist-selecting jury (individuals who will select the finalists among all the MobileMonday chapter nominees by online vote during early to mid January – and will not need to be in Barcelona). If you’re interested to become part of that jury or know someone who should be part of it, send an email to jury AT mobilepremierawards DOT com with a short bio, your LinkedIn profile, and personal blog and twitter name if you have it.

Join Russell Buckley, Tomi Ahonen, Ajit Jaokar, Andrew Grill, Raimo van der Klein, James Whatley, Pat Phelan, Chetan Sharma, and other mobile illuminates. Previous juries have included, amongst others, representatives from Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange, Google, Yahoo!, HP, VentureBeat, GoMoNews, Shozu, Plazes, dotMobi, Nexit Ventures, Balderton Capital, Xtract…

That’s it for the Carnival in 2009, and the decade!

Have a fantastic Christmas and New Year and I wish you every success in mobile in 2010.

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It is often said that marketing helps consumers decide which product they should buy, and the customer service and operations department of any company is where this work can come undone in a flash.

As rightly identified by Dave Evans in a recent post titled “Social Business: the New Black”

Marketing sets the expectation, marketing creates demand, marketing helps a consumer differentiate why one choice is better than another choice.

Operations delivers.

Any gap between the two drives a conversation on the social Web.

Hence the title of this article: “Mind the (social media) gap”.

Social media is going mainstream, giving customers a voice like never before, and if there is a huge gap between the marketing promise and the actual service delivered then the whole world will know about it as a result of just one angry tweet.  This gap is something that is driving conversations online in a way that was not even conceivable just a few years ago.

A good example of this is the now infamous “United breaks guitars” incident, where Dave Carroll watched helplessly as his guitar was broken by United airlines ground staff, and in turn United looked on as $180million was wiped off their stock price almost instantly as the story spread around the world.

Companies need to understand that they no longer have control of their brand – all they can hope to do is to manage how other people treat it by using the power of social media.

It could be argued that companies need to invest more heavily in the tools, people and processes to monitor, measure and manage what is being said about their products online, than is spent advertising  the product in the first place.

You wouldn’t interrupt a conversation with an ad would you?

Companies wanting to “advertise” in social media channels don’t get that this is the old way of doing things – driven by 50 years of a broadcast mindset where companies decide the messages they wanted to project.  Advertisers still assume that consumers will receive and act on these messages in just the way they planned.  Social media is proving that this is no longer the case.

In the last few years with blogs, Facebook, and now Twitter emerging, this way of thinking by advertisers is likely to disappear altogether.  Peer advocacy is taking hold, and consumers are now turning to their real, or online “friends” for advice on products and services.

This means that it is more important than ever for companies to actively listen to these new social channels for mentions (both positive and negative) of their brand – and act accordingly.

In the old PR world, indentifying the “influencers” was a matter of having a decent journalist and analyst Rolodex.  Today though, almost anyone armed with a blog or twitter account becomes as important to a brand as journalists once were.

The impact of poor customer service can not only completely undermine the latest marketing campaign, but as was seen with United, wipe millions off the value of an entire company.

My advice to companies looking at investing in social media is to actually start with the customer facing areas first – operations, support & customer service.  Interaction by consumers with these areas of the company will drive most of the “noise” online – much more than any new marketing campaign.

Sadly, most companies starting out with social media seem to be focusing their efforts on PR (an extension of existing clipping services) or marketing – trying to understand the impact of social media on “their “ brand.  What they don’t realise is that the operational areas of a company are where most of the  customer interaction is taking place – and this is where the initial efforts with social media are likely to bear the most fruit.

Step one for any company wanting to dip a toe into social media is to listen.  There are a number of free tools that allow companies to start to listen to what is being said about them online.  A good place to start would be to type the company name or one of their major brands into the Twitter search engine at search.twittter.com. Other free tools such as socialmention.com will provide an indication of the urgency behind developing a strategy to cope with these new channels.

Free tools are a good “social thermometer” to take a brand’s temperature online, but to get serious, companies need to invest in paid tools that allow a deep level of analysis and workflow management to be incorporated into existing processes.  Companies such a Visible Technologies, Techrigy, Buzzmetrics and Radian6 provide enterprise grade solutions for listening, and identifying conversations and then engaging in a positive and meaningful way.

The steps to mind the social media gap can be summarised as

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You can’t help noticing how fast social networks are growing around the world, and with the two that get the most press lately – Facebook and Twitter, the real question is what does the explosion of social networks mean for mobile?

With twitter it used to be “What are you doing?” but with the explosion of mobile services, it has rapidly become “What are you doing and where are you doing it?”.  Even Facebook has changed their status update window to “what’s on your mind”, and the Facebook iPhone application remains one of the most popular free apps in the Apple app store.

So how can social media help to drive the adoption of new mobile services?

Jumping from the desktop to the mobile

If you don’t believe that social networking growth is exploding – consider these statistics.  The internet took four years to reach 50 million people and in less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users.  Also, if YouTube were a country, it would be the third most populated in the world.

Alan Moore in a recent whitepaper written for Microsoft titled “The glittering allure of the mobile society” mentioned the 6 unique benefits of mobile:

1. Mobile is personal – it is my media
2. Mobile is always carried – the city in my pocket
3. Mobile is always on
4. Mobile has a built in payment mechanism
5. Mobile is there at the point of creative impulse
6. Mobile can recount the audience

With users flocking to these social networking websites, the next logical step is for them to want to take these networks with them – and allow them to contribute to their status updates at the “point of creative impulse”.

The one major barrier that I see in this plan is that while the “mobile internet” is freely available on all UK networks, many consumers are unsure of the costs, and so are not seeing mobile social networking as a key activity for them on their mobile.  Indeed, a recent infamous Morgan Stanley report written by a 15 year old stated “teenagers don’t twitter”.

His real explanation was however that to twitter via SMS eats into their monthly message allowance.  Some operators have zero rated tweets to a special short code, but the issue remains that social networking access via mobile is still seen as expensive and so consumers are using the PC at work and home instead of their mobile at the moment.

At a recent mobile conference in London, I conducted a simple experiment.  While chairing a session in front of 100 mobile executives, I asked one of the event organisers, a young lady called Rachel about how she uses her mobile.  She told the hushed audience that she did not access social networking on her mobile as she was “not sure of the cost”. 

When told that with her mobile operator’s standard plans she had reasonably priced access to the internet and hence mobile internet services, she seemed unconvinced that this would not eat into her monthly pre-paid balance.

Indeed, when was the last time you said to someone “I can’t talk for long, I’m on the mobile”.  I can remember saying this phrase, probably 10 years ago, but with mobile competition in the UK now at a peak, almost everything is going flat-rate.  Voice calls and texts are being offered in the 1000’s per month but it seems like mobile internet is yet to go flat-rate, or the perception of consumers is that it is too expensive.

Conversely, operators such as Orange have launched a social media initiative called Social Life.  With this new service, Orange subscribers user can, upload images, keep track on status updates, send and receive messages, view social network notifications along with pokes, friend requests, and events.  However, this will remain a “closed” network (Orange to Orange) and just as when SMS messages were limited to those on the same network, adoption of these services will be slow.

In contrast, I remember the day in Australia when all the major networks opened up the ability to send SMS messages to friends on other networks.  I was working for Telstra at the time, and overnight, message volumes went from 80 million per day to 800 million per day!  This proves that people like to talk and communicate across any network.

Vodafone recently unveiled their new social networking initiative called Vodafone 360 and this a move in the right direction to promote a completely open network to all mobile users. With Vodafone 360, they have designed both a web based solution as well as a mobile client that glues together address books, contacts, location and social networks in the one place.

With Vodafone behind this initiative, and directly driving their customers onto mobile social networking, this will hopefully serve as a catalyst for other operators to reduce the high cost perceptions of the mobile internet, and encourage users to take up where they left off when they close down their PC at home or work and go mobile.

My view is that if mobile operators get this right, consumers will flock not only to mobile social networking, but also to mobile internet services generally as they discover that they can get access to almost anything while mobile.

The challenge for the mobile industry will then be to package existing information sources in a mobile friendly way – and delight instead of frustrate new mobile internet users.

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The resulting essays in mobile hope to make a difference, and can be read and enjoyed, studied, torn apart and used by vendors, workers, students and competitors to benchmark ideas or innovation.

The online magazine is presented below, and you can also grab your hot off the press copy at Issuu.  Well done Bena, Niamh and Cian, and thanks for asking me to take part.

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But with such a focus on social media in London, and the accompanying concentration of “social media experts” popping up faster than a twitter trending topic, one is left to wonder why clients are still scratching their heads about social media, and what they should do.

The current thirst for information on this new topic seems to increase daily.  Conference organisers are rubbing their hands together as they organise another “twitter conference” – and are guaranteed a sellout.

But there is a broader issue here.  My concern (as happened in the mobile advertising space) is that for all this advice, not much seems to be translating into action.

Why is this? I believe it is because social media for a company probably represents a greater step change than the web and online ever did.

Let me explain why.

A step change is happening in the marketing, advertising, communication and PR space. Why? Because via social media (no matter what the website or service), consumers can now talk back to brands, and tell them what they really think.

The purist market researchers claim that this is “dirty” research, because it has not been “scientifically” conducted in a walled room behind a one way mirror after work for a £40 per diem.

Instead, social media gives brands an unfiltered view of what consumers really think.

As Dave Edwards said in a recent post “Social Business: The New Black”

“Marketing sets the expectation, marketing creates demand, marketing helps a consumer differentiate why one choice is better than another choice. Operations delivers. Any gap between the two drives a conversation on the social Web.”

This last line bears repeating because it is the most concise summary yet of why social media matters

Any gap between [marketing and operations] drives a conversation on the social Web.

Wow – we’ve cracked social media – now what?

What we will face is that very few (if any) of us have formal training in “social media”.  We all have a degree in “real life” but this does not translate well to the traditional world of advertising, marketing and PR where everything must be measured and controlled. 

With social media, as per the quote above, all the hard work by the marketing team can be undone by a poor customer experience and an angry tweet.  Think “United Breaks Guitars”, which wiped $180 million of United’s stock price.

A more recent example is the attempt by Vegemite in Australia to brand a new variant of their product as iSnack 2.0.  Overnight Kraft has agreed to scrap the new name due to consumer feedback.

Cartoon credit: Cathy Wilcox and Sydney Morning Herald.

I would argue that a few short years ago this would not have happened as fast.  Back then it wasn’t easy to “tell a brand off” in public. You had to get a letter to the editor published that would not offend a one of the paper’s major advertisers, get through to a radio talk show or run the gauntlet of a company’s PR machine trying frantically to hose down bad news. 

The game has changed.

Along with this change we need a new breed of social media leaders.  Recently Revolution Magazine ran a story suggesting that the lack of social media talent will harm investment.

They have a valid point.  In a follow up post, I will outline what I believe are the new skills that marketers and leaders will need to survive in this new world.

In speaking to my local friendly Starbucks Barista, Laura who is studying an MBA majoring in marketing, I asked her what social media subjects or themes were being taught. 

Her response did not surprise me, but it did prompt me to write this post, because the rate that social media is starting to impact normal business practices, we need the next wave of graduates thinking NOW about the 4 rules for social media

Listen, Learn, Engage and Integrate.

It’s not too late to learn how to listen.

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to visit the Ogilvy headquarters in Canary Wharf where they were running a social media day.  They had a brilliant line-up of speakers such as @jbell99, @PeterFriedman, and @rorysutherland. 

You can search the tweets from the event using the hashtag #ogilvysocial (grab some gems before twitter archives them).

One of the posters around the room (left) summarised “CRM in the social age” (click for a larger view) in 4 key words:

Listening, Participating, Activating. Engaging.

When a major advertising agency (or at least their 360° Digital Influence team) starts using this sort of language in front of clients, you know the world is changing.

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Last week I was asked by Sky News to provide comment on the issue of “Techno addiction”, as a result of a report by Northampton University, where a study of 1,200 people carried out by Professor Nada Kakabadse highlighted the effects of social networks on young people and claims “up to a third are addicted” to technology and social networks.

The 3 minute report from Sky News that aired over the weekend in the UK can be viewed below, and Sky also has some coverage on their website, as does the BBC and the Guardian newspaper.

According to the Northampton University report, the study also revealed that almost 50% of the respondents use work computers for personal reasons. An overwhelming 70% of technically savvy people admit to spending up to 24% of their time browsing the internet for personal reasons, although in interview, many stated there were also some work related reasons for doing so.

”Shockingly,” states Dr. Nada Kakabadse, Professor in Management and Business Research at Northampton Business School, ”over 70% of the respondents in one segment indicated that they spend up to 50% of their working day accessing social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace to satisfy their social/personal needs.”

Susan Bailey of Northampton Business School said “‘we were somewhat surprised by the results!”

My counter response as can be seen towards the end of the video piece is that we need to learn how to filter this information, and there are some simple tricks to help avoid being overwhelmed by information from social and business networks.

One of the simplest tricks was shared on twitter by Amelia Torode (@amelia_torode) who explained in a tweet and also on her blog how turning off the “you’ve got mail” flashing light on her blackberry has “changed her life”.

I’ve been using email since 1981 – when it was called a Bulletin Board Service (BBS), and have been on the internet since 1994 so I am well aware of how information can overload you if you let it.

One of my simple tips for reducing email overload is to set up rules in Outlook (menu: tools>rules and alerts) to deliver email from people or groups of people to specified folders. 

As you can see on the left, my email rules tell me which folders have new mail (in bold) and they also automatically file things for me.  I try and never have more than 20 items in my inbox – the rest are in folders, actioned or deleted. 

I also use the amazing Xobni (inbox backwards) client to help me find email I have filed.

I used to read multiple RSS feeds from blogs I was interested.  Now I find myself “dipping in” to twitter when on the mobile, and using the Nokia twitter client Gravity to “clip” articles of interest shared by my followers to my Instapaper account – for later reading when I have a moment.

What do you think?  Are you letting social networks run your life or are they helping you be more connected and productive?  Leave a comment below or send me a message on twitter @andrewgrill

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LONDON UK – The Calling All Innovators competition is back and this time Nokia is looking for talented UK developers to create the next big thing in mobile applications.

The competition was announced  at Nokia’s first Ovi Developer Open Day in London on September 24th.  It is being run by the global developer program, Forum Nokia, which connects developers to tools, technical information, support, and distribution channels to help build and market applications around the globe.  The aim of the contest is to challenge mobile and web application developers in the UK to create best-in-class applications that could be made available on the Ovi Store, Nokia’s one-stop-shop for applications and mobile content.

Nokia is looking for applications and content which are relevant to consumers in the UK across the following five categories: 

• Social location – apps that use Ovi Maps 4 or integrate a location element to take a new or existing app to the next level
• Business and productivity – apps that help make people’s work lives easier and enable them to grow their business
• Communications and social networking – from news to social networking and IM, apps that connect people to each other and the world around them
• Games – the next big hit for all the people who love to play games while on the go
• Just for fun – apps that people simply can’t live without – nothing is too simple or off the wall to be considered

The overall winner across all five categories will have their application published on Nokia’s Ovi Store and will also walk away with £20,000 in cash, a ticket and paid travel to a Nokia developer event in the Spring 2010, Nokia’s sponsorship to become an Ovi Store publisher and one year’s membership to Forum Nokia Launchpad.

The winning application from each of the other four categories will also be published on Nokia’s Ovi Store and the developer will receive a cash prize of £2,500 plus Nokia’s sponsorship to become an Ovi Store publisher and one year’s membership to Forum Nokia Launchpad. Nokia will also review the winning applications in all categories for possible preload on future Nokia devices.

Rupert Englander at Nokia comments, “We are looking for bold ideas from talented developers who can demonstrate a real understanding of what UK consumers want from mobile content”.

“The range of categories reflects our ambition to develop mobile technology which helps consumers to manage their busy lives and to share and communicate with friends and family more easily”.

“While we are looking for apps that help personal productivity we also want ideas that are fun and entertaining. Creating fresh ideas for applications is key in the fast-paced mobile content market and UK developers play a major role in driving forward innovation. This competition is not just about nurturing talent but also offering the UK developer community access to an unrivalled network of consumers through our Ovi Store channel.”

Submissions for the contest will be accepted until 30 November 2009 and the winners of Calling All Innovators UK will be announced by 31 December.

More information is available at http://www.callingallinnovators.com/uk

Looks like a great competition so get coding!

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Andy Favell, editor of mobiThinking from dotMobi has been in touch about a new guide to mobile advertising networks they have just launched.

The guide profiles nine of the most important mobile ad networks giving publishers and advertisers an exclusive insight into who they are, what they do and what geographies they cover.

Considering the rate at which mobile advertising is growing around the globe, mobiThinking was surprised to find how little information there is about mobile advertising networks and the vital role they play in connecting marketers to mobile websites – so they decided to do something about it.

The guide profiles nine of the most important mobile ad networks across the globe, and they plan to add more, as they are recommended.  The guide will give publishers and advertisers an exclusive insight into who they are, what they do and what geographies they cover.

mobiThinking have divided networks into three loose categories (with considerable overlap), based on the different business models.

Jump straight to each section of the mobiThinking guide:

1) BLIND: AdMob, BuzzCity, InMobi
2) PREMIUM BLIND: Jumptap, Madhouse, Quattro Wireless
3) PREMIUM: Advertising.com/AOL, Nokia Interactive Advertising, Pudding Media

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TigerSpike

LONDON, United Kingdom – 25 September 2009 MX Telecom, the UK’s leading mobile aggregator are delighted to provide Macmillan Cancer Support with the first Short Code in the newly commissioned charity range.

TigerSpike, the world’s first personal media company, have designed, created and delivered the text, mobile and web campaign.
Thanks to an agreement by the network operators, specific charity codes now allow even more of the donated amount to go to good causes.

As part of Macmillan’s World’s Biggest Coffee Morning that took place across the UK on September 25th, both those attending and those unable to make it along were able to donate the cost of their coffee by texting the word ‘Cuppa’ to 70123.

VAT agreement means more for charity

The 70123 code is the first to qualify under the framework agreed by the Mobile Data Association and UK network operators that ensures no VAT is deducted from donations.  This means an extra 15 per cent of the amount donated is passed on to the charity.

“We’re delighted to be able to use mobile to give even more people the chance to support people living with cancer,” said Joanna Dew, Macmillan National Events Marketing Manager. “Receiving the additional VAT amount can make a real difference in encouraging people to donate via SMS.”

Mobile increasingly important to charity sector

The use of mobiles to donate has already been a hit in high-profile charity events such as Comic Relief.  “It’s great to be able to bring a mobile element to an established and successful fundraising event,” said Nic Newman of Tigerspike.  “Innovative use of personal media which includes mobile is playing an increasing role across the charitable sector.  Working alongside MX Telecom and the networks to enable increased donations by SMS can only help this trend”.

TigerSpike were commissioned by Macmillan Cancer Support to provide the strategy behind the campaign delivery in order to maximise the donations received via the mobile channel.

It is not too late to make a donation! In the UK, simply text the word CUPPA to 70123 to donate £3 until 30 October 2009.

About Macmillan Cancer Support and the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning

• Macmillan Cancer Support improves the lives of people affected by cancer, providing practical, medical, emotional and financial support.  Working alongside people affected by cancer, Macmillan works to improve cancer care. One in three of us will get cancer. Two million of us are living with it. If you are affected by cancer Macmillan can help.
• The World’s Biggest Coffee Morning is in its 19th year – last year 45,000 people held coffee mornings, collectively raising £7m for Macmillan Cancer Support
• This year, the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning was held on Friday, 25 September 2009.
• For more information about the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning, or Macmillan Cancer Support, please visit www.macmillan.org.uk

TigerSpike is the world’s first personal media company with a specialization in mobile. With offices in Asia, Europe and North America, our global experience combined with research and development from our Innovation lab keeps us and our clients ahead. 

With a dedication to being “Creative” and “Cutting Edge” our work has resulted in numerous awards; most notably

• Best Mobile Marketing (D&AD Awards 2009)
• Best Cross-Platform Integration, and Best Direct Response & Lead Generation (IAB Awards 2009)
• 3rd fastest growing technology company in Australia, and 54th fastest in Asia (Deloitte’s Fast 50, 2008),

MX Telecom is the leading global aggregator providing the connectivity and infrastructure, and facilitating payment and digital content delivery, to enable businesses to take advantage of mobile technology.

Founded in 2000, MX Telecom helps hundreds of companies to implement mobile services around the World; including national broadcasters, government agencies, major brands and entrepreneurial ventures.

I couldn’t help but notice that the actual amounts donated to Macmillan differ between operators – £2.80 from 3, £2.70 from Vodafone, £2.65 from O2, £2.47 from T-Mobile and £2.19 from Virgin.  Let’s hope that all operators get behind this initiative and that it is the £2.80 level for a £3 text that goes to the charity in the future.  I can understand a 20p admin charge, but not 81p.

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The new initiative was launched in London today, and demonstrations featured new applications including:

Vodafone Mclaren Mercedes – which shows breaking news and information about the McLaren F1 drivers &pit crew.  A key feature of the app is the provision of live telemetry from the Mclaren cars. When a race is currently taking place, users can see the respective telemetry from Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen’s cars

ESPN soccernet - which shows users the information from the Premier leagues & national cups in  the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, France and Scotland. It also allows customers to follow the UEFA Champions league, cup and super cup. Another feature is called “gamecast” that allows users to see what happened for a specific game.

Timeout Film which lets you see the Top 10 films showing this week in the UK.  A unique feature is a menu option that enables you to find your nearest cinema showing the film review you are currently reading – powered by the Vodafone network location services.

Tube exits – already famous on the iPhone, this app lets Londoners get on the right carriage on the underground so they arrive at their nearest exit - a very handy app!

KGB  – this application showcases one of the KGB services which shows local information and questions being asked locally in real time.

The app store is called Vodafone Shop and is the one location where Vodafone customers can discover all of the digital content available to them – this will include the apps, Video, Music, Ringtones and Ringback tones.

Quoting from the new site:

Vodafone 360: bringing your world together like never before. A single address book for all your contacts from your phone, Facebook, Windows Live and Google. One place to get status updates and stay in touch with your friends. And a wide range of Apps, Games and Music for you to enjoy. All in one experience, accessible from your phone, PC and Mac.

First impressions: looks good and well thought out.  I’m a Vodafone customer so I look forward to giving it a try on my E71 soon.
Quoting from the official release (which London Calling scooped by 90 minutes) copied below:

A Suite of Innovative, New Internet Services for Mobile and PC

• Vodafone 360 is a brand new set of internet services for the mobile and PC which gathers all of a customer’s friends, communities, entertainment and personal favourites (like music, games, photos and video) in one place
• At its heart Vodafone 360 has the most personal address book available, bringing together all of the contacts from the mobile phone, social networks and other internet accounts. It works across a range of mobile phones, including the new, exclusive Vodafone 360 phones, and synchs automatically with the PC
• Connected address book – Vodafone People, open to everyone on any network across over 100 popular mobile phones, automatically synchs all contacts from a customer’s phone, Facebook®, Windows Live Messenger™ and Google Talk™, and will soon also include Twitter, Hyves and studiVZ
• New suite of internet services accessible on multiple handsets as well as PC or Mac, including a wide range of apps, games, music and mapping services
• Two tailor-made Vodafone 360 mobile handsets, manufactured by Samsung, give the best customer experience of the services including the unique 3D contacts display, driven by Vodafone’s ‘proximity algorithm’, bringing the most frequently contacted people closer to the front
• Proprietary User Interface on Vodafone 360 mobiles, designed and developed by Vodafone using the LiMo operating system
• Launching first in eight European countries by Christmas

24 September, 2009. London. Vodafone today announces the launch of Vodafone 360 – a new suite of innovative internet services for the mobile and PC.

All of a customer’s contacts, status updates and messaging services are brought together in one place enhancing the customer’s experience and use of social media. Customers will have integrated contacts, music, photos and mapping services and can share their favourite music choices and even their physical location, how and when they choose, with their chosen groups of friends.

The service is automatically backed up and synchronised, regularly and wirelessly, between the mobile and PC or Mac. All contacts updates, emails, photos and conversation history or settings changes made either at home or when on the move are saved, keeping all the content up-to-date.

“Vodafone 360 is the first service of its kind to offer customers the benefits of a truly integrated mobile internet experience that gathers all their contacts and content, all around them, in one place,” said Pieter Knook, Director of Internet Services at Vodafone Group.

“The beauty of Vodafone 360 is that all the services work together and they are easy to use. Vodafone 360 enables customers’ digital lives. Customers can stay in touch and share experiences through social networks, instant messaging, email, apps, maps, music and buying digital content on their mobile bill, with the personalised address book at its heart.”

Vodafone 360 is a substantiator of Vodafone’s new brand expression – ‘power to you’ – which is focused on putting the customer in control and enabling simple and easy to manage communications, both mobile and fixed.

Benefits:

• bringing together all contacts and content in one place and allowing customers immediate access to their various contacts across different networking sites – all the latest information updates including Facebook status updates and the ability to chat through Windows Live Messenger and Google Talk
• the ability to create different contact groups across social media networks, allowing customers to organise their contacts the way they want and manage how they share different information with different groups
• the ability for customers and friends to share locations, tag and share pictures and favourite places
• confidence that your connected address book is synchronised between your phone and the web and you can easily recover your phone contacts if you change or lose your mobile
• access to the service through a variety of handsets and operating systems from multiple manufacturers – the ultimate experience being through a custom-built device
• a catalogue of over one thousand Apps at launch available to different handsets, downloadable through the Vodafone Shop
• the ability for non-Vodafone customers to access some of the range of services, linking them to their social networks via mobile.

The Vodafone 360 suite of services has been designed and developed by Vodafone. At launch the full Vodafone 360 experience will be available on two exclusive handsets built to Vodafone’s specification by Samsung. The Vodafone 360 H1 by Samsung boasts a 3.5” multitouch, high definition OLED screen, 16GB memory, WiFi, a maximum talk time of over 400 minutes (3G) and a 5 megapixel camera. It will be followed shortly by a second Samsung handset, offering customers a range of colours and price points.

At launch four Nokia Symbian smartphones will come pre-loaded with Vodafone 360 and part or all of the service will be downloadable to over one hundred popular phones. In the coming months Vodafone will be making the service available through as wide a selection of handsets and operating systems from multiple manufacturers as possible.

The 2009 launch in Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK will be followed by launches in a number of other countries in 2010, including India, Turkey, South Africa, New Zealand and Romania and in France through SFR. through MTS in Russia, and through Vodafone Hutchison Australia.

Notes to Editors

1) The two Vodafone 360 handsets manufactured for Vodafone by Samsung give the best Vodafone 360 experience. Four Nokia handsets are preloaded for customers to buy in store and for existing customers 10 handsets can download the Vodafone 360 service. The People Service will be available on over 100 popular devices at launch for any customer on any network.

2) For images, go to www.vodafone.com/media

3) For more details on the service, go to www.vodafone.com/media

4) Hyves and VZ networks (which incorporates the schuelerVZ, studiVZ and meinVZ platforms) are leading Dutch and German social network services. Hyves and the Hyves logos are trademarks of Startphone Limited

5) Vodafone Group 2009. VODAFONE, Vodafone 360 and the Vodafone logos are trade marks of Vodafone Group. Other names used herein may be the trade marks of their respective owners.

6) Windows Live is either a registered trade mark or a trade mark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

7) Google Talk is a trademark of Google Inc..

8) Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.

Here are some pictures from the new Vodafone 360 site.

#vf360

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News comes from London Calling friend Ajit Jaokar about the first ever Mobile Application Stores Conference at CTIA. From a quick scan of the release, it has a great lineup of speakers. More information is presented below:

The Mobile Application Stores, Strategy and Deployment conference http://www.mobileappevent.com/ is proud to announce its all-star speaker lineup for this unique event. Mobile Application Stores is a partner seminar of International CTIA WIRELESS I.T. and Entertainment October 8th in San Diego.

Mobile Application Stores is the only conference to focus exclusively on the business of mobile applications and will focus on the
tremendous opportunities in the mobile apps stores ecosystem. The event is designed to give a complete understanding of how to capitalize on this dynamic market.

Featured speakers for the event include:

• Dr. Jin-Sung Choi Ph.D, Senior Vice President, Head MC Global Product Planning Team, LG Electronics Korea
• George Linardos Vice President, Product Management, Media, Nokia
• Ilja Laurs Founder & CEO, GetJar
• Tim Haysom, Chief Marketing Officer,OMTP
• Mike Merril, CEO, Smart Phone Technologies
• Ajit Jaokar, President Futuretext
• Chetan Sharma, CEO, Chetan Sharma Consulting
• Jouko Ahvenainen, Founder, Grow VC International
• William Volk, CEO, PlayScreen
• Sena Gbeckor-Kove, Chief Technology Officer, imKon

The timing is perfect for an event like this.  The Apple Appstore announced its billionth download in less than 9 months after opening and the recent launch of LG’s Applications Store and Windows Marketplace for Mobile as well as Android and the Blackberry App World are making tremendous impact in the mobile marketplace.

The Mobile Application Stores event s co-located with the largest wireless event in the U.S., International CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment.  Registration is only $295 at http://www.mobileappevent.com/

About Mobile Application Stores:  The Mobile Application Stores event is produced by futuretext, a London based research, consulting and publishing company. For additional information, please contact Larry Lockhart at NextVision Media at 727-388-9849 or Larry@nextvisionmedia.com or Ajit Jaokar Ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com

The web site again for registration is: http://www.mobileappevent.com/

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ad:tech London 2009 set to address best practice for mobile marketers looking to interact directly with consumers through their phone.

London – 17 September 2009: Marketers are expected to increase investment in mobile this year, as brands continue to recognise mobile as an integrated part of their marketing strategy, according to research from organisers of this year’s ad:tech London 2009. For the first time, the event will also be hosting the Mobile Marketing Show as part of the conference, assessing a number of topics including how advanced, feature rich mobile devices such as the iPhone have directly impacted the market in the past year.

Ahead of this year’s show, research was conducted amongst over 1,000 visitors of last year’s event which revealed that investment in mobile marketing was expected to more than double this year with 37 per cent of marketers claiming it would be an area of investment.  Earlier this year ABI Research estimated that, as new platforms for ad-supported mobile search, video and gaming content services arrive, mobile marketing will grow to over $24bn worldwide in 2013 from just $1.8bn in 2007. 

Andrew Grill , one of the mobile advertising industry’s leading strategists and author of popular mobile marketing blog London Calling, commented ahead of his presentation at the show; “Everyone has a mobile, and advertisers are looking to include this new medium in their marketing mix. We need a new approach that is not about reach and frequency – but is about relevancy.  With mobile, small is beautiful.  As a result, we need more targeted and personalised messages that are actually welcomed by the end user and therefore increases the relevancy of mobile marketing. Hence, ROI and sales conversion – this is what everyone is looking for from mobile.”

As the value of mobile marketing continues to grow, with an estimated market value of £28.6 million last year in the UK according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, it offers the opportunity for extremely targeted and personal advertising direct to consumers. There is no question that mobile devices allow consumers to interact immediately with advertising, and many case studies of mobile marketing effectiveness have leveraged this in conjunction with other media channels.

Grill continued; “Mobile is such a personal device, and so we need to treat it in a different way – and learn from all the mistakes we made with the internet 10 years ago – we actually know how the story will end with mobile if we look at the lessons learnt from the early days of the internet.”

Prior to her appearance as a speaker at this month’s ad:tech London, Emily Hare, Production Editor for new marketing strategies magazine Contagious, shared her views on the impact of mobile for marketing professionals; “The iPhone and other mobile devices have revolutionised the market through their apps offering, particularly by allowing third party developers to programme apps and profit from them. Companies looking to build an app for their brand should aim to create something that is genuinely useful, entertaining and relevant, as without these properties engaging users and driving profits will prove a real struggle.”

Taking place on the 22^nd-23^rd September at Olympia, ad:tech London has become established as the largest gathering of digital marketing professionals in the UK (http://www.ad-techlondon.co.uk/).  This year’s conference programme includes the following discussions and speakers: 

• Mobile Marketing Effectiveness Revealed
  Making sense of the mobile marketing ecosystem and understanding when and how it can work as a key part of marketing strategy. Panel session participants:
  • Daniel Rosen, Group Head, AKQA Mobile
  • Andrew Grill, Mobile Advertising Evangelist & Blogger, London Calling
  • James Parton, Head of NPD, O2
  • Henry Stevens, Business Development Director, GSMA

Mobile Apps Think Tank
How have the iPhone and other mobile devices and technologies revolutionised the market? What are the new marketing and media opportunities offered by this exploding phenomenon? Panel session participants:

• Emily Hare, Production Editor, Contagious Magazine
• Jon Williams, CCO, Grey London
• James Easterbrook, Director of Client Services, My Agency
• Robert Hamilton, Product Manager, Google

To reflect a growing interest in mobile marketing, the Mobile Marketing Show will bring together the UK’s key agency buyers, brand marketers and mobile marketing vendors to discuss how businesses can more effectively use mobile marketing.

The full conference programme can be viewed at: www.ad-techlondon.co.uk

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It has become so popular that the event has moved venues 3 times – and it is now going to be held at the Wieden + Kennedy Innovation Centre, 16 Hanbury Street London E1 6QR.

Developers, bloggers and other content creators can learn about Ovi Store opportunities at a developer open day sponsored by Forum Nokia and Nokia U.K. in London on 24 September, at 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

For both U.K. developers and those in town for the Over the Air event on 25-26 September, the Ovi day will be a perfect opportunity to meet informally with the Forum Nokia and Nokia U.K. teams. Attendees will also learn about Ovi Store opportunities; the Calling All Innovators contest; Open Screen Project (a $10 million grant program for developers); and Forum Nokia tools, developer programs, support and other offerings.

Venue: Note! Location of the event has been changed. The new address is

Wieden + Kennedy Innovation Centre
16 Hanbury Street
London E1 6QR – Google map

Nearest tube: Liverpool Street
Event website: http://bit.ly/ovilondon

Agenda:

11:00   Registration and coffee

11:30   Developing for Ovi Store – Benjamin Roszczewski, Business Development Manager, Forum Nokia

12:00   Market overview and opportunities with Nokia UK  – Mark Loughran, General Manager, Nokia UK & Ireland and Rupert Englander, Head of GTM Nokia Services, Nokia

12:45   Lunch

13:30   Meet the Calling All Innovators finalists and announcements – Janaina Pilomia, EMEA Product Marketing Manager, Forum Nokia

14:00   Ovi Apps and SDK introduction – Martin Ramsin, Senior Manager Total Experience Management, Maps Ecosystem, Nokia

14:30   $10 Million fund for Flash mobile development – Open Screen Project – Janaina Pilomia, EMEA Product Marketing Manager, Forum Nokia

15:00   Summary, wrap-up

16:00   End of the event

Secure your seat and register today!

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As an example of the MMA “drinking their own champagne” (I like this expression so much better than “eating your own dog food”), the next Brands and Agencies briefing to be held on Thursday 17th September in London has been an all mobile affair.

To sign up to the event, you needed to send “MMA” followed by your name and company to a shortcode, and your registration was confirmed by text.  A few days ago I received a text reminder directing me to http://mmabriefing.mobi - a mobile site about the event.

As Aleksandr Orlov from comparethemeerkat.com would say “simples!”.

A bit more about the event is below – it is now sold out but if you follow me on twitter @andrewgrill or the hashtag #mma09 then you can keep up with the event.

The Mobile Marketing Association in conjunction with media partners, The Guardian, are proud to announce the second Brand & Agency Briefing  this year which will give you an opportunity to hear directly from other leading brands and agency thinkers on how they are using the mobile channel today and what they plan to do next.

There will be no sales pitches, no technical presentations and no jargon.

Just a real opportunity to hear from your peers about what has worked for them in mobile and what they plan to do next. The briefing will be held at BAFTA in Piccadilly on Thursday September 17th and we are delighted to announce that the speakers will be;

- Kees Mulder, EMEA Marketing Director and Vice President Kodak

- Paul Taylor, Mobile Strategist & Planner, COI

- Mike Parsons, Managing Director, Tribal DDB

The briefing starts at 6.30pm and the drinks reception at 7.45pm. We are limited to 200 places so if you are interested in attending then please rsvp by texting “MMA” followed by your name and company ( e.g. ‘MMA John Smith BrandX’) to 88080. The last event was oversubscribed so please text in as soon as you can to avoid disappointment.

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I am sure I am not alone at dreading the thought of making this call – being put on hold, having to push 1, 2 etc and being transferred into an endless loop between departments…you know the 1990’s way of “dealing with” customers.

In contrast, the way forward for call centres might be to ditch the endless maze of “interactive” voice response (IVR) systems and instead deploy these agents to listen and respond via twitter and instant messenger (IM) channels.

Let me share a recent example.

I recently renewed my BT broadband account, and was given a shiny new “BT home hub” and also a free BT mobile broadband 3G modem and SIM card.  Thrown into the deal was 12 months of free BT mobile broadband (their MVNO using the Vodafone network) with 1GB of mobile data thrown in – not a bad deal.

I ordered it and everything worked as promised.  I signed up online to add my BT mobile broadband number to my bt.com online account.  Here’s where things started to go in a circle.

Trying to add the mobile number online, I received the following error (click to enlarge)

So…I called the 0800 number – and was asked to “enter the phone number I am calling about”.  I entered the BT mobile broadband number.  “This is not a BT number” the IVR told me.

So…. frustrated I tweeted @BTCare the BT twitter support channel.

@btcare pls help trying to register my mobile broadband number get message at http://bit.ly/2EYZma call 0800 = not BT number endless loop!

Their response was

BTCare@andrewgrill Hi, the helpdesk would like to speak with you personally please call them on 08007832326. Lines open 8am to 8pm

Ok so I called that number – and sank deeper and deeper into the IVR system….

I actually spoke to 7 people, over the period of 5 calls and navigated 15 IVR “trees” (push 1 etc), but I was still no closer to a resolution.

The 5th person I spoke to actually walked me through the BT.com website to the part where they offer live chat with a customer care advisor and suggested I use this to have my problem resolved.

Below is the transcript with the BT advisor Keith McKiernan who was super helpful – he actually CALLED ME and walked me through fixing it.

Here is the transcript of the live chat session on Tuesday 15th September 2009.

GoToAssist (13:47):
Your advisor has arrived.

GoToAssist (13:47):
Advisor Keith McKiernan has requested system information from customer Andrew Grill.

Keith McKiernan (13:47):
Hi Andrew

GoToAssist (13:47):
Customer Andrew Grill has sent system information to advisor Keith McKiernan.

Andrew Grill (13:47):
hello am trying to add my BT mobile broadband number 077 xxxxxx to my bt.com account but get an error – see screenshot at http://bit.ly/2EYZma

Keith McKiernan (13:48):
ok, sorry about that, are u able to call the number on your link?
this will get you through to the mobile team

Andrew Grill (13:49):
yes but 4 handoffs and 12 IVR prompts later I have given up – last chap I spoke to suggested I use live chat. Can someone call me instead?

Keith McKiernan (13:50):
i am unable to call you at present as i have 2 customers, let me check to see if i can get this account added manually do u already have an online account on bt.com?
what is your email address?

Andrew Grill (13:51):
yes – have 2 lines on it already – I got the error from within my account when logged on

Andrew Grill (13:52):
(email address provided)

Keith McKiernan (13:56):
do u have your mobile account number please

Andrew Grill (13:59):
BT mobile broadband SIM xxxxxxxx
SIM number: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Your BT account number : xxxxxxxxxxxx
Services in this account : BT Pre-Pay 

Keith McKiernan (14:01):
i just have to make a call to get this account online
sorry to keep you

Andrew Grill (14:01):
ok thanks – you are being super helpful

Keith McKiernan (14:06):
no worries

Keith McKiernan (14:11):
have you had a bill from your mobile bb yet?

Andrew Grill (14:11):
no – I should have 1GB free data per month but no BB bills yet – the BB worked for a while but doesn’t work any more

Keith McKiernan (14:13):
ok, there is some problem with the account number,this may be what is causing your BB not to work i may need to call you and pass you through to the billing team

Andrew Grill (14:13):
ok can you call me on 07xxxxxxx

Andrew Grill (14:20):
call just dropped out

Keith McKiernan (14:21):
ok, i will call u when i have explained everything

Andrew Grill (14:21):
ok thanks

Keith McKiernan (14:21):
will bring u back into the call

Andrew Grill (14:21):
ok no problem

Keith McKiernan (14:27):
sorry about this, had to call a different dept!

Andrew Grill (14:28):
ok – glad you’re on the case – I have already hit 8 different departments (9 including you)

Keith McKiernan (14:33):
ok, mate, its the end of my shift. this service is open till 5 if you need to come back

Keith McKiernan (14:34):
lauren seems pretty clued up though so you should be fine

Andrew Grill (14:34):
ok thanks for your help – have a great rest of the day

Keith McKiernan (14:34):
u too, thanks, have a nice day

Andrew Grill (14:34):
she has just sourced a supervisor so fingers crossed!

Keith McKiernan (14:34):
sweet!!

So BT – it appears that for some things a live chat session can deliver the right outcome, but the old, outdated IVR’s have to go!

As an aside, I sent a reply back to @btcare after getting off the phone and before going on the live chat

@BTCare have u actually tried calling this number yourself? Have had 4 handoffs and 9 IVR trees am no closer – can someone call me instead?

Update: Keith has just called me and patched in the right person at BT but in between there has been no twitter response. 

Keith handed me to Lauren who simply created a new account (I can’t have the BT mobile account on my existing account) and all is fixed!  If only the other 7 people I spoke to knew about this and were able to point me in the right direction sooner.

The whole experience has also shown that the instant message channel was the most efficient.

The other day I was speaking with the head of PR from a major bank.  I shared my prediction with her that in 5 years time customer care centres will have fewer people on the phone and more using online channels such as instant messaging, twitter etc.  She thought this was an interesting viewpoint and I know went away with a desire to look into this further.

My experience above has shown how the old IVR/phone methods of customer “care” are outdated.  With twitter and IM as a support channel, I can get on with other things in the background while a customer agent sorts the problem, and updates me when they can.

Companies with large banks of customer care agents need to urgently review the channels they support, and plan ahead to support new channels such as twitter and IM.

The first part of this process would be to listen. Listen to what customers like me are saying about the channels they prefer to use and learn how to provide these as part of the mix.

Have a look at my previous post on this very issue

Listen, Learn, Engage and Integrate – 4 rules for brands using social media Part 1

Hats off to BT for embracing these new channels – you should be commended for your forward thinking.  However with the arrival of these new channels, it is exposing the lower effectiveness (what is the cost of these 7 different agents I spoke to?) of traditional channels.

Has anyone else had a similar experience? Do you agree with my thinking? If so leave a comment below of tweet me @andrewgrill

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To counter this view, you only need to read a great quote in Campaign Magazine from Philippa Brown who is the chief executive of Omnicom Media Group UK. In her recent guest article titled “Social media can be great for business. If only agencies knew” she writes

“I was recently talking to a potential client who was looking to move agencies, and I asked them why they were unhappy with their current arrangements”.  The client shot back at me: “They don’t give us any leadership in social media… I know it is something we should be looking at, but I don’t know what we should be doing”.

I hear a lot of similar comments (mainly of the sort “I don’t know what we should be doing”) and think to myself that it sounds a lot like where we were with the internet in the late 1990’s – ie “we know we need to be on the web but don’t know what we should do”.  Many reading this post will be old enough to remember the internet well before it became mainstream and at the centre of how companies do business.

Way back then when I was in Sydney working for Telstra, I was fortunate enough to be head of  Business Development & Marketing Strategy and involved in a really exciting customer event called Solutions 2000.

One of the keynote speakers for this event was Professor Nicholas Negroponte, and his takeaway sound bite that still resonates 9 years later was

“everyone is talking about ‘eBusiness’ at the moment but in a few years we won’t call it eBusiness – it will just be the way we do business”. 

This is so true of where “social media” is today.  In just a few years we will probably just refer to it as “media” or simply communication – it won’t have its own label, and there will probably not be large number of “social media experts” all scrambling to have a voice about something at the moment that is new and untested.

Imagine today if I called you and said I was an “internet expert”.  You would just laugh at me.  

In speaking to a number of practitioners in this new space, I have summarised 4 key steps that companies need to be aware of when planning for social media.

1. LISTEN

There have always been conversations about people, brands, companies and governments.  The latest web based tools and networks have simply allowed these conversations to be amplified and communicated to a global audience.  The problem with this for companies is that now they have no control over their brand and how it is being perceived in the real world. 

Until recently, discussion in groups about a product, service or brand was just that – in local and contained groups.  Brands relied on the fact that they owned the access to broadcast channels (TV, Radio, press, outdoor and to some extent the web) to send their message out – at a much louder volume than could be achieved by an individual or even a small group of people.

Social media – being global, real time and hyper connected now allows even an individual’s thoughts, experiences and feelings to be amplified above that possible by even a multinational brand in a simple tweet.

If you don’t believe me, Google “United breaks guitars” and see how one man’s lack of satisfaction with a brand wiped $180 million off their stock price in a matter of days.

In this day and age, not listening to your customers can be a costly mistake.

Social media IS going mainstream.  When one of the world’s leading financial newspapers, the Financial Times (and supposedly Obama’s source of expert opinion) runs a story on twitter almost every two weeks, you know it is being discussed in the boardrooms of major companies.  It is also being discussed by the general public. 

Recently I overheard a conversation between 3 people at a local Starbucks, where one said “I meant to tweet it to you yesterday…“. 

Companies should be left in no doubt that there is a step change happening in the way consumers receive marketing messages, and also where they receive their recommendations for products and services they are interested in.

As an aside, have a look at a recent post here titled Advertising in 2020 – a sneak peek from Ogilvy and Acision where I discussed the topic of peer advocacy and how advertising will look in the future as a result of social media.

The way brands market to consumers is about to change forever.  Those brands that act now have a chance of at least protecting their brands, because they can no longer claim they own the sole rights to their brand messages.  Power is moving firmly to the hands of the people thanks to the power of social networks.

This step change will also require rapid updates to marketing theories and education.  Students who recently commenced a marketing degree will find that the skills they are acquiring may actually be out of date before they graduate.

This itself warrants a separate post on the future of marketing education – so stay tuned to London Calling for regular updates (why not subscribe to the RSS feed?)

2. LEARN

Once companies have started to listen to what is being said about them, they are in a unique position to be able to analyse and understand more about how they need to adapt their processes and marketing messages.  Companies that invest NOW in listening and learning will be best positioned to ride this new social media wave – and gain a clear competitive advantage.

From the data gained in the “listen” step, companies can analyse the conversations occurring online and learn a great deal from them – such as “what is driving the conversation around our brand?” – is it due to a recent marketing campaign or advertisement?  Is it because we changed something?  Did one of our customers have a negative experience and are telling each other rather than telling us?

The sort of information that can be gleaned from social network “chatter” is the sort of stuff that marketing and product managers are crazy for as budgets are being slashed and access to primary market research is becoming more difficult.

And here is the interesting thing.  Until now, “social media” has been associated with only the PR or corporate communications departments of companies.  

Many people I speak to say that the social media “team” (if there are enough people to actually call them a team) either sit in the PR area, or somewhere in marketing – or in “no man’s land” somewhere in-between looking for a home and a corporate sponsor.

When I was a product developer at Optus in the late 1990s, I never spoke to the PR team at all (we had no need to).  I would have craved the information available to them today about the products we were developing if it had existed and been available to me.

Important lesson: Don’t hide the social media team out of sight and in the PR team – allow them to access every section of the company – marketing, research, customer service, even recruitment.

This may seem to be “jumping the gun” as indeed many companies in the UK aren’t even ready to have the PR team take on social media responsibilities.

Interestingly, I met with a leading social media practitioner from the US a few weeks ago.  He was amazed by the state of social media in the UK and went as far as saying that “The UK is 12 months behind the US when it comes to social media”.

He’s probably right.  This means that we know how the story will end in the UK – that companies will really start to grasp the power of social media in early to mid 2010 (possibly earlier the way the market is developing) so it’s time to start planning now.

This post is already becoming quite long so I will look at steps 3 & 4 (Engage and Integrate) in a follow up post as these are probably the most important going forward and warrant a post of their own – stay tuned for part 2!

In the meantime why not follow me on twitter @andrewgrill to see when part 2 is on the site.

Related posts

• Advertising in 2020 – a sneak peek from Ogilvy and Acision
• Why are clients still scratching their heads about Social Media?
• Mind the Social Media Gap
• When social media meets mobile – a perfect match?
• First look at new Vodafone 360 social media initiative & new apps #vf360

Naturally, the magazine is not in paper form but in a easily readable online format.

It has a good cross section of articles covering a variety of “point zero” topics.  Looking at the table of contents, you will see articles such as

Social Media (not there is no 2.0 suffix here – yet”!)

• Marketing Innovations in the BMW Group
• A Framework for Social Media strategy success
• Why Friends are more than just a number
• Ingredients for a successful Social Networking campaign
• Blogging with a human face
• Top Tips to help you turn your brand into a Social Animal
• Wimbledon all a twitter this year (loved this article by Alan Flack)

Mobile 2.0

• This time…it’s personal -  How mobile challenges everything we
  thought we knew about advertising (I authored this one – you can download just this article)
• The changing media landscape and the opportunity for mobile
• The future of local
• Making UK consumers an advertising offer they can’t refuse
• Now is the time for social networks to mobilise

Enterprise 2.0

• Why are brands and retailers adopting enterprise social media
• Enterprise 2.0 – from WTF? to FTW
• The Growing Importance of Social Networking in the Enterprise
• Harnessing Social Media: Understand the discussion before joining it
• The Boomerang Effect of Corporate Social Networks

You can access the magazine a few ways – view online by clicking here or view a PDF version from Slideshare (embedded below).

Congratulations to Mark on the launch.  It is well worth a read and has some great insights.  I’m hoping to be a regular contributor to the magazine and my next article will focus on how established companies need to prepare for social media and the skills they will need.

Related posts

• 10 things you absolutely have to know about mobile advertising
• Last carnival of the mobilists for the decade #204
• IBM serves up an ace @Wimbledon
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• Advertising in 2020 – a sneak peek from Ogilvy and Acision

“Important information regarding operational trading hours at Ocado”

The email appears below (click for larger view) 

What was amazing to read is that for some good news (they are extending deliveries in our area to include Sunday – which provides more flexibility), the language they use is so very formal…

“We are writing to inform you of an operational change in Ocado’s trading and delivery hours in your area, which clarifies clause 4.1 of our terms and conditions.

[Boy I am so glad I had a copy of their T&C handy ]

We currently deliver in your area from Monday to Saturday only, however, as of this weekend, we will now be delivering up until 3pm on Sundays. All available delivery times can be found on the delivery booking page at Ocado.com.

Mark Bentley
Head of Customer Services”

Reading this, I had assumed they were going to drop their Saturday delivery service, which would have thrown the Grill weekend family plans into chaos, as my wife pivots our Saturday afternoons around our 4:30pm Ocado delivery (and watch out if they are ever late!!)

I wasn’t the only person to find this strange, @andrewpascoe tweeted at almost the same time I received the email

 
as did @danlane

So what Mark Bentley should have done is turned this good news into something more substantial.  Now I’m not a professional copywriter but perhaps the following would have been more suitable

Dear Mr Grill,

We’ve listened to customer feedback from our valued Ocado customers, and especially from those in your area.  To make life easier, we are now offering a Sunday delivery option as well, with slots available from 9am – 3pm.

We hope this helps you enjoy your weekends even more by giving you more times when you can experience the great Ocado home delivery service.

If there is anything you think we can improve on, just give me a call on 0845 xxx xxx or email feedback@ocado.com

If you’re on twitter – why not follow us at OcadoUK for the latest news and from time to time some twitter specials and exclusives!

Thanks again for being an Ocado customer – we love delivering the freshest Waitrose products to you every week.

Yours Sincerely,

Mark Bentley
Head of Customer Services

Agree? Leave a comment below or send me a tweet @andrewgrill

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What better way to promote the offer and solicit worthy recipients than on twitter!  When I posted the offer on Monday, my blog also automatically sent an update to twitter.

The entries received via twitter and considered were

Branedy@AndrewGrill I could use the N97 to further build @querynet, @ideaforecasting or @fleetthoughts come see!

ianhomer@AndrewGrill #lc – we’ll be showing how to easily deliver #wrt widgets @ our workshop @ #ota09. N97 would come in handy (or in pocket).

benmtwt@andrewgrill #lc Janaina’s gift cld make zijit’s 1st wgt a wgz, homescreenified the Nokia way. Abt 1 week from demoable alpha on Smsng i8910.

markobrockman@andrewgrill I created a simple strategy game on S60 2nd, porting it to the 5th. Probably going to Ovi Store. http://twitpic.com/d0sxe #lc

3gdoctor@andrewgrill I’m building an app for patients who have suffered a stoke. Requires a connected game environment + touch. N97 would be top #lc

buddycloud@andrewgrill N97 would help @incrediblepants develop our home screen widget for buddycloud. Screenshot: http://yfrog.com/endl8j #lc

Summeli@AndrewGrill #lc I need a N97 to make 5th edition version of my snes9x emulator port. See the concept at http://www.summeli.fi/?p=842

After careful review of  all the submissions, I have chosen to award the N97 to David Doherty of 3G Doctor – congratulations!

David also explained that he is “..building an application for patients who have suffered a stoke, and it requires a connected game environment + touch.  The N97 has the exact specification needed and we have developed on Symbian before.  The application would be used for monitoring patients who have suffered a stroke and would be helpful for medication compliance and aid feedback.”

Sounds like a great use for the N97 and so I am happy to name you the worthy winner.

David is now in touch with me, and even managed a blog post on his win.  The N97 will be on its way soon.

Thanks also to everyone else who put their submission forward, all were worthy winners and I wish you all success with your applications.

Thank you also to Nokia for providing the N97 for the developer community to use, and continuing to show their support for the developer community in a direct and meaningful way.

Related posts

• Nokia N97 available for a lucky mobile developer via twitter pitch
• Forum Nokia launches £20,000 UK developer contest
• Who will win the location battle?
• UPDATE: Mobile Commerce named as the provider behind Microsoft LIVE LBS service in UK
• The rise and rise of the GPS mobile – but not for mobile advertising

The lovely Janaina Pilomia from Forum Nokia was kind enough to loan me a brand new Nokia N97 for blogging at the Mobile 2.0 Conference in Barcelona in June.

The device was put to good use, and is now looking for a new home.  Nokia are prepared to offer it to a mobile developer out there who could really use a Nokia N97 to test, finalise and demonstrate their Symbian application.

I’m going to ask for pitches from developers via twitter – so you will need to be able to convince me in less than 140 characters that you and your app are the most worthy of the N97.

Here are the rules, and my decision will be final

1. you must be located in the UK or the EU and be able to demonstrate you are developing a mobile application for Symbian Series 60 (we will need to verify you via your website etc)

2. you do NOT have a commercial solution yet and the N97 would really help you finalise and demo the application

3. The 5 best / most imaginative tweets sent to @andrewgrill AND tagged #lc (for London Calling) by Friday 7th August 2009 will be selected by me and from this one will be selected to receive the N97.  Your details will then be sent to Forum Nokia and they will follow up with you and arrange delivery of the N97.

Feel free to leave a comment below also with a link and description of your mobile application but please note I will be selecting the winner via twitter.

Get tweeting and good luck!

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You can download the entire paper or view it on slideshare below.  For quick re-tweeting, use the short URL http://bit.ly/ad2020 to access this blog post.

While the title of the paper is “Mobile Advertising – 2020 vision“, I think it actually goes further and is a very brave (and I believe accurate) look at how ADVERTISING will look in 2020.

The paper echoes many of the thoughts and sentiments I have been expressing at various conferences and events over the last 18 months so I am delighted to promote it here.

Some of the key points raised in the paper are

1. The advertising agency will transform from one which is industry led, namely by the brands, to one where the individual is brought more into the communication process.

2. The consumers will evolve from those having advertisements pushed to them, to being able to select what information is allowed to reach them.

3. Different types of mobile operators will be formed

The paper looks at the concept of mobile directed advertising – quoting from the paper below

“Mobile advertising in 2020 will be mobile directed advertising. It is about collaboration and individual control. The mobile device will enable the individuals to decide where, when and on what screen they would like to receive their chosen advertisement.

Advertising will move away from creating campaigns which are forced upon particular consumer categories and instead will transform to engage in constant conversations, where both parties participate.”

As I mentioned in the intro, I think this paper is actually describing the way pure advertising will look in 2020.  An interesting parallel is that back in 1999 when I was working at Telstra, we hired futurist Nicholas Negroponte to speak at a large executive customer briefing.

This was at the height of the “e-business craze”.  The one thing he said 10 years ago that has really stuck was that “…in a few years we won’t be talking about ‘e-business’ – it will just be business, conducted online”.

The same is true here.  In 2020 we won’t be talking about “mobile advertising” and “Facebook advertising”, we will just be talking about advertising…or will we?

Another key concept raised in the paper is that of peer advocacy. Here the paper suggests

“There will be a greater involvement between advertisers and consumers. One manifestation of this, which will be led very much by individuals, is that of peer advocacy. This is something which has been driven by the social networking sites.

Related posts

• Listen, Learn, Engage and Integrate – 4 rules for brands using social media Part 1
• Why are clients still scratching their heads about Social Media?
• Brands expect investment in mobile marketing to double
• When social media meets mobile – a perfect match?
• Think big, act small, scale fast – advice from Procter & Gamble on mobile advertising

If you or your family are with Vodafone (it does not work with Vodafone MVNO customers on BT or Talk mobile), then they will get improved 3G coverage when close to the access gateway.

Quoting from the Vodafone website:

“The Vodafone Access Gateway service gives you a great 3G signal throughout your home, no matter where you live. All you need is a broadband line and the Gateway – a clever little box that’s simple to install.

You can even connect family and friends to the Gateway, as long as they’re with Vodafone. And up to four people can use it at once. So everyone gets the same great signal.”

The reason it is also called a femtocell is that the word femto means 10⁻¹⁵ or 0.000000000000001 ie – something VERY small – and this refers to the size of the 3G cell. 

The femtocell has a lower signal than a WiFi home hub, and in tests in my home the WiFi signal travels further than the femtocell signal.

I have been following the commercial deployment of femtocells for some time, from when I was selling “home zone” style services based on location and was often asked about the differences between femtocells and what I was selling.

It is interesting to note that for the Vodafone UK launch, none of the UK based femto manufacturers such as ip.access or Ubiquisys were chosen for the home hardware.  My femtocell is manufactured by Sagem.

The experience of ordering and setting up the femtocell was not perfect – so I will share what I went through here so that others have a smoother ride. Luckily for Vodafone I know all about femtocells (none of their staff seemed to know why I would actually want one) so I just said “I want one of these” without having to be sold on the benefits.

Firstly - the Vodafone stores have not received adequate training.  I had a total of 5 visits to 2 different stores to actually get my Vodafone gateway.  Agreed, I went in on the 2nd July, the day after they had been launched but this is no excuse. The gateway features in the consumer “Summer” catalogue on display in all stores (and this is where I found out about it). 

[Footnote, when I was a product developer at Optus, we could not launch until all channels had been trained - this is a mandatory requirement in some operators.]

In the first store I visited, they had the device (I could play with it) but had no idea how to sell it to me – it was not on their system.  They were very helpful and made calls to other people who had no idea also.  I had to leave the store to make a call so came back and was told that they still had no idea.

Later on that day they did call me though to tell me they still had no idea, but their manager would be back soon.

I happened to be  in a different area of London later on so tried my luck at a larger store.  At least there they had received the 15 page fax on the product and the procedures in selling it.  As we went through the process (together) – me reading it upside down and the sales guy reading it for the first time, he came to the conclusion that he also was not able to sell it to me. 

I had to go and he said he would make some calls and fix it up for me and I should come back later on – which I did.  I was told he had fixed it up, and it would be sent to me at my address “next Tuesday” (this was Thursday).

After not receiving the home gateway by Friday, I called Vodafone customer care to sort it out.  A helpful chap called me back and told me the access gateway was at the store.  So I went back for visit 5 and walked out a winner!

“Hi Andrew, I’d just I’d let you know that following the feedback in your blog we’ll be addressing this with the stores to see what went wrong so that we can prevent it from happening with other customers”

Hats off to the Vodafone team for being so responsive and showcasing the power of twitter and social media.  I would suggest that just 2 years ago my problems would have fallen on deaf ears.  The fact that this post has been read by more than 1000 people over the last 24 hours proves the power of social media!  On with the review…

This is the procedure I followed once I had the device at home.

1. Go to www.vodafone.com/gateway and register the gateway where you need to tell them your name, address, mobile number and the 15 digit gateway serial number. Here you can also enter the Vodafone mobile numbers you would like to share the gateway with (the gateway will only work with Vodafone mobiles – not MVNOs such as BT and Talk mobile that use Vodafone).

2. Plug in the access gateway to the mains and a spare ethernet port on your home router.

3. WAIT.  The lights will flash and the top power light will flash (the instructions say this indicates an error) for a long time.  In my case it was around 18 hours.  Then the lights will flash different sequences for some time.  You will know you are on the home stretch when the top light is steady green and the next one down (@) is flashing (means attempting to connect to Vodafone).

4. An email will arrive to the address you provided during registration saying it will be ready in 24 hours (an SMS will also be sent to the mobiles you granted access in step 1).  Actually – it worked from the time the email arrived.

Why did I get an access gateway?

I live in a basement flat in an old Victorian home in central London.  As such, the mobile coverage in my house is poor or non existent on all networks.  If I do manage to receive a call while home, I have to move to the windows to make any sense to the caller.

During the run up to the commercial deployment of femtocells, there has been a lot of debate – much of it intelligently led by Dean Bubley over at disruptive wireless on the commercial benefits and applications for femtocells.

I still think the business model is slightly skewed.  I paid for the femtocell myself (£5 over 24 months – added to my mobile bill) and you can opt to pay £160 up front or £7 over 18 months or £10 over 12 months.  However, Vodafone get the benefit of my broadband connection for backhaul (luckily I have an unlimited plan from BT), and power supply so that I can complete more calls with them – seems somewhat asymmetrical but for £5 a month it seems worth it to be able to finally make and receive calls from home.

The femtocell does work as advertised and the calls made on it seem clear.  Downloading a YouTube video to my laptop using my HSDPA card, I was experiencing 1.2 Mb/s speeds – so it is HSDPA.

Other uses of femtocells have yet to be proven, such as sharing music files locally via the home network, and with many handsets now having WiFi, this may not appear as the main reason for getting one.  Home tariffs via femtocell are unlikely to be widespread as most operators have gone to a flat rate structure for voice and data, and even O2’s favourite place allows calls from a whole postcode without needing a femtocell to check you’re home.

My advice is if you are on Vodafone, have poor reception and an unlimited broadband plan then go and grab one.  Hopefully your experience will be smoother than mine.

Related posts

• Will the 3G mobile broadband “dongle” kill the WiFi hotspot market?
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As we all know by now, Roger Federer was again crowned the Men’s Champion (becoming the greatest winner of all time with 15 grand slam titles) after defeating Andy Roddick.

Now … on with the game.

In this week’s match, Volker Hirsch looks at the changing role of content aggregators in the face of app stores and the like.

Martin Sauter over at Wireless Moves has finally bought himself a netbook after resisting for some time.  His post looks at the initial experience with going “netbook” with the Acer Aspire One 250.

Barbara Ballard submitted a really interesting piece [and my post of the week] that promoted her thinking after she saw a Razorfish presentation on the differences between the internet and the mobile web.  As Barbara’s post suggests “the mobile experience should be appropriate to the mobile context. It might have fewer, more, or the same features. Let’s just make sure they are the right features whether they are on the desktop or not“.  I for one fully agree.

Tam Hanna talks about how Nokia’s recently-announced partnership with Intel has caused concern for quite a few key players in the industry: is Nokia planning to give up on S60? Read Tom’s post and see what he thinks.

Ajit Jaokar looks at a huge opportunity for Smart Grid, Telecoms and the Cloud but with big caveats for privacy.

And closing out the set, I’d like to submit my piece titled IBM serves up an ace @Wimbledon which looks at the 3 mobile applications IBM deployed at Wimbledon this year.  I was lucky enough to be invited into the grounds (and sit and watch the Men’s Doubles finals at Centre Court) and see these applications in action. 

I was visiting Wimbledon to see how IBM are using twitter as part of a book I am writing on the use of twitter in a business context. 

If you, your company or someone you know has an interesting business use of twitter, I would love to hear from you. Please contact me via the contact page.

Next week’s Carnival will be hosted by Antoine at AntoineRJWright.com which will be the first carnival to hosted ON a mobile phone – should be interesting.

Have a great week in mobile.

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Jouko tells me that this is only the first version, and there will be a lot of new and innovative funding models during the next 6 to 12 months. More information is presented below.

Jouko has given me an exclusive invitation code for 30 London Calling readers to sign up for the private beta – please use MDPCCC.

30 June 2009 – Hong Kong and London, England – Web entrepreneurs struggling to find seed money received a boost today with the launch of Grow VC for venture capital 2.0, the web’s first truly international community-based, open and transparent framework for early stage investing.

Grow VC is the answer to the traditional problem of venture capital being locally-focused, difficult to obtain, uninterested in smaller investments and structured by a rigid model for many web and mobile startups.

Grow VC reinvents the traditional funding model with the Web’s first framework for investments ranging from $10,000 – 1m USD, where investors and startups are equals within one community, without borders.

Grow VC enables early stage web and mobile startup companies to match-make with “funders”, or startup investors, located anywhere around the globe. Having a truly transparent approach, Grow VC is founded on the premise that financial investment should be rooted in the same interactive, community-mindset that the Web 2.0 world is noted for.

Hence an open, information-finding and reputation-building source is the heart of Grow VC’s groundbreaking model, according to co-founder and CEO, Valto Loikkanen.

“We call it “venture capital 2.0″ because it’s the first service with a live, continuous, interactive, open approach to funding,” said Loikkanen. “Anyone who is passionate about finding and growing the Internet’s next big thing can benefit from joining Grow VC.

We are growing a quality, vetted, and respected community and sustainable business model to support the Web’s next rock stars by giving power to the people. Any startup who has become frustrated with the one-sided VC process, as well as any investor who needs one place to find new innovative companies, now have a community to call home.”

Both founders and funders need obtain an invitation to join the early private beta, whereby they receive a free membership (worth $150 or upwards in value, depending on the size of funding sought – the cost of membership when the service launches publicly in Autumn 2009) as well as five additional invitations they can pass onto their own contacts.

By visiting www.GrowVC.com, users create profiles of themselves and their businesses to match-make with other members and discover investment opportunities. All users will be open for commentary from within the community to build their reputations. Third party partners will also join the community to provide the needed framework for funding, such as legal representation, accounting and other business services.

Grow VC directly combats the prevalent challenges of:

-VC firms not needing or wanting to get involved with smaller investments, yet web and mobile 2.0 companies no longer needing big funding in early stages, due to the efficiencies of the web business model

-The difficulty in attracting angel investors outside the entrepreneurs’ immediate circle (friends of friends, family members, etc.)

-The opaque nature of investments, whereby it can be difficult to ascertain reasons for and against investing

-The trend in preferring supportive, hands-on investors to just cold, hard cash

-Angel investors lacking a structure for global diversification of risk

“Our aim is to make Grow VC the place to go for funding, in a shared ecosystem where members gain from other members’ success. Through this approach the funding industry can become a more level playing field. The most compelling reason for a startup to join now is the very real issue of early stage funding not being available as VCs move to bigger deals.

For investors, Grow VC offers a place to diversify his or her risk globally as well as a place to unearth the web’s most exciting new companies,” concluded Jouko Ahvenainen, Grow VC’s co-founder and chairman.

The public launch of Grow VC will include more innovative investment methods that will be revealed later in 2009. During the private beta, Grow VC is also launching a certified partner program, where local or regional startup enablers (incubators, event organisers, law firms, etc.) can get involved to become the primary local access points for members of their community interested in Grow VC.

Entrepreneurs and funders who would like an invitation to Grow VC can use the London Calling invitation code MDPCCC, or get in touch with Grow VC directly.

About Grow VC
Grow VC is Venture Capital 2.0, bringing the first truly transparent, international, community-based approach to early stage funding. Grow VC can help mobile and web 2.0 startup stars secure initial funding for their businesses ranging from $10,000 to 1m USD. Grow VC will not only connect startup entrepreneurs with “funders‟ (investors) to help them discover their common interests, but also provide tools for the process and new transparent ways of doing things. Grow VC international headquarters is located in Hong Kong.

Press contact:
Emily McDaid
Head of Communications
emily@growvc.com
+44 7748 6333 55
Twitter: @growvc

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IBM, in conjunction with their advertising Agency Ogilvy has served up three brilliant applications for the 2009 Wimbledon Championships. You can read more about the “Say Hello to a smarter Wimbledon” campaign, and my summary of each of them is below.

iPhone Wimbledon application

This is a must have application (just search for Wimbledon in the app store) for anyone following Wimbledon this year. It has live scores (updated every 30 seconds), match results, news, match draws, video and the match schedule.

I expect that the huge success of this application will mean that events such as the US Open and Australian Open (which IBM also support) will want to use a similar application to keep fans updated.

Indeed I understand that an Australian Open representative visited the IBM teams while at Wimbledon to see what they had created for the Championships.

If you can’t watch the final today live on the BBC – this is the next best thing!

IBM Seer Java application

For those without an iPhone, IBM developed a Java application that aggregates news and twitter feeds relevant to the Championships in the one application. If you are in the UK, Text ’smart’ to 60999 to download the app. You can also go to m.wimbledon.org on your mobile if you just want the latest results.

Wimbledon is one of the first mainstream sporting events to really start to leverage the power of twitter. Both The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC) – the hosts of the game and IBM are running twitter feeds relevant to the event.

There is the main @Wimbledon feed as well as @centre_court (both run by the AELTC) providing live updates on what is happening on Centre Court, or in and around Wimbledon.

To really leverage the power of twitter, IBM went one further and engaged some of their own tennis mad Interns as Scouts who literally walk around the entire Wimbledon site reporting on things that matter to those at the Championships via twitter. You can see what sort of things they report on by following @IBMScout.

Over the 2 weeks of the championships, these Scouts have not only had their picture taken with the likes of Ben Stiller, but also notched up more than 3000 status updates!

They hashtag each tweet with a point of interest – as per the examples below

#Court2 Gangways 7-9 are best if you want group seating. 300+ seats now available for men’s invitation.

#court14 People leaving now after Serena finishes her practice on court 15. For live tennis check out courts 3 and 4.

#Court2 150+ seats still available on No.2 court, game still in 1st set. Seating is abundant at the back entrances (gangways 3-6)

The tags are then used in the IBM Seer Android application, explained below.

IBM Seer Android application

This is probably the most leading edge application I have seen come out of a large corporate like IBM for a long time – and in speaking to the IBM team, a refreshing risk that they took in pitching this to the AELTC.

In a nutshell, the IBM Seer android application utilises the GPS in the Android phone as well as the compass to not only understand where you are on the Wimbledon site, but also which way you are pointing. This type of emerging technology is called Augmented Reality (AR) and has started to appear with other applications such as Wikitude from Mobilizy and Layar from SPRXmobile. Nick from Ogilvy told me that the Wikitude application was the inspiration for the Seer Android app.

In the weeks leading up to the tournament, the IBM and Ogilvy teams tagged points of interest around the grounds (transport, gates, toilets, food outlets etc) so that when you look through the camera, these points of interest are superimposed on the picture (see the screenshot above).

The tweets mentioned above from the Scouts that are hashtagged are fed into the Android application – so live updates on what is happening in each area is available when you point the phone camera at an area of interest. This is a really amazing use of twitter – both for those with and without the AR application.

You can also watch a video of the application in action – and even Nick from Ogilvy (trying) to explain how it works to Aussie tennis legend, Pat Cash. As well, you can see some photos on Flickr from the IBM Scouts over the last few weeks, or photos I took during my visit to the site.

A HUGE thank you to Louise Fletcher (@louisef1) who was running the event PR for IBM, as well as Nick Bennett from Ogilvy (@nickbtweets) who was from the team behind the implementation of these apps from the creative side, and the “Scout leader” onsite to make sure everything went to plan. Ogilvy run IBM’s advertising in the UK and also do some amazing work with other large clients.

Thanks also to Alan Flack who is the IBM Client Executive for the AELTC account, and who was brave enough to pitch these ideas to his client. In return, the AELTC were open enough to new ideas to green light these initiatives.

Alan provided me with a ticket to watch the Men’s Doubles final at Centre Court after we met (something totally unexpected, but a very welcome gesture – thank you).

I also understand that Brendon Riley, the Chief Executive, IBM UK and Ireland (and a fellow Australian) provided high praise for all 3 applications when he hosted clients on the Saturday at the event.

I would certainly rate these initiatives as a huge success, and something that we can expect to see a lot more of not just at other tennis championships, but other large events. Now that the iPhone 3GS and Nokia N97, and E72 come with a compass, we can expect to see many more sporting event visitors using these applications to greatly enhance their experience.

Augmented Reality, coupled with live updates from roving “Scouts” via twitter is a perfect solution – well done IBM, Ogilvy and Wimbledon for having the vision to showcase the use of this mash up at such a public event as the Wimbledon Championships.

See all of the mobile services available for Wimbledon at the official website.

If you are using twitter in a business context as IBM are here, I would love to hear from you for my book on the business use of Twitter as I am looking for really interesting case studies. Please contact me via the contact page.

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You can download the PDF or browse the document online.  Either way – it is a great snapshot of what is happening in the UK from a brands, agencies and technology perspective – well worth downloading and reading at your leisure.

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I saw Paul and Wes last night at a function pre-launch and I asked them who they saw their major competitors were.  “Admob” was the answer.  I’m happy to give them some promotion below and enclose their launch release.  Competition is a good thing and I hope they do well.

LONDON, UK – July 1, 2009.  Launched today, advertisers and agencies can bid for advertising on mobile sites and apps, creating a new revenue stream for mobile publishers. Adfonic’s self-service global mobile advertising platform addresses the advertising community’s increased demands for more sophisticated mobile campaign management and maximises the earning potential for a new generation of mobile internet sites and applications worldwide.

With Adfonic, advertisers and publishers alike will benefit from the most advanced targeting capabilities in the market, detailed web-based real-time reporting and analytics, and an intuitive user experience.

“We are creating a transparent marketplace for advertisers to buy mobile inventory using an auction model which will keep costs low whilst protecting their brand. Mobile has the potential to be the most powerful channel in the marketing mix. Our goal is to turn that potential into reality,” says Victor Malachard, CEO of Adfonic.

Adfonic’s campaign management tools have been designed from the ground up to allow advertisers and agencies to connect with their desired audiences, with a wealth of targeting options including location, device, mobile operators, demographics and day-time parting. A Web 2.0-style “tag” approach further helps advertisers reach a contextually relevant set of publishers, who in turn benefit from increased earning potential.

The Adfonic platform will serve display advertising to mobile sites and applications at launch, and publishers and advertisers can create an account for free in minutes at http://adfonic.com. The easy-to-use interface is designed for companies ranging from larger brands and established mobile destinations to bloggers and small developers seeking to monetise or drive traffic to their sites and iPhone applications.

The three co-founders of Adfonic – Victor Malachard, CEO; Wesley Biggs, CTO; and Paul Childs, CMO – collectively bring 40 years of mobile marketing, mobile technology and start-up experience to their roles. The company is founded on the principles of trust, openness, flexibility, innovation and continuous improvement: essential elements for the development of a vibrant mobile community.

About Adfonic

Adfonic is Europe’s first self-service mobile advertising marketplace. Founded in October 2008 by three mobile and marketing industry veterans, Adfonic is headquartered in London, with operations in France, Spain and USA. Adfonic offers comprehensive and intuitive capabilities that make it easy for advertisers to connect with their target audience and for publishers to maximise the earning potential of their mobile sites and applications. To learn more visit our website at http://adfonic.com.

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According to the PR who sent me the details,  “Getty Images embarked on this partnership was to offer its clients the chance to purchase genuine, unexpected imagery which would otherwise be unable to be licensed”.

More information from the release below:

As of today we are launching some really cool and exciting new digital features for the Flickr Collection at www.gettyimages.co.uk/flickr to help people explore the thousands of amazing Flickr images available to license through Getty Images.

The Flickr Collection was launched back in March, which allows Flickr photographers to bring their imagery to Getty Images’ worldwide customer base. They in turn get the opportunity to license an untapped selection of fresh, authentic and locally relevant imagery.

The new features include an embeddable widget, Facebook app and screensaver which can be accessed from the  ‘Inspiring Downloads’ tab on the bottom left corner of www.gettyimages.co.uk/flickr and following the instructions.

Some of the new features include:

Flickr Clouds

Flickr Clouds enable customers to create little ‘packages’ of their favourite images based on a certain theme, photographer name or specific occasion. The Clouds can then be used as an inspirational tool or as a way of creatively presenting an idea or topic. It’s a great way to search, select and save images from the collection.

See an example cloud of images from around the UK

Widget

By downloading and embedding the Flickr Collection widget, using the embed code available at www.gettyimages.co.uk/flickr, you will be able to search the entire collection from your own blog or website and create Flickr Clouds, that can be seen by your readers, without having to navigate away.

Facebook Application

‘PictureMe’, will be available to all users of Facebook. This unique application brings a person’s Facebook status to life by visualising it through images from the Getty Images Flickr collection. Every time a Facebook status update is made, that user’s personal cloud of Flickr images will form accordingly, effectively visualising their thoughts in a highly original way.

Screensaver

People will also be able to draw inspiration and discover new imagery via a screensaver which will display the most popular images being searched for on the Getty Images Flickr Collection website.

You can browse my photos on Flickr also – it’s a fantastic site.  Why not also follow me on Twitter @andrewgrill

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Zoompass, Canada’s first mobile payment service is a new fast, safe, and convenient way for Canadians to send and receive money using their mobile phones.   It is the first product launched by EnStream LP, a mobile commerce joint venture company owned by Bell Canada, Rogers and TELUS – Canada’s three leading wireless operators.

Canada’s three largest wireless phone companies decided to collaborate and launch the Zoompass service together with the vision that a common standard and interoperability for mobile money transfers across all networks would result in unprecedented convenience for consumers.

Nadir Mohamed, President and CEO, Rogers Communications had this to say about the launch: “Today the industry announced something called Zoompass, a collaboration between the three players [Rogers, Bell Mobility, and TELUS].  These are early days, but they allow for people to exchange currencies, make payments between friends, between supplier and provider. It’s the beginning of something that’s going to revolutionise our industry.”

Zoompass makes it easy to split a lunch bill, request money from parents, collect sports team fees, solicit money for a co-worker’s gift, or even pay a babysitter – right from a mobile phone. If Canadians find that the service fits into their mobile lifestyle we can expect to hear more people ask one another “Do you want me to Zoom you the money?”

For more information, see www.GetZoompass.com and if you can get access to a Canadian mobile phone, or you are reading this in Canada, sign up for an account at www.Zoompass.com.

It is great to see the 3 Canadian operators getting together to launch a venture that can benefit 100% of the mobile population – we need to see this sort of collaboration in the UK around mobile payments and mobile advertising as well to move things forward.

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