If mobile is the future of marketing, then the future is now. Consumers are buying shiny smartphones in their droves, which is driving a revolution in the way we engage with them. The mobile internet on smartphones and other mobile devices has set the web free from the desktop and it won’t be long until it overtakes.

When we develop for the web today, we need to consider how best to serve all devices and understand what users want from each experience. Those shiny smartphones in the pockets and handbags of consumers are gateways to new types of interaction and we’re only scratching the surface of what can be achieved.

Brands large and small need to think hard about how to use the opportunities mobile offers to engage in innovative ways.

QR Codes and Tags offer simple and seemless links between the physical and digital world, but unless we give users compelling reasons and positive experiences, they’ll be dismissed as another marketing fad.

Retail is being shaken-up by mobile marketing, but not enough retailers are really taking advantage of mobile coupons, location and payment services. How long will it be until savvy consumers start voting with their feet (and their fingers)?

Check out the infographic below. Although it’s produced by Microsoft to plug their Tag system, it does give an insight into the growing world of mobile marketing:

I text, you text, we all text. Although most of my communication happens through Facebook and Twitter, I don’t foresee the day when I won’t text. Texting, no matter how primitive, instills a greater sense of importance than an e-mail, but in a way that isn’t as intrusive as a phone call. You don’t need to have a smart phone to participate equally in social texting, and when the recipient looks at his or her device, the awaiting text is the first thing that they see (see the hierarchy of digital distractions, but that’s for another blog).

More than once I have been rudely awoken at 7am on a Saturday morning by Orange to remind me about something that I certainly don’t care at all about. We all have received unwanted text messages the same elements of text that make it so attractive have the potential to make it as equally annoying. That sense of casualness mixed with a sense of urgency is addictive and overpowering.

GroupMe (not to be confused with GroupOn) are developing a new form of texting, in a 1998 chatroom-esque kind of way. It allows group conversation in exactly that, one conversation on your mobile.

It sounds like a genius idea, especially for pre teens planning an evening out on the town. Does it sound a little like Google Wave though? Will group chat be compelling to users who are accustomed to communicating with one person at once?

Just wait a minute… can’t you already do this in Skype, BBIM and iChat on your smartphone? It is only in the US for now, so relax, you can continue to have group conversations without it.

Considering the negative points, GroupMe is providing a unique service. You can register for a unique group number on their website, and voila you have a conversation group. If I were located in the US I would try it…

How can companies use this feature in the future? One of the main potential revenue streams identified is from advertising, but this chat app could also be used in a massive way like a giant Facebook wall. That’s a lot of web 2.0 conversations. An organization could be found by their unique handle, whether by name or number as an additional medium of connection.

It looks like they might have found a unique selling point after all, but do we need another medium of connection?

We all like to trim the fat at the beginning of a New Year. We all try to consume less, get fitter and cut back on unnecessary luxuries. What about in your organisation? Think optimisation rather than reduction.

There are many challenges and looking at the year ahead there are some big decisions to make (carefully).

Return on Investment

Instead of just cutting back on marketing activities to reign in your budget before the fiscal year end, it pays to think strategically about how you are spending your campaign allocation.

Are you focusing on promotional activities or on brand building ones? Whether at the end or the beginning of a campaign, analysing return on investment is a smart strategy to ensure that your efforts are reaping the most rewards and a good way to build your learning for next time.

If short-term results are important to you tactical initiatives are a good way to reach your goals providing they consider the bigger picture. Select targeting with an offer and call to action with efficient measurement can do wonders to deliver quick ROI.

Longer-term programmes will require deeper investment in time and resources to ensure your research and planning provide the robust platform for a strong brief. This time and process is critical to ensure that sales and marketing outcomes are aligned with your forecast return.

Re-evaluating Your Competitive Advantage

Why not spend the first few months of 2011 re-evaluating your competitive advantage? You can do this by looking at your market, your customers, trends, your product, offer and key messaging making sure that you haven’t taken the easy train… making sure that you are maintaining your position in the market and keeping the revenue flowing in.

One thing is for certain, at least one of your competitors will, as a minimum, be looking to creep slowly into your point of differentiation having redefined their own competitive advantage against you. It’s never too late to make a slight change moving forward, to invest a day in a workshop to step back from your business or to try something new.

Get on the weighing scales

A helpful cleansing exercise is to take a look back and review what you said you needed to achieve and what you actually did achieve. This can be done statistically, financially, visually and even by actually doing some simple research to sense check. Are you slipping back into old habits? It’s easy to eat takeaway when it’s convenient, and there’s nothing wrong with it in moderation, as long as a quick and easy solution isn’t taking over your well-intentioned strategy or plan. Use this exercise to plan out where you want to go, and to ensure you keep doing what’s good and change what’s not so good.

Best wishes for gaining a competitive advantage in 2011.

In daily decision-making, when weighing alternatives and selecting the best options, having relevant data at hand makes the process of making a decision less variable, more secure and will lead to a more profitable outcome.

From an integrated agency perspective, when evaluating a brand or planning a campaign, it is extremely important to be able to make decisions based on data. Your customer data is important, but so are internal statistics such as sales measures and industry information. Who are your most profitable customers? Which products or services have the highest margins? How do your services or products compare with those of your competitors?

Data not only assists in decision-making, but allows the tracking of campaigns to demonstrate results. Data is also important in understanding how you compare with your competitors. Once your competitive advantage is identified, how can you benchmark yourself against your competitors without a strong grasp on the industry?

Consider the following data cycle:

Each of these steps is important in managing data. Firstly, the collection of data is critical including knowing what to collect and understanding what is important. The editing of this information is equally important, including ensuring that formatting is consistent and that information is collected in its entirety.

Secondly, the review of data is important. Understanding what you have and constantly analysing if what you have is what you need to have. If not, what changes can you make to your data collection and creation process to ensure that you are capturing what you need to?

Thirdly, managing the information is critical. The quantity of data you have, along with how important it is to you will determine how you manage the data. Also, does the software or other applications you are using allow you to extract the information you need?

The fourth step or consideration is training the software, system or human resources in the analysis and manipulation of this data. It is important that both the people using the data understand what it means and that they can either manipulate it or that the software can manipulate the data in an optimal way.

Finally, it is important to use the information. Use the information in daily and periodic decision making but also use the information to streamline processes and to baseline marketing efforts. Keeping an eye out for trends and making full use of data is an extremely valuable resource that could potentially be your competitive advantage!

This advert for the Salvation Army most likely caught your attention the first time you noticed it. It certainly caught my attention. This advert is selling the Salvation Army’s product, which is assistance to people who most need it. This is an emotional appeal, and is indirectly asking the audience to give the Salvation Army money to put to use where you otherwise wouldn’t notice. This advert is using an affective message strategy, invoking feelings between the audience and company. In this instance these feelings are not warm and fuzzy ones, most typically found in ads at Christmas. The feelings invoked are of sadness, guilt, caring and these feelings, which motivate the audience to make donations to the Salvation Army, or to purchase items from their stores.

This next advert is using humour. Focusing on one of the key images of Christmas, Santa Clause and his bright, saturated red outfit, this advert for laundry detergent demonstrates the danger of not using their product. Technically this advert is scaring customers by implying that if you don’t use this detergent your clothes might end up like Santa’s, faded. Although they are using this fear tactic, humour is implied with the use of the children’s Christmas character.

This John Lewis TV advert is emotional.

Using a current top feel-good track, they portray different audience demographics wrapping Christmas presents in their own special way. Instead of focusing on the gift receiver, this advert focuses on the giver of the gift, and the rituals and enjoyment of giving. Hiding presents in the attic, hanging a stocking for the dog, demonstrates real scenarios of enjoyment in preparing the gift to give. This message is implying that the gift giving and preparing experience will be more special if the gift is from John Lewis.

With a very different message, this Matalan advert

is focused on the receiving of presents. This advert uses a primarily emotional appeal, although it is very different from the John Lewis ad. This one focuses on the joy of the receiver, and even indicates at the end that “Who says this can’t be the best Christmas ever”, implying that if you purchase presents from Matalan the receiver will act in the way that the actors in the tv commercial have, and that you will be closer to having the best Christmas ever.

Both these commercials use music in a very special way, to set the mood, tone and evoke emotions in themselves. Nostalgia and a feeling of family for John Lewis, and happy, feel-good-about-yourself music for Matalan.

This Sony advert

is very different again. While portraying Christmas images, this one focuses on a rational appeal, specifically targeting audiences who are price sensitive. The main message here is that you will not have to pay VAT on Sony Christmas presents purchased before December 24^th.  Humour is used to portray this message. The family at the end of the advert is surprised and although the unexpected guest is his uncle, the audience is made to believe for a few seconds that the character believes it is Santa Clause at the door with Sony presents.

These are just a few of the many types of appeals you can use at Christmas to send messages to your audience. What is your main message? It is important to take your existing brand image and consider what specific action you want your audience to make at this time of year. Is it primarily a sales specific message that is most appropriate for a promotion, or is it a brand building message that will your brand in their top of mind awareness for the coming months? It is also important to consider the seasonal nature of your products or services. If your message can wait until January there will be considerably less noise in the advertising realm!

Valentine’s is just around the corner…

This week marks the finale of the Apprentice. Last week the teams competed in interviews with some of Lord Sugar’s toughest advisors. After tears, lies and jokes Joanna, Jamie and Stewart were sent home.

This week’s task saw some old Apprentice members return to help Stella and Chris with their task. Both teams had to create a new a new brand of alcohol to be sold at the £20 mark, targeted at the over 25 age range.

As Lord Sugar remarked in his statements, Chris’s team created a product in an interesting bottle with great shelf appeal. The Prism (literally) didn’t have a solid brand story or target audience. It was primarily sold as a masculine drink, but in the end was a bright pink coloured liquid. Other than the bottle, the Prism brand identity was strengthened by the presence of threes; three sides to the bottle, three ingredients and three individuals in the television advert. The element of threes, although consistent and unique, wasn’t enough to build a brand considering other fundamental elements were lacking.  An unclear demographic hindered the team and even with a great bottle, inconsistency such as a name that matched the shape of the bottle, not the ingredients nor the alcohol led to poor execution.

Stella’s team created more of a brand than did Chris’s team. More focused on the alcohol, they targeted the more popular dark spirits and added flavours of honey and spice. With a more typical bottle, they chose a bourbon drink, which wouldn’t frighten male customers but would equally interest the women. With a clever name Urbon, it might not have been as flashy as Chris’s Prism in first impressions but it had a more consistent and well thought through brand identity and messaging.

Stella was ultimately the successful Apprentice candidate, and she got to hear the unusual words “Stella, You’re hired” by Lord Sugar. As she pulled away in Lord Sugar’s Bentley, she may not have been a maverick or have had entrepreneurial spark, but she certainly had a solid footing of good strategy, was a great team leader and was extremely hard working and motivated.

Interestingly enough, this week Lord Sugar criticized Stella and Chris for delegating what he deemed to be one of the most important elements of the task, selecting the taste and colour of the product. In the boardroom Lord Sugar noted that the product is the most important element and should have had the attention of the project managers. It is interesting that Lord Sugar believes this alcohol created by his two potential Apprentices is important, yet a few weeks ago in the London Tour task Lord Sugar clearly indicated that once customers stepped on the bus the product didn’t matter, that selling was the most important element.

We do recognize that the London bus tour challenge was very different to the creation of an alcohol product, but it is interesting how Lord Sugar wasn’t consistent in his view that the product in question is the most important element to consider in a business task.

In terms of The Apprentice overall, it is very interesting that at the beginning of each episode Lord Sugar indicated that he didn’t want a “Steady Eddie” or a “Cautious Carol”. After getting to know all of this season’s Apprentice candidates, Stella and Chris were perhaps two of the most cautious candidates. Whether poor casting/selection or changing views, the candidates with entrepreneurial spark throughout the contest saw their demise to powerhouses of strategy, consistency and experience. By no means do we intend to disregard the Apprentices, quite the opposite in fact. Perhaps Lord Sugar should record a new opening to the Apprentice next season, and clarify what in particular he is looking for in an Apprentice.

Lord Sugar was obviously looking for a great combination of entrepreneurial spark and strategy. Someone that can take risks, but calculated and profitable risks. Unfortunately too many of the candidates just took risks. Stuart Baggs for example, the contestant that everyone loved to hate, in the end proved himself to be a liability when he indicated on his CV that his business was in fact licensed for a particular operation on the Isle of Mann when in fact it was not. Lord Sugar’s lawyers would have vetoed Stewart in that instance!

It was a very entertaining autumn season watching the Apprentice each week with you. We would love to know any comments or feedback that you have in regards to the winners, losers, strategy and most importantly, the competitive advantages of the candidates and their product pitches.

When does next season begin?

As with any large city, tourism is a big business and with vast landmarks and royal palaces to see, Lord Sugar sent the Apprentice candidates out to run a London bus tour company for one day.

Stewart and Joanna were project leaders and Stewart’s team decided to offer a Cockney tour, after Stella expressed how passionate she was about Cockney tradition. With Joanna as project manager, Jamie was the champion for the Ghouls and Ghosts of London tour.

Both teams pitched to a tourist board near Trafalgar Square, to win the organisations’ support for the day. Stewart’s team were charging a steep £35 per adult, and offered the tourist board a 25% commission on tickets that they sold for the team. Chris headed out to negotiate on behalf of his team and project manager Joanna. Chris offered 20% of the profits from the entire day, not just for the tickets sold by the organisation.

While watching the episode, it appeared as though Chris had made a mistake in offering the tour promoters 20% of all profits, and that he just wouldn’t admit the mistake. In the interviews and in discussions with the team, Chris didn’t justify this decision and subsequently Joanna returned to the promoter and asked if the offer could be retracted. We are unsure of how good a decision it was to secure the promoter, but Joanna’s team had lower prices and what seemed to be a better product.

With all due respect to Lord Sugar, I don’t entirely agree with his opinion of the tour bus business. Aside from the fact that he thought Chris’s “20% of all profits” mistake was a shrewd business strategy, he also indicated that the quality of the tour that the teams ran did not matter. Lord Sugar clearly indicated that the task was primarily about sales. Yes, of course sales are critical and if the selling is poor and the tour meets audiences expectations, success isn’t guaranteed, but as old fashioned as it may sound, we believe that having a good product is paramount.

Having a good product would have increased the interest in the tour from word of mouth. Also, Jamie mentioned having received tips and there was no mention of tips for tour guide Stella on Stewart’s team. In this challenge the difference between the winning and losing team was less than £300, and without a doubt this amount could have been made up by tips alone – especially with a great product and a low ticket price.

It is sad to see Liz go, especially considering the fact that she didn’t say ridiculous things, make outlandish claims or really do anything wrong at all. Yes – she wasn’t the perfect candidate for Lord Sugar’s apprentice, but she certainly would be trustworthy and dependable… two words that do not describe Stewart. Stella escaped unharmed, mostly due to her winning record and the fact that she took Lord Sugar’s advice and went outside of her comfort area.

Lord Sugar has an interesting strategy and one that obviously works in his personal business life- one built around prices, pounds and profits. Perhaps in other instances short term aspects like maximizing daily profits should come as a second priority to a longer term more sustainable strategy.

Do you think Lord Sugar set a bad example this past Wednesday evening when he indicated that the quality of the tour was not important whatsoever? A one day success strategy, perhaps. A long-term successful strategy? Definitely not.

This week Lord Sugar challenged the burgeoning potential apprentices to purchase a collection of items for low a cost as possible. Many of the items unknown, the group were split up into the original men versus women teams and both had very different tactics and had especially varying results.

The women’s team was led by Liz, and they started the challenge on the phone. The ladies tried as best they could to locate all of the products on their list and arrange purchase. They headed out shopping with a plan. The ladies maintained a corporate image during the day and tried to remain professional while being aggressive with the sellers. On one hand, the planning strategy was successful – the ladies managed to purchase all of the items. One fault however was that the women were too focused on finding all the items, not necessarily on finding one with the lowest cost.

Liz actually said “this task is all about locating the items, because we don’t want to incur the penalties, we don’t have time to shop around. It’s about finding the supplier and really negotiating that price down”. The ladies certainly found suppliers, but they were not very successful in negotiating the prices down, and did not find places with lower prices to start with.

The men’s team took a different approach. With little to no planning, they did however have a strategy. Team leader Jamie motivated his team and tasked them with offering a price of 70% lower than what the sellers were asking for. Jamie also asked his team, in each situation, to create a story that justified why they need to purchase the item at the reduced price.

Strangely enough, in the end the women purchased all of the items, and the men purchased 7 of the items. Due to the fact that the women were late returning in the evening, they incurred a £50 penalty while the men incurred a £50 pound penalty for each of the 3 items that they did not purchase, plus the retail price of those same items. In quite a boardroom shocker, the men won the challenge. This astonishing feat was due to the fact that unfortunately, in a few instances the women paid more than the regular asking price for one of the items on their list. The truffles in particular, knowing that the street price for the quantity that they were looking for was £100 but also being told that they were like gold dust, Laura made an opening offer of £200 to a restaurant in Knightsbridge. This decision ultimately cost Laura in the boardroom and she was sent home.

Interestingly, the women were much less aggressive in their negotiating style then the men.  The men were very persistent in their negotiating, almost to the point of being rude. The women on the other hand, on multiple occasions indicated that they didn’t want to be rude to the shopkeepers, and that they wanted to remain professional.

The financial penalties in this task were quite steep, and because the women’s team bought all items and the men’s team only bought 7, you would think that the women would have been the task winners. Whether by luck or strategy, the men’s team managed to beat the ladies by paying significantly lower prices then them for the items which they did purchase.

Whether you agree with the tactics undertaken by the men, they did have a sound strategy and were first and foremost focused on a low price, while the women were more focused on locating each item. A few poor choices for the women was too much of a match for the luck/skill that the men had in locating bargain prices.

The lesson for today? Strategy, strategy, strategy!

Even though we’ve been complaining about Stuart Baggs these past few weeks, we are glad he’s still a contestant on the show, even if for the only purpose of contrasting his optimism and motivation against Laura’s sourness and negativity.

This week the challenge was all about crisps. The teams had to create two new flavours of crisps and sell them to the German market. In order to successfully complete a challenge such as this, market research is imperative, both in terms of crisp flavours and the German market.

At the start of the task the project managers remained in England to manage the production of the crisps while the teams went to Germany for market research and to set up meetings with suppliers. It seems that both teams had already set their flavours before even thinking about market research, at least that’s what the editing on Stella’s team led us to believe.

The show featured a heated phone call between Joanna and Stella, where Joanna had just finished interviewing Germans in shops and asking them what kind of crisps they would like, and what kind of food they enjoy. At this point Stella and her team had already chosen to proceed with a “British Foods” theme, and Stella seemed to be upset that Joanna was telling her that they were proceeding in the wrong direction.

Chris’s team on the other hand decided to go into the German market with German crisp flavours. This was a great idea, until the buyers tasted the crisps and indicated that they tasted nothing like their German food counterparts.

In the end Stella’s team won and Chris’s team were sent to the boardroom. Although Chris the project manager had been in the bottom three and in the loosing team for the past few challenges, Lord sugar sent military and operations expert Christopher home. Lord Sugar said that although everyone liked Christopher, he didn’t have an entrepreneurial spark, and was sent home.

Whether the teams had any control over the situation or not, it was ridiculous for the teams to choose crisp flavours and then undertake market research. The teams communication styles was also very inconsistent, with Joanna and Laura speaking very quickly and not being sensitive whatsoever to the German buyers while Stuart actually made an effort, which resulted (much to our dismay) in his name in German, Herr Baggs, trending on Twitter during the airing.

Do you think any of the candidates that are left have an Entrepreneurial spark?

We all know that Facebook is an influential global company, and even if you don’t have a Facebook account, you’re probably the only person you know over the age of 15 who doesn’t.

Mashable announced last week that 25% of all web page views in the United States are views of Facebook pages, which also equates to 10% of page views worldwide.

What kind of experience has Facebook created online, and how does this attract more customers than Google? Google is the largest and most used search engine on the Internet and does receive a significant number of searches and page views but is certainly not as high as Facebook’s global 10%.

While Google provides great value to their customers, Google’s business is in connecting searchers to the information that they are looking for, in the quickest and most efficient manner possible. Although Google has many other business functions and makes its core profit from advertising revenue, Google and Facebook will soon be even closer rivals. Facebook is launching a messaging/e-mail service similar to that offered by Google through Gmail/Google Mail, an established popular free e-mail service.

Facebook has a very different business model than Google, even though their revenue streams are predominantly based on pay per click advertising.

Facebook gives value to users by providing a platform that intelligently manages and promotes user generated content, an example of the most fundamental of web 2.0 philosophies. Facebook’s business is diversifying and now includes social gaming. Over 11 million daily users log on to a social game and engage with their friends, relatives, colleagues and most importantly, click on ads and spend money on earning higher game status.

In the end, Facebook and Google have very different core business strategies. Although Google provides tools to help manage daily online business and communication, Google directs people to content that they are looking for. Facebook on the other hand does not create any content, but provides an online environment that most of the world chooses to spend time in.