BRANDING UNBOUND

ABI Report: Social Networks Consume More Media Content

It appears heavy users of digital content are, well, heavy users of digital content.

Two new studies from ABI Research finds that compared to average mobile subscribers, those who also participate in online social networking via sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo are much heavier consumers of digital content including text messages, mobile email, photos, music, games and mobile TV. 

“The fact that online social networkers consume more mobile content and media than mobile subscribers who aren’t into online networking may not be really surprising,” says principal analyst Nick Holland, winning today's award for understatement. “However, what we have long suspected is now confirmed by the numbers: for most kinds of mobile content, online social networkers consume about twice as much as their non-networked peers.”

Oh, and they're young, too, which will come as a surprise to...nobody.

According to the firm, three quarters were aged between 18 and 30, and were twice as likely to own a smartphone as their non-networked equivalents.

So what's the deal? As the firm reports:

What drives online social networkers towards consumption of mobile media? They are on average younger and more tech-savvy for a start. Also, many social networking networks are organized around a specific media-related interest such as photography or music.

The implication, however, is of interest. First, the data validates our preconceived notions. And second, that data bears out that if you're selling mobile content, you might want to advertise on online social networking sites.

Fish, as they say, where the fish are.

Quick Links:

BRANDING UNBOUND The Blog
BRANDING UNBOUND The Book
ADWEEK Magazines Excerpt
Rick Mathieson.com

Dolce & Gabbana Grabs 10% Response Rate From Mobile Ad Campaign

D&G got a thing for mobile.

First there was the gold-plated Dolce and Gabbana Razr mobile phone.

Now, results are out from its recent mobile campaign during the Male Collection Fashion Show in Italy.

The campaign - which included a viral branded game and WAP site from which consumers could download  content such as the D&G catalog - resulted in a 10% click-through rate, according to Mobile Entertainment.

Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't do a similar effort tied to this summer's big screen version of "Sex In The City," but hey this doesn't look to be chopped liver, either.

Read more about the summer campaign, here.

And to see how Prada and other fashion brands are using mobile, start here.

Quick Links:

BRANDING UNBOUND The Blog
BRANDING UNBOUND The Book
ADWEEK Magazines Excerpt
Rick Mathieson.com

What Does Google Android's 'Barcode Scanner' Mean To Retailers?

Adverlab is reporting that one of the applications that won the first round of Google's developer challenge for the Android mobile platform include a barcode scanner.

Dubbed "Android Scan," the app "finds pricing and metadata for anything with a barcode." Think reviews, competitive products, comparison shopping, customer reviews and more.

In BRANDING UNBOUND the book, I include an exclusive, Q&A-style interview Smart Mobs guru Howard Rheingold about what such solutions may mean to retailers.

Read an excerpt, here.

Quick Links:

BRANDING UNBOUND The Blog
BRANDING UNBOUND The Book
ADWEEK Magazines Excerpt
Rick Mathieson.com

MTV Music Awards Has Text Appeal

If anyone needed further proof of the over-sexualization of pop culture, they should look no further than the titles of the Best Pop Video nominees at this year's MTV Music Awards:

Britney Spears: Piece of Me

Kay Perry: I Kissed A Girl

Mariah Carey: Touch My Body

And those are the titles we can mention in a business blog.

As in year's past, MTV's Music Awards, set to air September 7th, will feature web and text voting from the viewing public, enabling consumers to vote for their favorite performances.

As I talk about in BRANDING UNBOUND the book and blog, MTV has long used mobile to connect with its target audience, from text voting to SMS alerts for shows like "The Hills," mobilized digital billboards and more.

What's noteworthy is that after so many years, mobile is now a tradition for MTV.

It'll soon be a tradition for your brand - whatever your category - too.

Side note: How'd they get Cat Stevens to host this year's awards show?

Read more, here.

Quick Links:

BRANDING UNBOUND The Blog
BRANDING UNBOUND The Book
ADWEEK Magazines Excerpt
Rick Mathieson.com

Kroger Goes For Mobile Coupons

Score another supermarket for Cellfire.

Cincinnati-based Kroger, the nation's largest standalone grocery chain, will beging offering mobile coupons in markets, according to news reports.

Major consumer brands that will be offered via coupons include Clorox, General Mills, Unilever and many others.

"We're constantly seeking new innovations to provide our customers with more ways to save," Glynn Jenkins, the director of communications of the Atlanta Division of Kroger, tells the Nashville Business Journal.

It's the usual Cellfire deal - consumers sign up to receive coupons via mobile phones.

Personally, I'm not that into coupons - mobile or otherwise. Nothing to do with the technology. It's about the store. It's just that I expect to get an every day low price, not have to sign up for something to get it.

And I'm not clear on how this all gets marketed. I hope there's a Kroger-branded experience for its customers to sign up for the coupons, not some general "go to Cellfire.com" to sign up and then have to search for the stores they want to sign up for - which is how the Cellfire site seems to work.

And, as I've said before, I'm not big on apps you have to download in order to get, in this case, coupons.

However it works, Cellfire seems to be on a roll, and supermarkets seem to love 'em for it.

Read more about it, here.

Quick Links:

BRANDING UNBOUND The Blog
BRANDING UNBOUND The Book
ADWEEK Magazines Excerpt
Rick Mathieson.com

Stephen King's 'N' Launches On Mobile Today

The King is coming back to mobile phones.

Sure, there was the whole book "The Cell" about a signal transmitted over cell phones that turns anyone into a zombie - which naturally got its own mobile promotion.

But today, author Stephen King is launching his latest work on the web and mobile phones in the form of a 25-part, comic book-style video series in conjunction with Simon & Schuster Digital, Marvel Entertainment and CBS Mobile.

It is dubbed as the first comic-style book adoption specifically developed and produced for viewing on mobile phone screen platforms. That's not true, of course, but it could be a reasonable claim here in the US (Japan's had these sorts of things for years).

According to materials from the parties, the episodes are based on King's original and previously unpublished story "N.," the tale of a psychiatrist who becomes the victim of the same mysterious and deadly obsession as his patient, and which will be included in his forthcoming collection of short stories Just After Sunset (Scribner, November 11, 2008) and published as a comic book miniseries by Marvel, launching in 2009.

Featuring sophisticated production values, the episodes were drawn by award-winning comic-book artist Alex Maleev, whose work has appeared on NBC's "Heroes," and colored by famed comic-book colorist JosA Villarrubia, best known for his collaborations with Alan Moore. They were adapted by Marc Guggenheim, co-creator of the ABC-TV series "Eli Stone" with creative oversight from Stephen King. The episodes are presented in a highly designed "pan and scan" format, complete with comic book-style graphics, an original score, sound effects, and a full cast of voiceovers that includes Emmy and Golden Globe award nominee actor Ben Shenkman.

Stephen King commented: "I'm always interested in new delivery systems for stories and always curious about how those systems work with the old storytelling verities. This one, it seems to me, works extraordinarily well."

Indeed, the publishing world is waking up to the potential of the Web, but, perhaps more interestingly, mobile, as a delivery mechanism for episodic (or chapter-based) delivery. Beyond book publishers, the mobile platform seems like the perfect medium for comic book material - even more than comic books themselves - because of the potential for voice, music and motion.

King's breaking new ground again. To the 'N'th degree.

Read all about it, here.

Quick Links:

BRANDING UNBOUND The Blog
BRANDING UNBOUND The Book
ADWEEK Magazines Excerpt
Rick Mathieson.com

Interview: Daren Tsui, CEO of MSpot - On Why The IPhone Misses The Mark In Mobile Entertainment

Is the iPhone really a phony when it comes to mobile entertainment?

Now that we've got some space from the blanket, 24x7 publicity around the launch of the iPhone 3G a week ago, some in the mobile content business are coming forward to counter some of the hype around the device.

Case in point: Daren Tsui, CEO of mSpot, who gives Apple props for building awareness for mobile music, movies, games and more, but nonetheless feels the iPhone's one-carrier game plan and "outdated" sideloading system miss the entire point of widespread, over-the-air content distribution in an anywhere, anytime world. 

mSpot, of course, is a mobile entertainment company that delivers music, full-length movies, ringtones and live radio, over the air, to many handsets spanning multiple carriers.

Why should consumers be forced to return within WiFi or wireline range of their iTunes-connected computers to ask "Rihanna where you at?"

Why should consumers buy into the promise of mobility - and then find entertainment options as tethered to the desktop as Coldplay is to mixed reviews?

And does true mobility mean never having to say you sync?

In a new interview, Tsui shares his peeves about iPhone - and what it means for the mobile medium.

The mSpot Interview: Debunking The iPhone

(Approx. 16:10)

Quick Links:

BRANDING UNBOUND The Blog
BRANDING UNBOUND The Book
ADWEEK Magazines Excerpt
Rick Mathieson.com

Kimberly Clark's Kotex Gets 28% Response Rate From Mobile Campaign

A personal care giant is finding the personal touch via mobile.

And it doesn't get any more personal than this: Kimberly Clark's launch of U by Kotex in New Zealand.

The company used a mobile opt-in list to push a link to a video pitching a free sample offer. A full 28% of those who received the ad responded to the offer, according to the New Zealand Herald.

The campaign was managed by mobile marketing firm HooHaa (what a great name for a mobile marketing firm) that pays consumers 10 cents for each message they receive. This marks the first campaign that used a link to a video ad instead of standard issue SMS messages.

In a recent text message-only campaign, Kotex caught a 17% response rate.

As Nick Baylis, CEO of the New Zealand office of M&C Saatchi tells the pub: "It's inevitable that mobiles will become a major video channel. It's just too good an opportunity for advertisers not to investigate."

"Our job is to make it not intrusive. As always with these emerging channels it's about making it relevant, making it engaging and making it useful so that people actually want to download and view it."

I'm thinking it had to be a pretty darn compelling video to get someone to dial up a Kotex commercial on their mobile phone.

Of course, if it's anything like the ad shown here, well....it does have a certain subversive (even shocking), pop-culture dint to it.

Read all about it, here.

Quick Links:

BRANDING UNBOUND The Blog
BRANDING UNBOUND The Book
ADWEEK Magazines Excerpt
Rick Mathieson.com

55% of Young People Willing To Send Text To Receive Mobile Video

Apparently video is hot for young, mobile consumers.

According to a new report from Avot Media, a recent survey found that 55% of young (under age 29) mobile users are willing to send a text message to receive mobile video of interest to them. And 95% say it's easy to do so.

“There’s been plenty of buzz in the industry about mobile video and its possibilities and how brands can utilize them to connect with their target audience,” Avot Media CEO DeWayne Nelon tells Biz Report. “While the industry has been slower to adapt to these possibilities, these results clearly show that there is a great deal of interest for mobile video services and the time for companies to start integrating them to their marketing campaigns is now.”

No fooling. Actually, many brands have been doing this for years, as readers of BRANDING UNBOUND the book know. But the report offers some validation that a.) people like using mobile as a response/interaction mechanism, and b.) young people have way too much time on they're hand(sets).

Read more, here.

Quick Links:

BRANDING UNBOUND The Blog
BRANDING UNBOUND The Book
ADWEEK Magazines Excerpt
Rick Mathieson.com

'Rejection Hotline' Gets You Off The Hook

Why send a text message when rejection is a dish best served out loud?

The Rejection Hotline enables you to give out fake phone number to lame suitors that delivers this delightful message:

"Hello, this is not the person you were trying to call. You've reached the The Rejection Hotline. The person who gave you this number did not want you to have their real number ... So why were you given a Rejection Hotline phone number?

•  Maybe you're just not this person's type (note: this could mean boring, dumb, annoying, arrogant, or   
just a general weirdo).

•   Maybe you suffer from bad breath, body odor, or a nasty combination of
     the two.

•  Maybe you just give off that creepy, overbearing, psycho-stalker vibe.

• Maybe the idea of going out with you just seems as appealing as playing leapfrog with unicorns."

"I started it as a joke," says Rejection Hotline creator, Jeff Goldblatt, in a statement about the Hotline's 7th birthday. "But people found it funny and passed it on to friends. It just took off virally by word-of-mouth and started getting millions of calls."

For those who've already found themselves stuck in a bad date, Cosmo Girl Mobile goes one better, with a fake calls feature that enables people to send a text message to have their mobile phone interrupt their ordeal with an "urgent call" that makes them have to call it a night. Cosmo says a surprising number of men have signed up to that particular service.

For those who want to break up by phone and want to do it via voicemail instead of actually having to talk to the rejectee live, Slydial enables you to bypass that whole landline or mobile phone ringing process and skip right to voicemail.

Lastly for dating revenge, don't forget RatesYourDate, which enables people to offer feedback after a date. Which is, you know, sick and brilliant at the same time.

Suddenly the brutally honest text message isn't sounding so bad.

Quick Links:

BRANDING UNBOUND The Blog
BRANDING UNBOUND The Book
ADWEEK Magazines Excerpt
Rick Mathieson.com