Location, location, location

 

 

It’s the first day of Mobile World Congress (for those of you that don’t know, this is when anyone and everyone involved in the mobile industry flocks to Barcelona to flog their wares at a massive trade show), and everyone seems to be talking about the potential of mobile LBS (location-based services). 

A couple of weeks ago, Google launched its controversial LBS tool, Google Latitude, which enables people to track the exact location of friends or family through their mobile devices.  Personally I’m really not sure that I would go for this, but I can see that the technology is pretty smart. 

Something that I might consider checking out is Lastminute.com’s ‘nru’ (near you) app.  The online leisure retailer recently created a program for the T-Mobile G1 mobile that tells people what’s going on in their area.  The  app uses the built-in GPS chip in the handset to work out where customers are, then suggests restaurants, bars, cinemas and theatres nearby, while a compass in the G1 also shows customers which way to go for their destination.  A nifty tool indeed!

The mobile advertising industry is also set to benefit from recent developments in LBS technology.  Our client BuzzCity runs a mobile advertising network, and has recently launched a targeting advertising feature which allows brands to target their wireless advertising campaigns to customers in different regions.  This capability will provide benefits for both advertisers and consumers, both of whom gain from enhanced relevance of advertising campaigns.

I think LBS might prove a good deal for both the mobile industry and consumers worldwide – as long as consumers are offered appropriate opt-in channels – watch this space! 

Call centres come home

Orange has recently announced that it is bringing all of its call centres back to the UK in order to improve its customer service.  This is the best news I have heard from Orange for a long time!  Last time I called the customer service department I was put through to someone in India and the majority of our conversation was most definitely “lost in translation”, although the guy did ask me if I worked in telecommunications?!  It must be my very professional phone voice…

I have personally never understood the concept of outsourcing call centres – yes, yes, I know, it saves a company a whole lot of money, but quite frankly, I have yet to see one success story, and the majority of corporates have been pretty slow at recognising their failures and bringing their customer service call centres back to the UK.  Like most people I don’t appreciate being left on the end of a phone line listening to some vomit-inducing music only to be answered by someone who I cannot understand and has no idea what I’m talking about.  The sooner that UK companies realise the benefit of having decent call centres the better!

Mobile advertising: are the big brands holding back?

A recent report published by Informa, Mobile Advertising: Cutting Through the Hype, reports that the mobile advertising industry will be worth $12.09 billion by 2013.  In 2008, however, industry revenues will reach only $1.72 billion, 80 per cent of which will be generated by mobile content providers.  So what about the big brands?  According to vendors, this is the year that mobile advertising will go mainstream (as was last year, incidentally), but according to this report, and mainstream media, the big brands still aren’t biting. 

The mobile advertising campaigns of two big brands, however, have recently been well documented by the media.  The first is Jaguar.  Jaguar has recently announced the success of its US mobile campaign around the launch of its XF model, which has delivered over 15 million ad impressions across the mobile Internet, and over 85,000 unique visitors to the Jaguar XF WAP site.  The second is Nike, who has launched an interactive mobile campaign allowing consumers to create their own trainer designs.  Digital agency AKQA has created a pan-European campaign around technology that analyses the dominant colours of pictures taken on mobile phones.  The new service, NikePhotoID, encourages fans to customise their next pair of Nike trainers by offering them the chance to send an MMS of their choice, which the service will then use to create a picture of a shoe customised to the main two colours in the shot.  Consumers may then progress to buy the customised shoes. 

Despite the success of these mobile campaigns, apparently mobile advertising is yet to hit the mainstream: “big brands remain sceptical about the return on investment that will justify the premium rate-cards already associated with this emerging medium” (Nick Lane for Informa).  Time will tell….