Mobile by design

@IsaacNaor My pleasure. Everyone should be following you on Twitter! Your Twitter Stream is like a river of gold. cc @2morrowknight

My latest Cisco Blogs guest post explores the paradigm-shifting notion of building a sensory system into our entire world as opposed to connecting the devices within it, as a means of connecting the unconnected.

Wearable Tech, As a Marketer and Consumer

We’re living in truly exciting times, both for consumers and marketers! We’re finally seeing the first members of the (relatively) general public wear phones on their faces (in the form of Glass), and many believe that we’ll see an iWatch (a version of an iPhone but wearable on the wrist) released before the end of 2013.

The trend of wearable technology is part of the Internet of Everything (IoE) revolution, where ordinary, previously unconnected devices become connected (and thus “smarter”), and this trend is only expected to increase (exponentially) over the coming decade.

It’s easy to understand why we, as consumers, are excited about these technologies (and if we aren’t, it’s probably because we’re unaware of the smart device revolution and its potential), but marketers’ excitement is only matched by anxiety around how we’ll be able to utilize the potential of these technologies.

Interestingly, as high-tech as wearable technology hardware is (and will be), it’ll require relatively low-tech software to communicate.

We’ll begin to see a renewed value of twitter and SMS as a means for notifications as these devices gather stockpiles of data and are required to only present tiny bits of information as it becomes relevant to you (or one of your other devices). These pieces of hardware will need to utilize the lowest common denominator communication channels, and SMS and Twitter will be warmly embraced to do that because they are notification workhorses which accomplish that function better than almost anything else (and very elegantly, I might add, especially when it comes to M2M communications).

In the example of Glass (or the highly anticipated iWatch), marketers are trying to build applications that will provide utility to the user, while simultaneously creating a channel of communication for relevant advertising. Essentially, most apps won’t have a high enough priority to be presented on the 1”x1” screen that’s either on your face or wrist, which begs the question, why not integrate with something else that already has a high enough priority to be displayed on these devices.

While these applications present amazing opportunities in the long run (we’ll finally be presented with the right information at the right time in the real world, which will also happen to be paid advertising), over the next few years SMS will be key.

Think about it – SMS is one of the few notifications you are presented with today if you’re wearing Glass (or in the future with the anticipated iWatch), and text message marketing platforms already exist (and have been perfected over the past decade to be much smarter than they have ever been in the past).

The mobile ecosystem has evolved over the past three years, so why hasn’t your mobile strategy?

Three years ago less than 31% of wireless subscribers in the US owned a smartphone, the iPad was just introduced (and most people dismissed the product, suggesting it was nothing more than a large iPod Touch) and most brands were just experimenting with mobile, making their (desktop-oriented) digital properties accessible via mobile devices.

Over the past two years mobile has turned into a powerhouse. More people access social networks via mobile devices than they do the desktop, tablet sales surpassed desktop sales, and the big boys of technology (Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon) have shifted their focus, taking a mobile-first approach for all new products.

As of last month, smartphone penetration in the US was close to 55%, 36% of us own a tablet and those numbers are increasing faster than surveys can be completed and reports published!

With that said, people use smartphones and tablets in very different ways. According to a 2012 Nielsen study, 73% of smartphone owners used their devices to locate a store while only 42% of tablet owners performed that same task. Likewise, 36% of smartphone owners used their devices to redeem a mobile coupon, versus only 11% with their tablets.

Alternatively, (in that same year) a whopping 42% of tablet owners used their devices to purchase items compared to only 29% of smartphone owners. 

One of the trends I’m proud to see is brands are developing some sort-of mobile strategy that's different from the overall digital strategy. While this is an excellent start, the mobile advertising ecosystem is much more complicated than it seems, and creating a simple all-encompassing mobile strategy just won’t cut it.

Think about how many areas of focus there are in “traditional” digital channels -- you have SEO/SEM, email marketing, e-commerce, general website management, web-video and social media marketing (I’m sure I’m forgetting a few here, but you get the idea).

Mobile is similar in many ways. Under the category of mobile you have SMS/text marketing, apps, mobile optimized webpages, location based advertising, search, display, mobile commerce, NFC, Bluetooth proximity marketing, augmented reality, etc. Each of these areas of focus need to be custom-tailored to the device type you’re trying to reach, and creating a mobile strategy that utilizes all means that only a small proportion of mobile users are getting the full experience.

So why is it that a mobile strategy today focuses on mobile as a whole, instead of targeting users by device type? To be blunt, there’s a tremendous lack of true mobile professionals in the advertising industry. Everyone who worked in digital advertising over the past decade recently became a (self-proclaimed) mobile professional, and these folks are diluting the mobile experiences brands create today.

We wanted to “log-onto” the internet using AOL or Prodigy, and we’d sit there in front of our computers just hoping and praying for the “lightning bolt” and space-age noises to connect us with the world wide web and all of the wonders it had to offer (kinda like the gif below, except this one came years later).

If you owned a Motorola StarTac, you had the latest in cellular technology and the Y2K bug was a distant worry just beginning to scare only a handful of us with its potential to roll-back the clock on government and financial institutions and bring with it total chaos.

In fact, reading this post indicates you were probably one of the few people in this country who actually used the internet at the time, as crazy as that sounds!

We’ve come a long way and unfortunately lost the pure roots from-which digital advertising once emerged. I read a wonderful post today by Brian Morrissey about the history of the banner ad, and I couldn’t help but see the comparison to the evolution of the mobile advertising industry over the past decade.

When I first began working with mobile advertising technology, brands and advertisers would consult with me and ask what could and couldn’t be done. Much to the surprise of the inquirer, my answer (in almost all cases) was, we’re only bound by creativity! There was virtually no industry regulation, and benchmarks were nonexistent. 

Aside from the uncommon individual asking about accomplishing something a bit shady, most brands and advertisers that embraced mobile did so to provide some real value to the end user -- the objective was generally to engage the user with the brand and provide some value the user could not find elsewhere.

Similar to the evolution of the banner ad, brands and advertisers believed that if we provided something of true value, users would really appreciate it and develop a long-lasting relationship with the brand.

What happened next was both inevitable and unfortunate -- large, well funded organizations that learned to thrive in the connected digital world began to apply the same scalable ad-server technologies to mobile as they applied to the desktop experience, and that’s when advertising on the most personal device we had, our mobile phones, became impersonal.

AR (augmented reality) has been touted as one of the next big things in mobile/tech for the past two years, yet in-spite of marketers’ valiant efforts with inspiring one-off “successful” campaigns, AR has failed to realize its potential.

For those unfamiliar with AR, it is a live direct (or indirect) view of the physical world with  elements of digital information augmented atop that view. These digital augmented elements can include GPS data or other information, and how to create enhanced user experiences through the use of that data is the topic of conversation here.

The thing about AR is it evolved a bit ahead of its time and wearable technology will need to become more ubiquitous before marketers can really capitalize on its potential. With that said, there is still some huge potential for AR today, and that potential lies in education.

Imagine a child in a typical school setting wielding an iPad instead of a text book.

Now imagine that child in a math class pointing their iPad at a mathematical formula, and being able to see the formula and the way to calculate it augmented atop the space around the formula. The child can then select the augmented calculation portion to view a lecture on how to perform the calculation on their own. Next, imagine that child in a chemistry class pointing the iPad at a Banana to find the molecular composition, history of the fruit and more just by launching an app and viewing the banana through the iPad’s screen.

Next, imagine that same child in a Spanish class where they can point their iPad at any Spanish word and see the root word, definition, male and female versions, etc. Finally, imagine that child studying astronomy using the infamous Starwalk app, allowing the child to point their iPad at the nighttime sky to view celestial objects and find more information about them like their name, age, temperature, and much more!

This potential for AR exists today and just needs to be employed for today’s students to reap the benefits!