Wii Fit and Guru Meditation
Saw a commercial for the Wii Fit and thought immediately of the Guru Meditation.
(It feels like several lifetimes ago that I was a Software Engineer at Commodore-Amiga. Well before my time that the original Amiga team released the Joyboard controller.)
My recollection of the lore:
- The controller was produced both to ensure they had some revenues and to provide a “cover” for the top secret system they were working on.
- A simple Guru Meditation game required you to sit on the controller and balance perfectly. They often did so during long compiles.
- The system error message with debugging information was named “Guru Meditation” since it would mean fixing code and waiting through another compile.
Googling “Guru Meditation Wii” brought me immediately to the Wikipedia entries for Guru Meditation and the Joyboard, as well as to Ian Bogost’s new Guru Meditation game. (I was lucky enough to have briefly met Iain and enjoyed a group lunch with him at Mobile Persuasion 2007 . His work is amazing.)
UPDATED 9-Jun-08:
OK, now I want a Wii Fit — they did build in a meditation game!
How to do Mobile Marketing Fast and Cheap
Filed under: SMS, mobile advertising, mobile marketing, mobile marketing examples, shortcodes, social media
Text messaging programs with a shortcode often involve complexities requiring good sized budgets and months of lead time to set up. I’ve certainly wished this weren’t the case as I’ve managed many of these initiatives.
Sometimes there are effective shortcuts.
Coors Light recently added an interactive element to ads with a simple text messaging program. Fans txt’d “coorslight” to 44636, opting in for SMS updates on the NFL draft. Subscribers received a series of 31 messages which came as each NFL team made its top pick.
Agency DraftFCB handled the text messaging part of the program, implemented with a free text service. 4Info lets you publish via SMS for free. They are ad supported, selling text ad space at the end of published text messages.
This approach can only handle a small subset of text programs, but is effective marketers who only need simple publishing.
Tradeoffs include:
- avoid the considerable time and expense of a new branded shortcode
- loose flexibility in sharing the 4Info (44636) shortcode
- avoid most of the other costs of a text messaging program
- your messages may include ads from other brands
- few options for programing, interactivity, integration, and control
Here’s what the program looks like to subscribe:
me: coorslight
44636: Coors Light, the official beer of the NFL is proud to provide NFL Draft Results. To confim you’re 21 & receive alerts, reply PICK + TEAM NAME ex. PICK JETS
me: pick niners
44636: NFL SF@OAK 8/8 10p Reply 1 for NFL San Francisco 49ers score alerts *Courtyard by Marriot. Reply CTYD
I didn’t get a chance to see the TV commercial for this — if anyone has a link, please share in the comments.
Thanks to Mobile Marketer for the article bringing this campaign to my attention. The New York Times has an interesting article on the broader Coors Light campaign including the social media elements.
Comscore buys M:Metrics
Filed under: SMS, mobile advertising, mobile analytics, mobile web
An web strategy/analyst friend asked on Twitter what I thought of this afternoon’s news that Comscore had purchased M:Metrics.
In more than three years I’ve been doing mobile, M:Metrics has been invaluable for industry usage statistics to give me information in the US and worldwide for facts and figures like what percentage of US subscribers have sent a text message in the last month, or how many have a full keyboard. Their ~120 customers have been large players in the mobile space including mostly carriers and handset manufactures, perhaps some entertainment heavyweights selling ringtones and games in mobile.
According to M:Metrics, of 226 million US subscribers, only 13.5% Accessed news/info via browser in February 2008. They’ve stopped publicly releasing the percentage who text each month, but it’s likely more than 50% at this point. For comparison, they indicate that over 20% play a downloaded game or send/receive a photo.
Thus, smart mobile marketing has included the more common modes to be able to reach as many handsets as possible: voice, text, ringtones, etc., and the best often give users options with one or more.
Mobile web still has limited reach.
Still, M:Metrics recognized the growing buzz around mobile advertising, and thus mobile web, adding products in this market outside what was previously its core anticipating the market.
It seems like more buzz, more startups and more investment has been shifting this way. learly the move paid off for M:Metrics in terms of an acquisition. Comscore is likely in a much better position to sell those services than M:Metrics was.
So is this smart buzz and a smart move for Comscore?
Comscore focuses on web metrics. They want M:Metrics for mobile web metrics.
Honestly, I’m not sure what it would have cost Comscore to build out the mobile web piece it’s buying in M:Metrics. I suspect it might be cheaper to build much of that technology than to integrate it, but I’m just not familiar with the details.
As well, I believe the majority of M:Metrics revenues have come from the rest of its business. I wonder what will come of that part of the business with the Comscore acquisition.
Anyway, back to the mobile web, and mobile advertising.
M:Metrics reports that “smartphone users to spend an average of four hours and thirty-eight minutes per month browsing the mobile Web in the United States.” It seems inevitable that devices and networks will add more capabilities and speed so that the mobile web becomes usable for most mobile subscribers, so that 13.5% number should go through the roof, right? And mobile advertising should go through the roof with it just like the buzz says?
My thoughts on this will have to wait for a later post…
Are Adoptive Marketing and User Experience as Strategy the same?
Filed under: mobile marketing, user experience, viral marketing
In “Viral Marketing is bullsh*t. Adoptive Marketing isn’t.” blog Go Big Always explains why viral marketing is otherwise manipulative, shallow, and correspondingly ineffective. Contrast that with making sure the product itself is designed to create an emotional connection and a high adoption rate.
Is this the same, or different, from User Experience as Strategy? Share your thoughts in the comments….
(See entries from earlier in May: Join the 8% Who Get It (or what do books on Experience Design, Advertising, and Social Media have in common?) and Thunder vs. iPhone: Experience not Features)
Mobile Charity: The $10k SuperBowl Ad
No, they didn’t pay $10k for a SuperBowl ad.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that the United Way Superbowl spot asking users to text “fit” to UNITED (864833) raised about $10,000. Of each $5 donation, United Way got about $4.50. By my math, that’s 2,000 $5 donations from a single 10-second spot viewed by nearly 100 million (second most-watched TV show ever).
Could they have done better with what they had?
pSMS (premium SMS) allows interaction with a user which adds small charges to a cell phone bill, typically under $10. In the US, it had been limited to selling mobile content and dominated by ringtones.
According to the carrier rules, you couldn’t make a pSMS charge to deliver a real-world good a service, or to accept a donation to charity.
The rules also have mobile carriers and aggregators keeping a large percentages of the charges as revenue share. Varying from carrier to carrier and negotiated by volume, etc., you might get back only 60% of revenues, and this still requires you to do all the work of programming the service, promoting it, etc. This is as if the credit card companies charged 40% instead of low single-digits for processing charges through merchant accounts, but don’t get me started.
Until recently, the only exception to both rules had been donations to the Red Cross during disasters. Slowly more exceptions are being made, and here’s a little more detail.
I know how mobile works in detail (having run many pSMS programs) and I had questions when I viewed the spot during the game. I didn’t know enough about what I was being asked to do, how it would work, how much it would cost me (“$5″ was buried in small print at the end), what the privacy impact would be (would I be solicited for more donations?), and what the benefit would be.
Even remembering the instructions might have been challenging (how many Budwiesers had the viewer consumed at this point in the game?). Why not run the instructions at the bottom of the screen through the whole spot:
Help United Way Reduce Childhood Obesity, give $5 through your cell bill.
Text “fit” to 864833. It’s easy, no hidden charges, no calls.
Did they test this ad by serving chips and beer in a living room and showing it? When doing something fairly new, a little insight goes a long way, and since you’re not after absolutely objective data, a fancy research firm with expensive scientific validation isn’t necessary. Cheap and informal work does great here. Ask folks what they thought about it and watch them while they try to do it on their phones after you answer their questions.
Anyway, since I try every shortcode program I run across, I made one of those 2,000 donations back in February. I wonder if nearly all 2,000 were from mobile industry folks. Here’s what the program looks like on my phone (four text messages):
Me: fit
864833: “To confirm your $5 donation to United Way youth fitness reply with the word YES. For more info visit: mahlp.cc/uwyf. Other charges may apply.
Me: yes
864833: Thanks for your $5 donation to United Way. Donate up to 5 times by sending FIT to 86433. Encourage others to donate. Info reply HELP, Other charges may apply.
They don’t ask for permission to text the user later. Otherwise they might follow up to see if they are interested in volunteer opportunities, tell them about outcomes with the donation they made, ask them to take action in support of some legislation, or let them know about other causes or ways to donate. Would some who gave $5 want to contribute much more if they’d been further engaged?
Also, TV is only one way to promote these mobile donations. How would they do with print? Outdoor? Or with calling for people to take out their phones at events?
The Mobile Giving Foundation is pushing to move this kind of program from rare exception to common practice.
The carriers win when everyone understands pSMS better and sees it as applying to more than ringtones. Allowing mobile philanthropy meets that goal and creates good will, so I hope progress will be made to quickly allow many more non-profits to experiment with mobile donations. For their part, I hope non-profits work to develop and share insights from listeing to and observing those in their target audience so that any hurdles to mobile adoption are most effectively understood and overcome.
ADDED 12:45pm: Mobile Active included many more details about the Mobile Giving Foundation and vendors used in implementing the United Way program.
Thunder Lifetime Exclusive: The New Walled Garden?
Filed under: Blackberry, Carriers, Thunder, walled garden
Rumor is that RIM’s new BlackBerry Thunder will be a lifetime exclusive to Verizon and Vodaphone. This ups the ante from iPhone’s five year exclusive with AT&T in the US, though Apple has inked non-exclusive or co-exclusive deals in many other countries recently.
I’d thought the “walled garden” approach to data access on mobile phones was slowly slipping away as more phones support browsing the open Internet, including downloading media that can be used as ringtones or wallpaper.
(Just two years ago a carrier asked us to shut down a program giving away a free promotional wallpapers. They considered it “revenue leakage” since we weren’t selling it and giving them a cut. Now they charge the brand to deliver promotion content free to the user.)
The iPhone arguably replaced one walled garden with three:
- Works only with AT&T
- Preventing installation of applications until a future release
- Requiring that ringtones be purchased from iTunes
Being AT&T-only did provide the benefits of tight voicemail integration, simplified pricing plans and painless activation. Apple may not have been able to get cooperation for that improved overall experience without the exclusive. Maybe that’s a feature rather than a bug.
M-Metrics reports only 2.8% of US mobile subscribers accessed a downloaded application in February 2008. Arguably, Apple is just as concerned with user experience as with any revenue possibilities here. While there are great mobile apps available for most handsets which should be reaching a broader audience, everything is difficult about the old way of finding, downloading and paying for applications.
Will RIM have the vision to apply pressure for similar innovations in its deals with Verizon and Vodaphone, or is the exclusive just another way to keep customers locked in? Please add your thoughts in the comments…
Thunder vs. iPhone: Experience not Features
Filed under: Blackberry, Thunder, iPhone, touch screen, user experience
The Wall Street Journal Reports that RIM is launching a new touch-screen BlackBerry, Thunder, in the third quarter, to be sold exclusively by Verizon, “answering the challenge posed by the popularity of Apple Inc.’s iPhone.”
They go on to say, “The iPhone’s sophisticated touch-screen was one feature that made Apple’s device a big hit.”
There is no list of features that made the iPhone a big hit.
The experience of buying, activating, and using iPhone made it a hit.
How easy it was to show the experience of using it made it a big hit.
Isn’t that the same thing that has already made the BlackBerry a hit in its target market? Show a roadwarrior in need of a workhorse how you scroll through emails with the thumbwheel, then do the same to select and dial a contact from the phonebook. Enter a quick email from the keyboard. You’ve just made a sale.
BlackBerry has less penetration to other markets not only because the features they use are different (in fact, many are the same), but the whole context is different. Who they are, what they use it for, when and where they use it. I haven’t seen the Thunder, but hopefully for RIM they’ll develop the kind of understanding and insight they brought to the roadwarrior, creating experiences for a new market, not just adding features for it.
Interviewed when the iPhone came out, I told Reuters that it wasn’t about the features. In fact, I was surprised in the first few hours with several “missing” features I might have expected, but these surprises didn’t meaningfully diminish my experience. They’d carefully selected features to leave out (or leave for later) as much as features to leave in.
[UPDATE 6/18: Wired ran a great article about Japanese market handsets competing on feature lists: "The manufacturers, who realize the absurdity of piling on features that don't work well.... The average person only uses 5 to 10 percent of the functions available on their handsets. "]
Before iPhone, you had to do things the phone company’s way and the device’s way. It was all about learning how to deal calls to their support, calls to select plans, learning how to navigate the maze of device features. Even to me it seemed like a constant chore of dealing in arcane lore, and I like tech stuff.
The iPhone “felt like a living sculpture in my hands” because the whole experience was about the system fitting me instead of me finding a way to work with the system. The pieces fit together in a seamless whole. Every part was beautiful, from the box it came in to the physical device to the icons on the screen. My actions and the flowing animation and movement on screen at every step blended together as one and looked pretty.
I said elsewhere, “The iPhone really points out how unpleasant other interfaces are, how ugly and unwieldy. The iPhone responds immediately with rich and beautiful feedback to everything you ask it to do, making it beautiful to look at and a beautiful experience to use it….. When other companies are forced to bring as much attention to design to their devices, and pulling together as many features seamlessly, hopefully the bar will keep being raised for all.”
I didn’t have to struggle with the phone company or the device. For once, I could smile most every time I reached in my pocket.
Join the 8% Who Get It (or what do books on Experience Design, Advertising, and Social Media have in common?)
Filed under: account planning, social media, user experience
I might summarize the new book Subject to Change: creating great products and services for an uncertain world
It would be a mistake to dismiss this as an obvious argument.
A 2005 study cited in the book showed 95% of organizations surveyed claiming to be “customer focused” and 80% claiming delivery of a “superior experience.” Only 8% of their customers agreed!
So the message is needed and every bit of help this book offers is welcome.
The emphasis on developing actionable insight through talking to customers (especially listening and watching) reminds me of two other books I like, and the three of them together make a stronger argument than any one does alone.
Jon Steel’s Truth, Lies & Advertising: The Art of Account Planning
Transitioning with another coincidence, Seth Godin endorsed Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies
While the first two books emphasize more objective research, Groundswell is about the necessity of moving to conversational participation. In blogs, on YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook and elsewhere, customers are talking about products, experiences and companies. Organizations must learn to listen and take part in these conversations, and they must do so across levels and silos to succeed. As you might expect in a book published by Harvard Business Press, there is as much emphasis here on the required organizational change as their is data to justify it.
While any of these books is a great place to start for ways to move to a real customer focus, all three should be required reading at any company hoping to join the 8%, and each cuts across more disciplines than the expertise of it’s authors might imply.
About Dale
Entrepreneur and Advisor.
Founder, LeanScale.
Partner, SF AppStudio.I've been a software engineer, a rocket scientist, a CEO, an author, editor and publisher, a personal trainer (to movie stars, Olympic and professional athletes), and helped build a couple of mobile and Internet ad agencies.
Yeah, I was also the guy at the front of the iPhone line; all three times. iPad, too.
I write about startups, business, technology (especially mobile, social and web), and sometimes I review the gadgets I love to play with.
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