Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

This article was contributed by Edvaldo Acir, Business Development for FOX Latin American Channels, and Andre Bodowski, a Brazilian-American Marketing Manager operating in New York and São Paulo, Brazil.

Across the globe, marketers are looking for ways to tap into the mobile medium. In Latin America, certain initiatives are finding success through observing consumer behavior and applying business models and technology accordingly.

UOL, the largest Internet web portal in Brazil, has started to explore mobile offerings. Its mobile portal now enables advertisers with the functionality of "click to call." When users click on the ads from their mobile web browser, their phone dials out, connecting to the company's call center and further assistance. UOL promotes the service by making "click to call" banners less expensive for advertisers.

In December 2009, Claro Wireless, one of the largest operators in Latin America, launched a new form of mobile marketing. With technology acquired from the North American company MyScreen, Claro customers can now opt-in to receive an image delivered to their handsets at the end of every call. The image remains on screen for a few seconds so that users can click-t0-call or click to view a video.

Leonardo Xavier, the CEO of Brazil's Ponto Mobi, reminds us that in today's marketing environment, messaging needs to be served with permission and relevance in mind. If this is the case, consumers will engage with brands and come back for more. This is especially important when it comes to the mobile medium, as it is the most personal of digital communication channels. It is also one that is ever-present and used consistently.

Xavier highlights two new mobile campaigns that he considers well executed:

1.  The Sampling Machine for Dove Men+Care lets users retrieve samples from a vending machine via SMS. This took an old technology and put it to use in a new and involving way. Customers were amazed by the simple fact that they could text-in to receive the product.

2. The Nivea Sun iPhone app lets users know the current weather condition. It does this through the phone's built-in GPS and presents suggested FSP according to the user's age, genre, and skin type.

With these examples, we see that mobile marketing can be especially useful, even for brands that do not already have a mobile-optimized website. Mobile also opens up opportunities for small and mid-sized companies that may not be able to afford any form of online mobile presence. It is a gold mine for local businesses; food delivery services, dry cleaners, and other service providers are able to advertise online and target only the consumers in their immediate surroundings.

Have you ever gone on vacation and wished you had left your phone at home?  Finnish student Johanna Nieminen has conceptualized a service called "Disconnected Holidays" that allows people to do just this.

You just load disconnectedholidays.com (not a working URL) into your browser and enter in your home address, they send you a box, you put your mobile phone inside, mail it off, and then it’ll be mailed back to you after a few days.

Mailing your phone off somewhere before you go on vacation might seem silly, but it is an idea that has crossed many of our minds before. People find the idea of becoming unreachable at least for a moment of time appealing.

[via IntoMobile]

North American mobile companies are influencing user behavior across the globe. Whereas European and Japanese manufacturers were once most powerful, companies like Apple and RIM (Blackberry) are now changing the way people work and play.

In Eastern Europe specifically, these two companies have been facing off in hopes of placing their devices in the hands of business users. Operators M-Tel and Globul fuel this competition between BlackBerry and Apple within Bulgaria. Both provide users with useful but pricey plans including Internet access, a mailbox, and free calling minutes.

Whether accessing the mobile Internet via Wi-Fi hotspots or through the country’s still developing 3G coverage, constant connectivity is changing consumer lifestyle. Carrier coverage in Bulgaria is almost 80%. Healthy competition between the three mobile operators has probably had something to do with the country’s placement as the second most mobile connected country in Eastern Europe, ranking just below Italy.

How are Bulgarian users putting mobile technology to work? Almost every single person has a mobile phone with more than half using it for more than just voice calls. Businessmen are using them to access the Internet and work while on-the-go. Easy, everywhere access is letting users perform tasks and find information at anytime. Tzevetelin Simov, owner and creator of Business Logic accountancy services, says that 80% of his company computers are notebooks. His mobile phone is mostly used for voice calls and as an organizer. Again, 3G is expensive in Bulgaria, so he relies on Wi-Fi.

Dimitar Angelkov, Chief Technical Officer at Mag Studio, considers his Apple iPhone an electronic adjutant, not just a mobile phone. On a daily basis it is used as a personal organizer, email client, web browser and video player. He sees mobile as the leading IT segment which will soon replace the old fashioned PC for common daily uses.

Of course as this new mobile platform develops, advertisers are looking for ways to reach the influential Belgian consumer. Times are tough, and mobile is a cost effective solution. A lot of companies have already developed marketing campaigns around mobile devices. M-Tel has a mobile version of their website, leading Eastern European interactive agency Mag Studio created the first mobile merchant for the Bulgarian market. As iPhone applications are becoming easier to create and distribute, advertisers are applying a slice of their marketing budget towards their development.

Being as resourceful as they are, big brands have the ability to lead the way in this space. Coca Cola created a mobile version of their “Happiness Factory 3” where a unique code was printed inside of bottles. Participants voted for their favorite character from the Happiness Factory spot. As a reward, participants were given a free ring tone and wallpaper from Coca Cola. Beck’s also rolled out a smart code campaign where barcode coupons were delivered to mobile devices, redeemable for special prizes upon scanning.

As both hardware companies and operators build their businesses in Bulgaria, user lifestyle is changing. Everywhere access combined with improved processing power is providing those in business a more efficient routine and consumers a new way to interact with their favorite brands.

This article was contributed by Edvaldo Acir, Business Development at FOX Latin American (Linkedin: http://bit.ly/1MV67Q) and Ivaylo Netsov, New Business Development for Mag Studio Ltd in Bulgaria (email: ivaylo.netsov@magstudio.bg;  mobile: +359878411682).

In Brazil, a country with a population of 190 million, there were 173.9 million mobile phones by the end of 2009 -- that means 9 out of 10 people have one. While Brazil is only the world’s 10^th largest economy, it has a higher cell phone penetration rate than that of the United States.

While pre-paid phones dominate the market--82.55% of the market, vs 17.45% post-paid--the iPhone has become an object of desire  in Brazil and is increasingly in popularity. It's also changing mobile behavior. Of the total number of mobile web hits in Brazil in February, almost half of them were made by the Apple phones, according to a recent survey.

The most awaited phone of recent times, the iPhone draws the attention of Brazilian consumers primarily because of the media player and web browsing. While those features are common in most modern cell phones, the difference is in how they work. Songs, pictures and videos are accessed through an interface similar to the iPod, one of the most popular players in the world and in Brazil. The web access interface is similar to that of computers, so it's a more robust experience for users. For the Brazilian advertiser Tomas Prado Felicio, who bought his iPhone in November 2010 through the Claro carrier, the number of applications available, the touch screen, the built-in iPod and web access through a larger screen are the main qualities of the device.

There isn’t an official survey tracing the iPhone's  Brazilian user profile so far. But in an informal consultation with some executives from operators Vivo, Claro and TIM, we learned that the majority are likely male-- about 70% --aged 20 to 40 that love technology and make more than USD $30,000 per year.

According to a list released by Apple, the top three apps in the Brazilian App Store last year are all utility-focused. The most downloaded was Sygic Mobile Brazil, the first turn-by-turn GPS to come with domestic maps. The office document editor was Quickoffice Mobile, which publishes and creates Word and Excel documents directly on the iPhone. Not surprisingly, eight of the apps on the list are mobile games, which many people play during pockets of down time.

As a result advertisers of this growing popularity, advertisers in the Brazilian market  are investing in creating iPhone applications.

Centauro, a large network of sporting goods stores in Brazil, created an app with customized running tips as part of its customer acquisition strategy. The company hired Marcos Paulo Reis, a famous Brazilian Triathlon coach, to provide the tips, and the app has turned out to be a great branding tool for the company.

The Brazilian subsidiary of Pizza Hut also launched an iPhone application that demonstrates how a well-designed campaign can generate significant revenue. It offers a video game in addition to an order function. This app allows users to build and place their orders, choosing from many choices of pizzas, pasta and chicken wings. The user can choose the size of the dish, add ingredients through a drag and drop function and even shake the iPhone in order to add seasoning to the order. Using the locator function of the iPhone, the app automatically sends the order to the nearest store. In only three months, the application was responsible for over one million dollars in sales. McDonald's in Brazil has followed suit with their own iPhone app.

There is an obvious hunger for this new technology that will grow the market in coming years.

More than one year before being officially launched and available for sale in Brazil, iPhones already accounted for half of the mobile internet traffic in the networks of Brazilian mobile carriers. Now Brazilian consumers can buy an iPhone--unlocked or subsidized, with a contract--from any of the four major carriers that operate in the country. But prices can be steep: A 32GB iPhone 3GS can cost upwards of $1,500 Brazilian Real (USD $885), and an unlimited voice and data plan will cost roughly $270 per month or USD $150. To be fair, monthly plans and cell phone handsets tend to be much more expensive in Brazil than in the U.S. because of heavy government taxation. Consumers choosing other smartphones will likely only find the same pricey options for unlimited voice and data.

But despite this price barrier, the iPhone market will surely grow. In addition to the better user experience it provides and the growing number of applications, there is an economic incentive. Since it is possible to provide content to be accessed for offline, without an Internet connection, data traffic can be less expensive. Mobile broadband is also becoming more popular in Brazil, and prices will become increasingly more accessible.

This article was contributed by Edvaldo Acir, who does Business Development for FOX Latin American Channels in Brazil, and Andre Bodowski, a Brazilian-American Marketing Manager who lives in New York and São Paulo.

Mobile giving to Haiti has topped $30 million, but wireless devices on the ground in Haiti are helping relief efforts as well.  Haiti.ushahidi.com (testimony in Swahili) is a crisis map of Haiti that allows for people on the ground there to report emergencies and missing persons after the January 12 disaster.

By texting to 4636, Haitians can report their location and their needs -- things like food and medical supplies, lists of survivors, even amputations. The service is being promoted on the ground by FEMA, the Red Cross International, and the U.N Foundation, the Clinton Foundation and others. In addition to SMS, reports can be contributed via web, email,  radio, satellite phone, Twitter, Facebook, TV, listserves, livestreams and situation reports. All the collected  information is mapped in close to real time on the site.

The incoming data is largely unstructured, so efforts to parse it are being crowdsourced. According to the site, volunteers at the Fletcher School's Situation Room are mapping about 50% of the reports 24 hours a day. The other 50% of reports come from the Ushahidi team and volunteers around the world. All reported incidents are available for download in .csv format -- right now there are about 1550. Each one includes an incident title, date, location, description, category, latitude and longitude and whether the submission was approved and verified.

The site also links to other crowdsourced efforts, including The Extraordinaries, which lets you tag photos coming in from the news, so they can better match images against missing persons databases, and Google.org's Person Finder, a gadget that lets people  submit information about missing persons and to search the database.

Crowdsourcing and citizen journalism efforts like this have been on the rise over the past few years with mobile taking a major role. Indeed, the phone is becoming a global equalizer, as we saw during the Iranian elections last summer. Mobile tools especially make sense in Haiti. According to a report from Research and Markets, Haiti’s fixed line teledensity was amongst the lowest in the world in early 2009, at less than 2%, while mobile penetration was over 40% in September 2008 and growing strongly. Given the stagnating fixed-line infrastructure and poor fixed-line penetration rates, the report concluded that mobile is likely to remain the principal form of telecommunications for the short-to-medium term.

Ushahidi itself is a great example of how mobile is being used to empower citizens in places where wired Internet access is low. The platform was initially created to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008.  Reports were submitted via the web and mobile phone and, according to the site, this initial deployment had 45,000 users in Kenya. Since then, it has developed into a larger-scale open source project for mobile citizen journalism. Their goal is to create a customizable platform that allows for any person or organization to set up their own way to collect and visualize information. It's alpha version was used by a number of groups and institutions including Al Jazeera during the War on Gaza, Vote Report India (to monitor the recent local elections) and Pak Voices (to map incidents of violence in Pakistan). Now in beta, is continually being tested with various partners, primarily in Kenya.

Haiti.ushahidi.com

Thanks to Oscar Salazar for telling us about this project.

India may have developed its own version of Twitter. SMS GupShup is a service that offers groups of cellphone users the opportunity to text message for free with the intent of promoting social networking through text messaging. Users discuss everything from stock tips to religion.

The key to SMS GupShup's strategy is two-fold: one, in a country like India, Internet usage is low and consumers use cellphones more than PCs. And two, that the service can stay free as long as it does not become too popular.

Wall Street Journal reports:

“SMS GupShup's strategy of targeting cellphone users comes with special challenges. Each text message a user sends costs money and SMS GupShup—which means "chitchat" in Hindi—pays on their behalf. While the company buys capacity in bulk from Indian wireless operators, it still costs about 20 cents for each 200 messages.

Given those economics, SMS GupShup is being careful not to let its message traffic grow beyond its ability to generate revenue, which is coming in from advertisers...”

The company limits usage to a maximum of four to eight messages per day, depending on the audience size. This contrasts with U.S. social-networking startups who do not restrict usage because of affordable, web-based services.

Telecommunication companies are worried about current developments in the world of the mobile internet. There is a change in user habits and behavior, the popularity of using multiple social networks and applications that stream video and audio is growing. The difference between the traditional use of mobile internet (e-mail, chat, and sporadic visits to different sites) and the social network use of mobile internet is that the latter is ongoing and constant. Social networks become, with each new cycle of innovation, environments for constant exchange of information, and with ever larger data transmission, whether in the form of applications, videos, pictures or other files.

Miguel Dorneles, Manager of Products and Operations at FOX Latin American Channels, tells us that 2009 consolidated "live blogging" activities and established once and for all a term that is becoming increasingly popular (even among non-digital mainstream players): the so-called "social media." For Dorneles, 2010 is the year of the socialization of the media, which in his own words means “we’re becoming part of a communication layer that once was one-way, almost dictatorial, that now begins to govern a world apparently more proactive and feedback-based”.

Fixed networks in the U.S. have been preparing themselves for this expansion of internet use for at least the last four years, but now the expansion in data use is also happening in the mobile networks. Mobile carrier AT&T experienced an increase in network traffic because of the overwhelming amount of data downloaded by iPhone users. Over the past three years, AT&T's data traffic increased 4932% due to data-heavy iPhone use. This is an increase of almost 50 times over what it was in the fourth quarter of 2006.

According to Andre Bodowski, a marketing manager based in New York and Sao Paulo, the “data use explosion is just beginning and it will not only affect AT&T, but other U.S., European and South American operators as new “Google” phones and new Blackberry models allow for ever greater expansion of video, audio and constant streaming of data to mobile phones”.

Mary Meeker, analyst at Morgan Stanley draws attention to the challenge of mobile internet and mobile social networking. Meeker said that 2009 was the year that mobile internet had gained momentum. To her there is an inflection point where a technology becomes popular, accessible and self-sustaining. In the case of mobile Internet, this inflection point occurs around 20% of the total of all mobile users. This mark of 20% has already been reached now for several years in Japan, and more recently in Western Europe and the USA.

Observing the dynamics of the market in Japan in light of significant penetration of 3G networks (currently around 90%), Meeker has observed a convergence point where important mobile platforms have become the main form of social networking. Today, access to social networking through mobile networks is three times larger than the access via fixed networks, which naturally puts a strain on the infrastructure of wireless networks, because people remain connected at all times and because of the fact that the size of the files exchanged is much larger than with regular mobile internet use.

Much still remains to be done to develop and increase mobile social networks. Phones have to allow easier typing and carriers have to introduce more features, like the possibility to capture and share full motion videos, for example, in order to make this a truly rich experience.

But what is clear is that mobile networks are every day more attached to the development of the Internet and applications that thrive in this environment and the use of these applications will grow despite questions on whether or not the business model will be profitable. The best proof is the phenomena of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, where usage has grown exponentially even though their balance sheets do not necessarily follow the same trend. So to conclude, wireless companies need to be prepared to withstand this new mass use of the Social Networks and applications.

Edvaldo Acir is currently Head of Business Development at FOX Latin American Channels and works with digital media since 1998. He has a Master degree in progress at UNICAMP (research about mobile market) and a Post Graduation degree at ECA/USP in Advertising and Marketing (research about internet and mobile market). Contact: edvaldoacir [at] uol.com.br