Tag Archives: NFC

Mobile and offline media: bridging the gap

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In this age of digital marketing, one might believe the days of outdoor and other traditional advertising platforms are numbered. However, the emergence of new media platforms has provided several opportunities to use these traditional media in interesting ways.

The inclusion of digital services within traditional marketing creates a call to action scenario, ultimately transforming a push message into an interactive pull communication.

The three most common forms of mobile calls to action are commonly referred to as text, scan and tap.

Text: Long before there were smartphones, brands have been using SMS as a tool to provide one-on-one communication. Today, SMS remains a commonly used marketing channel because of its simplicity and ubiquity.

Scan: A more recent tool for mobile engagement is the QR code. QR codes aren’t new but the fact that your smartphone’s camera can scan and read data from a QR code has made it a popular choice for out-of-home engagement. Commonly, QR codes will simply open up a URL but they can be programmed in different ways.

Tap: Near-field communication (NFC) is a technology that uses radio fields for contactless communication. Tags can be hidden in stickers or integrated into posters or billboards. Many new smartphones now support NFC, enabling devices to simply tap a tag without having to open any apps.

When integrating text, scan or tap mobile interaction into offline advertising platforms, there are five key considerations to keep in mind.

1. Placement

A good call to action should always be prominently visible. Simply putting a tiny QR code or NFC tag at the bottom of a bus shelter ad is not going to drive much engagement. Try to reserve some dedicated space for your call to action so that it is easily noticed and not lost in the display. Walmart Canada had a great campaign with Mattel where outdoor ad space in busy train stations was used to create a virtual toy store for busy parents, featuring the must-have toys for the 2012 holiday season. With a clear, eye-level call to action, passersby were made aware of how to interact. One of the key selling points, free shipping, was featured prominently.

Walmart virtual toy store

Billboards and other large outdoor ads are typically seen from a distance. When scanning or tapping is not possible, SMS is always an option. Make sure both the keyword and SMS number are clearly visible.

2. Reach and limitations

SMS is supported by all mobile handsets and therefore has the biggest reach. QR codes work on most smartphones, either natively or via a free QR reader app. NFC devices are growing in popularity with most new Android and Windows phones having NFC chips built in. SMS works well for competition entries, text-based alerts or simple vouchers. Interactive, media rich promotions are normally targeted at smartphone users where QR codes are more suitable. NFC offers the most seamless option but tags come at a small cost and are not suitable for all print media. When running a joint QR/NFC promotion in Australia today, expect to see a 75/25 split with NFC growing steadily.

3. Relevance

The type of call to action you want to generate will influence what channel you use and how to market it. If a movie distributor wants to run a campaign with the intention of getting consumers to watch a movie trailer, it would makes sense to use a QR code as viewing the trailer would require a smartphone and the code can take them directly to the website hosting the trailer. If the call to action is to get consumers to enter a competition, SMS campaigns work well with most consumers willing to pay the cost of sending a SMS for the chance to win something. A recent study in the UK showed that 90% of consumers believe that interactivity makes an ad more effective in capturing their attention with three in four likely to interact again. Even so, don’t expect consumers to interact with you if there is no clear benefit. Campaigns that entice, educate, reward or surprise tend to drive the best interaction rates.

4. Device targeting

If you use one of the mobile channels to direct users to a URL, make sure you use a good redirection platform so you can serve up content that looks and works best on the user’s phone. This way, you can show a link to your brand’s new iPhone app exclusively to users on an iOS device – no need to show an Android user what they can’t get. Similarly, you might want to limit mandatory fields to the bare minimum for users on non-touchscreen devices as typing can put people off when using a numerical keypad.

5. Reporting

SMS campaigns, when set up properly, are a great way to build up an opt-in database of mobile numbers, a clear advantage over NFC/QR-based campaigns in some cases. Whether you use SMS, QR codes or NFC, make sure you use different identifiers for all your campaigns and if possible even for every individual ad you run. That way you can measure the performance of every single ad, any time of day. Whether your goal is to drive site traffic, Facebook likes, newsletter subscribers or sales, mobile technology can make traditional media fully accountable on a micro level.

 

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Watershed moment for mobile payments: Visa and Samsung ink global NFC deal

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Visa and Samsung have formed a global alliance to turn smartphones into credit cards in a move that could prove a major step in taking the digital wallet into the mainstream.

Announcing the partnership overnight at the Mobile World Congress, the tie-up will see a Visa payWave application embedded into all next-generation Samsung NFC smartphones.

The trust the Visa name brings to the mix will be a telling factor in the development of mobile payments, consumer analyst at Ovum, Eden Zoller, believes.

“It’s a significant agreement that could give NFC a much-needed boost, given that Visa is a trusted payment brand, while Samsung is the top smartphone manufacturer in terms of shipments and a driving force behind the increasingly popular Android device platform.”

Visa will power the secure element in the phones, giving users the assurance of its Mobile Provisioning Service and secure upload of payment account information. Banks and other payment processors will be able to develop their own apps that work with the secure element.

Google’s move into the space with Google Wallet has struggled to gain traction in the absence of existing payment infrastructure and relationships with banks and carriers.

Mariano Dima, executive vice president, Visa Europe, says the payment provider is delighted to build on its long-standing relationship with Samsung, which included a trial of the system during the London Olympics. “A Samsung device equipped with the Visa contactless payment service is a powerful proposition and will allow us to make mobile payments a reality for people around the world,” Dima believes.

The partnership with Visa continues Samsung’s commitment to pioneering NFC (near-field communications), Dr Won-Pyo Hong, president and head of media solution centre at Samsung adds. “We believe that we have a strong value proposition for financial institutions that will ultimately allow consumer choice in NFC payments.”

The move is expected to bring more financial institutions onboard as they can use Visa’s Mobile Provisioning Service to securely upload customers’ payment account information onto NFC-enabled Samsung phones.

“Both Samsung and Visa are committed to NFC and we would expect them to put effort and marketing muscle behind making consumers aware of the potential benefits that NFC payments can bring,” Zoller predicts.

“This is desperately needed as for most consumers, mobile payments – let alone NFC – is simply not on their radar.”

Ovum’s latest Consumer Insights survey found mobile commerce related applications remained limited in their use. Visa data shows a four-fold increase in contactless payments over the past year globally with around 13 million transactions made on its network per month.

Mashable’s Christina Warren receives a demonstration of the system at Mobile World Congress in the video below:

 

 

UBank in world first NFC social media campaign for Midsumma Festival

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UBank will use Near Field Communications (NFC) technology in a social media campaign, in what it claims is a world first for a banking institution.

The bank, an arm of NAB, will use NFC chipped wristbands that create posts to participants’ Facebook accounts each time they touch on at designated points around Melbourne’s upcoming Midsumma Festival.

Upon entry to the festival, participants will be enticed to register for the campaign by the chance to win $5000 and an assortment of other prizes. Entrants will be given a wristband which they can then use to touch on at seven designated points, or with seven roaming attendants, each representing a colour of the rainbow.

Over 20,000 festival-goers of the queer culture festival will be able to enter, as can people who register through the festival’s UBank Facebook app from home.

The campaign will promote UBank’s ‘PeopleLikeU’, a tool which finds spending trends among consumers similar to the searcher and compares it to the nation’s spending habits to help people visualise how they’re spending.

A fact from the tool’s database, such as “Melburnians spend 10% more on fashion than Sydneysiders,  but 20% less on the arts”, will be shared on participants’ Facebook walls each time they check in.

The campaign is an attempt to bring UBank’s sponsorship of the event to life, according to cofounder of the social media agency behind the campaign, Troy Townsend from Tiger Pistol.

“The big thing for UBank was that they were trying to bring social into one of their sponsored events; so how do they actually leverage their sponsorship of Midsumma to increase likes and engagement on their Facebook page.”

NFC was chosen to get into an innovation space and to make participating easier, Townsend adds. “Instead of just being a one-on-one interaction you only have to connect it once to have that sort [check in on Facebook] of interaction. It’s easier for the consumer and they get something that they can reuse – a wristband that they may use again around the event.”

Customer loyalty at the phone tip

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On the occasion of Walmart’s 50 years in business, a recent article in Business Week highlighted how each week more than 140 million Americans shop at Walmart, a figure that far surpasses the audience of the 2012 Super Bowl (one of the most watched television events in the US) or the voter turnout of the 2008 presidential election. Back home on Australian shores, the situation will be fairly similar if we were to compare shoppers at Woolworths or Coles and the footy finals or announcement of Australia’s Got Talent winner, which was the most watched show last year.

The question I ask now is: which avenue presents more marketing and brand engagement opportunity? Consumers at home (or wherever they are watching the shows) or shoppers standing in front of your product? Point-of-purchase (POP) is still such an untapped potential for most marketers. It isn’t too often you hear of a marketing strategy that is led by POP and in-store marketing. It still forms a support function for the above-the-line and other marketing functions. That’s despite the fact that almost 70% of purchasing decisions are made in store.

In a world fragmented by technology and short consumer attention span, the need to create and retain brand loyalists through every available opportunity is more important than ever. We don’t have any excuses for not doing this either – not when the infiltration of technology is making solutions more cost effective and easy to manage. The coupon and loyalty cards which were the mainstay of most loyalty programmes is now evolving to integrate through omni-channel marketing into comprehensive social media campaigns. Technologies such as QR codes and as near-field communication (NFC)(eg. Tapit) are shaping this new wave of retail marketing and that’s the opportunity for marketers, retailers and brands.

Have a think of how new shopper behaviour patterns are shaping your marketing and retail plans. In the past, shoppers would go into a store, review the selections presented and make a choice on the product. This process would to an extent be influenced by advertising seen prior to, on the way to, or at the store. In the digital age, most empowered shoppers research purchases prior to store visit and will shop with an agenda and a clear idea of expectations. The opportunity here is in POP and how marketers convince these shoppers to not just change their mind and pick up their product, but also engage with the brand to become a loyalist.

Where in-store advertising aims to influence impulse purchases, NFC technology goes two steps further to create brand engagement and give marketers the ability to roll out integrated campaigns easily. Imagine a shopper walking up to a fridge to pick up a couple of beers on Friday night. With NFC technology, the said shopper could place his phone on the fridge and have the latest footy scores sent to it instantly – adding a little bit of value and excitement to his purchase. Or, to make it more engaging, the advertising message could prompt him to enter a competition to win tickets to the State of Origin game. In a ‘here and now’ world, loyalty and gratification is made instantaneous by such technology.

The real-estate associated with the display unit also increases when you have stronger audience engagement with it. The relevance of display units within the marketing framework gains more relevance from the shopper’s perspective. From a POP design and manufacturing company’s point of view, this builds a stronger case for semi-permanent and permanent displays that display easily-updatable messages. More women buying beer from the display unit than men? Just update your marketing content at hundreds or thousands of sites from a desktop to share recipe ideas using beer or calorie counts of different beers.

With most phone manufacturers around the world committing to NFC and marketers slowly acknowledging the importance of integrating all campaign touch points with technology, this just could be the next big opportunity for brands. It lets you own the channel and not just the brand and makes your POP very pertinent in the future. And, it also helps measure the effectiveness of campaigns successfully and in almost real-time.

 

Is a physical Google credit card on the way?

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Who needs NFC to use Google Wallet when you can wield a physical Google Wallet card instead?

According to Android Police, who received the information from an ‘anonymous tipster’, Google is working on a physical Google Wallet card to make the system usable at retailers that don’t operate wave and pay technology necessary for NFC payments.

The card will function exactly like a regular credit card with one crucial exception: it will charge to whatever is currently the default card on your Google Wallet account.

Android Police published leaked screenshots of the ordering procedure for the card, which allows interested parties to have the card sent to them in the post.

The images indicate the card will be usable where all major credit and debit cards are accepted.

It looks like the ability to deposit and withdraw money from a ‘Wallet Balance’ is currently being added, along with person-to-person money transfers and transit card functionalities.

While the idea of a physical card sounds like a sound move towards boosting adoption rates of the mobile wallet service, Google is yet to confirm whether the reports are accurate.

With Macworld.

Samsung hits back at Apple with ‘It doesn’t take a genius’ ad

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Samsung has hit back at rival Apple taking aim at the iPhone 5 in an ad that carries the message ‘It doesn’t take a genius’.

As well as taking a jab at Apple’s ‘genius bar’ retail help desk, and potentially founder Steve Jobs, the ad suggests that the decision between the two devices isn’t rocket science.

The ad which ran in US newspapers over the weekend pits the specifications of the recently released iPhone against the Galaxy S III. The list compares a number of common features, pointing out areas where the Galaxy matches or surpasses the iPhone, like its larger and higher resolution screen, greater battery life and extra RAM. Samsung has listed a host of additional features making the list of specs for its phone look much longer than Apple’s.

It also points out the lack of near-field communications (NFC) technology in the iPhone, which can be used for mobile payments as well as a wave for more information tool on products. In addition, the ad pokes fun at the new ‘Lightning’ plug introduced in this iteration of the iPhone, which has drawn criticism for forcing past iPhone owners to upgrade their docking equipment.

Samsung recently lost a court battle to Apple over patents, and was ordered to pay $1 billion in infringement costs.

 

Nokia has joined Samsung in attacking their competitor on this very point, with a tweet from Nokia’s official Twitter account on Friday night (US time) using almost exactly the same sentence. It seems great (but not genius) minds, as they say, think alike:

Nokia iphone samsung genius

 

Will Apple’s Passbook be a pocket rocket in the digital wallet wars?

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By Rob Livingstone, University of Technology, Sydney

You might not realise it, but there is a virtual queue of organisations snaking around you just waiting to make you more valuable than you actually are. Your spending patterns, loyalty program memberships and location at any point in time is worth good money – especially to others.

Apple is the latest to join this queue, with their Passbook offering on iOS6 iPhones. This offering will allow you to store and redeem discount vouchers, movie tickets, passenger boarding passes, and any other loyalty-based incentives offered by organisations with the resources to invest in this proprietary Apple technology. This is also likely the first step taken by Apple on its journey to insert itself into the actual payments stream. Unlike the Google Wallet, Passbook neither uses near-field communications (NFC) nor stores credit card or other financial data – for now at least.

The consolidation of your life’s transactions into a single point, such as your smartphone, is probably the end goal of any organisation that is interested in you as the product. Utilising smartphone technologies, organisations wishing to sell their services to you are constantly working on ways to personalise their offers to you – preferably in real time. By combining the geospatial and other positioning data in real-time, either from your GPS or cell phone location information, organisations are able to deliver real-time data to you that are both relevant and timely.

Consider this scenario. As you are walking (or driving) towards a cinema, you receive a text or email offering you a free upgrade to premier seating for the movie about to screen. You decide to take up the offer and buy your movie ticket on your smartphone there and then. When you walk into the cinema, you just present your smartphone at an automated turnstile, and then head off to watch your movie. No paper or people involved. During that time, your digital trace has been tracked, collated and all financial and other rewards or loyalty systems have been updated with the transactions that have just occurred. This is merely another brick in the digital superhighway, and another dollar towards those putting a value on your interests and spending behaviours.

From the merchant’s perspective, there are potential cost savings in each transaction they have with you. The costs associated with voucher printing, staff handling conventional point of sale transactions and so on are potentially more than offset by moving customers to the digital wallet/Passbook. No doubt as you read this article many organisations vying for your attention, are weighing up the return on investment in the latest offering from Apple.

Interestingly enough, though, the uptake of the Google Wallet smartphone has been a lot slower than the initial hype predicted. Barriers to uptake are not trivial. The challenge for organisations such as Google and Apple lies in gaining a critical mass of retailers and business partners that are willing to invest effort and money in the digital wallet model.

Designing enterprise-strength, secure digital wallet software for the volatile ecosystem of smartphones — and running a range of operating systems with short half-lives — is neither cheap nor easy. Which horse do they pick? Apple or Android? Which OS? Maybe hedge bets by developing 2 systems, one for each ecosystem. Twice the cost, half the value.

The reality is that it’s not what flight you take or movies you see that’s important per-se. It’s you, your community; your societal living patterns that are a potential gold mine for organisations wanting to shape products and services that they think you may want or need – all wrapped up in the convenience of your mobile device. In this game, you as the end consumer of these services have a choice. Choose wisely!

 

Rob Livingstone does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation mentioned in this article. He is the owner and principal of an advisory practice that provides independent IT advice as well as other strategic consulting services to industry.

The Conversation

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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Gartner: Cloud disillusions, NFC and big data to deliver on hype

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‘Big data’ and mobile payments using NFC chips in smartphones are among the breaking technology set to deliver on their hype, while cloud computing is on “a path to disillusionment”, according to a study from Gartner.

Released annually, the analyst’s ‘Hype Cycle’ report assesses more than 1900 technologies to provide industry watchers with forecasts of what to expect from upcoming technology trends.

The report reads: “Cloud computing is still a visible and hyped term, but, at this point, it has clearly passed the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’ [a point on the curve]. There are signs of fatigue and signs of disillusionment (e.g. highly visible failures).”

Gartner Research VP LeHong says cloud is not seeing the uptake that the industry expected, meaning its impact on the marketing world will not arrive for some time. “I think cloud computing is moving slower than what everyone thought it would. Everybody has been talking about cloud for so long, but it’s not moving very quickly along the curve and is heading towards disillusionment,” LeHong says.

NFC (near-field commmunication) chips, which enable mobile payments and wave-for-information functionality on products or points of sale, and big data are among a number of ‘tipping point’ technologies considered to be on the verge of tipping into the mainstream.

HTML5, machine-to-machine and in-memory databases are expected to tip, but LeHong identifies mobile payments using NFC and big data as the two that are particularly interesting.

“We put quite a big focus on payments first of all, which includes NFC technology. These are just coming off the peak of the Hype Curve,” LeHong adds. “This is one of the tipping point technologies that I would pay close attention to – it has the potential to impact customers quite broadly. There is a lot of noise about it at the moment, but it is heading towards a period of disillusionment.

“The promise of it is huge, but so is the challenge, hence why it opens itself up to negative hype. But we believe that this is just one of the stages technology goes through, industry, consumers and the world will soon understand what is possible from NFC.”

LeHong also touts the benefits of big data, but more specifically, complex event processing.

“Another thing that’s quite interesting is the whole big data and analytics side. It is quite hyped up right now, but the promise is there. Companies are able to process information that they were not able to do before – unstructured information – but it’s also about the speed at which they can do this,” he says.

“For example, take pricing. In the past if you wanted to maximise your margins as a retailer, or maximise your unit sales, you would run an optimisation and only really get to do it once, because of the time it took. Now you can run two or three scenarios in the same amount of time and can understand a number of different customers. It’s a subtle change but it really improves decision making.

“A complementary part of big data is complex event processing, which is not the speed of crunching algorithms, but the speed of taking in real-time data to the magnitude of thousands of events per second. So think about a stock market, for a bank to be able to understand its trading position in real time, is a really interesting proposition.”

Other new technologies flagged include 3D scanners, silicon anode batteries, crowdsourcing and consumer telematics.

 

Originally published on Marketing‘s sister site Macworld. Additional content from Marketing staff.

 

Debate: NFC is just Bluetooth in a new dress

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Near-field communication (NFC) is just Bluetooth in a new dress.

 

 

Jeremy Corfield

Jeremy Corfield

Global director, commercial

EYE

Negative – I am going to disagree with this one. Why? Because NFC is simpler, faster, cheaper and more ubiquitous than Bluetooth.

They’re different things and not just from a technology perspective. Bluetooth can do a good OOH marketing job, but for me the technology is about transmitting – push – rather than opt-in. NFC in a marketing sense, however, is all about opt-in.

Bluetooth requires a capital cost to deploy and manage transmitters, it incurs communications costs and needs to establish a pairing between two devices. These can all be overcome if the audience and location match up well and the offer is right but they do stress the business model and the consumer proposition.

NFC only requires inexpensive, unpowered tags. There is no need for a pairing – the interaction is instant, then over. Everything after that happens virtually. You don’t need a network; there is no communication cost to provide it. Its main limitation is handset availability and that is changing very quickly.

Bluetooth use hasn’t penetrated too far beyond marketing uses and connecting personal devices like your hands- free system or gaming controller. NFC is an entirely different proposition – it is embedded in a wide range of payment systems already; it is in your frequent flyer card, it’s emerging as a public transport ticketing tool, mobile wallets are on the way. So that means that ‘tapping’ will be a natural consumer behaviour in the very near future.

Let’s not forget that in a marketing sense NFC is just one technology for getting your content on to your customers’ phones. But offering it with other technologies, like QR codes and even SMS (and, if you’re really agnostic, Bluetooth too) to give your customers multiple windows to your offer, depending on their preference, goes a long way to making sure that whatever your offer, your customer can access it. OOH has done its bit – then it’s up to you.

 

Leah WhitfordLeah Whitford

Managing director

iOM

Negative – NFC will deliver currency and breathe new life into what has for decades been perceived as an ‘old fashioned’ and out-dated medium. NFC gives OOH a golden opportunity to provide brands with not only awareness, but also a commitment to purchase all in one hit. This interactive point of sale will provide real revenue and real business models to the OOH industry.

Unlike Bluetooth NFC’s only requirement is proximity, additionally its immediacy, simplicity and context differentiate it from Bluetooth. The reality is Bluetooth was never intended as a marketing medium. It was intended to connect to other devices or for peer-to-peer file sharing. As such there has been little investment in the channel or the technology.

Unlike Bluetooth, NFC has had considerable investment in its technology by companies with the money to drive it, for example banks, mobile manufacturers etc. With estimates

that NFC will be a standard feature in most smartphones in the next 12 months it would stand to reason that NFC (unlike Bluetooth) has a future.

Obviously, consumer adoption is the key to NFC but as smartphones and tap and pay become more and more accepted as a means of secure payment and interaction the market will naturally follow. It may not be 12 months away but certainly in the next five years.

NFC is exciting technology that will integrate the offline OOH world with the online world and provide a platform for brands to add immediate currency to their OOH campaigns.

 

Shaun Branagan Shaun Branagan

Head of innovation and creative director, Melbourne

BWM

Negative – Ok, yes, you could say NFC on OOH (oh the acronyms!) is just Bluetooth in a new dress. But boy, or rather girl, what a dress! Smarter, easier to put on. Sexier. More fashionable. It’s in! It’s now! It’s the new black. Those QR (dress) codes look so last season in comparison. But hey, that’s the hectic pace of fashion, err, technology.

Personally I found Bluetooth a hassle. I never went for the Bluetooth headset look. It was too ‘call centre’ for me. And pairing devices was sometimes a tricky process.

NFC is a simpler. Tap your smartphone and you’ve got access to a brave new world of content.

But is making your outdoor poster interactive over-engineering things? Well, that depends on what you believe a brand’s role is today.

If your brand is concerned with solely pushing messages at people, then making a poster interactive, just ‘cause you can, won’t cut it. I don’t believe people want to get all interactive with their bus-stop. Unless they’re super bored. Or the bus is very late.

However, if you believe a brand’s role is to be useful, then NFC on your billboard could just be the bright new thing. Give them an offer, coupon, a recipe or some exclusive content and you’ve made the wait at the bus stop more interesting.

One brand that has gone beyond the poster and used NFC to great effect is Epic Mix – a platform developed by a consortium of ski resorts in the US. The RFID chip embedded ski pass not only gets you onto ski lifts but records your stats, stores photos and connects to your social network. In short, keeps you loyal.

But back to the question of NFC on OOH. What’s more interesting to me than which technology will ultimately dominate (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, QR codes, NFC, Google goggles or something else) as the evolving role of the billboard from a branding tool to a direct response medium. Does that make interactive OOH just direct response in high heels?

 

Cameron BaxterCameron Baxter

Chief operations officer

Titan Media Group

Negative – NFC solutions can be incredibly effective if used in the correct environment. In environments where customers can act on the call to action immediately there is a real opportunity to monetise the interaction with a brand.

Our technology partner Aura Interactive is a pioneer in the space and CEO Adam Dunne explains that while NFC certainly is the shiny new name or buzz word that introduces proximity marketing and proximity payments to today’s marketer and consumer, we need to understand that Bluetooth is just one of the technologies that can be used to deliver NFC solutions, along with RFID, ultrasonic audio and WiFi.

Consumers are most concerned about what’s in it for me, the skill for the marketer is to also work out what’s in it for their brand and what they can provide for the consumer through interactivity and theatre.

Adam cites the need for a compelling and relevant offer, obtaining permission and respecting the consumer’s privacy in order to encourage opt-in. But if these elements are aligned, uptake is promising; well over five million Australian mobile devices have interacted with OOH advertisers via Bluetooth in bus shelters, shopping malls and cinemas in the past few years, which proves that when the value is there, the consumers will engage and interact.

From a brand advertising perspective, NFC offers the holy grail of ‘closing the loop’. Of being able to track consumer engagement and interaction with a media site all the way through to the point of sale. But with the next generation of NFC mobile devices this experience will be made easier even for the non-technical mass-market consumer to enjoy.

This seamless experience will ensure that over the next few years, tapping your phone on a poster for an offer or at the point of sale at your local store will become a normal behaviour.

 

Mobile telecoms industry predictions for 2012

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Like all tech-based industries, telecommunications is a sector in flux. With game-changing devices making their presence felt, low-cost smartphones, tablets and an app economy are tipped to dominate the field of play for telecoms in 2012 in a new report released by Deloitte.

In their Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions report, the management consultants forecast that over half a billion low-cost smartphones (costing less than $100) will be in use by the end of 2012.

But with so many variations of smartphones and tablets set to emerge the task for app developers stands to become more challenging.

According to global leader of Deloitte’s technology, media and telecommunications practice, Jolyon Barker, the number of apps in stores will only continue to grow but developers may have to make up to 360 versions if they wish to cover all devices.

“The number of apps available reached one million in December 2011 and will double again by the end of 2012. However, the proportion that are paid for remains small. Only a fifth of downloaded apps sell more than 1,000 copies and only a tiny proportion of unpromoted apps will ever become successful,” Barker says.

The report goes on the read: “With so much choice on offer, app-store providers should consider ways to improve and assure the quality of the products on offer. Stores should look to differentiate by considering subscription models focused on different genres, or selected by editors, that would create ‘app bundles’. As smartphones go truly mass market, there will be a growing demand for local language, local content apps.”

The low-cost smartphone will have the look and feel of current smartphones, but weaker processors, less memory, slower connectivity and lower resolution cameras. Purchasers of these devices are expected to reside primarily in emerging markets, but traction as ‘starter’ phones for teenagers is expected in mature markets also.

The report predicts the rise of the $100 smartphone will be comparable to the growth of the netbook, which offered a low-cost and low-powered alternative to standard laptops.

The report also forecast a surge in the use of near field communication (NFC) technology, best known for its application as a wave and pay mobile wallet.

According to Simon Kerton-Johnson, lead telecoms partner at Deloitte: “The number of devices with embedded near-field communications technology is set to soar to 200 million by the end of 2012.

“NFC – the transfer of small amounts of data over a very short distance – has been dominated by the ‘wave and pay’ notion of embedding a credit card into a mobile phone but the application of the technology is likely to have a wider reach,” Kerton-Johnson says.

Other applications of NFC listed as on the horizon include gambling, games and healthcare.

The analysis also predicted 5m tablets will be sold globally to consumers who already own at least one such device, in what it calls the rise of the multi-tablet owner.

More predictions for the telecoms industry are covered in the full report.

Mobile wallet still years from reality in Aus

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In the US, 2012 is being touted as the year of the mobile payment, but closer to home experts believe the mobile electronic wallet will not go mainstream in the next two years due to delays in infrastructure development.

According to Todd Wackwow, CEO of Australian mobile marketing firm POCKETvouchers, mobile payments for ecommerce will keep growing, but while payment apps may move the market forward, near field communications (NFC) enabled ‘mobile wallet’ payments in bricks and mortar stores will not take off in 2012 or even 2013.

“Delays in infrastructure deployment and dubious incremental value will mean it will take a while to reach the tipping point,” Wackwow says.

Writing for Marketing, founder of Third Screen Media, Joe Barber, agrees that NFC integration is not expected in 2012 or even as mainstream in 2013.

“The need to have NFC-enabled phones and NFC-enabled SIM cards will mean that broad consumer availability requires everyone to change handsets. This is not something that will happen inside 12 months,” Barber says.

Currently, few mobile handsets available in Australia contain the NFC technology required to integrate ‘wave and pay’ functionality into the device.

Google’s Galaxy Nexus contains the chip but the search giant has not made its payment app, Google  Wallet, available in Australia since it launched overseas in September (although there is a backdoor way for Australians to get it to temporarily work).

And with Apple yet to make a move into NFC, uptake of the technology will be hampered in the short term.

The financial services industry however is preparing itself with a number of players jostling to be first to market.

In July, the Commonwealth Bank announced that it expected to go straight to a live roll-out by the end of the year, and has since introduced its iPhone app Kaching, which requires a special case that is linked to a PayPass enabled MasterCard in order to complete transactions.

MasterCard and Visa are investing in pay and wave terminals with their PayPass and payWave systems, which Google claims are compatible with Google Wallet.

PayPal has previously said that it would bring NFC to the Australian market within the year and predicted the traditional wallet’s demise by 2015 after acquiring mobile payments provider Zong for $240 million earlier in the year.

While handset manufacturers lag behind the financial services industry in preparing for the technology in Australia, this is not the case in the US, where experts are watching the trend with greater optimism.

Writing for CNN, Mashable founder Pete Cashmore claims, “Next year is likely to be the year when mobile payments blossom. While we’ve seen a great deal of innovation in mobile payments technology this year – including the success of Square’s iPhone dongle, allowing anyone to accept credit card payments — 2012 is the year of NFC.

“By 2013, one in five cellphones are expected to be NFC-equipped. Early contenders include Google Wallet, Visa Wallet, Serve (by American Express) and ISIS.”

The future of… mobile

by ON
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This feature first appeared in the December 2011/January 2012 issue of Marketing magazine.

 

As 2011 comes to an end, Marketing magazine decided to take a look at the most rapidly evolving channels. The pace of change across the industry made this a difficult decision, but the three we’ve analysed all share a common and ever evolving game-changer: technology.

In the second of our predictions trilogy, Joe Barber explains that mobile mutations will continue so marketers must stay on top of the technology.

Finally, marketers will get a chance to catch up in 2012 with the rate of innovation in mobile finally looking to slow and give way to evolution. While many brands and marketers embrace new innovation with vigour, and try to create consumer engagement not only through high impact executions, but also through consumer intrigue with new novel technologies, the rest now have a chance to analyse various strategies and start adopting mobile as an integrated medium with unique and compelling consumer response patterns.

In a relatively short period (even compared to the rate of evolution in the ‘web world’), mobile has continued to bamboozle a marketer’s understanding and adoption with new challenges and offerings emerging so quickly.

For such a long period of time, the primary mobile marketing execution was a ‘text to win’ competition model, which was crudely entwined with other channels, if at all, and left to deliver its own isolated results, with limited or no appreciation for the true scope of being able to develop and create a direct one-to-one relationship between a brand and a consumer. Branded wallpapers and ringtones supplemented the SMS campaign and marketers viewed this channel as a necessary evil and, in many respects, a distraction from their core activities.

Within a very short period, MMS emerged and then the game changer: the iPhone. The iPhone completely changed the thinking and was the first device to deliver such a diversity of options directly to non-technical mainstream consumers. The high-resolution large screen, supported by an ever-increasing array of applications downloadable from the iStore, changed not only the way consumers suddenly viewed their phone, but also put the other vendors and many other technology companies into catch-up mode. Then came the plethora of device changes in things like form factor, interface modes like touch screens and screen sizes, which opened up a whole host of new opportunities for marketers.

For a short window of time, most brands delivered or were planning on delivering an iPhone app in support of their brand – from branded games through to immersive multimedia experiences all designed to have a consumer engage with the advertiser. Interestingly, it was for many brands the first time they could actually communicate one-on-one with a specific consumer. An exciting yet also daunting idea, leaving many marketers wondering how to best utilise the medium. For a long time, there was such a disconnection between the mobile campaigns and the rest of a brand’s integrated strategy.

The iPhone also saw the demise of Bluetooth as a proximity marketing tool, with iPhone leading the charge to have its Bluetooth only connect or ‘pair’ with audio devices. Combine that with the fact that all you have ever discovered with Bluetooth executions is the number of connections and downloads, and its decline in marketing was inevitable.

Just as marketers were beginning to understand the new landscape with SMS, MMS and now on-device applications, the incredible uptake of Google’s own Android operating system as a device-independent OS (operating system) suddenly occurred. In what seemed like a blink of the eye, the iPhone went from dominating the majority of all initiatives to what we see today – a more balanced market share between the top three to four vendors. Android is now a formidable opponent, which means marketers now have to consider more than just the iPhone when it comes to application development.

In 2011, brands enjoyed the ability to use very engaging multimedia experiences through on-device applications. The balancing of market share with no clear dominating leader unfortunately meant that cost became far higher to provide and distribute across the three to four major mediums. Now, however, the medium was able to deliver the multimedia experience, which enables far greater integration between channels, with TVC-like quality and production value emerging in applications.

2011 was also the year of the mobile web, in many ways accelerated to prominence by the cost of on-device applications. To reach the majority of consumers, it is now a case of three or four applications or a single mobile web. Notwithstanding the development costs and the loss of full multimedia objects, mobile web quickly took centre stage with the speed to market, device flexibility and, most importantly, cost.

One final part of mobile came into prominence in 2011 and started being explored in a range of ways: location-based mobile. Proximity has always been a fascinating idea – tracking a consumer’s path, location-based deals and coupons, and geo-specific calls to action. It started in earnest with Bluetooth, which promised marketers and brands a lot, but in reality fizzled to nothing. In many ways, Bluetooth proximity initiatives had all the right ideas and campaign executions, but lacked the direct consumer connection and was stuck by the technology itself in not being able to ‘see’ past the handset.

Proximity ideas evolved using the mobile as a carrier with RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, stickers or labels, with branding physically attached to the mobile and integrated in a new and different way. The consumer needed to link their RFID tag with their mobile number through a registration process and then RFID readers could be used to detect their presence. The most common use was for things like venue entry authentication and even ordering low-cost items like coffee at the local café.

Both Bluetooth and RFID, however, will give way to NFC (near field communications). This is a fully integrated technology requiring handsets and NFC-enabled SIM (subscriber identity module) cards and introduces an integration level that can launch applications and go beyond just detection. NFC will be a significant leap forward in potential brand executions and will deliver a level of integration not seen before – from detection (proximity) through to application launching, validation and linkage back to advertisers’ backend systems.

NFC will be the first true mobile replacement technology. It will supersede Bluetooth (as a marketing device) and RFID, and will introduce new and amazing things that a brand can do in its quest to interact and engage with a consumer. It is not, however, something that is expected in 2012 or even as mainstream in 2013. The need to have NFC-enabled phones and NFC-enabled SIM cards will mean that broad consumer availability requires everyone to change handsets. This is not something that will happen inside 12 months.

The closest thing to innovation that will have an impact upon the next 12 months is ‘push messaging’ and the launch by Apple of iMessaging on the iPhone and iPad. As technologies, they are innovations as they introduce new methods and processes for proactively connecting with a consumer. To a marketer, they are an extension in many regards to SMS and MMS. You are able now to send an iMessage to an iPhone user, which appears within their normal message inbox, but is delivered through a data channel, thereby avoiding SMS or MMS charging.

For a marketer, this push messaging option delivers limited benefits, except cost, and still has all the spam controls and requirements for opt-in. What it does for the service providers, supporting brands with their execution, is add a whole new layer of complexity and challenges in being able to recognise a consumer with push messaging support and to utilise this route over other more costly ones.

The mobile marketer in 2012 will have a range of mobilisation tools in their arsenal. SMS will continue being a valuable voting and competition tool, with MMS being a higher ROI method of messaging for coupons and vouchers. Both of these methods will be augmented by the use of RFID detection with the mobile being used as no more than a physical carrier of the tag.

The debate over on-device application versus a mobile-enabled website has all but faded and falls back to a matter of costs, speed to market, rate of change and updates, importance of a fully immersive multimedia experience, importance of availability to all consumers and finally, and most importantly, what’s in it for the consumer to download an app versus connect direct to a mobile website. From a period in 2010 and 2011 of frenetic applications development, brands now realise that without compelling reasons for them to install, consumers will ignore.

In summary, the next 12 months or so will be less about new technology, new directions, new devices or new handsets and more about the behavioural understanding of a mobile consumer and the consolidation of various mobilisation objects into a well-linked or integrated strategy. It has already started in part in the US and more recently in the UK, where agencies and brand managers are investing more in the professional understanding and analysis of how a consumer may interact, and for what purpose in each medium, than the cost of the mobilisation piece itself. There are now a number of professional service consulting firms just dealing with the psychology behind certain mobile actions and responses and then proposing a suitable compelling consumer mobile strategy.

Another interesting trend is the direction of mobile in replacing our wallets. There are lots of discussions and sampling activities regarding mWallet and online mobile commerce for everything from micro payments through to third party bill payment. Many of these include the ability to use the camera on a phone to recognise a barcode and conclude a purchase. All this sounds very exciting – leave your physical wallet at home; it makes no difference to your day.

Our mobile is very quickly becoming a single source of all things in our day: contacts, messages, email, calls, diary, credit cards, access control and even family photos. To most, this sounds exciting and for marketers it creates a passion and drive to get a brand in the hand of the consumer and into their ‘wallet’. Just as with a real wallet, the consumer is becoming far more discerning over what applications they load, far more considered regarding what lists they subscribe to and far more protective of the content on their mobile.

I suspect, however, it won’t take long before someone realises that this single device that is so central to our everyday life is also a massive threat to our identity and our security. Lose your phone and the chances are someone could almost take over your entire life. It’s creating the most perfect identity theft resource ever!

So, with revolutionary innovation slowing, the next 12 months will offer marketers the chance to catch their breath, actually take the time to understand the mobile channel and its ROI, and build more effective strategies to better integrate across all channels and mediums.

 

This article is featured in the December/January issue of Marketing magazine.