As planning is kicking off for many of our clients in 2012, we are taking special note of different media trends. We are finding more and more opportunities that tie into the ZMOT  mental model. One of these trends is happening online and in real time and on your mobile phone.  As we all know mobile is no longer an up and coming trend, it is very much happening right now and it is changing the way we shop.  This article from VentureBeat expands on this new shopping phenomenon and talks about how consumers are using their cell phones while shopping in stores to phone a friend, look up product reviews and to comparison shop.

The Pew Research Center conducted a survey and reported on how Americans used their phone during this past holiday shopping season. Their findings found that while shopping in store “38 percent of cell owners called a friend for advice, 24 percent looked up online reviews, and 25 percent compared prices via their cell phones.” Another interesting finding was that of the 33 percent of people who used their phone to look up product information, 19 percent ended up buying the product online rather than in-store.

Cell phones are changing the shopping experience and brands are needing to adapt.  A strong online and social presence, sampling, and increasing online conversation through reviews, etc. around products is more important than ever. What trends have you been seeing around mobile & shopping and how can brands leverage them in their favor?

In pre-holiday shopping retail news, Walgreens continues to lead in mobile innovation with the addition of mobile coupons being added to their mobile app (available on iTunes, Android, and Blackberry) reports Mobile Commerce Daily. These coupons will be scanable via customers smartphones at Walgreens point-of-sale making it easier for customers to use coupons at Walgreens.

This is another way in which we’re enhancing our mobile apps and creating greater value for our mobile customers who use the app,” said Rich Lesperance, director of marketing for e-commerce at Walgreens, Deerfield, IL.

With the ability to scan the coupons, Walgreens shoppers with smartphones will no longer have to clip or print the coupons out to use in the store. This is not only is an added convenience to shoppers but also could help relieve some of the retailers customer service complaints of coupon printing issues online. One question I have though will be whether the Walgreens checkout clerks will have the ability to still give consumers the coupons if there are any technical problems with the phone or the scanner. Another key feature of the app says Rich Lesperance, is the ability for customers to check in store availability via the app, which strikes me as a great feature during the holiday season when things can fly off the shelf quickly.

I know I’ll be downloading the app and giving it a try. Does the ability to use mobile coupons excite you enough to make a point of shopping at Walgreens this holiday season as well as downloading their app?

From March 11^th-March 15^th I had the opportunity to attend SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX. SXSW, as described by closing speaker Bruce Sterling is “the epicenter of the web universe.” SXSW has become the conference for all things interactive. This was my first time in Austin, as well as my first time at SXSW.   SXSW is definitely not your “run-of-the-mill” conference. If conferences were drinks, SXSW would be a triple-shot espresso (or a Four Locos if you are into that sort of thing). There is always something going on, it starts at 9 a.m. and runs until 4 a.m. and there are more people and things to see than one really knows what to do with. To be honest, it can be a bit intimidating for the first day or two. However, here are a few tips from my first SXSW experience to help other newbies get in the groove and conquer the five day madness:

1.       Plan! Plan! Plan! – Most conferences have a few tracks that you can follow for specific interest, SXSW has… about 80 (slight exaggeration). It is really important to determine which sessions and panels you are most interested in and schedule them into your day.  It is also important to note that the sessions occur in various locations throughout the city, so pay attention to where a session is located and  determine if you need to skip something else (or hustle your pants off) to attend.

2.       Throw the Plan out the Window – I know, I know, I just told you to plan and I sincerely mean it, but be willing to throw that plan out the window. The plan is really important for trying to tackle this event, but once you are there things can change very quickly. Sessions, particularly the highly sought after ones, fill up fast. Once the room is full, it is full and the wonderful SXSW volunteers will close the doors. Be willing to find something else, explore the numerous outside activities and sponsored booths or chat-up someone else that got locked out.

3.       Be nice to the SXSW volunteers – They do not determine fire codes, they are not purposefully keeping you out and they are not being paid. Show them a little kindness, because that is not a job that most would want and Felicia Day was once a SWSX volunteer (Moral-You do not always know who you might be yelling at!).

4.       Don’t be fooled by a snazzy session title – This is the oldest trick in the book: create a really awesome -superly -fantastic –hipster- thrashing-can’t- believe- it’s not- butter of a title for your session to get people to come. Don’t be fooled. Look at the title for general interest and then look to see who is speaking. If it is someone that you have previously heard of, great. If it is not, search out who they are and what they do. This helps determine if the session will actually live up to the title and be beneficial.

5.       Location! Location! Location! – As mentioned above, the sessions are scattered all around the city (on that note: Thanks Austin for being so fantastic about a bunch of nerds taking over your city). If a session is in the Austin Convention Center, it is probably a safe bet in terms of content. If it is located at a gas station (another slight exaggeration) 20 miles away, make sure to do your due diligence on what the session is going to offer and if it is worth the trek.

6.       Go it alone – I am lucky enough to have amazing coworkers who showed me the ropes of SXSW right away. However, if you are not so lucky or have a different sleep schedules or different interests don’t be afraid to divide and concur (Data geeks do not bite).

6 ½. If you see your coworker leave the hotel without a bag, inform them at that moment that you will not be carrying their swag – AKA Do not turn into the pack mule, the days are long and the t-shirts get heavy.

7.       Be realistic – There comes a time in your career when there is not a ton of knowledge to be gained from listening to other people talk about what you do. That said, there is an immense amount to be gained by being around 17k people who are just as excited about the new Foursquare update as you are and what that means for the future of LBS. It is energizing and inspiring and gets your mind racing with ideas and how to execute. If that is not good enough; go to sessions that have nothing to do with what you do. If you are a marketer, go down the development track and vice versa. A conference is only as good as what you are willing to put in, so put in.

8.       Charge! Charge! Charge! – You will use all of your gadgets all of the time, so bring your chargers wherever you go or have backup batteries where applicable. Not having your phone normally is not fun; not having your phone when you are trying to stay connected to your team is awful.

9.       Be about IRL – This is the biggest learning from my first time at SXSW. Meeting people and networking is the heart of SXSW. Make sure you take your nose out of your iPad long enough to actually meet people. Go to parties every night to make connections with people (you can sleep when you get home), take business cards, give business cards, follow people on Twitter right away and be open to making new friends. These friends are possible vendors, clients and partners that share interest in the interactive space. Also, use it as an opportunity to further relationships with people from your neck of the woods. I made great friends with someone from Minneapolis whom I had not previously met and that is an invaluable experience that would likely not be replicable at an in-town event.

Obviously these few tips just begin to break the iceberg that is SXSW. Any other SXSWers out there have additional tips to share for newbies or think that I am way off base: Let me know!  See you next year Driskill Hotel, Austin Convention Center and Bar-B-Q Heaven Food Stand.

In Part One of this series, “The Rise and Power of Mobile” we looked at the do-it-all-and-then-some smartphone.

This past holiday shopping season did you:

• Find yourself comparing retail stores pricing with that of Amazon or Ebay? If you did, you weren’t alone. Three in ten people found a product in the store and used their mobile phone to find a better price online.
• Text a friend or family member about a great deal you saw at a store? Again, you were part of 33% of people who did the same.
• Post something about your shopping experience on your Facebook account? One in five did the same.
• Use your smartphone to determine a store location? So did 50% of other smartphone users.

Over 30% of the country owns a smartphone now, and Nielson is predicting that number will rise to 50% by the 2011 holiday season. If we consider the stats outlined above, there is clearly a market in which retailers and brands can connect to their customers via mobile platform, whether it be a mobile application or website.

Even more emphatic is the feedback Accenture received when asking smartphone users their preferences while shoppinng. Over 70% said they would prefer to use their phone to research basic information about a product, rather than interact with a store employee. Now before some of you get all hot and bothered about human interaction becoming an extinct form of communication, take some time to think about your experiences with store employees over the holidays. If you were like me you probably ran into more than a few who were “temporary” holiday employees who didn’t know much about the products they were trying to sell. Either that or they knew “too much” about them and immediately began pointing out the “you-better-buy-this-one-it-has-the-most-features-and-oh-by-the-way-is-the-most-expensive” of the top of the line product. For instance, I can think of a number of times I’ve visited Best Buy in the past and when I was finally able to track down a sales associate that wasn’t busy helping someone else, the associate had limited to non-existent knowledge about the product I was interested in purchasing and had a question about. (On a side note: I’m always puzzled by how many employees stores have working who have limited product knowledge and are wandering around the store when there are 30 people in line to check out. Couldn’t we just teach them how to use a register instead??? Ok end of side-rant.)

What are your thoughts on mobile shopping? Were you one of the people who bought something from your smartphone and then used Paypal to pay for it? (leading to them growing 300% on mobile payments) Were you one who used your phone instead of talking to someone in the store? Were you one of the 97% of people who found QR or mobile bar codes useful? Any good or bad experiences you’d like to share?

“Have I told you how much I love that phone of yours?” My wife must ask me this at least a couple times a day, normally right after I respond to a something she’s just said, after a 30 second delay or so, with “I’m sorry, what did you just say honey?” Honestly I’m lucky she doesn’t throw it out the window or send it to BlendTec for their next Youtube video demonstration. What can I say other than that I’m addicted to the constant stream of information and entertainment? Is it a bad thing? Am I just A.D.D.? In my defense, it’s hard to pay attention when you just about have the entire world at your fingertips these days in the form of a smartphone. Then again there isn’t anyone in the world more important to me than my wife and I have trouble giving even her my undivided attention all the time like I should (maybe I’m not so out of the norm there though, but that’s for a different post on a different blog). Let’s just say I’m working on it.
Back to my statement about “having the entire world at my fingertips.” You may think this is an exaggeration for the power of mobile phones these days but I happen to think its 100% true. A couple of weeks ago I was travelling for my work on Spenco Ironman Cycling Gloves to attend the Ford Ironman Arizona race in Tempe, Arizona. To say that my Droid X smartphone from Verizon was invaluable on the trip is probably not a strong enough statement. In order to prove that I really do have the entire world at my fingertips with it, here’s a list of everything I did on my mobile phone over that week:

• ­ Made numerous phone calls
• Sent numerous text messages (some even by using the speak-to-text feature)
• Set an alarm to wake up, (and snoozed the alarm multiple times)
• Received and sent e-mails from both my work e-mail accounts for Bolin and Spenco
• Received and sent e-mails from my personal gmail account
• Downloaded and viewed attachments both in Excel and Word from e-mails I received
• Shot an HD quality video of my 3-month old son and shared it with my family both by text and e-mail
• Checked my Facebook account, updated my status, and posted a photo of my son taken on my phone using the built-in 8 megapixel camera.
• Read and sent out multiple tweets on Twitter via the TweetDeck app
• Exchanged tweets directly with a pro-triathlete who was competing in the Ironman Arizona race, and was able to drop off two pairs of Spenco Gloves to him after the race for him to use. (BTW: He loved them!)
• Googled a number of random things.
• Deposited a check to my USAA bank account by taking a picture of it and uploading it to my account, seeing it posted and available to use within minutes.
• Checked in for my Delta flight to Phoenix and used a special bar code image on my phone as my boarding pass for my flight (if you are familiar with an “e-ticket” we could call this an “m-ticket”)
• Scanned the QR-Code for a product in a magazine I read on the plane to learn more about the product on their mobile website. (You can download the QR code Reader for iPhone here and the Android one here.)

Scan this code on your phone to see my favorite commercial of 2010.

• ­ Received weather updates from AccuWeather updated automatically on my phone based on my geo-location while I was there. (Mostly sunny and 70’s which was nice.)
• Located my hotel on Google Maps, received directions with an ETA based on traffic, and turn by turn GPS navigation (an application I used heavily while driving around in Phoenix).
• Searched for local restaurants on Yelp that were nearby my location, (all of which lived up to their excellent ratings based on user reviews). I also “checked in” to one of them, and wrote a review of one. Man was that some good bacon.
• Stayed up to date on some of my favorite websites, including the Social Media news site Mashable, using the nicely laid out Pulse app, that collects feeds and presents them in a slick, great looking, and scrollable list.
• Streamed live music via Pandora radio, which selects music for me based on my interest in a singer, band or a particular song.
• Sent interesting articles I found or that were shared by friends on Twitter and Facebook, which I didn’t have time to read right away, to Instapaper, a website that collects them for my later perusal.
• Searched for the local Catholic Churches that were nearby and for mass times on Sunday (I found one within walking distance from where I was at the event no less.)
• Processed a credit card payment through Go Payment, a smartphone app for Intuit/Quickbooks accounts, for a store which bought Spenco Cycling Gloves (I also have a Bluetooth connected credit card swiper that I can use at expos and events we sell the gloves at.)
• Listened to my favorite podcast, the B.S Report with ESPN’s Bill Simmons, via the Google Listen app.
• Watched HD quality video of Minnesota Timberwolves highlights, including Michael Beasley’s game winner against the Clippers as well as read game recaps from multiple Timberolves blogs.
• Updated my Netflix queue
• Played far too many hours of the addicting and fun mobile game, Angry Birds. If you haven’t downloaded this game yet but have heard about it, I urge you to avoid it. It will suck you in and never let you out. I’m already planning on giving it up for my yearly Lenten sacrifice.

Now looking at this list, how can you argue that I don’t have the entire world at my fingertips? What can’t I do with this thing?!?!? At least we can agree we’ve come a long way since my dad was using the original “Brick” cell phone.

Now I happen to be either a Millennial (or Generation Y if you prefer) and one that is more tech savvy than most. Let’s just say I certainly enjoy using and maximizing the capabilities of my smartphone at all times. But after doing a little digging, it appears I’m not alone. In fact in a recent study by the mobile browser Opera, the results showed that 90% of my Millennial generation uses their mobile internet more than their desktop or laptop. That’s right –we already prefer browsing the net on our mobile phone more than on our computer.

“We have often said that the next generation will grow up knowing the Web mostly through their mobile phones,” said Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner of the results. “We see this trend already emerging in different regions around the world. The mobile Web will bring a profound change in how we connect with one another. I think the results from this survey already show that change taking place.”

What does this mean for marketers these days? If you aren’t working on something for your brands to connect with customers via mobile already, you better start now or you won’t survive the next generation.

In Part 2, I’ll look at the rise in mobile usage during this year’s Holiday shopping season.

Social Email Campaigns Expected to Increase Nearly 400 Percent in 2009

A record number of email marketers plan to bridge the gap between online social networks and their email marketing campaigns in 2009, according to new research from Ball State University, the Email Marketer’s Club and ExactTarget.

The study surveyed 351 email marketers in March and found that while only 13 percent leveraged the power of online networks last year to grow their email subscriber list, more than 46 percent plan to use social media and email in tandem in 2009.

“While the global reach, rapid adoption and high engagement found in social media have email marketers salivating at the potential these environments offer to engage with customers and prospects, the real challenge is how best to facilitate meaningful interactions,” said Morgan Stewart, ExactTarget’s director of research and strategy.

Although the demand for the integration between social sites and email is surging, the success with the integration remains largely uncharted, according to the study featured in ExactTarget’s newest whitepaper entitled, “Expanding the Reach of Email Through Social Networks”.

“Consumers are reluctant to invite marketers into social environments, and this is because they don’t want to see the channel overrun with irrelevant commercial messages,” Stewart said. “However, marketers who are able to align their messaging with the distinct mindset of consumers engaging in social networks are posting positive results and building a quality following in these environments.”

The whitepaper features research that highlights how brands such as Carmex, TripAdvisor and Papa John’s have scored success by broadening their communications to include social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg and others to their traditional email-based efforts.

“We want visitors to share the experience with their friends, but we don’t want to force them to use a channel they are uncomfortable with,” said Paul Woelbing, president of Carma Labs, the maker of Carmex (a Bolin Digital client). “By offering visitors choices, we are learning a lot about the dynamics of integrating email, social media and text messaging – namely that they complement each other very well.”

The release of the whitepaper follows Tuesday’s launch of ExactTarget’s Social Forward, its new flexible metrics-driven social sharing solution for email. Debuted at ad:tech San Francisco, the new functionality gives marketers the industry’s first social media integration for email that allows multiple ways to leverage sharing and provides the industry’s most complete solution to enable and track sharing through its Direct to Social capability and through a partnership with social media syndication powerhouse ShareThis.

ExactTarget’s Social Forward will be available to users through its online Innovations Lab starting May 1 and will become an integrated solution for all ExactTarget users worldwide as part of the company’s Summer release.

The whitepaper and an overview of ExactTarget’s Social Forward technology are featured in ExactTarget’s Social Media Kit for Email Marketers. Marketers may download the kit free of charge at www.exacttarget.com/socialmediakit.

Aside from all the news about Apple’s withdrawal from Macworld and tradeshows in general, as well as the questions surrounding the health of Steve Jobs, there’s been a lot of speculation about what Apple’s next Big Deal is.

How about an enhanced, more evolved, touch screen iMac? This is not a stretch. HP has it. Or maybe you just call it the iPhone. Will Apple will roll out some application that is more intuitive, more useful, more sexy, more capable of complex interactions than current devices out there? How quickly will non-keyboard gestural interfaces become part of the lexicon of computer interaction?  We’ve seen how the iphone technology works with current ergonomics of human movement. Here are some foreseeable extensions of the idea:

• POP swiping and account transacting (e-money services have been popular in Asia for some time)
• Mobile health monitoring that tracks human movement and vitals
• ‘Smart’ apparel that collects numerous points of data from and for people that wear it
• Any type of research requiring micro viewing

These applications are not only forseeable, but require sophisticated new devices to handle enhanced human interaction. The moment of truth: How will a company like Apple strike out on this front? The pressure is on.

Snagged this image of a the airplane tray table on the way to Charlotte yesterday.  Couple of thoughts- this Zicam ad was in front of me for a total of 6 hours yesterday with no escape!  Having 6 hours to digest the message, one might think that more than a simple headline could have been employed and consumed.  The ad had no call to action whatsoever – online or mobile.

After paying a dollar for a cup of coffee, I noticed that the napkin had an SMS frequent flyer sign-up through a simple 2 way campaign.

Who would have thought that a napkin advertisement would be higher-tech than a complete airplane tray table takeover?  (ps- what’s with the Rhino?)

Marcus Didion

Mobile Calls vs Text MessagesHow many total mobile calls did you make and receive versus text messages last month? I’m curious to see how people are starting to use their mobile phones. Please let me know what phone you are using.

It has been interesting to see how my mobile phone usage has changed in the last year. Before Twitter, and some other services, I would very rarely crack 100 text messages sent and received. I’ve also noticed not a diminishing number of voice calls, but my average call length has diminished quite noticeably. Let me know what your last month’s usage was like, and feel free to response in the comments or on Seemic.

We’re working on some two-way SMS campaigns for Carmex and Opus. Many questions about the marketplace so we dug up these stats from Iconoculture, Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), and Carlson.

• 94% of text messages are read.
• 1/3 of the worlds population has mobile internet access, which is twice as many people as access the internet by computer,
• The average person sends 3.8 text messages a day, while making 2.8 voice calls in the same period.
• 46% of the mobile video audience is 35 or older, 54% of that audience is male
• Products sold on a mobile device will generate $63 billion in worldwide revenue by 2010.