By now, marketers know that brands cannot fully control their own message anymore. Consumers now have a diverse set of channels through which they can interact with their digital world, and they’ve taken rightful ownership of their own destiny when interacting with brands through those channels.

In an effort to be heard and to increase engagement, brands are turning to new, innovative ways to approach the digital marketing landscape, from social environments such as Twitter and Facebook, to blogger outreach and global alternate reality games. Like anything else new and innovative, the risk of failure in these approaches runs high, and the payoff is unknown.

But failure, if done early and often, can be more instructive than success. Let’s look at four new and innovative ways that brands attempted to engage with their consumers through digital, and see what lessons we can learn.

Lesson 1. Tell a story, but make it your story
In February 2008, 50 bloggers and gamers received mysterious packages in the mail containing clues to an online alternate reality game (ARG) with a clear call to action: Find “The Lost Ring.” These packages kicked off a six-month effort across the globe by more than 150,000 players in seven languages to uncover a lost Olympic game. The game officially ended at the Beijing Olympics, and it generated more than its share of accolades in marketing circles.

But that’s only half of the story. The game is a classic example of what’s known as “dark marketing” — a viral campaign in which the sponsoring brand (in this case, McDonald’s) is barely, if ever, acknowledged. The theory is that mentioning the brand would turn potential gameplayers off when they realize that they’re simply playing a part in a larger marketing campaign. In this case, it wasn’t revealed that McDonald’s was participating until months after the game began.

ARGs have proven to be successful in the past and are an incredibly viral method of participatory storytelling on a grand scale. Yet in most cases where measurable success was achieved, the ARG told a story that was at least tangentially related to the brand that sponsored it. Consider ABC’s “Lost Experience” and “Find815″ ARG campaigns, which gave rabid fans of the hit show something to do during its hiatus while simultaneously telling some of the show’s back story — all without diminishing the experience of watching “Lost” for consumers who didn’t participate. 
 

BMW created an ARG surrounding a fictional town, “Oberpfaffelbachen,” that built a huge ramp up to launch the BMW 1-Series in America. In each of these cases, the story of the game tied back to the story of the brand, even if the tie-in was slight or tongue-in-cheek.

Lastly, in order to measure the success of an ARG, it’s important to understand how the brand is perceived before, during, and after the game. Using sentiment analysis tools to continually measure what people are saying about the brand can identify the baseline sentiment and the brand lift during the campaign, as well as any lingering effects after the game has ended.

Lesson 2: Turn the chairs inward (and take a seat)
It’s become a marketing cliché: Your consumers are talking, and your brand is the topic of conversation. In an effort to show that they understand this, Skittles decided to bring that conversation to the fore in the guise of its official website, which it replaced with an unsupervised Twitter feed that showed every tweet mentioning the Skittles brand. At the same time, the brand allowed website visitors to switch between its Wikipedia page, YouTube account, and other social media outposts using a simple widget. Within 48 hours, the messages on Twitter were littered with expletives.

Skittle’s parent company, Mars, had a great idea, but while it exposed conversations around the brand to the bright, harsh light of day, the company neglected to participate in it.

By participating, Mars could have managed the conversation around its brand, instead of letting it spin out of control. Consider what Pepsi did with the “Pepsi Cooler“ on FriendFeed, a social media aggregator now owned by Facebook. Pepsi managed the conversation through multiple social media channels partly by taking a seat at the table and participating as an equal contributor.

Lesson 3: Behave Yourself
My iPhone is the most personal of personal technology devices. It’s always on my person, it’s always on, and it contains my contacts, calendar, and music; it’s my life in my pocket. It makes perfect sense that a smartphone app can be a great way to increase engagement with consumers.

But remember, when in the personal space of your consumers, it’s vital that you follow their rules of etiquette. Pepsi released an iPhone application to support its AMP energy drink that was designed to help make male customers more successful with the ladies. The app categorized women into types, and it offered pick-up lines targeted to those types. The backlash was so great that Pepsi yanked the risque app from the App Store and offered a public apology.

Mobile apps have been a great way to create a service out of a brand. Molecular worked with Nikon on an app that helps its consumers take better photos, regardless of whether they own a Nikon camera or not.

When you engage with consumers on their turf, on a device as personal as their mobile phones, make sure that service is helpful. To Pepsi’s credit, it admitted the mistake, but it could have been avoided by understanding how far it could take the joke without offending its audience.

Lesson 4: Keep the circle of trust intact
Reaching out to influential bloggers is a great way to generate buzz around a new product launch. The best bloggers will give a fair and honest review of the product, thereby extending the trust that these folks have established with their loyal audience to your brand.

When ASUS reached out to bloggers to review the new Eee PC 901 laptop, it was counting on that trust. But instead of simply letting the bloggers review the product, they made it a competition. They chose six bloggers to write a minimum of three 200-word posts a week about their laptop over the course of four weeks. The blogger with the most readers would win the laptop.

ASUS didn’t expect what happened next: The blogger with the most readers wrote a review that, while honest and fair, wasn’t exactly favorable to the product. So ASUS changed the rules. Instead of the most readers, the winner of the laptop would be chosen by a vote taken by the six bloggers themselves, resulting in another blogger winning in the end. The readers revolted by posting scathing comments on the announcement of the winner.

Product ratings and reviews work because they are written by the folks consumers trust most: other consumers. When a brand tries to game the system, this breaks the circle of trust. Instead of changing the rules, Asus might have been better off thanking the winner for his review, acknowledging (or defending, when necessary) the product’s limitations, and working the feedback into future products.

Conclusion
There are so many new ways of interacting and engaging with consumers today. Their conversation is fragmented, their attention span short, and their tolerance for BS is low. Without well-established roadmaps for success, it is inevitable that we will sometimes fail when attempting to engage with consumers in new and innovative ways. But by learning from failure, we are left with enormous potential to provide exceptional brand experiences that do succeed.

[Written for and originally published at iMedia Connection]

Even though my team was swept by the Angels, I still follow MLB’s postseason games when I’m out and about with their great app for my iPhone. At 10 bucks, it’s not exactly cheap, but MLB provides a free “lite” version of the app to try it out before getting the full-featured version. Finding and downloading the free version was the only way I could try it  before I went ahead and bought the full app, because Apple didn’t allow “in app” purchases within applications that were offered for free.

Until yesterday.

This is great news. No longer will users need to download two apps to try before they buy — a true “freemium” app will allow upgrades and add-ons seamlessly, without having to leave the application. iPhone developers will no longer have to worry about the time and expense of maintaining two redundant applications, and designers can now think of unique and innovative ways to take advantage of the freemium model that meets users’ increasingly demanding expectations.

There are some limitations, however.

Apple won’t allow the sale of non-digital goods in the app itself, so dreams of one-touch storefronts for offline retailers will have to remain on hold. They also won’t allow any form of virtual currency, such as the Linden. And while subscription purchases are allowed, rentals are not − Netflix no doubt noticed this caveat.

Even so, the potential for in app updates is enormous. The difference between free and “nearly free” is vast — for every one person who bought Galaxy Impact (iTunes link) for $.99, roughly 400 downloaded it for free, according to their great case study. Offering the free version with seamless upsells, such as a game application that offers new levels or playable characters for a small fee, will likely prolong their app’s potential for user engagement.  Similarly, publishers such as the New York Times or NPR can charge for their premium content but can now offer the delivery mechanism for free.

And as Greg at MobileCrunch pointed out, pirating apps will be more difficult now that they can simply be free.

App Store search placement is a huge driver of iPhone app downloads and sales, especially if you don’t have a big media buy to support the app. If a consumer finds your offering in the App Store, it’s safe to assume they’re a qualified lead, and they’re literally one click away from converting. 

But what affects how “findable” an app is in the App Store? If one can’t count on getting in Apple’s “Top 25″ or “What’s Hot” lists, what other options does a fledgling app have to gain consumer visibility?

The answer is keyword search optimization, which is like web SEO, but focused on the nuances of the iTunes App Store search algorithm. The following article provides tips for improving the searchability and findability of your iPhone applications and, ultimately, increasing downloads and sales.

1. Downloads are huge.
 The number of downloads is the number one factor in search ranking placement, by a large margin. For this reason, brands should consider launching apps at a low initial price point to help boost the download count as quickly as possible.

2. Ratings don’t matter (for search).
Positive (or negative) consumer ratings and reviews are not included in the calculations for ranking placement (or if they are, it’s a very slight effect). Of course, ratings are still important for conversions, but if your primary objective is search placement, you’ll want to focus your efforts elsewhere.

3. Descriptions don’t matter either.
 Due to the emergence of “spammy” app descriptions that go on and on for pages and mention every keyword imaginable, Apple is changing the way keyword search works.  Instead of matching against both title and description, the company has added a new “keywords” field and will be phasing out descriptions from consideration in the search algorithm. 

According to Apple, “It is important to enter keywords for all applications as soon as possible so your application can continue to be successfully located on the App Store.” Due to these changes, be sure to focus your app descriptions on telling the features-and-benefits story, and not on search placement.

4. Make every keyword count.
 The new keywords field can contain a maximum of 100 characters (comma-delimited). So instead of a thousand-word description, you’re down to around 12 keywords. These keywords can only be entered when you upload a new version of your app; at that point, they’re set in stone until the next version. 

These 12 keywords are the most important decisions you can make for search placement, so it’s critical to develop a strategy. Come up with a prioritized list, and try searching for various combinations to see what comes up in the store. Some strategies may involve picking keywords where there’s no competition; others may involve piggybacking on the competition. 

5. Get creative with the title.
 One workaround for the new keyword limitation is to put a short description after the App Store title. For example, I recently changed the title of one of my apps from “On the Clock” to “On the Clock – time tracking for clients, projects and tasks.” However, like keywords, titles are “set in stone” and can’t be changed until you release a new version. Treat them as an extension of your keywords, and if you touch on a target word in your title, don’t waste a keyword on it.

6. Review text is ignored.
 Textual consumer reviews are not considered at all in keyword search matching. For example, if a review boasts that “This bird watching app sure beats fishing!” that app will not appear in searches for “fishing.” In other words, worry about what reviews will do for your conversion, not what they’ll do for your search placement.

There are over 65,000 applications available on the App Store today. The vast majority of apps enjoy a brief spike of downloads upon release and then quickly fall off as other newly-released apps fill in behind them. 

Optimizing your iPhone applications for search using the guidelines above can help to build and sustain demand for your applications. While these guidelines work for the App Store today, the rules have changed since launch, and they’ll no doubt change again as Apple continues to evolve the App Store. Until that happens, choose your keywords carefully, get creative with the title, and beg, borrow and steal to increase your download count.

Our Sue Lockwood shared this dense infographic illustrating financial and other interesting factoids from the mobile app battleground. It was created by you-must-subscribe-to iPhone website, iSmashPhone.

Click on the image for the full story.

Thought this was a very interesting statistic even though it is not very surprising. The most popular camera on Flickr these days is being challenged by the simple photo abilities on the iPhone. I am sure it is a reflection of many things including mobility, and even audience type. It does in the end become the most versatile tool for capturing life’s moments and Flickr may be more popular now with casual photo enthusiasts and not serious hobbyists or pros.

Lot of other great information here as well. Check it out when you get a chance  -  http://www.flickr.com/cameras/

Mobile phones have long been able to access the Web, but anyone who’s ever been to any website via their phone knows it’s an exercise in frustration. Squashed images, missing content, a postage stamp screen; it’s more scrolling than browsing. But Apple’s introduction of the iPhone and iPod Touch changed all that. Mobile Safari is a modern and fully functional web browser, and now the experience is much closer to the real thing. Companies all over the world are transforming their existing websites to target the iPhone and iPod Touch users who are now numbered in millions.

Wanting a piece of the pie, I decided to transform my website hakki.com, into an iPhone compatible one. Through research and trial/error, I came across interesting information and learned tips that I would like to share with you in hopes of making your life easier should you decide to embark on the same journey as I did. I started out by registering the domain hakki.mobi, and went to work. I had two choices: I could build a native iPhone app, or a webapp that looks and acts like a native iPhone app. Humbled by the learning curve and restrictions of building a native app, I decided a webapp is more feasible to achieve for me. As a seasoned designer, I know my way around html, flash, scripting languages and so on, but I have never built a webapp. Actually, it turns out, making a webapp for the iPhone is a lot like making a normal web site, but with a few quirks to abide by.

1. Design to mimic a “Native App”

From a usability perspective, making your web app look like a native iPhone app is beneficial because users already know how to use an iPhone application. If you mimic a native app, you won’t have to go through the whole process of designing and creating something that may in the end prove infeasible. Besides that, using the buttons, font, lists, etc is also beneficial. Here is a list of native fonts for the mobile safari browser:

If for whatever reason mimicking a native iPhone app does not fit your needs, make sure to consider the following:

• Make your text legible (large fonts, sufficient contrast, etc…)
• Always be consistent (i.e: navigation buttons on each page)
• Make buttons large enough to tap (i.e: for fat fingers or the error-prone)
• Make UI intuitive (i.e: collapsible boxes should have hint…like a +/- next to it)

2. Have a Homescreen Icon

This makes the most impact with the least amount of work. Design a nice icon that people can see when they add your web app to their homescreen. Make a 57×57 PNG file and add the following code inside the head tag of your home page:

<link href="path/to/your/icon.png" rel="apple-touch-icon" />

As simple as this step seems, it is the best way to quickly recognize your web app, as well as look professional while having some nice eye-candy. You don’t have to add the curved edges or the glassy effect, when a user adds the site to their home screen, iPhone OS will automatically add the effect for you. Here is an example:

Icon in original format:

Icon in iPhone homescreen:

3. Viewport!

If you want your content to look perfect on an iPhone you must use the viewport meta tag. Without it, your page may look like thumbnail. The viewport meta data goes in the head:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;" />

The possible values for it are as follows:

• width=device-width
  This fits the page to the device’s width. The iPhone’s display is 320×480 pixels in portrait mode, and 480×320 pixels in landscape mode, which is why you sometimes see sites use width=320 instead of width=device-width.
• initial-scale=1.0
  This is the scaling when the page first loads up.
• maximum-scale=1.0
  This is the maximum scaling allowed.
• user-scalable=0
  This determines whether the user is allowed to zoom in and out by pinching/double-tapping. You can also use user-scalable=no and user-scalable=yes instead of 0 and 1.

4. Hide the Address Bar

While the iPhone packs a lot of resolution into its relatively small screen, the address bar consumes about 60 pixels of real estate by default when a page is loaded in MobileSafari. With either 320 or 480 pixels available to the viewport, 44 of which are reserved for the bottom toolbar, it’s necessary to maxamize every available pixel.

Add this code in the body tag to hide the address bar:

<body onload="setTimeout(function() { window.scrollTo(0, 1) }, 100);"></body>

5. Preserving aspect ratio of images

I wanted to display images of my portfolio using the maximum width available by the device and retain their aspect ratios when the user switched between landscape and portrait viewing modes. Easy with the help of CSS. Create a simple class and reference it in the code:

CSS:

.work img { width:100%; }

Code:

<div class="work"><img src="images/sample_1.jpg" /></div>

6. Detect Orientation Change

You might want to run a function or perform a special task when user switches the orientation of the phone. In this example we are simply going the alert the user when they switch from landscape to portrait and visa versa.
Here’s the javascript:

function updateOrientation(){
	switch(window.orientation){
		case 0:
		alert("portrait");
		break;

		case -90:
		alert("landscape");
		break;

		case 90:
		alert("landscape");
		break;

		case 180:
		alert("portrait");
		break;
	}
}

Don’t forget to add the orientation change hook to the body tag:

<body onorientationchange="updateOrientation();">

7. Use Frameworks, Libraries, and Tools to Save Time

If you do decide to mimic a native app, then I suggest not starting from scratch. There are many things out there that can save you a ton of time. Below I’ll make a list with components you can use to develop for iPhone using only what you know, or learn only few things more.

• Dashcode
  If you have a Mac, this may be the best route to go if you want to whip up something fast. Dashcode has a parts library(i.e: buttons/frames), a code snippets library, a workflow steps guide, and way more!
• iUI
  iUI is a framework consisting of a JavaScript library, CSS, and images for developing iPhone webapps. Makes WebApps Look and Feel Like iPhone Native Apps
• iWebKit
  iWebKit is a file package designed to help you create your own iPhone and iPod Touch compatible website or webapp. The kit is accessible to anyone even people without any html knowledge and is simple to understand thanks to the included tutorials.
• XUI
  A simple javascript framework for building mobile web applications. XUI strives to be a framework for first class mobile device browsers such as WebKit, Fennec and Opera with future support under consideration for IE Mobile and BlackBerry.
• iPhone-Universal
  The framework is based on 1 stylesheet and several HTML examples, also, it contains original artwork so you can edit them in Adobe Photoshop CS and adapt it to your projects.

8. Testing

You might not always have access to an iPhone or an iPod Touch. Although not perfect, there are emulators out there that do a decent job of replicating the iPhone OS:

• iPhoney
  iPhoney gives you a pixel-accurate web browsing environment—powered by Safari—that you can use when developing web sites for iPhone. It’s the perfect 320 by 480-pixel canvas for your iPhone development.
• TestiPhone.com
  This is a web browser based simulator for quickly testing your iPhone Applications. This tool has been so far tested and working using Internet Explorer 7, FireFox 2 and Safari 3 in Windows, but you ned Safari to get the real experience.

That’s it, best of luck and hopefully you will find this article useful.

We’ve all been told that we should not use our cell phone while driving. However, much like knowing but ignoring the fact that smoking and drinking is bad for our health, some of us will continue to use phones while behind the wheel. As states continue to pass laws to limit cell phone usage while on the road, usability around using Bluetooth and other hands free dialing features becomes all the more important.

At this point, some of you are probably thinking, “Just don’t use a phone while you drive.” I’m all for using the phone as little as possible when on the road – if you have to, you should definitely use a hands-free system. I’m not advocating dialing and holding your phone while you drive. However, there may be times when you receive an emergency call on the highway and can’t pull over, or times when you simply want or need to make an urgent call. Regardless of what the law is, the overall usability of a phone should be to provide a simplistic experience around how users are actually using the device, as opposed to how they should use the device.

As one of the leading smart phones currently in the US market, I’m surprised Apple hasn’t given the iPhone a more befitting user experience in this area. Its revolutionary touch screen interface is without doubt, the building block for all things cool about the phone. However, in my opinion, the steps required to make a call are simply inefficient, to say the least.

The general steps required to make a call, assuming your phone screen is locked, are:

1. Touch menu button or power switch
2. Slide button to unlock screen
3. If you have a password lock to protect the security of your data, you will need to enter the correct pin before you unlock the screen

Here, your calling steps may vary. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s assume these high level paths:

Path A

1. Tap contacts icon to open your address book
2. Scroll through list and tap name
3. Tap the number of the user (i.e. home, cell, etc.)

Path B

1. Tap the phone icon to open the phone menu
2. Depending on which menu you were last in, you might be able to find and tap the name of the person you want to call (in favorites, recent, or contacts, for example), or you may have to tap to a different menu to find the person or to dial the number manually (in keypad)

Path C

1. Tap menu button twice to shortcut to the favorites list (if you set it up that way)
2. Tap name from favorites, or switch to other menus if recipient is not on the list

This is all fine and dandy when you’re not in the car and can devote your eyes and both of your hands to the phone. But, imagine performing these steps on the highway, especially step 2 if you have a passcode lock on your phone. Or, imagine simply trying to scroll through your address book to find the person you want to call. Needless to say, either of these tasks would require a bit of visual and tactile attention, the latter of which is also more challenging with a touch screen interface.

So what exactly is the iPhone missing from a calling perspective that would help alleviate these concerns?

Integrated voice dialing

• Sure, there are a few apps that do this for the iPhone, but this just adds an extra step to the calling flow because you’ll have to remember to launch the application when you drive. What the iPhone needs is an integrated voice command feature that allows you to utilize your Bluetooth receiver to make calls without having to manually do so with the phone interface. This would be less distracting and would bypass the many steps otherwise required to make a call. Many other phones have this feature, including several of the Nokias, Motorolas, and Samsungs I’ve owned in the past. These were not “smart phones”, either. In fact, my first Motorola phone I owned in high school had this feature.

More advanced Bluetooth headset calling features

• In addition to receiving and ending calls with Bluetooth headsets, build in the capability to allow dialing the last dialed number or to allow users to scroll through the recent calls list with the Bluetooth device controls. Again, this would potentially help lower the distraction that would come from operating the phone itself.

Dedicated car or hands free profile

• This feature would be especially useful for those of you that have enabled a passcode lock on your phones. Entering in a pin while driving on a touch screen interface without tactile feedback is simply not a very manageable task without taking your eyes off the road. It would also be inconvenient to go into your phone settings to manually change this preference back and forth every time you drive.

• A dedicated hands free profile could solve this issue. Having the option to customize this profile to, say, automatically remove passcode lock or to disable the screen standby feature (and perhaps display the screen on reduced brightness) would also simplify the steps for making calls. In addition, this would put to rest the previous remedy of switching security preferences back and forth.

The above features are just a few of the key recommendations that would help make the phone aspect of the iPhone more user friendly, especially during instances where you need to use the phone on the road. I’m not advocating using a phone while you drive, but the example of doing so merely helps to accentuate some of these usability issues. The iPhone really just needs some basic improvements to the phone aspect to improve overall usability when making calls.

Along with many millions of people around the world, I’ve been watching closely the transition of the presidency in the United States.  Of course that transition ended yesterday with the formal Inauguration of President Barack Obama.  An inuaguration, literally defined as a new beginning, gives us great opportunity to assess the changes around us and think about how many ‘new beginnings’ are actually happening in parallel today.

Professionally, we’ve just completed the first fully Internet-immersive election cycle in the US.   From the astounding fundraising statistics where Obama himself raised over half a billion dollars online, to the amazingingly thorough websites, massive social media outreach, and the dawn of a new generation of Twitter users and YouTube videos from the politicians themselves.  

Faces In The Crowd

Personally, I was blessed to have the opportunity to be in Washington for the inauguration.  Over a million joined me on the National Mall and some small percentage busily Twitter’d and Facebook’d their every emotion in real-time.  It would have been fabulous to also have some real-time location based services on my mobile to find friends and scout optimum locations.   At the same time the true digital impact yesterday is still being fully measured.  Akamai, Adweek, and many others have chronicled record levels of combined online and offline traffic including more than 7 million simultaneous data streams most carrying live video.  The informal endorsement the Obama family has provided to J Crew has resulted in extraordinary publicity, as well as equal levels of traffic to their website which have at times overwhelmed their ability to keep up.

More important than all these digital events, it was the energy and enthusiasm of every person I met that struck me as the most profound ‘new beginning’ that yesterday held for us.  From the 85 year-old woman next to me on the mall, to the fellow CEOs at a TechNet reception, to the Iranian-born cab driver on my way to the airport at the end of the day.  Universally they were all excited about the possibilities for our country and how each and every one of us can make meaningful contribution to a better future.  Whether you use an iPhone app, social media, or an old-fashioned helping hand and a smile.

Parade Reviewing Stand and White House

The holy grail of marketing on mobile devices for at least the latter half of this decade revolved around the promise of location based services, or LBS. LBS mean that the network will share its knowledge of your whereabouts with an application, which in turn can react to it. For example, detecting that you are walking next to a McDonald’s location, your mobile device can suddenly pop a message on its screen telling you that you just got a coupon for a free Diet Coke if you buy a Big Mac. Built-in GPS would be the simple avenue to obtaining location data. Still, as Google Maps users on older Blackberry devices know, using cell tower information can give you a pretty decent idea where you are as well.

The main setback to widespread adoption of such marketing magic had been the mobile carriers themselves. Always fearing the same fate of Internet service providers, they look for angles to retain control and squeeze income out of any potential revenue stream. Adopting caution instead of openness, having access to mobile device-based LBS was generally only possible through carrier partnerships. In the best case, the carrier had the application preinstalled on all devices, but getting there was an almost impossible mission. Worse yet, American consumers are not keen to install third party applications on their phones, unless your name is Google or Facebook.

Apple’s iPhone changed all of that in two ways thanks to its exclusive agreement with AT&T:

1. Third-party iPhone applications are allowed to access location information obtained from its built-in GPS device.
2. Users can easily install third-party applications from the App Store.

Google, following Apple’s lead, made the same possible on phones running its Android operating system with its own easy-to-download application store.

However much better things are now, something may be missed in the hype. The vast majority of mobile device users do not own an iPhone or an Android-based device. They also still do not have built-in GPS or applications that use it. So are they destined to stay in the dark when it comes to LBS? Are there other networks that can be leveraged in order to provide location awareness outside of the world of cellular communications?

The answer is yes and you are using it every single day, probably. The network is even deployed worldwide and is tried and tested for decades: credit card and payment networks. In the modern world, the vast majority of people turn to plastic before they turn to cash. Credit card companies are so keen to have us do that they actually reward us with cash and hotel and airline miles. Beyond racking up debt, there is a hidden utility that can be tapped, at least for marketing purposes in this vast payment network.

As a suburbanite, I frequently head to the sprawling shopping centers near my home. Like many parents, I go to Target frequently to get diapers for the baby and replenish other household products. I always use my credit card to pay because I want to get cash back, even if it is 42 cents for the current purchase. This is where the magic can take place; the credit card network knows where I am from the authorization and processing of the transaction. Why not send me a text message with a coupon for a free latte at the Panera location next door to the Target store? It is the payment transaction that provides the network its location awareness and this network is currently not doing anything with that information. Better yet, I did not need any special hardware other than old school plastic; no special mobile device or GPS technology. Any mobile device will do.

Clearly there are huge hurdles with privacy the top among them. Technology can always be figured out if enough effort and support is thrown into the mix. Consumers can be incentivized and shown the benefits of such a program, especially with no investment or effort on their part being necessary to participate. They must also explicitly agree to receive such messages, often on their own dime. At the same time, very few entities have access to this information, namely Visa, Mastercard, American Express and to a lesser extent, Discover Financial’s Novus network.

Still, banks can rely on another network that is under their own control – automated teller machines or ATMs. People always need cash for the few instances that credit cards do not work. Whenever you go to an ATM, the bank knows where you are. This is again a perfect trigger to provide you with location based marketing information. Similar to the coupons printed on the back of supermarket receipts, banks can give you coupons to businesses that are close to the ATM device.

A weakness of this approach is its immediate nature: the reaction to a consumer’s known location must almost be instantaneous. Otherwise, the consumer has just moved on and the relevance of the message/coupon/information may be reduced. Nonetheless, its low fidelity and near-independence of mobile device capabilities beyond SMS gives it a lot of its power. Can you hear me, Visa?

We’re all hearing it – the forsaken R word, the markets in disarray, you get the idea. Marketers are focused increasingly on digital, but as any good marketer should, they are likely questioning just how to reach their audience with a digital strategy that embraces emerging mediums including social media, mobile, and more traditional digital media such as online advertising. Mobile is one of the oldest of the “new” emerging technologies, and while 2009 was long poised to be a big year for mobile, it is worth taking a step back to reevaluate whether now is the right now time to be investing marketing dollars in mobile.  As marketers, we’re always looking for relevant and valuable ways to connect our brands with customers, and mobile is perhaps the most measurable, relevant, and personalized means of meeting that need.  Until recently, mobile has not been a very lucrative means of connecting with customers mainly because of low data-usage rates, clunky handset experiences with data, and slow network speeds. With the emergence of 3G networks, affordable data-plans, and brilliant new smart-phones (hut hum, namely the iPhone), customer data usage is rapidly climbing, making marketing to customers on mobile increasingly relevant, and increasingly popular.

Mobile is inherently unique in that it is portable, extremely personal, and now more than ever, highly measurable. Marketing for mobile, whether via messaging, advertising, mobile apps, or a mobile web presence; leverages all of these inherent unique properties of the channel. Marketers can reach users when and where information is most relevant, since the user is always connected to her mobile device. Mobile provides location-based services (LBS), provides a vehicle for instantaneous transaction and brand experience, and serves up relevant content to users leveraging demographics, handset device information, and other preferences gathered through increasingly accurate mobile usage data.  Given the measurability of mobile down to the individual user, targeted and relevant content is not only possible, but in addition, enables us to glean valuable data on click-through, participation in campaigns, time and location relevancy.

Now, navigating through the mobile ecosphere is not always easy. Where does one start?  For many marketers, the mobile web is the most natural starting point, as it is not really that much different from the traditional online site as it exists today. In simple terms, an optimized mobile web site is a streamlined version of an online site, which provides not all, but rather the most relevant content for individuals on the go, formatted for mobile, from the company’s traditional online site. For years folks have been asking if the traffic and popularity of the mobile web (or WAP, as some call it) can sustain building a site optimized for mobile. This should be less questionable in most recent months given the statistics being thrown around about trends of incredible upward usage of the mobile web.  Consider this – ABI Research sees mobile web growth continuing over the next five years, with highly capable Internet browsers on smart-phones expanding from 130 million in 2008 to 530 million by 2013! Simply incredible when you consider the opportunity to connect with so many millions of users on a device they deem so personal.  Mobile is no longer seen as a ‘nice to have’, but is rather a channel marketers are taking seriously and beginning to plan for not only in the short term, but in their longer term strategies as well.  In many ways, having a mobile presence is akin to having a website in 2000. It is expected by consumers, will drive an increasing slice of the pie of your customers’ brand experience, and if smartly executed, is a huge opportunity to add value to your customers in pertinent and meaningful ways. Don’t wait too long; it’s time to mobilize.