Top 5 Marketing Articles to Read This Week

Busy week! As always, I'm always reading a ton of articles on the Internets. Here are a few that caught my eye...


What You Can Learn From the Funniest P&G Marketer Ever, by Rajiv Satyal, AdAge

Good advice if you want to add some creativity to your work.


Breaking: Salesforce.com Announces the Marketing Cloud. So What is It?, by Jesse Noyes, Eloqua

Marketing, sales and technology are becoming the same process. Get it? Get it?


David Byrne on How Music and Creativity Work, by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

Yet more insight into the creative process...


Are HTML5 and Hybrid App Development Strategies Ready for Primetime?, by D. P. Venkatesh, mPortal Blog

Building out your mobile platform? Wondering whether to go native, html5 or hybrid?


4 Reasons Facebook Dumped HTML5 And Went Native, by Todd Hoff,High Scalibility

Facebook has an opinion. You should probably listen...

Notes from AMA Mobile Marketing Event

I attended an interesting and informative event at NPR's office last Thursday night on mobile marketing put together by the DC chapter of the American Marketing Association. I've talked a lot about mobile marketing on this blog over the years.

Just my two cents: it's been a long time coming, but I think the promise of (at least non-Location Based Services (LBS)) mobile marketing is at hand.

The event had a strong, experienced panel who confirmed a lot of what I already knew about marketing on mobile devices but had a lot of new compelling information. Here are the panelists:

DP Venkatesh, CEO, mPortal

Mary Gramaglia, Director of Sales, Sybase 365

Michael Lieberman, Mobile Integration Director, Hyperfactory

Demian Perry, Product Manager Content Development and Mobile Operations, NPR

Chris Parandian, Founder, Tin Can Communications

(Thanks to the ever-charming Old Town Alexandria resident, Limor Shafman, for moderating the panel!!)

The topics of discussion ranged from extremely tactical to very high level. Here are some of the takeaways...

1. Mobile marketing is a unique medium due to the intimate and individual nature of the interaction. People don't share phones so their handheld is an extension of the person and his/her personality. When marketing through mobile, that relationship must be respected.
2. Ask for help. Mobile marketing is complex and cannot be planned in a silo without reference to your other branding, marketing and PR efforts. Like all media, mobile marketing has strengths and weaknesses- plan for both. Mobile is digital and can be tracked like any digital campaign. But be sure mobile targets your audience and make sure your message is relevant for that audience.
3. Don't distract, annoy, bore, confuse or attempt to hold your audience hostage.
4. Mobile marketing is about engagement rather than reach. Always include a call to action to further interact with you. Mobile marketing is, at its core, a social medium, akin to social networking. Give people a chance to participate and express themselves. Don't blast a brand message to 100,000 people.
5. Go to the Mobile Marketing Association and read their marketing guidelines.

Do you think the panel left anything out? Should marketers think about mobile marketing in a different way? Or ignore it?

Walt Mossberg Raises the Red Flag of Revolution

A colleague of mine pointed out to me an interesting blog post by Walt Mossberg this morning:

http://mossblog.allthingsd.com/20071021/free-my-phone/

A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer.

Up until the 1970s, when the federal government intervened, you weren’t allowed to buy your own landline phone, and companies weren’t able to innovate, on price or features, in making and selling phones to the public. All Americans were forced to rent clumsy phones made by a subsidiary of the monopoly phone company, AT&T, which claimed that, unless it controlled what was connected to its network, the network might suffer.

Well, the government pried that market open, and the wired phone network not only didn’t collapse, it became more useful and versatile, allowing, among other things, cheap connections to online data services.

I suspect that if the government, or some disruptive innovation, breaks the crippling power that the wireless carriers exert today, the free market will deliver a similar happy ending.

At the SIIA Changing Landscape seminar on mobility last month, D. P. Venkatesh pointed out that Apple is a odd choice to lead the anti-oligarchy charge. It's model is based on it owning the entire software stack to the exclusion of anyone else. Although, Apple just announced that they will eventually allow third party programs, this seems like too little to late. After all, my three year old PocketPC (on Verizon, widely acknowledged as the "worst" carrier in terms of openness) easily allows third party applications.

Now, switching it from one carrier to another might prove a challenge...

However, Walt's economic instincts are correct. More competition will bring more innovation, and greater value at lower prices. And you can bet that the carriers will fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening...

The Changing Landscape of Mobile

Hi all. I've partnered with the Software and Information Industry Association (www.siia.net) to produce a series of events that will take a look at the transformational changes occurring right now in three critical areas. Each of these areas are wrestling with dramatic change that is raising technology, regulatory, and cultural issues while generating tremendous business opportunities and creating real value for customers. Each of these events will spotlight panelists with differing perspectives on all of these issues as well as give insight into what the future might look like given today’s trends.

The first event will be very informative and will focus on the changes in the wireless industry and the impact that mobility is having on consumers, enterprises and marketers. We've scheduled two other events: one on security (Oct 25) and one on enterprise software (Nov 13). Look for those invitations down the road.

I’ve included the event information below. If you’d like to attend, please visit https://www.siia.net/events/prereg.asp?eventid=757.

“The Changing Landscape: Mobile”

Panelists: Leslie Poole, CEO, Javien Digital Payments
Gregg Smith, CEO, Acuity Mobile
Rich Carlson, CEO, Wireless Matrix
D. P. Venkatesh, CEO, mPortal

Moderator: Jeff Majka, Strategic Communications Group

Date: September 25, 2007

Time: 8am to 10am

Location: SIIA DC office, 1090 Vermont Avenue, 6th Floor, Washington DC