New (ways of using) Media

Interview about Flair Mobile Mag (in french)

Thursday, March 26th, 2009 | mobile advertising | No Comments

Tags: branded service, Dynamic Insourcing, Flair Mobile, interest-based advertising, media, mobile, mobile advertising, mobile marketing, mobile monday, user experience

Cleverwood enabling Girl Geek’s low pound shopping in London

Friday, March 13th, 2009 | mobile advertising | 6 Comments

Tomorrow, Brussels and Paris Girl Geeks go to London, kindly invited by Eurostar to enjoy low pound shopping and a gathering with London Girl Geeks. Cleverwood, in partnership with Rolling Talks, designed, adviced on technologies and managed the whole project for Eurostar.

Based on our know-how of the mobile usage in Belgium and the very short timing, Cleverwood decided to propose a mobile site, designed for most smartphones and using advantages of open API applications on the web. Mixing power of Twitter to spread the word and add some virality to the messages created during the event, possibilities related to Flickr geo-location and Eurostar favorite places in London located on Google Maps give a great cocktail focussed on ladies locations, their pictures and, of course, their conversations.

All this in a very intuitive and navigation-free interface guiding the Girls at each step to the logical possibilities.

A web interface (www.eurostar.com/girlsgeeks) has been set up as well in order for the non-invited people to follow their trip, their tips, their discoveries… All messages will be automatically transferred as well to their Twitter account using the #GGSL tag. Check it out!

Tags: branded service, e-marketing, mobile, mobile advertising, mobile marketing

Now, son, Mobile can be a media !

Saturday, February 14th, 2009 | mobile advertising | 1 Comment

It is always interesting for a Son of a Phone like me to see how other worlds are looking at Mobile. It can be other cultures like Asia or USA, it can be through women eyes like I did while working at Sanoma for Flair Mobile and it is certainly while witnessing people from traditional advertising or media discussing about it. And I learned a lot of things during GRP’s Media Session over Mobile Marketing.

The host list was already very promising. Laurent Deramaix from RMB who represents perfectly the risky and innovative initiative this company took taking care of media part of Pumbby. Alexis Picard from Mediaedge:cia presented figures from their exclusive study on Belgian Market. And last but not least, Blyk Belgium CEO Eric Samson who represents perfectly what the debate was about: a media savvy entering the mobile world.

Let’s start with figures: Alexis highlighted the fact that 26% of 24-65 Belgians are ready to give their mobile phone number for receiving information and/or advertising. Which is roughly 1.6M people! Most expected services are Mobile Banking, Mobile Couponing (but keeping in mind that distribution sector doesn’t accept it yet) and Advertising. Quite encouraging for Blyk, then. What is also interesting to note is that French-speaking part is more willing than the dutch-speaking one. Another key fact is that older age classes are increasingly using SMS and MMS, especially for reaching their family members. Adapting to their grand-children communication channels.

Pumbby and Blyk have quite similarities. On one hand, Pumbby is being sold by a Sales House, at rates and in a customer experience closer to Direct Marketing than webvertising. Subscribers are rewarded with cents (44 cents per message) while Blyk rewards them with phone call minutes and SMS. Pumbby is only starting creating an interaction and bringing added value to consumer (Cliniclown case) while Blyk knows it will be needed from start. Eric Samson considers Blyk as a Media and not as an advertising channel. The recipe is ready and has been successfully tested in UK, now it’s time to roll it out in Europe:

• Exclusive focus on 16-24 target group
• Messages are sent regarding customer preferences, which positions Blyk as database-marketing rather than webvertising like Skynet (for Proximus) and Microsoft (for Mobistar and Base) currently do
• Create engagement towards the “advertising message”: an interaction is expected from the member each time in order to start a conversation between the brand and the member
• Members are only accepted via invitations. It creates a buzz and an happy few feeling for the chosen ones
• It is NOT webvertising on members phone, it is Direct Marketing
• Average response rate of 25%, advertiser retention rate of 60%, 2000 campaigns for 200 advertisers in less than 2 years. All this on UK market.

After the presentation, I had the chance to discuss further with Eric Samson who highlighted the need to, beside working with all media value chain members, talk to advertisers at top level to convince them adding this new media in their plans because it simply just works! Blyk will focus at first on (of course relevant for the 16-24 target group) brands who are looking for innovation. He would be happy gaining very quickly a critical mass of 50.000 to 100.000 (that was exactly our goal at Sanoma too=o) members and expect campaign budgets between 5.000 and 20.000 euros. Also what we experienced at Sanoma!

As a conclusion, it is very interesting that Media World is accepting Mobile as a (7^th Mass, for Laurent from RMB) Media. But they expect to manage it with their rules, inside their value system and considering all traditional media value chain members. That’s why legal constraints (especially around opt-in rules), metrics and socio-demographic data are key for adoption of mobile media in marketing plans. That’s what MNO have not considered until now.
It was funny to hear Laurent telling that Mobile Operators will play a major role in this new media while they officially claim now that they won’t play that game in Belgium and focus on Customer User Experience and Connectivity.

Tags: blyk, media, mobile, mobile advertising, mobile marketing

Flair Mobile wins Golden Mobistar Innovation Award

Friday, January 16th, 2009 | mobile advertising | No Comments

Flair Mobile won a Golden Mobistar Innovation Award in the MMS category. Looking for new ways of doing mobile advertising, Fabian Tilmant from Cleverwood designed an MMS service that allowed any mobile user in Belgium to subscribe to this innovative weather forecast service. Based on forecasted weather, but also on user preferences, Flair Mobile sends every day an outfit proposition to the subscribers.

Based on an idea from Carole Lamarque, Mobile Business Unit Manager at Sanoma Magazines Belgium, Fabian and Ring Ring proposed this service to 3 Suisses in order for them to gain visibility on this new media. 

Sanoma Mobile Strategy aims at proposing innovative and brand-relevant mobile services to all mobile users in Belgium. These services are a direct extension of Sanoma brands (Flair, HUMO, Libelle, Femmes d’Aujourd’hui…) unto the mobile world.

For Flair, Sanoma wants to propose services to the market that appeals to Flair audience and to Flair brand. Such services don’t exist yet on the Belgian market. These services will be used to create more attractivity to Flair Mobile SIM-card offer. Flair Mobile customers receiving more, better or at a preferred tariff services. In this case, Flair Mobile customers enjoyed the service FOR FREE during the first week!

3 Suisses wanted to experiment this approach by helping Sanoma creating a truly innovative and Flair-relevant mobile service. Fun, but still informative. Together, they decided to exploit branding, call-to-sales and viral aspects possibilities of mobile media. 

We decided to go for MMS technology for this service in order to enhance attractivity of this high potential medium and because MMS is natively viral-enabled. We expect our customers to forward MMS or to keep them in their inbox in order to show them to friends later on. This is a great value for the 3 Suisses and for Flair Mobile brands compared to WAP-push technology used by Pumbby for instance.

Flair proposed a partnership to 3 Suisses for this action in order to enhance attractivity of the service. 3 Suisses products being fully and natively integrated in the service allows 3 Suisses not to be seen as an advertiser, but as a true part of the product.

Native functionalities of the medium are also used: the MMS can be forwarded to friends, can be kept in user’s MMS inbox, the image can be used as a wallpaper by the user and a call can be generated by the user to 3 Suisses call center for more information about the product, being identified by the catalogue reference of the product. 

This service has been communicated in Flair magazine and on Flair website. The website allowed to improve customer’s involvement, interactivity and personalization by allowing the user to choose her style and her size range. 

Tags: Flair Mobile, MMS, mobile advertising, mobile marketing