Communities Dominate Brands

My sixth book, 7th Media, is ready. Taking pre-orders at publisher Futuretext

I am very proud to announce my sixth book, the eagerly-awaited treatise on mobile phones as the newest of the mass media. The 322 page hardcover book is entitled Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media, and subtitled Cellphone, Cameraphone, iPhone, Smartphone - is what many of our readers have seen me speak about during the past two years, and obviously both Alan and me often blog about here - about how the cellular phone is now the newest mass media. Not the dumb little sister of the internet, not the clumsy cousin of the personal computer, not the tiny screen crippled kid sibling of television - but rather, mobile is as much more potent as a media channel than its predecessor the internet, as TV was more potent as a media than its predecessor, radio.

The book has 18 chapters including several on mobile phone customer behaviour; chapters each on the major content categories such as music, gaming, television, advertising etc; and of course it is packed with up-to-the-minute statistics and real world examples. The book has 16 case studies from the most innovative countries in the mobile space, such as Finland, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong etc. The case studies include just about every one of the most innovative companies and services in the mobile space that we discuss regularly at this blog, such as Flirtomatic, Blyk, MyNuMo, Cyworld, SeeMeTV, Super Stable, Kamera Jiten, Airline mobile check-in, Mice Love Rice, Pop Kids, Just-in-time Dentist, Virgin MVNO etc etc etc.

If you are curious about the mobile industry and how it may impact your life - such as why Barack Obama is right now making such great use of SMS text messaging and Twitter to connect with the youth and gaining new evangelists to his cause; or if you are in the media or advertising space, look at the iPhone and wonder how that will change your career and the lives of your audiences; or if you're someone in the telecoms space, unsure what 3G may bring (and not bring), this is the book to read right now.

I wrote this book alone, as this was more a mobile telecoms book than a marketing/convergence book like my previous two books, Communities Dominate Brands with Alan Moore, and Digital Korea with Jim O'Reilly. But rest assured, as you can see from our collaboration here with Alan, his thoughts are frequently quoted throughout the book. And the foreword? I am very proud to have Pekka Ala-Pietila, the Chairman of Blyk and past president of Nokia who wrote the kind foreword to the book.

The book is priced to sell, 322 pages hard cover, and only 20 UK Pounds (30 Euros, 40 US Dollars) and taking orders now for first deliveries shortly. Please go to the futuretext website now to place your order. The link is http://mobile7th.futuretext.com/

Of course the book will soon also appear on Amazon sites and be available through major booksellers. As with my previous two books, I have a pdf file of an excerpt of the book, including a full chapter, the Foreword and a complete case study (plus table of contents etc) that you can read to sample the book. If you write to me at  tomi (at) tomiahonen (dot) com, then I will send you the pdf file in return email.

I will be posting some updates of the book so you'll get to read more about it and also the first opinions as they come in. But yes, this is my book on what makes mobile unique. If you like what I've written about mobile telecoms on this blogsite, you will love the book.

Americans and their cellphones, new numbers

And continuing from my miscellaneous articles picked up during the vacation..

I read the September issue of PC Today magazine and it had some mobile telecoms stats from America. The Nielsen Company reports that the American cellphone penetration rate per capita is now 85% (still lagging almost all industrialized countries where leading countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Italy and Israel have per capita rates of 135%-140%). But the PC Today article gave good comparisons of how other technologies fare in America. DVD players are nearly as prevalent with 84% penetration rate per capita.  PCs are only at 80%, digital cameras at 69% and MP3 players only at 40%. Hopefully this helps wake up those who might still be asleep in America about the 7th of the Mass Media - the world's most prevalent technology is the cellphone.

There was another stat in the issue as well. The USA National Center for Health Statistics reported that 15.8% of American households has already cut the cord and have no fixed landlines, but use only cellphones for their telecoms needs. Again, this may seem like a big number (almost one in six homes in America) but of course, this also lags the leading countries quite massively. Finland has already passed the half-point with more homes relying only on cellphones than those that have a fixed landline.

About those mobile phones on planes..

I picked up a number of news stories during the vacation and will blog briefly about them over the next few days as I return back to work..

One was in the Economist on Aug 9, where they discussed the use of mobile phones on planes. As we've reported here several times, various airlines have announced intentions to, then started pilot projects, and now are rolling out services to allow passengers to use mobile phones on planes.

And very predictably, there is a big outcry by the general public against this idea. Nobody wants to sit next to some blabbermouth talking about their life on the phone during a 12 hour flight..  Yeah. But lets get real. First, that most who are in these surveys, are not regular travellers. Among frequent fliers, it is a very different attitude to phones on planes.

Secondly, these airplane calls will be more expensive than the same calls on the ground. It is most unlikely that people will want to spend a lot of time yapping on the phone in a plane.

But mostly, the far more convenient use in planes both for the person communicating and the fellow passengers - is of course SMS text messaging. Totally private, non-intrusive, it is the natural method to use a mobile phone when seated shoulder-to-shoulder in the middle seat of cattle-class..

So, any surprise that this mobile telecoms consultant is very happy that we are finally getting to be conneted also on flights? No surprise here ha-ha, I'm always happy when our industry figures out ways to make more money as we approach the trillion dollar industry level at the end of this decade..

Well, clearly the vacation has not cured me of my long intros to try to get to my point, eh?  What was the Economist saying on the 9th of August? Couple of fascinating findings from early trials and tests of phones on planes. Emirates has been using the technology to allow mobile phone use on planes since March of this year, on 10 of their aircraft. The reaction has been "overwhelmingly positive" with half of passengers switching on a phone during an average flight. That sounds good to me. A phone that is turned on, means also it can receive communciations (call attempts even if not answered, and of course SMS text messages). Overwhelmingly positive? Sounds good. How about the calls? The average call length has been two and a half minutes. Well less than the average length of a normal mobile phone call, which is nearly four minutes. Thus even if you happen to sit next to someone who speaks twice as long as the average, it is only a five minute call.. This does not seem like the torture that many imagined.

Also Emirates found that most calls were made in daytime hours, very few calls were in night time. What was the most popular use on Emirates? SMS text messaging of course. Of course!

The article also talked of Air France's trials which were short haul flights in Europe and Northern Africa. Interesting tidbits. 80% of the passengers wanted the system expanded to cover all of Air France's flights. And the average flight generated 100 SMS text messages..  If we assume its a mid-size Airbus plane carrying some 150-200 passengers, then they get something like half a text message sent per passenger. Not bad. I think if this continues - and as SMS text messaging continues to grow - this number will also grow.

Yeah, I like this development.

Social Media in the Inc. 500: The First Longitudinal Study

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research recently conducted one of the first statistically significant, longitudinal studies on the usage of social media in corporations.

The new study compares corporate adoption of social media between 2007 and 2008 by the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies compiled annually by Inc. Magazine.

Click here for report

Facebook and the Age of Engagement

Facebook launches beta of Engagement Ads programme

Facebook will launch its Engagement Ads beta programme in the UK from 1 September ahead of a full October roll out and will move all users to the new Facebook platform during the test period.

The Engagement Ads advertising programme, an evolution and addition to the existing Social Ads programme, will allow users to comment on targeted brand adverts, with the resulting actions being placed inside their and their friends news feeds. Each time the ad is then served to a friend... The appearance of Engagement Ads will see the end of the sponsored stories ad placement inside the news feed. The ads will initially come in three formats covering video, fan and gift services allowing brands to become part of user's conversations.

In the Revolution will not be Televised in 2003 – I wrote

Up until now, advertising has always relied on Interruption. Whether travelling to work, reading their favourite newspaper, watching TV or just generally going about their daily business, consumers are constantly interrupted by advertising messages. But the power of these interruptive messages is waning, simply because there are so many of them around us and they cost so much to do. More TV channels, more magazines, more billboards, more door-drops, more email spam means more and more ads - interruptive advertising is beginning to become as much of a headache for marketers as it is for the poor consumer. The more interruptions there are, the more clutter there is - and consequently the less power any individual message has to stand out and get noticed. Moreover there are grumblings from the client side that all is not well in the marketing communications industry.

No wonder that marketers are waking up to a new way to build their brands. Not by Interruption, but by Engagement. Engagement Marketing is about brands, becoming, for example part of the fabric of entertainment - enhancing it, not interrupting it. Put simply, it is about getting out of the ad break and into the world of content, assets and properties.

Brands that create engaging content are being welcomed by consumers as enhancing their daily lives rather than interrupting them. And with the explosion of new technologies, in particular digital TV, web and mobile phones - there is an ever increasing array of new tools with which marketers can surround their consumers
with new types of engaging content. But do not think Engagement is purely about lowest common denominator entertainment. Far from it.

The new engagement communications tools include...

1. Branded content or Brand related content
2. Entertainment, Info-tainment, Edu-tainment properties
3. Media properties
4. Meaningful brand experiences
5. Information Service brands that specialise in edited choice
6. Embedded sponsorship vs. passive sponsorship

These front-end properties assume that there is a value equation for both businesses and customers. They are also premised on the fundamental principle that marketing should be conversational rather than a top-down, one-way interruptive message which de-personalises the relationship and becomes a barrier to communication, the very opposite of a conduit to valuable customer relationships.

Ad spend on UK social networks to top £100m

Whats the deal with the Obama SMS text messaging notification of his VP choice - is very clever campaigning

I caught CNN's Larry King Live on Friday with a panel discussing the US Presidential elections and Barack Obama's upcoming announcement of his Vice Presidential pick. They had a four person panel discuss the matter for example about using the SMS text messaging alert. The panel had somewhat predictable and valid view points, mostly. While the Democratic pundit and the two neutral pundits were generally favourable to the idea, the oldest panelist, the one Republican party representative pundit - I'm sorry I didn't get his name - said that he had found the choice of SMS text messaging as surprising, because to his mind he felt that SMS text messages are used only for the "most inconsequential messages". He then gave examples of frivolous youth messaging examples. He clearly felt that SMS was inappropriate for "proper" communciations..

NEW IDEA - TO AMERICANS

I knew I had to write this blog today. First, I think it is not surprising that this year - 2008 - the American elections are adapting to SMS text messaging, because last year we passed the point where more than half of all Americans had started to use SMS text messaging on their cellphones. What many American elections pundits don't know - as America lags in mobile telecoms, and lags drastically in SMS text messaging adoption - and until very recently SMS texting was a techie-nerdy bizarre cryptic messaging option; is that SMS text messages are used in elections all the world over, have been for many years and several election cycles already in the advanced markets. For most, especially non-telecoms experts today in America, SMS texting can easily seem like the dumb and simple variant of the wireless email on a Blackberry.

Secondly, it is not surprising that it is Obama's campaign which has been most innovative and active in using SMS. There is a clear division between McCain and Obama this year, that older voters tend to favour McCain and younger voters tend to favour Obama. And funnily enough, the same division held well earlier this year with the Democratic primaries, where Hillary Clinton supporters tended to be older Democrats, and Obama supporters were younger Democrats. And SMS texting is definitely in every country adopted by the youth first, before their parents, teachers, bosses, and grandparents subsequently catch the SMS text messaging bug.

So, we now know that the Obama campaign collected millions of cellphone numbers from interested voters (and media) and promised to send the official announcement of the Vice Presidential pick first to those voters. Sounds like a clever bit of using high tech, a gimmicky PR campaign to increase attention and interest in the VP pick, and to create suspense and anticipation to the selection (and dominate the news cycle prior to the announcement)

That is all good and well. But there is FAR more to SMS than being a gimmicky youth messaging method. It is the world's most widely used data application (globally twice as many people are active users of SMS text messaging on their phones, than the total number of internet users). It has been proven to be addictive - far MORE addictive than the Blackberry. And for comparison, there are 160 times more people sending short messages from cellphones using SMS, than all users of Blackberry devices. 160 times more! And consider the recepients. If you send an SMS, rather than an email - you can reach a total population that is 220 times larger with cellphones that can receive an SMS, than all Blackberries in use around the world....

Yes, so what is the real point to this strange obsession that the Obama campaign has with SMS?

TEXTING RESULTS IN MORE ACTIVE VOTERS

They can influence voter behaviour through SMS !  A study by the University of Michigan and Princeton University, covering 4,000 cellphone users in America, found that when a prospective voter is contacted via SMS text messaging alert/reminder on election day, the likelihood of voting increases by 4.2%. And the cost to generate an additional vote, was 1.56 dollars per vote achieved, through SMS reminders. Considering that we're looking at an election costing hundreds of millions of dollars per party, this is incredibly cost-effective. The study was reported at Wireless and Mobile News in August of 2008.

USA 195 MILLION TEXTING TODAY

So, you think 4% is not really very much..  Well, think again. First, the USA has passed the 50% per capita point of SMS text messaging use last year. The latest number I have were reported in SMS Text News in April, on USA statistics by Wirefly, that 65% of Americans are now active users of SMS texting. That is not against cellphone owners, or the "adult population" or some other such stat. It is per capita, ie measured against all living Americans, including babies etc. That is 195 million people.

USA 221 MILLION VOTING AGE

So lets map it against the voting age population. Of the 300 million USA citizens, the latest count I found was by George Mason University, based on USA Census data and individual state voting data, that there were 221 million voting age people. 79 million are too young to vote. Some of these do have cellphones, and as SMS starts with teenagers, of those 79 million we have perhaps 30 million who are active SMS users. So lets deduct these from the active user base, and we have about 165 million active users of SMS texting who are also of voting age.

AGE DIVIDE

Then lets make an adjustment of the voting block for Obama and for McCain. There is a clear preference for under 40 year old Americans to prefer Obama, for over 65 year olds to prefer McCain, and for the mid-ground to split somewhat evenly. Older people are far more active and reliable voters than young people, so while on demographic data, Obama's base of support is far bigger, McCain's age group is more reliable in voting, bringing this to such a close election at this point. I don't have actual preferences, but if we say the under 40 age group is 2.1 in favour of Obama, and conversely the over 65 group is 2:1 in favour of McCain, I'm sure we're in the ballpark.

So, is there a related age gap in SMS texting use. Not in the advanced markets, in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark etc it is totally normal for retired people to be active users of SMS text messaging. We've reported that here on this blogsite many times.

But when countries start to adopt SMS, it is a youth thing, gradually spreading up the age curve. And it is quite clear, that in America today, the core McCain voter base - the over 65 year olds - are still quite dubious of SMS. Even the mid-range aged voters, 40-65 year olds are only recent converts.

SIMPLE MODEL

So I did a quick spread of the numbers according to the USA age pyramid, and find that out of the 165 million voters who are active SMS users, 100 million would be in the Obama voters, and 65 million with McCain (note that the more severely the age breaks split, the greater this difference would be).

Now it gets intersting. Lets say that Obama manages during the election season 2008 to get half of his voter base to give their cellphone numbers. That is 50 million numbers. This is similar in scale to for example voters in the latest run of American Idol, so this is not an unreasonable assumption. Then lets plug in the 4.2% numbers. We get 2.1 million extra votes for Obama - which cost his campaign about 3 million dollars (a trivial number when his campaign will spend hundreds of millions during the next 70 days in the campaign).

COMPARE TO 2004 ELECTION

And is this relevant.. The last election with Bush and Kerry, had 121 million votes cast. Because of the US Presidential election vote counting system of "Electoral College" votes, allocated to states, it always is a count of states and their respective Electoral College votes that determine who wins the election (Al Gore won more popular votes than George W Bush in 2000 but Bush won; similarly Richard Nixon won more popular votes than John F Kennedy in 1960). So in 2004 the battle was won or lost in the three most close states - Ohio, New Mexico and Iowa.

If we assume that this year November, McCain wins exactly the same votes and states as George W Bush in 2004; and Obama wins exactly the same states and votes as Kerry did in 2004, and we then add the 4.2% added votes effect to half of the Obama votes (ie 2.1% effect to all of his votes) - guess what. That would shift those three states, Ohio, New Mexico and Iowa - to the Democrats.

OBAMA WOULD WIN SAME ELECTION THAT KERRY LOST

So if McCain keeps improving just like Bush Jr did four years ago, all the way to Election Day, and pulls off what many consider a major upset right now - and duplicates Bush's vote count. And Obama would get the same result as Kerry did four years ago - but Obama now adds an SMS text messaging influence - as his ONLY gain - that would turn three states to the Democrats, and the election would be won by Obama, with 284 Electoral College votes (270 is needed to win). Bush Jr won with 286 last time and Kerry lost with 252.

THAT is what SMS text messaging can do for a campaign. This is yet another example of what Generation C (Community Generation) do with their lives, and how critical both the cellphone, and specifically SMS text messaging is to them. This is yet another example of the radical new services on the 7th Mass Media channel. And a brilliant example of shrewd use of the world's most counter-intuitive service - and what is not obvious at first glance, but definitely true - also the world's fastest form of communication (when measured wholistically by throughput of the communication activity - far faster than email, voicemail, direct voice call, etc; even faster than using wireless email on a Blackberry)

YOU NEED TO BE YOUNG OR YOUTHFUL TO UNDERSTAND

So yes, clever by Obama. And yes, poor McCain. He is still trying to get to grips with the sixth mass media - the internet. He is clueless about the 7th mass media (mobile). His team consists of far older people than Obama's and they are saddled with the kind of faulty opinions about cellphone based communciations, from SMS to twitter. Like the pundit on CNN said "inconsequential messages" ha-ha. How totally wrong he is. The MDA (Mobile Data Association) measured preferences of communication tools of UK business execs and five years ago already found that UK execs number one preference was SMS text messaging. The classic London City investment bankers and Fleet Street journalists and all other traditional business execs in Britain - yes, they prefer using SMS to voice calls or emails (or voice mail). Same for governments the world over - the Finnish Prime Minister says on his voicemail greeting, don't leave me voicemail, send me SMS...

For those who don't fully understand SMS text messaging, I've got a great (and free) two page Thought Piece for you on the topic of SMS. Send me an email to tomi at tomiahonen dot com and I'll send you the Thought Piece in return email.

UPDATE Sept 2 - also please note I've just had my sixth book released a couple of days after this blog entry was made. The book - Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media (subtitle cellphone, cameraphone, iPhone, smartphone) has a chapter on SMS, and another chapter on how society is now changing with ever smarter cellphones and their users. I have a two-chapter excerpt from the book including its foreword. If you send me an email to the above address, I'll send it to you. And you don't need to request it separately from the SMS Thought Piece, I'm adding the book excerpt to all who request the Thought Piece as well.

Life was local

National Union of Journalists' representatives from across Johnston Press's main publishing centres have unanimously backed a motion of no confidence in the company's senior management and urged shareholders and communities to act to save their local papers.

Now the union is planning to stage a group-wide day of actions to highlight what it calls "the damage being done to local papers." It quotes the following examples:

"One title is restricted to just 12 photographs a week because of the lack of money to pay photographers, another cannot send a photographer to jobs after 5.30pm because of budget cuts. Another title has almost 25% of editorial posts currently unfilled and reps report that morale across the group is at rock bottom."

Posts Roy Greenslade in Johnston Press: the uncomfortable truth

And in Flat Earth News Nick Davis relentlessly demonstrates how the news industry has in fact eaten itself with greed - instead of reinvesting in the the product, quality journalism.

And its such a shame that Print media is struggling with a digital future

Nick Davies writes

These are corporations that think greatly about commerce and casually about journalism

This demonstrates Punctuated Equilibrium for the Johnston Press but it did not need to be so, but I am afraid its all a bit too late.

Greesnslade writes

But Johnston's financial situation is parlous. Its ad revenue has declined. Profit forecasts have been downgraded. Its share price, trading at 58.50p as I write, has recovered only a little from its 30p low point. To put that in perspective, it was 393p a year ago.

The NUJ would undoubtedly point out that Johnston has enjoyed high profit margins, beyond 33%, in recent years. Why can the company not accept a lower margin without cutting back on staffing? However, by their nature investors - including our pension fund holders - are ruthless. They want the best returns available. So they are turning their backs on the maturing newspaper industry.

He continues

Yet, as we all know, reducing staff often reduces quality. The result? Readers desert. Then advertisers, already difficult to attract, desert too. The downward spiral is inevitable.

Moreover, what I think is a shame is the failure to try and work-out what advertising looks like in the digital age. And this has not happened. Instead has been a half step from analogue to digital.

And so Analogue media presses the panic button whereas what Regional Press Owners Need to do is this

Obama twittering and texting, McCain learning to surf web

I find it intersting, how stereotypically obvious the two US presidential candidates are in their approach to modern digital media. 47 year old Democratic candidate Barack Obama has broken all kinds of records in using the web to raise money. He has used SMS texting to expand his army of volunteers - and will now be announcing shortly his VP pick via SMS to registered supporters. And he twitters about his life.

Meanwhile 71 year old Republican candidate John McCain said earlier that he doesn't use the computer - its his younger wife who does that for their family. He said he was not computer literate. McCain has now been trying to catch up, and apparently has some fave web pages that he surfs. But this is a very serious drawback, in the age of "Communities Dominate" - that one candidate behaves fluently like a Generation C (for Community) member - already fully on mobile as well as PC based internet, and the other is only learning the basics of computers.

PS am still on vacation, but will gradually get back into blogging now..  I have to start by reading all of Alan's postings while I've been away, ha-ha..

Consuming Life [2]

Sophia Parker has posted about Zygmunt Bauman Bauman caught my attention recently

As a recap - Sophia writes

His basic argument is that we have moved from a producer society to a consumer society (where we are defined by our shopping basket rather than by our work) - what he calls ‘liquid modernity’. As part of this transition, we not only become consumers, but also necessarily commodities ourselves: constantly marketing who we are in the quest to be seen, as ‘invisibility is tantamount to death’ (here he quotes Germaine Greer). He believes we are in the grip of a subjectivity fetishism.

But these are the interesting bits

I was really struck by a number of the consequences he outlines of this view of the world. First, a consumer society is not defined by what it buys, but instead by what it wastes

Second, he writes at length about the commodification of intimate life - Our relationships become as dispensable as the things we buy - and this pattern is reinforced by the way we find our friends now (online dating etc etc)

Third, he kicks back against the internet, and all those who herald it as the dawn of a new era of connectedness, instead seeing it as a force that drives us towards this commodification of the ‘Other’

The last one worries me as I see that connectedness - can be a powerful force for good. Take the view that Connectivity unleashes productivity Which looked at the economic success of GrameenPhone in Bangladesh

One study concluded that the total lifetime cost of an additional phone (including the cell tower and switching gear) was about $2,000, but that each phone enabled $50,000 of increased productivity. And surprisingly, the poorer the country to begin with, the greater the increase in wealth from connectivity.

Sophia picks up on how Liquid Modernity affect Time and Meaning.

Whereas before meaning was derived by progression through life, Bauman believes we are now operating in ‘pointillist’ time, where each of us have to create meaning out of the many choices we make everyday. Melancholy, in these terms, is being overwhelmed by the possibilities of all this choice, to the point of withdrawing from the act of choosing

And this has a significant implications on our sense of self and our identities

Bauman should force us to pause for thought. And I thank Sophia, for so clearly illuminating Bauman's thinking.

Co-Creation with Lego

Mark William Hansen LEGO Co-Creation
Uploaded by henkjan