Nothing new under the Sun at 3GSM Barcelona
Just returned after a hectic few days at the Alatto stand at 3GSM Congress in Barcelona . This year I felt there was nothing new that really had that "WOW" factor. Usually there is some offering or announcement that is really exciting but this year ... nada.
OK the announcement that Skype will be available on
Three handsets is a little earlier than expected. Also interesting to see
Microsoft announce the acquisition of
Motionbridge. I believe more US based mobile search outfits will be forced to look to Europe for useful IP and traction in this area. What about
Tribes then Google ;-).
BTW: Check out my new tagline for Tribes: "
Discovery without Search" geddit?
I will leave you today with a few pictures from the event. Firstly the alatto stand at the Irish pavilion.
The event was so big this year (after been squeezed into Cannes for many years) that many of the big companies had several stands in different halls. Nokia had so many stands that some were dedicated to specific products. For example see below Nokia radio stand. This is kinda frustrating for us in alatto as we touted the idea of mobile radio client on handset several years ago. We even built a prototype running on flash on a Symbian handset. The client is synced with the radio station and provides information about the song being played and a link to buy the ringtone or full track. ah well.
Last but not least a snapshot of the alatto drinks in the Michael Collins Pub beside the Gaudi Cathedral. Is Sean O'Sullivan everywhere or is he just stalking me?
Phone Projection System
Now this would be really cool to have on our stand in 3GSM Barcelona next week. An Aussie company
Digislide has patented a system that allegedly turns your handset in to a mini projector. The product known as Digismart projects the handset screen to a size of 11 by 17 inches.
Of course there is a slight problem the product doesn't actually exist and the company appears to be built on the foundation of intellectual property and flashware. The flash demo has one hilarious example of a squaddie in the field projecting an image onto the side of tank! LOL**2. Having said that if this works and you don't need to carry around a 5 kilo battery pack I want one!
Yahoo! is top mobile portal in US
Thanks to Gavin Barrett formerly of Nokia Ireland and now with
UpstartGames for pointing out to me the following research: Some very useful recent data on usage of mobile portals in the US just published on
M-Metrics site. Shows Yahoo! mobile portal leads in the US at least. 6.7 percent of mobile subscribers access Yahoo! branded services compared with 4.4 percent for second- place AOL. Of course if a mobile portal is serious about winning eyeballs they should consider the whole new approach to mobile navigation offered by the
Tribes toolbar.
Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that according to the survey of 14,000 mobile users: 32% of Americans use text and 10% photo messaging. Of course use is the usual definition of "sent a message in the last month". So in many ways unfair to compare with European figures where consumers will access much more frequently.
John
First ever MMS marketing campaign launched in Ireland
Alatto Tribes technology is powering the first ever MMS marketing campaign in Ireland and its a biggie!
A major above the line campaign invites users to send MMS pictures in support for the Irish rugby team. The winning images will be displayed on the big screen at home internationals this year. The campaign includes a 4 page wraparound in yesterdays Dublin Metro newspaper see http://www.alatto.com/guinnessmetro.jpg , billboards, wash rooms and match programmes.
I think the wording of the call to action is quite confusing for punters (this was beyond our control) but nevertheless great to see the advertising industry embracing multimedia mobile. This is certainly the first MMS campaign in Ireland but we have several more about to launch in Ireland and UK.
Around the world deployment of MSM technologies for advertising is really now taking off. For example my old pal Geoffrey Handley from
Hyperfactory in New Zealand launched an MMS campaign for M&Ms chocolates last year in New Zealand,
with some great results.
The campaign was to relaunch M&Ms new packaging - and focus on the tag line "Chocolate is better in Colour!"
Consumers were encouraged to send in mosaics made out of M&Ms, which were then displayed on a website. Audience was then able to vote for their favourite submissions.
It was a huge success, with 10s of thousands of mosaics submitted. Some of them contained over 15,000 individual M&Ms - including self portraits, van gogh's, portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Eminem etc....and of course, lots of odd ones as well!
The aim was to have the 5 finalists, as voted by the audience online and via TVCs, to face each other in a "M&Ms MMS Mosiac Off" whereby they would be given 20,000 M&Ms of all colours and 8 hours in a public place to construct their masterpiece. The winner would then be decided by voting public by SMS and all finalists were to have their mosaics created into posters / adshels / bus backs etc.
Another interesting MMS campaign is one for NZ's leading methode champenoise brand Lindauer (Allied Domecq). Target is House Hold Shoppers, mainly female, 35+. After having implemented 3 successful SMS campaigns the brands current campaign invites the target consumer to send in MMS of themselves and friends celebrating with a bottle of Lindauer. Most of the submissions received so far have been exactly the intended target audience - females, 35 - 60+ very interesting results and some very interesting pictures have been received apparently.
The event was so big this year (after been squeezed into Cannes for many years) that many of the big companies had several stands in different halls. Nokia had so many stands that some were dedicated to specific products. For example see below Nokia radio stand. This is kinda frustrating for us in alatto as we touted the idea of mobile radio client on handset several years ago. We even built a prototype running on flash on a Symbian handset. The client is synced with the radio station and provides information about the song being played and a link to buy the ringtone or full track. ah well.
