I’m not going to elaborate on the the evolution of the mobile phone and how it has empowered normal people way beyond our wildest imagination. Instead, I’ll reflect on a conversation that I had just this morning. Firstly, it is common knowledge that there is still a stigma attached to mobile phone advances in South Africa. Most of the older generation still rely on mobile phones to send text messages (with effort), make and receive calls and to wake them up in the morning.

Let me ask the older generation a question though.

When last were you gob smacked by the apparent ease with which your youngster operates his / her mobile phone? Not too long ago I would reckon. And by youngster I mean anything from the age of 12 to 35 and even older.

With the introduction of the smart phones [images above], savvy business people and an ever increasing section of the general public have found a multileveled approach to their mobile phone usage.

We surf the internet with our phones, we can engage large groups of people in conversation at almost zero cost. We can distribute audio, video and text information across various websites and applications to literally thousands of people within a couple of seconds using a standard mobile phone.

But this is irrelevant to the older generation. Consider this. [True story]

This morning, 8:30am 31 October 2007, I had a conversation with a 40-something year-old lady (my boss’ wife) in the crystal retail business about her upcoming mobile contract upgrade. She was telling me how she actually need nothing more than a standard phone with limited features as she only makes and receives calls with it. How often have you said that, huh?

I responded to her statement by asking her how she thinks her clients would react if they could receive images of the latest stock on their mobile phones and have an option to place an order at reduced cost via return text message.

The silence was deafening. The light bulb moment was even more prominent.

The best part of this scenario is that she could still maintain her standard mobile usage for making and receiving calls. She doesn’t need to engage in a technological war of thumbs with her phone and neither does she need to learn how to operate the most complicated phones on the market.

But her customers are enjoying a more efficient manner to conduct business with her.

The infrastructure is in place where we can control and measure these types of communication campaigns to provide the type of instant gratification and convenience that your customers have become accustomed to.

Remember, just because you prefer to communicate and purchase in the conventional way does not mean your customers do too. Go test it and leave a comment on your thoughts.

I’ve recently found a couple of very interesting mobile platforms, only available in the US, but with the pace that mobile is going it wouldn’t be long before South Africa gets in on the action.

If you’re a business, please do not dismiss this post too quickly.

From msearchgroove.com I’d like to briefly cover three of them.

WHRRL & RUMMBLE: Location enhanced social networking from Whrrl (LBS application) and Rummble (WAP site) give users real-time location information to connect mobile social networking with real life networking (a novel idea!). Users can broadcast and search for friends in their locality as well as post reviews and photos of places they have visited, geotagging them on their site. This functionality is set to take off by utilising the key characteristic of the mobile communication - mobility.

One standout Q&A for me on Whrrl is listed here:

I am a business owner. How do I update the information about my business in Whrrl?

That leads me to Utterz.

UTTERZ: Voice is one of the main propositions of this mobile user generated content offering. Users can match their voice ‘Utterz’ with text and photos by calling a clearing house and Utterz does the rest, autoposting onto sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Although you can manage and edit postings online, there are some usability issues that make mobile account management tricky.

Utterz allows its users to publish audio (voice), video, pictures, text (blog) to their Utterz account. These can then be fed to just about any social networking site available such as Facebook, MySpace, Livejournal, Blogger etc.

Their tagline epitomises their service offering: Mobile post voice, video, picture, and text mashups right to your page. Evolve. Be Herd.

Smart Businesses keep a pulse on social and corporate trends. In some of my clients’ case, I am that person. What is overwhelming is possibly the vast amounts of mobile social networks that keeps popping up. Here in South Africa we have the now much discussed “the Grid” from Vodacom, Mxit and in all probability a host of new ones in the not too distant future.

A couple of things I would encourage businesses to keep in mind are:

1. Your target audience spends time on social networking sites during office hours.

2. Your target audience accesses these sites via their mobile phones after hours.

3. Regardless of the amounts of mobile platforms popping up, your target audience will find one (or more) to their liking and spend considerable amounts of time on them (their mobiles)

4. I call it your target audience because they are just that. It is not only 16 year olds that use their mobile phones to its capacity. The sooner businesses get that, the better.

5. Mobile marketing is not as expensive as you think. Just ask.

The list goes on, you can always add to this in the comment section.

[Note, I hope Agent Craig could shed some light on the parallel these applications draw with the Grid]

As more and more software developers get into the mobile development scene, you can expect and even greater rise of mobile consumption. This is noteworthy for businesses in South Africa.

Facebook, the (new) social craze among a whopping 605 000 South Africans, have opened up their platform to mobile developers.

The repercussions of these are pretty simple: More users will have access to Facebook more often. When companies thought it clever to ban Facebook from the workplace, I bet the last thing they had on their minds was that Facebookers would just crank it up a notch and find new ways to engage their users and increase the social activities through mobile phones.

One of our local talents has taken it on himself to develop a platform on Facebook which allows users to see which of their friends are active on Mxit. (Mxit of course is the uber popular mobile instant messaging platform with a recorded 5.4 million active South African users)

That’s a whole lotta mobile for a great deal of people.

Facebook of course is also in negotiations with Microsoft and Google for financing an international “SocialAds” rollout which would again revolutionize advertising as we know it.

The only conclusion we can gather from this is that consumers will be able to spend more time away from the confinement of desktop computing, or the bulkiness of their notebooks (who would have thought we’d ever use bulk and notebook in the same sentence), but still be able to have access to a wealth of information and social activity through their mobile phones.

Many businesses would question the relevance of Facebook to there businesses which is a discussion for another day and another blog.

Keeping in mind that Vodacom has launched mobile advertising, it seems though that leading businesses have caught onto this trend and are looking to enter this market as quickly as possible.

Not only have they done that, they are also in development phase for a new social media platform, the Grid, which is supposedly a mashup of Facebook, Myspace and Mxit.

This is some serious mobile and serious social networking for a seriously large portion of our population.

Consumers lead the way in the social trends, people. This is very important. Too many businesses feel they have the power and are able to channel consumer behaviour according to their guidelines.

Maybe it is time to do some introspection into your business, put yourself in the shoes of your clients / customers and establish whether you wouldn’t perhaps see the value of converging your service offering with mobile.

If you know your clientele is mobile oriented, shouldn’t you be spending more time getting to know the options mobile marketing presents?

“SUMMARY: Mobile marketing is on the verge of exploding as a specialty channel, but technology limitations and the marketplace aren’t quite in place yet. So do you want to be ahead of the curve or behind the times playing catch-up?”

I’d like to mash-up my article today a bit to cover most important sections pertaining to mobile, content distribution, convergence and creation.

While the marketplace isn’t exactly at the tipping point where mobile marketing is exploding onto the scene, it is important for businesses to identify technological trends and acknowledge the rapid pace at which it will happen.

When we look back at the dot.com crash in 2001, many never thought it realistic or even possible that the internet will again rise from the ashes and be a major role-player in business.

However, it has proven quite the contrary and it has escalated exponentially to where many marketers, I included, simply cannot see a way forward for businesses that does not converge their marketing strategies with online and wireless.

It simply cannot be ignored that consumers catch on to technological trends much quicker than businesses and marketing departments do. The irony of course is that most of these marketers are also consumers embracing technology, but due to reasons beyond scope simply do not manifest these societal trends into their marketing strategies.

Companies also often have the tendency to measure or require ROI to be measured in tangible monetary value. However, consumer demands have shifted as such that businesses need to rely on value added services more often to keep up retention numbers and have their consumers engage with their brand.

Content distribution is one such area where companies need to reevaluate consumer needs demands as many of them simply do not care for the company’s preferred method of distribution.

Many consumers do not wish and simply do not engage in newspaper formats anymore for sourcing of news.

They are on the go people and if media companies do not comprehend this shift and converge content distribution to mobile devices, their readership will simply shift to brands that do.

Financial & Advisory companies need to realise that these types of value added services aren’t luxuries, they are must-haves to keep their clients in the loop and informed at all times.

More prominent even are retailers. By advertising in magazines at extortionate pricing is failing to recognise that consumers spend the majority of their time on the internet and connected to their mobile phones.

These consumers not only prefer, but demand that product information be readily available to them or they will simply move on to brands that do provide these value added services.

The internet has enabled smaller businesses the same amount of access and opportunities to compete with the big corporates, whether they like it or not. It is often these smaller brands that also value innovation and manage to reach the sort of critical mass in a much shorter time span.

While the repercussions of failure to advance would probably not be felt immediately, it is absolutely crucial to understand that it is imminent. Moreover, it is critical to understand why it is going to happen.

These blogs serves a purpose, and it is not to deliver grandiose advice in search of your money. History suggests the patterns of the future and if the dot.com crash has served anything, it is that businesses have become smarter and have come to the inevitable conclusion that the future of business lies in smart marketing in the online and mobile arena.

They have learned through the mistakes of others. It is time to ask yourself whether you’d prefer to be the mistake someone else learns from, or whether you’d prefer to learn from the mistakes of others.

The epicentre of all things marketing and advertising shifted from mass distribution and mass delivery (which too often also includes spam) to what is brilliantly termed Just-in-Time marketing.

Just-in-Time marketing is timeously putting forward your products and services to a segmented, targetted audience base that has shown or is prone to an interest in it.

Traditional and online Marketing / advertising has always been a Just-in-Case practice including the larger part of society and demographics to hopefully conjur up the sort of sales conversion rates that get Managers and their clients excited. (You know, the 5% to 10% industry norm)

Since advertising has taken over mainstream media, with the average American exposed up to 3800 marketing messages daily, society has become immune to almost all forms, shapes and sizes. Mostly, that is.

Businesses and marketers, the smart ones at least, have kept an eye on developments and trends and came to the realisation that the only true form of marketing today is permission based.

There is no better platform to lauch permission based, Just-in-Time marketing campaigns from, than consumers’ most personal and valued commodity: their mobile phones.

Three things that stand out from consumers’ mobile behaviour:

1. They are convenience driven. Instant gratification has never been such high priority in the information overload era.

2. They use their mobile phones predominantly for communications with their personal contacts. There are no greater marketing effects than word of mouth recommendations. (ie. Text message forwarding)

3. They carry their mobiles everywhere they go. Simply texting your messages to them might not be enough. Businesses have to stimulate its audience’s senses. Billboards for retail, websites & television for Financial Services, radio for Arts & Culture.

“Mobile is already a platform, but the consensus was that leveraging the power of the web, integrating web services into mobile medium is the future of mobile.”

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Source: Slideshare / swamicrm

Synonymous with the age old dilemma of solving the chicken or egg theory, many marketers and businesses are struggling to find the answer to the ultimate entry point into their target markets’ minds.

Which route to go first: Mobile or Web?

It is no secret that I evangelise the convergence of both media vehicles, but for many businesses the outright jump from conventional marketing, or in some cases, no marketing, might be too great.

While both media have been around for a while now, at least in a capacity to conduct proper business, the internet has certainly enjoyed a head start in the marketing department. Mobile has caught up however and in many ways surpassed the internet / computer for portability, efficiency and convenience.

Ann Holland from MarketingSherpa had this to say:

The new generation of Europeans, Asians and, increasingly, our own American kids, too, think of PC-based communications as old school. An Internet tied to a PC is such a 20th-century thing. Get with the program, Grandmother, mobile is everything!

The new generation worldwide update their Facebook accounts with their phones. They blog with their phones. They tell everyone where the coolest party is tonight with text messaging. They make YouTube movies with their phones. They trust their phones. They love their phones. They carry their phones everywhere. The “third screen” is the first screen of their hearts and everyday lives.

Despite the savvy youth, which are the business professionals of tomorrow, more and more established consumers have also caught on. They have found means to ease the burden of regular daily commodities through the use of their handhelds. They have found new ways of communicating cheaply via services such as Mxit.

Banking is merely a text message away and e-mails these days are sent within minutes and with little hassle. Handhelds provide regular people with video conferencing, shopping, voting, RSVP’ing, weather updates, stock market trading, taking pictures and sharing, music / video downloads and playbacks, traffic congestion, tidal updates and of course the one that started it all, browsing the internet.

Mobile’s functionality has improved in such a way that in many cases we can already see a transcendence of attitudes from smart marketers and -business people alike. With the introduction of handhelds such as the Nokia N95, HTC Tytn and soon the Apple iPhone we are undoubtedly witnessing a digital transformation.

What that means in laymen’s terms is that more and more consumers would prefer connecting and interacting with their mobile’s to reduce cost, improve portability and comfort. Mobile phones are currently the prized belonging to the majority of the population.

Improved technology and functionality is altering the way in which businesses need to market their products, as the immediate future suggests some changes to target market communication strategies already. For businesses it is important to accurately segment their target market for optimum reach and communication via a prefered medium.

I’m worried that conventional marketers and businesses aren’t aware of what is happening to the market outside their scope.

I’m worried that businesses are reluctant to change their behaviour in terms of marketing of their services and products.

Note: I would encourage business owners and roleplayers to attend the Nomadic Marketing course at the UCT GSB on 31 October 2007.

Smart companies and not necessarily big companies get mobile. They comprehend the benefits of mobile to their businesses. Moreover, they understand how mobile and online work in tandem for an even better consumer experience.

iPay.co.za and Energy.co.za, flying entirely under the radar in advertising and marketing terms have revolutionised the prepaid electricity dilemma I face more often than not.

Semi detached housing, flats and many newly built residences these days consist of prepaid electricity. I personally own a property with prepaid electricity and my current rented residence also consist of it.

The inconvenience that goes along with prepaid electricity is enormous when days are long and business is pressing as usual.

Thanks to these two businesses, purchasing electricity these days is as simple as sending a text message from my mobile and loading the electricity token onto my meter box.

All in less than 60 seconds.

iPay.co.za and energy.co.za (from Syntell Networks) have single handedly become my most coveted commodity. Gone are the late night visits from one supermarket to the next to find prepaid vouchers.

Thawte further ensures that my online credit billing is safe and secure so I can breathe easy where it comes to my credit transactions.

Therefore, when my electricity went bust this past weekend during the quarterfinal match of the Rugby World Cup, everyone was upset, except me.

I fired off a quick text message and within 60 seconds, my recharge voucher was sent back to me.

We missed one lineout. More importantly, I was deemed the smartest guy in the room.

Isn’t it time your business becomes the smartest guy in the room?

Many businesses reckon they know their clients purely based on their LSM statistics or purchasing habits. Others assume they intuitively know what their clients want and react as if it is in their best interest without genuinely aquiring their true needs.

To many businesses it is a money game. Get in, have your say, get out. Cheque is in the mail. Technically it is, but realistically it has always been about customer relations.

Sound customer relations instills brand loyalty. The sort of trust people strive for in their own personal relationships.

And when there’s money on the line, there are relationships hanging in the balance.

Businesses need to tread carefully as this video illustrates the typical relationship many businesses have with their customers.

If you find it funny, it’s because you know it is true.

Business these days is as much a personal affair as it is a monetary one. Ask any loyal customer what sets their preferred brand apart from others and you’ll find in most cases it is not cost, but a well sustained trust relationship.