“I have been disappointed at the slow rate of development of the cellphone — both what the gadget can do and what marketers are doing with it.” Anja Merret: TechLeader

I don’t really have any qualms about the functionality of the mobile phone, but I am in 100% agreement with Anja in expressing my disappointment on what marketers are doing with it.

In her post on Techleader she mentions “Jan Chipchase, principle researcher for Nokia, [who have predicted that] there will be three billion people connected on cellphones by the end of 2007.

That is a fair chunk out of the approximately 6.3-billion people inhabiting the Earth. He also anticipates that within another two years, a further billion people will be connected.”

Anja continues with a wish list of features for mobile phones and applications she thought would be “run in the mill” for marketers by now. But it isn’t.

My question today is why? How is it possible that with such a global uptake in mobile connectivity that it seems the international marketing minds are so slow to respond? Ok, fair enough, they probably aren’t that slow.

Let’s scale it down a bit then. How is it possible that with 83% mobile penetration in South Africa and 11% internet penetration, our marketers are still fighting over internet stakes?

I’m willing to venture a guess. I think our marketers, and predominantly our web strategists, are trying so hard to keep up with international web trends, looking to duplicate innovative web solutions such as Facebook and Youtube, that they seem to have little time left to worry about the internet’s “poor cousin.”

Our web strategists are so consumed by creating / adopting video and audio into marketing strategies, even though it is evident that our bandwidth doesn’t allow it. We’re so blindly mesmerized by Web 2.0 that it seems any form of rationale is being chucked right out the window.

We build social interactive press material including video features through Youtube, bookmarked reference material through Del.icio.us and enabling the material to be pushed to various content aggregators like Amatomu, Digg and Stumble Upon, blissfully ignorant of the fact that our users don’t even comprehend the effect or mere existence of any of these tools.

We try to educate businesses and consumers when surely marketers should not be forcing adoption onto them, but rather devise strategies that complement their usage patterns.

We often boast about our latest web platforms that have evolved to be of similar, if not better quality than our US and European counterparts, yet we are totally oblivious to the fact that we lack the core ingredient…traffic.

No wonder Vinny Lingham doesn’t think Afrigator is worth investing in. It’s not because of a poorly built platform, it’s simply because there is no critical user mass to support the business model.

We’re trying to keep up with international internet innovations, but we seem to forget that we aren’t even in the same league as the US. We simply don’t have the capacity, the infrastructure or the critical mass to support this Web 2.0 phenomena.

We’re already evangelising the rise of Web 3.0 when most of our businesses are still in Web 1.0 phase. We continue to blog even though most of our readers are fellow bloggers.

I’m not disputing the importance of internet marketing in South Africa, but I was once told that if the internet penetration is 11% then 11% of your marketing budget should be spent online.

Does that mean 83% of your marketing budget should be spent on mobile?

In recent times I have been of the opinion that mobile would soon become as a competitive marketing tool as the internet is shaping up to be, if not greater.

While mobile pull campaigns (encouraging the user to respond via their mobile phone) have been widely adopted by most of the mass media channels, (newspapers, magazines, television, billboards, radio and internet) it is still a far cry short of what has transpired in my mind.

Mobile as marketing campaign strategy means so much more than targeting naive teens in downloading ringtones to their mobile phones. It far outstretches entries to competitions. And it is certainly not the be all and end all of establishing a winner in national talent competitions.

But, unfortunately, the predominant forces behind driving mobile marketing campaigns in South Africa are still large corporations.

From one of the leading mobile marketing agency websites in South Africa:

“The mobile marketing channel is slowly becoming increasingly important as an essential part of the marketing mix. For this reason large companies are starting to recognise the advantages such as immediacy and savings in costs occurring as a result of the use of mobile marketing.”

Regardless of what some would regard as recognising the advantages, it is clear that there is a perception that mobile marketing is just another weapon in the armoury of large corporations, large corporations which have the budgetary advantages of combining mass media to launch these campaigns from.

(Television and radio being among the top players with the ability to reach mass audiences during prime time broadcasting.)

However, with the massive 50% hiked television commercial prices during Q4 of 2007 (Finweek, January 2008), it is the Small to Medium Enterprises that are left behind once again.

Progressive SMME’s have recently begun to tap into the wealth of opportunities on the internet, but with the high cost of broadband, it is mainly still deemed a luxury for the higher income bracket of the population. (Hence the internet could probably not even be regarded as mass media)

This leaves SMME’s with a single mass media to their disposal, but quite coincidentally, probably the strongest of them all.

So if there is an approximate 83% mobile penetration in South Africa, the question begs why the uptake of SMME’s have been rather slow?

By doing some research on the internet, I came to the following conclusions:

1. The disregard of internet as prominent communication and publishing platform by SMME’s

2. The lack of proper mobile marketing resources, documentation and elaborate case studies

3. The perception of mobile being the poor cousin of the internet, television and radio; thus deemed as inferior

4. The perception that mobile marketing is only effective in tandem with other mass media components

5. The lack of proactive utilisation of the internet to leverage off the higher income bracket to drive marketing campaigns to a broader mobile audience

6. A lack of understanding of technology and the convergence mechanics of traditional marketing with new media tools

In my opinion, the fundamental problem with the slow uptake in mobile communications and marketing though is due to the cost and availablility of broadband internet to the masses.

If we do not see a profound change in approach from our marketers (moving steadily towards digital anyways), SMME’s  only saviour will be online penetration to the greater South African population.

Both of these seem to be happening, but at rather pedantic pace.

I’m kicking off the day with a mixed bag of goodies ranging from the annoying (and world famous) Nokia tune, a feature film on mobile telephony (can you believe?) and something I’d like to call sound branding (sonic mnemonics for the tech gurus).

Annoying Nokia Tune

With billions of Nokia users across the planet and a smart marketing move by the manufacturers of Nokia phones, it is a default setting on the most popular phone brand in the world that’s got people intrigued, humming, cursing, jumping for an iPhone and some, yes, that selected annoying few, adjusting the volume on the most popular ringtone in the world.

But where did it all start? As with most sound related things in life, it came from a European composer.

Francisco de Asís Tárrega y Eixea (yes, that’s a name) was an influential Spanish composer and guitarist from Spain during the 1900s. He is often considered to be the father of modern classical guitar playing.

He is also the composer of what has been claimed to be “probably the world’s most heard tune.“

[Download [8 KB] the original piece and pay close attention to the 18 second mark – prepare to cringe]

Or

[Listen to a rendition of the piece on this video]

Roll out the red carpet

You may have noticed that it seems like a trailer for some sort of movie. And you’d be right. Last month at the BAFTA in London, Mobile Planet, a documentary on the social and economic impact of mobile telephony across the world, graced the red carpet.

Here’s a news cast on the documentary. Will it be available in South Africa soon?

Sound Branding

You have all experienced the effect sound has on the human mind at some stage or another during your life. Sound branding (or audio logo) is something I haven’t heard many marketers speak about and it’s also a subject not hotly debated by many of my peers, but it’s a fascinating experience once you manage to let your mind encompass it for a bit.

Just the other night, it was the audio logo of Musica while I was preparing supper that caught my attention. For a music loving generation, the three second Musica audio logo is highly distinguishable and causes an affinity with a brand more effectively than anything I have experienced in such a short time span.

Similarly, every single time I hear or see James Earl Jones, I think about his part in the BMW “pleasant motoring” commercial. (Although it might possibly be because I haven’t seen Star Wars and my love for advertising)

BMW also has a signature audio logo though. A very brief, subtle yet distinct sound that resembles a metallic pulsating heart. Classic. Two beats is all it takes for BMW to carry their brand to millions without any form of visual stimulation.

Have you paid any thought to your company’s audio logo? Do you know of any other popular brand that has established a strong presence through sound? I’d love to get this debate going.