About a year ago I was approached by a local winemaker to help him conceptualize a way in which he could create a stronger footprint of his wine brand locally. He was mainly exporting his wines but expressed his desire to create a personal relationship with his local customers. As winemaker, I can imagine that that is probably one of the most satisfactory things to winemaking besides actually making it.

The problem he faced was that, because of exporting, very few of the locals had any idea that his wines even existed. Continuing in Monday’s footsteps I suggested an online marketing campaign, combining it with an experiential mobile engagement campaign.

His wine brand has a very clever slogan and because he was already manufacturing and selling T-shirts (because of the marketability of the slogan) I decided to combine the T-shirt with a unique (to the wine industry) mobile approach.

My idea was simply to print unique codes to each newly produced T-shirt together with a call to action that plays well on the clever catchphrase. Then he was to identify a number of strategic brand champions in the local community who could wear the T-shirts in public and hustle with them to engage more potential customers. Of course, the T-shirts could also be sold at local retailers with the campaign as incentive.

The idea is to entice the public to spot the t-shirt and when able to view the t-shirt from close by, the call to action lures them into sending a text message with their name and the unique code on the t-shirt. This could well be in the form of a competition or something more innovative.

This puts two very important components in the winemaker’s hands:

1. He can now further communicate his brand which each mobile participant.
2. He also has a way in which to establish which brand champion wearing the T-shirt managed to connect the brand with the most people and reward this person.

So by incentivizing the campaign and rewarding each person who referred potential customers to the brand simply by wearing the T-shirt, a much greater awareness around the great wine and a clever, catchy brand is established.

I know for a fact that there are smart companies in South Africa that realize the potential mobile marketing possesses.

I ask of them to proudly share their successes with the people.

I have just read about a mobile marketing engagement campaign in the UK for a Frozen Foods Brand. Odd, isn’t it? Nevertheless, Bird’s Eye, the frozen food brand secured quite a successful opt-in user base of customers who wanted to learn more about the Bird’s Eye Frozen Food product range via their phone.

It is quite obvious why they chose the mobile phone as communications device, but what has stood out head above shoulders is their innovative approach to the engagement campaign. They printed a unique code on each frozen food package with daily cash prizes as incentive to opt in. Also, at the end of each month, a grand prize is up for grabs where the company will settle the winning customer’s entire mortgage. How outrageous is that?

Nevertheless, bond payment aside, what is profoundly smart is that the company now has the ability to track exactly which product each customer bought simply due to the unique code on each package. Thus, they now have the opportunity to cross sell other products that are of relevance to the particular product. For example they can text to the customer: “We see that you have bought cod fishcakes recently, why don’t you try our new potato waffles with that?”

They also send short recipes for the particular product which, as you can imagine, adds that little extra in value to the customer experience.

The Communities Dominate Brands blog called it a great little simple campaign. Mortgage settlement aside, I couldn’t agree with them more.

[ Whether the 100 000 mobile subscribers signed up for the value adding campaign or a chance at winning a mortgage settlement is still debatable though ]

Bottom line: If you can manage to incentivize your campaigns, why not give mobile engagement marketing a shot?

If you spend the amount of time I do on the internet researching, you’d acknowledge that 3G just doesn’t cut the mustard. It’s way too expensive. So early in January I gave my 3G connection to my girlfriend. She sends the occasional e-mail, play around on Facebook and does the general amount of research she should do for her thesis.

But waiting for Telkom to come and install my fixed line at home so that I can go full circle in running wireless DSL once again have left us (the girlfriend and I) swapping the 3G between each other in the interim.

When I got home tonight from the gym, got out my laptop to start preparing for a couple of articles, I realized that Mondays aren’t my “I be haffin’ the Internet days”. At least not until Telkom (finally) arrives.

Pickle…Thumb sucking articles is not fun. Fortunately, I have my Samsung Omnia (i900) at hand. And here’s the thing – Smart phones are so cost effective these days and considering the functionality, there’s really no excuse for not having one.

I could always use my mobile as internet connection to do my research, and it would’ve been fine really. But I didn’t have to. I’m smart enough to use my phone to its potential, using a mobile based RSS reader to store my most important research sites. (Blog sites mostly)

Without having to access the internet I’m blessed with 257 blog articles on my mobile phone covering 14 websites. Not that I’m limited in any way…those are just the sites that I have added. My special high value sites…an exclusive club of blog authors I deem good enough to make it onto my mobile phone.

In addition to my 200 odd articles, there is still a massive 15.5 Gigabyte of space left on my phone to store anything from videos (personal or business use), Audio Notes – which I use when I drive to document thoughts and podcasts which I can listen to while I sweat away at the gym.

Mobile marketing isn’t always about campaigning and securing more sales. Sometimes advice comes in handy and your customers might perhaps be even more loyal to your brand simply by sharing important information with them.

My advice today…get a smart phone. It’s the smart thing to do.

There is something distinctly different between iPhone users and well…the rest of the mobile world. For one, iPhone users are decidedly more attractive than their rather unspectacular smart phone using peers. At least that is something they will have you believe. And they probably have a point.

Steve Jobs is the male sex symbol of technology companies (He made turtlenecks fashionable again…no?). Compare Steve to Microsoft’s man of mediocrity, Bill Gates, and it is probably not very difficult to fathom where Apple users get their profound sense of vanity from.

But in addition to that, you get the sense that iPhone users have a rather unwholesome affinity to their mobile phones, something they seem willing to fight till death for. It is not unlikely at any given moment to witness a war of words between Apple iPhone users and especially our Windows Mobile burdened Boondocks. And considering the inferiority complex most Windows Mobile users suffer from, it’s not a fair battle in the least.

Some of us have gone to great lengths to find applications to override the Windows Mobile operating system. There are even applications out there that simulate the Apple iPhone interface. Can you imagine the verbal abuse one would have to cop if an iPhone user recognizes your cheap attempt at twinning a unique product such as the iPhone? I mean, who does that? (I only had it on like, briefly, ok!)

According to @nealkernohan, a rather eccentric looking chap, not at all unlike the sort you would imagine using an Apple iPhone, “there is an active iPhone community and a buzz about them. People who have them are excited when they talk about them and about the apps.” Further, he reckons “other phones just cannot gain that much hype and momentum. Everybody knows Apple and knows Steve jobs. Who is Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo?” And I must admit I don’t have the faintest clue…

Despite the fact that the iPhone is the best selling phone of all times, it is unlikely that the iPhone would ever enjoy the market share of Nokia. Still, the business world seems desperate to get into its pants. Of course it is 2009, and if content is king, niche is queen and Apple is the sultry mistress. And we all know which is the most fun (wink…wink). Yet, it is still rather profound to witness the lopsided buzz that is created around this “superb” phone.

And I use the word superb very loosely. Considering that the Apple iPhone cannot send MMS messages, forward standard text messages, record videos, cut and paste, has a meager two megapixel camera and can only run applications that are specifically built for the it, superb is hardly a word I would use, yet its owners are perversely loyal to a model that doesn’t carry the grey matter, but packs the rack of your typical Girl of the Playboy Mansion.

Yet it’s the Windows Mobile owners that take the abuse, regardless of phones like the Samsung Omnia, HTC Touch Pro and the likes that can do all of that and more, but is rather nonchalantly dismissed as a competitor, simply because of the operating system.

But dismissed it should be. For a Windows Mobile driven phone is not a player in the mobile technology field, it is just too darn boring.

News just broke that Amazon released an application for the iPhone to work like their fairly popular Kindle. From a colossal smart mobility market, Amazon chooses (consciously above all) to only target the Apple iPhone user base. In essence, that grants them exclusivity, causing hype and an ever inflating ego among Apple iPhone users. And this is just one example of the enormous first-to-market benefits iPhone users have.

It is obvious that if you want to be part of the cool gang in gadgetry, an iPhone is a non-negotiable. It is the gadget of the new millennium and multi-billion-dollar companies, application vendors and garage-bound college dropouts simply salivate at serving the godlike creatures that own them.

If you’re a regular Windows Mobile smart phone user like me, get to the back of the line idiot…and wait for the good stuff. For it will come. Eventually. And while we wait, let’s marvel in silence at the functionality of the piece of equipment we hide from rest of the world.

Because…We chose functionality over cool! We chose cost effectiveness over hype! We chose mainstream over niche! And for that we’ll have to pay the price of an average eternity…