This was only days after Android users had finally been able to access the service thanks to the newly launched Android app. I was quickly getting addicted to the various filters you can apply to your pics as well as the ability to tag your images and then browse through related pics from all over the world.

So I didn’t feel any of the rage and frustration that the die-hard iPhone users felt at the announcement that Instagram was now part of the Facebook family. (I guess the iPhone users were also still reeling from the shock of us low-brow Android users moving into the neighbourhood .)

Within hours people were announcing that they were moving their pics off Instagram before Facebook ruined the service. I for one think that Facebook is far too clever to mess with such a simple, elegant and well-liked service. But whenever Facebook’s name crops up, you do need to stop and think about privacy, if only because the social networking site seems to own so much information about individuals already.

CNET quoted Chris Conley, an attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, as saying: “Part of the concern is that it’s Facebook. And their history of privacy and respecting user choices is mixed.”

“The larger issue to me is that Facebook is adding Instagram data to its own,” said Ryan Calo, a privacy researcher at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society, in the same CNET article. “Instagram users thought they were signing up for a simple service, of relatively little utility to advertisers or government. Now that data is likely to be combined with an entire social graph. I picture the consumer happily paddling down a data rivulet only to find themselves suddenly on the open waters of the social sea.”

Like I said, I’ve quickly become a big fan of Instagram for a couple of reasons, but mostly because it seems to make the world a smaller place. For example, I tagged my picture above with words like #coriander, #lime and #chilli. Then I could click on those tags and see pics from other people all around the world posting similar photos. See something you like, take a look at that person’s Instagram stream, follow another tag, and before you know it you’ve been viewing the most amazing photography from Tokyo to Tulsa.

But, if a picture says a thousand words, we need to tread carefully around what we share. A smartphone and a camera can be a disastrous combination – what seems like an hilarious idea at the time, can backfire very quickly.

So what should parents, and any Instagram user, for that matter, consider if they want to stay safe online?

Read the rest of this blog post on the Mobiflock site.

There’s nothing like a Super Bowl to put television advertising firmly on the radar, as far afield as the southern tip of Africa, even if you’ve started consuming most of your media online. At $3.5 million for 30 seconds, and up to $4 million for the premium slots, brands must still be seeing value in this traditional marketing method.

But what does this mean for companies trying to work out whether to stick with the tried and tested traditional marketing methods vs. embracing the brave new world of digital media, in all its fresh-out-the-box shiny glory?

Let’s start at the beginning and take a look at the numbers, using South Africa and its 50 million-odd population as an example: TV penetration per household was sitting at around 72 percent in 2012 and currently Generations, the most popular TV show in the country, gets around 6 million viewers a week according to TAMS (television audience measurement survey) ratings. Radio is the giant, with 88.5 percent of South African adults listening to the radio per week, spending more than 3.5 hours listening per day, according to RAMS (radio audience measurement survey) stats. The largest South African radio station, Ukhozi, has in excess of 6.6 million listeners per week. Total circulation of the 836 members of the Audited Bureau of Circulation (ABC) in South Africa is a notch over 34.5 million readers – although these are unlikely to be unique.

Now let’s move into the digital camp and take a look at the reach here: according to the Digital Media and Marketing Association (DMMA) member sites saw 12.9 million unique browsers, accessing 424.4 million page views, but this comes from a base of around 6 million internet users. In addition, there were 1.5 million mobile unique browsers accessing 40.3 million mobile page views. Mobile penetration is famously sitting at more than 100 percent – although this doesn’t mean that every South African has a cell phone, with many people owning more than one SIM card. The country has 4.8 million registered Facebook users – just less than 10 percent of the total population and 91 percent of the total online population.

While these stats are in no way meant to be an apples-for-apples comparison, what do they show us? At the very simplest level, the Super Bowl advertisers are right – stick to traditional advertising channels to reach the largest audience.

But wait a minute. Why does Forrester predict that online ad spend will eclipse TV spend in the next four years? Closer to home, a DMMA report says that while advertisers currently allocate 10.7 percent of their current annual media budget to digital platforms, “this far higher than what [they had] assumed for years”.

It’s not so simple, is it?

Read the rest of my article on African Business Review

There is no doubt that small businesses around the world are very successfully using daily deal sites to market their offerings. However, there are enough horror stories out there – most notably the UK bakery that had to bake 102,000 cupcakes at a £12,500 ($20,000) loss after offering a Groupon deal – for businesses to tread carefully when figuring out whether this type of promotion is for them.

Daily deal sites negotiate huge discounts for consumers based on the principles of collective buying: deals are only activated when a minimum number of people agree to buy. In return for massively discounting their products and services, usually between 50-75 percent as well as giving the daily deal site a cut (around 50 percent of the price paid by the customer), businesses are marketed to the hundreds of thousands of local consumers who have opted in to receive the deals.

On the one hand, the concept is fairly risk-free: businesses only pay if the deal tips and they get business out of it. On the other, there have been a number of reports of businesses brought to their knees by overwhelming demand or thanks to making an irrecoverable loss on the deal.

In Africa, South Africa is probably the most developed daily deal market on the continent, although a number of sites have already closed down, including Naspers’ Dealify and Avusa’s Zappon. Groupon, currently boasting a market cap of $12 million, added South Africa to the list of the 46 countries it has expanded to at the end of 2011 when it bought local Twangoo in January 2011.

African Business Review got in touch with Daniel Guasco, Head of Groupon (www.groupon.co.za) in South Africa, to get his views on when it makes most sense for a business to use its services.

Read the rest of my article on African Business Review.

Some of the areas mobile marketing has room for improvement in include:

1. Closing the loop with CRM

Mobile marketing is a great way to engage with customers at the point of sale when they have your product in their hands. From something as simple as an SMS to a shortcode to get a discount, to QR codes providing links to unique content, to the customer winning a prize for sharing a picture of them using the product, mobile marketing gives brands a chance to connect with their customers immediately, on the go and via a favoured device: their mobile phone.

Unfortunately all too often the very crucial next step doesn’t happen. Companies seldom use the opportunity to further engage with these customers, either by mobile, or by other channels such as social media, email or even a voice call. This wastes an opportunity to build on a positive initial encounter between the brand and the customer, where the customer has already volunteered certain pieces of information.

2. Real, ongoing engagement via mobile

As well as being a useful stepping-stone to ongoing engagement on other channels, mobile needs to be seen as primary customer engagement channel especially for the many people for whom a mobile device is their only internet device. And even if it isn’t, in some cases the mobile channel just makes more sense. For instance, towards the end of the year retailers will often send out discounts vouchers to say thanks to their loyal customers (and of course to encourage customers to spend money with them during the holiday season).

It’s one thing to email a statement to a customer, but it makes no sense to email a voucher to a customer, hope the customer hasn’t already gone on holiday and actually receives it in time, and then expect the customer to print it out (especially when the you’ve just sold them the idea of email statements as being environmentally friendly) and remember to take it along to the shops with them. Far better to send a mobile voucher that can be redeemed via the mobile phone – a device that the customer will definitely be checking all through the holidays and will definitely have with them when doing their shopping.

Likewise physically posting reward vouchers is problematic: it’s costly, not very green, you risk the customer only receiving the voucher after the expiry date.

3. Clever use of new technology

QR codes, augmented reality and location-based mobile technology have been derided as a waste of time in some quarters. It can also be argued though that we just haven’t seen these technologies being used in compelling ways that capture people’s imaginations and get them talking about it. Nine times out of ten, the cleverest use of a technology is also the simplest. Hopefully in 2012 we’ll see some interesting uses for QR codes, AR and LBS.

4. Spam

Unscrupulous and possibly sometimes just careless companies risk turning people off mobile marketing by spamming them. Email spam is one thing, but SMS and other types of mobile spam are so much more invasive, taking place on such a personal device people carry with them 24/7. For the ongoing success of the medium, opt-in needs to be the cornerstone of all mobile communication.

Read this article on Vomo.
Read this article on Biz-community. 

Well, obviously here at Vomo we don’t share this view, but it’s easy to see how mobile marketing could be dismissed as a load of hot air.

Firstly it’s still pretty hard to measure the impact of mobile marketing, and industry initiatives around the world are still scratching their heads trying to work this one out. Then there are the over-hyped stats, like the number of iPhones in the market. When you do the maths, you realise that contrary to the headlines, this is a very small number indeed in the grand scheme of things.

There’s also the issue of desktop web-based practices simply being transplanted lock, stock and barrel onto the mobile device. Take banner ads – pesky on the desktop web, but downright infuriating on the mobile web, taking up valuable real estate. (And not to mention pointing you to an iPhone app, even though you are using an Android handset.)

And probably the final nail in the coffin for mobile marketing is that the characteristic of the mobile phone – that fact that it is both personal and portable – that makes it potentially such a good marketing channel, is also its biggest weakness. Get it wrong, and you’re screwing up on the device that matters the most to people.

Then there’s the list of killer apps that was going to transform mobile marketing forever. From QR codes to augmented reality to location-based services, for now, these all seem like damp squibs.

Respectfully we’d disagree that mobile marketing is just a bunch of hokum. Firstly the numbers speak for themselves – with more SIM cards than people in South Africa, if you want to reach someone, the surefire way to get to them is via mobile. Add into the mix that for many South Africans mobile is the primary, and often only, way of accessing the internet.

Then consider that people do actually want to be communicated with via their mobile phones – if companies make it worth their while. According to Google’s mobile stats for South Africa, 54% of South Africans don’t mind receiving ads on their smartphones if they get rewards or freebies in return.

What we would say, however, is that it’s still early days. We need to move past just transplanting desktop-based practices onto a smaller and more mobile screen. Then we need to work out how to best measure the impact of these activities. And we need to stop treating mobile like tactical lego blocks, tacking them onto a marketing strategy at the last minute, and instead look at mobile strategically at the outset of any campaign.

Then let’s talk again about whether mobile marketing is over-hyped or not.

Read this article on Vomo.
Read this article on Biz-community. 

Anel and Jan, the cheeky duo behind Spit or Swallow, cleverly managed to get everyone at the event to be judges, using Twitter to collect scores per wine in real time. Encouraging tweets from @boxwineawards at various stages of the evening had a lot to do with me steaming my way through 21 of the 39 boxes.

More than 80 judges tasted through this year’s line-up with only one aim at hand, to find the best red and best white box wine in South Africa. This year Robertson Winery Sauvignon Blanc was awarded the best White Box Wine in South Africa and Drostdy-hof Merlot 2010 walked away with the title for best Red.

Here is the official list of ratings compared to how I rated them.

Sure their regular SMSs keep them front of mind for when I am in the area, but how much more effective would it be for them to send me personalised offers when I am in the area, perhaps based on what I have previously purchased (tuna, yes please; hake, not so much, thanks)? Or, if I have driven past the shop three times and not popped in, a super-duper offer to entice me, once a loyal customer, back into the store?

Done well, this geo-targetted mobile marketing could make me feel valued as a customer, get me back in the shop to see new products, increase sales for the fishmonger, and make me a loyal customer once again. Who knows, I may drive past just to see what specials pop up on my smartphone.

Done badly, this could be a super-creepy, very annoying service that at best makes me unsubscribe from the service, and at worst makes me find a new fish shop, complain bitterly and publicly in person and online, as well as taking the shop to task for spamming me.

So the devil is in the detail and as with all marketing, the detail starts with getting your customer to opt in, making it very clear what they are opting in to, and then making it very easy to opt out. When it comes to personalisation, there is a fine line between creating a connection with a customer and coming across as a downright stalker. (What do you mean you hope I enjoyed my leftover tuna mayo sarnies for lunch today?!?)

From the point of view of the marketer, clever processes need to be put in place to make it appear that they are sending me a suitably personalised message, when in fact it’s the same message sent to a group of customers with a similar profile.

So that’s the deal with the devil that mobile marketers have to make. On the one hand, the very personal, “take it with you wherever you go” mobile device unlocks the ultimate in customer targetting and personalisation: geo-targetting. But, the flipside is that a badly implemented campaign has a similar potential to anger and alienate customers like never before.

Of course in my example above, a mechanism would have had to be put in place for my fish shop to pick up my location when I was in the neighbourhood. First prize for them would be for me to agree that they locate me automatically as soon as I enter a certain pre-defined area – this way they don’t have to rely on me checking in to know where I am. Personally I would need to have a very trusted relationship with a company or brand to do this, and the benefits to me had better be pretty good. I can see this working well for extremely aspirational lifestyle brands, but also even mom ‘n pop shops, like my fishmonger, where a personal, off-line relationship already exists.

Other options are for companies to tap into existing social media location services such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places. While the element of personalisation might be slightly less in these instances, savvy marketers should know enough about their customers to pinpoint what deals will entice them to their business.

Finally, as mobile advertising and mobile ad networks become more sophisticated, it will be increasingly possible to target advertising by location. For instance, you could do a search on Google for a plumber in central Johannesburg and have a web ad for a plumber pop up on your screen. Add time into the mix and things get more targeted: searching for a restaurant at 7 am in the morning and you’re probably looking for a breakfast venue, while the same search at 5.30 pm implies you are probably looking for a dinner deal.

So, while I would argue that geo-targetting as a mobile marketing tactic is still approaching the runway, it is poised for take-off, and done right can up the rev count of most marketing campaigns.

First published on Vomo.

Here are the top five mobile inventions we recommend you take a look at:

1. M-Pesa

   Even though M-Pesa had a pretty disappointing start in South Africa, with only around 100 000 registrations in its first nine months, it definitely ranks up there as one of Africa’s top mobile inventions, and has been deployed as far afield as Afghanistan and Fiji. M-Pesa was launched by the former CEO of Kenyan mobile operator Safaricom, Michael Joseph, in 2007. Today, 15 million of Safaricom’s 17.5 million subscribers use the system to transfer US$700-million per month, according to Joseph, speaking before the 5th Annual Mobile Banking and Emerging Application Summit.M-Pesa gives people who do not have bank accounts and previously only dealt in cash a way to safely and cost-effectively transfer money via their mobile phones. Safaricom, in partnership with Kenya’s Equity Bank, also allows customers to earn interest on M-Pesa balances.

2. Fundamo

   Mobile banking golden child, Fundamo, announced a cool US$110 million (R750 million) acquisition by Visa this month. The company, founded by Hannes van Rensburg, ex-Sanlam CIO, in Cape Town’s northern suburbs, provides mobile banking infrastructure to mobile operators and financial institutions.Like M-Pesa, Fundamo proves that cellphones are key to providing banking services to the large number of people around the world who don’t qualify for, or have access to, a bank account. Fundamo has more than 50 active mobile financial service deployments in more than 40 countries around the world, including 27 in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. These deployments currently have five million registered subscribers, and have the potential, the company says, to reach in excess of 180 million people.

3.  MXit

   Arguably the bane of many parents’ lives, MXit, founded in Stellenbosch, South Africa in 2003, is the free online instant messenger and social networking platform that allows users to instant message via a cellphone at a fraction of the cost of a text message. For a small fee, as well as your data charges, users can also buy goods such as wallpapers and ringtones, or have conversations in the MXit chat rooms.User numbers are tricky to pin down, but are understood to be in the region of 10 million active unique users and 25 million registered users — primarily in South Africa, but also in Indonesia and other countries around the world. Increasingly marketers, educators and professionals in the healthcare industry are realising that MXit is an effective way of reaching the youth and young adult market. Next on the cards for MXit is a mobile wallet in partnership with wiWallet to allow purchases of larger items such as airtime, electricity and retail goods.

4. Ushahidi

   Ushahidi was born during the Kenyan election riots in 2007, when blogger Juliana Rotich wanted a way to allow people on the ground to report on violence, with the information primarily being captured by cell phone. Since then the Ushahidi team has built a powerful platform that captures information during a crisis, and displays it on a map to allow emergency services and other parties to get a crowdsourced view of what is happening.It was recently used as quickly as two hours after the Japanese earthquake earlier this year to identify locations where people might be trapped, dangerous areas, and the location of food and water supplies. Ushahidi has been used around the world during both political and natural crises in the USA, Haiti, Libya and India, amongst others.

5. JamiiX

   Another messaging platform, JamiiX grew out of a mobile instant messaging service used to counsel teenagers affected by drugs, alcohol addiction, and HIV in the Cape Flats area of Cape Town. The JamiiX platform was developed by South African, Marlon Parker, to effectively manage multiple mobile chat and mobile social networks streams. It allows eight counsellors to have 300 instant messaging (IM) conversations in one hour, massively increasing their ability to assist those who need help.It was released for third party use in 2010, and the WHO (World Health Organisation) has deployed JamiiX, in conjunction with MXit, in Indonesia to aid communications after natural disasters. Deployments are also underway in Nigeria and Malaysia.

First published on Vomo.

Instead, let’s all take a deep breath and start to consider what Jobs’ departure — strictly speaking a change in role, he is now chairman of Apple’s board — means for mobile marketing.

For a start, Jobs is undeniably the great disruptor when it comes to the mobile industry. As Justin Siegel, CEO of MocoSpace said Steve Jobs was responsible for making voice calls a peripheral feature of a mobile phone. And despite the limitations of the iPhone, there is no denying it is a thing of beauty when it comes to usability.

Then enter the iPad. Clearly not a phone, and can do a lot of what you usually use a desktop or laptop computer for, but very definitely a mobile device.

Last year the third piece of the puzzle fell into place. iAds is a closed mobile ad delivery platform that allows iOS developers to monetize their apps, and brands to engage with users of Apple’s mobile devices — in a more exciting way than previously possible with mobile advertising, according to Jobs. The key, apparently, is entrenching mobile advertising into iOS4. Generally the jury appears to still be out when it comes to the success of iAds and how innovative it really is.

According to Jeff Hasen at analysts Mobile Groove: “[iAds] has been a large disappointment for many advertisers and others (like me) who looked at Apple’s move into mobile advertising as a milestone and much needed push to move the industry along.”

Hasen continues to say though that if iPhone is also sold via Sprint and T-mobile in the US, as is expected to happen this year, the critical mass needed for advertisers to see real returns might become a reality. And if we know one thing about Apple fans, they are willing to wait while bugs get worked out of products and service.

So what’s next?

Steve Jobs continues to be involved with Apple as chairman of the board, and industry commentators say he is expected to remain involved in product and strategy development. Tim Cook, former chief operating officer who now takes over the chief executive reins from Jobs, has sometimes been dismissed as an accountant and lacking Jobs’ flair, passion and charisma. However, general consensus seems to be he is a solid pair of hands and can execute the current plan well.

Cook himself said in an email to Apple staff: “I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change. I cherish and celebrate Apple’s unique principles and values. Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that – it is in our DNA. We are going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do.”

The market seems to be calm so far as well, after a few shaky days immediately after Jobs’ resignation announcement. Gartner analyst Van Baker said: “My suspicion is that Apple will do just fine. There are so many talented people there and Steve’s attention to detail is baked into the culture.”

And while it appears to be business as usual at Apple, it is going to be interesting to watch what Apple’s competitors do. Shares in Samsung Electronics, the manufacturer of iPad competitor the Galaxy tablet, rose three percent, while LG Electronics jumped four percent after Jobs’s announcement, reported Memeburn. Samsung certainly seems to be upping the ante in terms of marketing and smartphones sales in recent months, so it wouldn’t be too surprising if it took this opportunity to grab market share from Apple.

As ever, it seems, mobile marketers need to stay nimble and on their toes, ready to respond to a constantly changing, but always growing, market.

First published on Vomo.

According to Nielsen’s recently released Mobile Insights study in South Africa, more South Africans (29 million) use mobile phones than listen to the radio (28 million). This is a profound shift, as radio has always been seen as the darling of both South African advertisers and PR folks, thanks to its massive reach and excellent results.

TV comes in third, with 27 million viewers in South Africa. DSTV/M-Net viewers are at 5.5 million and internet users at 5 million. The report doesn’t say, but based on other industry numbers, this is most likely desktop internet users.

Now of course this doesn’t imply advertisers should abandon radio and TV in favour of mobile devices, but it does indicate that savvy advertisers and marketers have the opportunity to up their game and steal the march on their competitors with compelling multi-channel campaigns, leveraging the distinct benefits of mobile.

Speaking at the Mobilize 2011 conference last week, another Nielsen analyst, general manager of digital Jonathan Carson, pointed out that based on their tracking of how people use smartphones and tablets, it becomes very clear that tablets specifically are used while doing other things, especially watching TV. This, said Carson, provides TV companies with both an opportunity and a challenge: while their audiences might be highly distracted, they also have the opportunity to present more of a surrounded environment for their audience and advertisers.

The same can be said about mobile’s surging ahead of radio and TV in South Africa. It is highly, highly likely that very often cell phones are being used while people are listening to the radio and watching TV. So if brands aren’t considering digital and especially mobile at the outset of any campaign, these stats should be a big wake up call. While your consumers are listening to and watching your beautifully crafted traditional advertising, they are holding in their hands and engaging with a cell phone – the ideal time to get them to take the next step and deepen their brand engagement via a device they love.

Or if, as a brand or agency, you are thinking mobile from the outset, what are you doing to use the platform to make this most of this multi-tasking media dynamic in new, clever and appropriate ways? SMS shortcodes are still one of the easiest and most effective (when done right) ways to bridge the gap between traditional media and more interactive, digital media. But depending on your brand and your customers, the sky is the limit when it comes to gaming, augmented reality, QR codes and user-generated content, to name a few.

Mobile is also the bridge to social media. Nielsen says 11 percent of South Africans use their mobiles to go online, and consumers aged 25-34 are the heaviest users. Facebook is the most popular social media platform, used by 85 percent of mobile subscribers and half of all users of Facebook in South Africa access the site via their mobiles.

No doubt in a few years time we are not even going to be having this discussion: mobile, social and digital are going to be just another line item in a multi-channel campaign, rather than an afterthought or a crazy new idea we’re “just trying out”. Until then, though, forward-thinking brands have the chance to break new ground – it’s where your customers already are, after all.

First published on Vomo.