In a tough economy, companies are in need of alternative advertising methods to keep customers coming in, and to maintain name recognition in an increasingly crowded market. Traditional marketing, while still effective, has lost its luster so to speak in recent times, and brands are searching for unique methods to spread their message. More and more, companies are turning to digital marketing, and more importantly mobile marketing to fill that need, and give customers and brands a new opportunity to interact using new-age methodology.

Ashley Furniture HomeStores of Charlotte, North Carolina and upstate South Carolina make up eight of the 377 independently-owned regional retail stores
that exclusively sell the Ashley Furniture brand across the United States. The small group of stores decided that the time was right to explore alternative methods besides its more traditional means of newspaper advertising which has been increasingly less effective in recent times. Their answer- make the switch to digital marketing using a combination of SMS and email messaging.

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Since the iPhone has revolutionized the thought of a full-web experience on mobile devices, other companies and software makers have been hot on its heels to bring the technology to other devices.  SkyFire, a new startup out of Mountain View, has introduced their version of a mobile browser that fills the void nicely.

SkyFire’s new browser is a lot like iPhone’s Safari browser in that it provides full-page views of websites in their entirety, but differs in the compatibility with java and ajax based websites.

A huge complaint with Safari was the lack of java and ajax support that many of today’s websites include as part of their design.  Things like videos, embedded Google maps, and other new-age web-based technologies can’t be viewed on the iPhone without opening a separate application.

SkyFire’s version uses the method of loading most of a websites content, including java and ajax elements, to its third-party servers rather than the mobile device.  Its servers do most of the “heavy lifting” and the website, once loaded, is shot back to the mobile device without the user knowing the difference.  This makes for seamless, and quicker web-browsing experience that finally includes almost all elements of every website.  You can watch YouTube videos and scroll through Google maps directly in the SkyFire browser.

The browser is available for Windows Mobile, but they’ve also recently launched a beta program for Symbian’s S60 platform.  Invites are available on their website.

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A difficult aspect of launching successful mobile campaigns is the fact that it’s hard to build a campaign that works between all devices, carriers, and other variables. Most mobile ad-agencies don’t have the in-house know-how to be able to produce a comprehensive campaign that will reach the masses.

Paris-based advertising holding company Publicis Groupe announced recently plans to partner with Yahoo to provide better mobile marketing offerings and a true all-in-one service to provide cross-device, and cross-carrier advertising worldwide.

They’ve integrated their mobile marketing agency, Phonevalley, with Yahoo’s Blueprint technology which is the backbone of Yahoo! Go. “Go” is a platform that supports widgets and third-party apps on mobile devices. Blueprint, in theory, allows developers to create an app once that can run on the Yahoo Go platform, which is then compatible with hundreds of phones around the world. Their intention with this is to provide brands working with Publicis the ability to tap into this capability, making it easier to develop one campaign that could work on various phones, carriers and across multiple countries.

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Canadian texters got up-in-thumbs recently when telecom company Telus Corp. unveiled new pricing that would start charging people without data plans to receive SMS messages. Up ’til now, users without bulk plans only had to pay for outgoing texts. Faced with having to now shell out for twice as many messages, the plan-less apparently cried outrage over the possibility of having to pay for spam SMS.

Due to the outcry (I’m guessing it went something like, “You hosers!”) Telus yesterday said it would give credit to customers for each spam message they receive. Complainants simply have to forward the offending SMS with the keyword “spam” to the shortcode 7726–which conveniently also spells out the word “spam.” They’ll then get credit for the 15 cents they’d have been charged to receive the text.

I’m not sure what to think of all this. The whole thing smacks of both greed and irrational fear on the part of Canadian consumers. Read the rest

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Sometimes it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite the plethora of unlimited long distance calling plans (both on landline phones and on mobile phones) and extremely easy access to calling cards, being able call someone collect is still needed.

While this convenient billing feature is old hat to landline calling, it has proven troublesome for mobile phones. Because mobile phones are increasingly replacing landline phones, the inability to place collect calls to mobiles had dramatically reduced the number of collect calls overall. With today’s announcement by 3Cinteractive about the immediate and full scale launch of their patent pending Text Collect™ service, that is all going to change.

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So Morgan Stanley recently raised expectations on Apple share prices based on the most optimistic iPhone forecast I think I’ve ever seen.

The investment bank believes that Apple will sell 27 million iPhones in the calendar year 2009, at an average price of $550 per unit. All this will raise Apple stock to $210 per share, the bank concludes.

Anyone else got a problem with this picture? Here are mine:

* The much-anticipated price reduction of $199 per 8-gigabyte phone. Even the 16-gig unit is $299. How Morgan Stanley estimates revenue of $550 per phone–even considering subsidies by AT&T–is a mystery.

* The 27 million units that Apple is expected to move. Sure, Nokia–the global handset leader–sold 14.5 million smart phones in the first quarter of this year, meaning anyone who dethrones the Scandinavians could sell something like 29 million units in a year (assuming the usurper has the same sales figures during all quarters involved) . But Apple reported selling 1.7 million units in Q12007 and 2.3 million units during the quarter prior. It would have to increase sales almost nine-fold to meet Morgan Stanley’s prediction. With certain issues still lingering over the iPhone, it doesn’t seem likely that Apple will toss Nokia off the mountain by next year.

* Investors elsewhere don’t seem to share Morgan Stanley’s optimism. Consider that when the cheaper, 3G iPhone debuted last week, shares fell 2.2 percent. Even today, Apple shares closed down 2.7 percent at $178.75.

What do you all think?

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The term “mobile marketing” encompasses lots of different technologies and media/message types: SMS. Mobile Internet. Mobile email. And so on. Marketers might wonder which to use, or how to combine them most effectively in a multi-channel campaign.

Broadcaster Media, which started in Australia and recently moved its headquarters to California, has the answer. Its platform, called SMARTS, uses SMPP (short message peer-to-peer) technology in an uncommon way. Instead of sending text messages to a short code, interested subscribers send a keyword to a dedicated phone number. The brand/marketer then sends that consumer a text message with a link to a mobile Web site–prompting consumers to visit the site, interact with the brand, perhaps even engage in transactions.

Broadcaster Media’s mobile marketing solution is intriguing for a few reasons: It’s all-encompassing (they create clients’ mobile Web sites as well as promote them). Since it uses a phone number instead of a short code, marketers don’t have to wait for short code approval. Most of all, its raison d’etre is to promote mobile content. Instead of “texts” being the end-message, they are merely a tool to drive consumers to mobile Web sites, where they can further interact with the brand.

Other companies like iLoop and Netbiscuits offer similar solutions. Broadcaster Media, however, claims it can do it for less money and in less time (a “couple of thousand dollars” as opposed to some $10,000 and taking a week to set up rather than a few months). Read the rest

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