As millions of eyes were tuned to the Oscars last night, the stage was set for one man to use the massive platform for a unique SMS call-to-action, whether the show’s producers wanted him to or not.

During the acceptance speech for winning best Documentary, the subject of which, Ric O’Barry, held up a sign that read “text DOLPHIN to 44144.”  Even though the camera cut away quickly, the message was still understood.

O’Barry, who captured and trained the first five dolphins who played Flipper in the popular 1960s TV series, dedicated the rest of his life to protecting and freeing dolphins from captivity after witnessing the ramifications of his actions — as well as the suicide of one of the Flipper dolphins in his arms.  His life’s work was chronicled in the documentary “The Cove,” which won the Oscar last night for best documentary of the year.

Following through on the campaign and texting “Dolphin” to 44144 returned a link to an Online petition and a means to send a letter to Pres. Obama.  MsgMe, the provider of the 44144 short code used in the call-to-action, said even though cameras cut away quickly when O’Barry held up the sign, the response was still significant.

“We saw steady traffic for the next five hours and have seen a huge spike in support over Twitter which we believe is generating the bulk of the traffic,” said Matt Silk of Waterfall Mobile, provider of the MsgMe SMS platform in an email today.  ”New subscribers are still coming in at a pretty healthy clip to sign the petition so we are ecstatic with the viral explosion of the campaign.”

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It’s always nice to come across use-cases for SMS beyond the basic confines of marketing, and a perfect example is the increased usage of the medium for appointment reminders.

Headrush Hair Salon, an up-scale and high-traffic salon in the U.K, enlisted the help of TextMagic to introduce SMS reminders to cut down on no-shows and reduce the standby time for their stylists, helping curb the untold amount of revenue lost during idle time.  With over 4,700 clients total, no-shows had become a huge problem.

“TextMagic has improved our amount of no-show clients who may have forgotten the date and time of their appointment, therefore leaving a stylist in the salon with sometimes up to 2 1/2 hours of down time, which is clearly bad for business and profits.  We calculate that our number of no-shows has been reduced by approximately 70% since we’ve been using TextMagic and we expect this number to improve further as we obtain more clients’ mobile numbers.”

With SMS being inexpensive, easy to implement and having the ability to reach anyone quickly and easily no matter the type of device, it’s no wonder SMS reminder solutions have proved so successful.  Nearly every use-case I come across is deemed a huge success, with ROI that goes above and beyond most expectations.  As the concept makes itself known, wide-spread usage in a variety of industries will begin to take shape, for good reason.

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At the annual Apple shareholder’s meeting yesterday, CEO Steve Jobs reiterated again the fact that Apple is a mobile device company focused on small acquisitions to grow its businesses using the nearly $26 billion pile of cash its sitting on.  Through its acquisition history and future plans, its clear that Apple wants to own every piece of  each “mobile device” they offer, especially the iPhone.

At the shareholder’s meeting, Jobs expressed his continued interest in acquiring companies based on their talent and technology, not by their perceived market position, meaning the company will go after small startups that offer highly focused technology, or highly skilled and knowledgeable founders.  The company wants to acquire startups that can help bolster certain aspects of its products- a perfect example being the low-key acquisition of a mapping startup a while back to help Apple develop its own in-house mapping solution.

It’s clear the company wants to own every aspect of the devices they offer, and they’re already on the right track.  With the iPhone, the company directly handles the hardware,  software, the mobile commerce and music aspects via iTunes, mobile application distribution via its App store, and soon its own mapping solution, effectively locking out all third-parties and positioning itself to keep the iPhone (and all its revenue streams) all to itself.

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r2integrated, an internet marketing and technology firm, has developed a simple and innovative tool to help brands plot the future of their mobile apps.  By comparing an app’s brand value against its usefulness, the tool predicts whether the app is doomed for failure or future success.

The quadrant is comprised of “campaign focused,” “most successful,” “least successful,” and “utility focused.”  By plotting a proposed mobile app’s brand value proposition against its usefulness, the quadrant can help predict its likely success based on one of the four aforementioned outcomes.

The first of which is obvious; if your app has low brand value proposition and low usefulness, the likelihood of success is inherently low, and it’s not worth the investment.  Low brand value compared with high usefulness, however, will place your app in the “utility focused” quadrant, meaning its success will improve, but will still face heavy competition from other utilitarian-based apps from larger software companies and providers.

If your app has high brand value but low usefulness, you’re app will be deemed “campaign focused,” meaning it will likely be successful for short-lived branding initiatives, but will lack long-term viability from a user-perspective.  Finally, if your app has high usefulness and high brand value, you’ll find yourself in the “most successful” quadrant for obvious reasons, meaning its utility will keep it “top of mind” with users, while driving brand impression and buying behavior as well.

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QderoPateo, a unique startup that generated some buzz with its focus on “Articulated Naturality,” has launched a bluetooth proximity marketing solution and the beginning of its “Bluetooth Advertising Network.”  The announcement, sent in a press release yesterday, comes after I mention a complete lack of interest in proximity marketing in the recent past.

The proximity marketing solution, dubbed “Blu-Pons,” is focused on malls and shopping centers and uses distinct calls-to-action to encourage roaming consumers to turn their Bluetooth on and make themselves discoverable.  Once they do so, the Blu-Pon system implicitly asks for permission to push a coupon to the user, and if they accept, the coupon is transmitted.

Upon acceptance, the coupon is downloaded and stored on the user’s phone to be presented and redeemed at the participating retailer during purchase.  Later this year, the company plans to add the ability to redeem “Blu-Bucks” at retailers, providing a unique retention tool to keep customers coming back for more.

In addition, the company will soon launch an online advertising portal at blu-pons.com to enable advertisers to purchase and manage Blu-Pon campaigns online- with complete reporting that can even be emailed directly to the campaign manager for easy ROI measurement.

While the solution is not unlike several others on the market around the world, QderoPateo has taken things a bit farther in terms of campaign management and access, reporting and the concept of creating a “network” between hotspots.  Still, the prohibiting factors of the bluetooth marketing concept is still present.  Since this implementation is US-based, it will be interesting to see how consumers respond, and how retailers embrace the new concept.

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A new report published yesterday by the UN indicates that 67% of the world’s population, or two-thirds total, are mobile subscribers- far outweighing Online access.

67% of the world’s population represents around 4.6B people, up from only 1B in 2002, indicating staggering continued growth.  In developing nations, however, the uptake is even more substantial with 57% of the total population in these nations being mobile subscribers, even though other technologies are scarce.

To compile the report, the UN tallied mobile phone, land-line telephone and internet usage in 159 countries, which ranged from the most advanced European nations to the least developed nations in sub-Saharan Africa.  The report also found that Internet use has grown, but at a much slower pace.  It’s no secret that mobile devices are replacing computers in many parts of the world, and that a large majority of Web usage is attributed to mobile.

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While we all understand the benefits of mobile marketing on a large-scale, why then does the concept of hyperlocal mobile marketing seem to always get lost in the mix?

I live in a small town, filled with small businesses and business-owners locked in to legacy ideals when it comes to marketing.  The thought of targeting customers via mobile devices is a concept that many scratch their heads about when planning their marketing strategy, and usually go back to old-time techniques when finally executing that strategy.

For those located outside the tech-savvy regions of the US, where mobile marketing is deemed the “frontier of marketing innovation,” the concept is still largely overlooked by those who can benefit the most from it – small businesses.  While there’s startups trying to bring the new-age ideals of mobile marketing to a hyperlocal level, it remains shrouded in obscurity for most SMB owners.

In large part, I think it all comes down to simplicity.  Cutting through the big words, various platforms and OSs, techniques and methods associated with mobile marketing, and instead focusing on the bottom line of using method X to achieve more sales/leads/etc should be emphasized on a hyperlocal level.  If SMBs get confused by the concepts, they’ll return to their so-called tried-and-true marketing methods, which may be easy to understand and implement, but not nearly as effective as a simple mobile strategy would have been.

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