I don’t own a smart phone. In fact my cell phone was in a remedial class eating glue when I found it. But it serves my purposes at this particular time in my life. I am fully aware that a smart phone is in my imitate future but I am a creature of necessity. That being said my experience with mobile marketing is limited. I will say, however, that I was texting a friend last year during the NBA finials and explaining how Kobe Bryant shares free throw abilities with my grandmother when a little while after I received a text from Bell Canada. The text was informing me of an online sale of NBA Jerseys 30% off at nba.com. This was obviously no accident. It was a great example how intimate mobile marketing is. I was taken with how the nba.com tip could have been from friend.

Not having a smart phone means I have not participated the world of smart phone applications. To be honest, the most fun I have had with a smart phone application was when Dave fell asleep in class and Brian had an iPhone and the iPhone application that told you what song was playing by simply placing the iPhone up to the music source. Noticing that Dave was snoring, Brian put the phone up to Dave ‘s face and it turns out, Dave snoring was closest to Elvis Hound dog. That was great.

I can say that I have not really incorporated Mobile marketing with my past projects. I could however, see many opportunities for this intimate marketing technique. With the advent of integrate location aware technology, advertising of locations such as restaurants could be seen as helpful rather than intrusive.

I have always had a theory that the advertising people find annoying and intrusive is advertising that is not directly pointed at them. The intimate nature mobile marketing could remedy an amount of this annoyance

The Revolution will not be televised

The broadband revolution is a reality. I spend very little time watching television, but I keep my digital cable for the simple fact that I’m a huge sports fan and watching sports online is not yet up to par. I can assure you that this is true for the fanatic, trust me. But when it comes to any other content, watching online is much easier than watching on television.

I did however notice an interesting side effect. In theory you are more plugged in to mainstream culture but you can no longer be a passive observer. I’ll give you an example of what I mean. Recently I was talking to two people whom I consider “plugged in” to mainstream culture and pride themselves as “in the know”. I was asking their thoughts on the Christian Bale “freak out” on the set of the new Terminator movie and neither of them had any idea what I was talking about. Now I’m not saying that everyone should know about this event but it was all anyone was talking about on television talk and news shows. Unless you are emailed the event or actively look for it, you will not be in the know. My point is that with all of us becoming able to customize our entertainment experience we are becoming less connected. The music industry is in serious trouble due to downloading but I believe another byproduct is that all of our taste is spread out over a larger field. This is good for the consumer but we are becoming less connected. Now I have never been someone to rebel against the evolution of technology and culture but I see advertisers finding more difficulty reaching large audiences through pop culture.

Idea Utility Company

As many examples of brands utilities you can think of, there is an endless amount of untapped opportunities not being utilized by popular brands. The few I can think off the top of my head would be Nokia having an online phone directory, UPS making digital stopwatches, Sharpie providing blank white cardboard signs and markers at sporting events. These ideas are just off the top of my head, and are not even very good, but should be seen as examples of how brand utility ideas could be created for every brand. It is difficult for brands to build relationships with an audience and the overall goal is to have your audience live your band. Brand utilities are a great way to have an audience view your brand as useful.

Before sitting down to write this I opened a bottle of wine with my Naked Grape wine opener and filled my Inniskillin wine glass, and was pondering what makes a great brand utility. Clearly there should be a connection between the brand and the utility they are offering. The new frontier, however, is online widgets and services. As I peruse the numerous widgets on my Mac desktop, I noticed an endless amount of lost opportunities. No one is sponsoring my weather, dictionary or translator widget. These would be perfect for Firestone, Scrabble and Go Travel respectively