Archive for November, 2007
Several times during my work with mobile phone manufacturers and operators, people have commented that mobile phones and services would be different if they weren’t created by ‘geeks whose bills are paid by the company.’ A harsh judgement, perhaps, but there’s something in it.
To a large extent new phone service development follows technology. Yes,
phones for gaming and music-listening show a sensitivity to people’s
needs; and operators’ range of service plans reflects their understanding
that individuals have different spending patterns (although not always a
willingness to explain that understanding to their customers). But Blyk
takes a step beyond these developments in its focus on a specific audience
who are very likely not to share the behaviours and aspirations of its
boardroom. This means a step away from a one-size-fits-all approach to
service design and an operation honed to answer the question ‘is this
something 16-24s want?’.
For me that’s the interesting thing about Blyk:
- meeting the basic challenge of providing what its members want (who
wouldn’t want more texts and calls?) and balancing that with advertising
sponsorship that keeps the business viable, and engaging for its members.
From my perspective, way outside the target member age group, I have
always seen my mobile phone as personal and disliked any intrusion (even
from my service operator) among calls and messages from friends and
colleagues. So advertising messages always seemed a no-no…until my recent
experience of working with Blyk, where I could see their potential for
entertainment and information erode my resistance, at least a little. So
what will be the value of advertising messages for Blyk’s members? And how
will the messages bind them further into the service?
And then something more:
- how Blyk will use dialogue with and between its members to stay close to
them? Will it be possible for members and service to work together to
develop Blyk in ways that haven’t yet been mapped out by company
strategists. [Right at the other generational extreme, Saga (the UK
organisation – originally a travel operator – for over 50s) has launched
its own social networking site and boasts 13,000 members after 4 months as
a beta site. Something has clearly sparked its target audience to engage –
but with less competition for attention than Blyk’s members.]
Can Blyk work with its members to pick up and respond to nuances that
might otherwise have been missed, and fulfil its intention to be the
network for 16-24s?
November 6th, 2007
The world is comprised of networks: social networks, fiber-optic networks, wireless networks, and many other kinds of networks. People do not live in isolation and they do not interact with technology in isolation. Nowhere is this more visible than when we think of mobile technologies. What’s the point of having a phone if it’s not connected to the network? More importantly, why bother having a phone if you aren’t a part of a social world?
As mediators, mobile phones connect people across distance. They allow people to talk, text, and share. Yet, all too often, there are barriers that get in the way of people connecting to people. People using different handsets can’t do things together because of operating system or application-level failure to inter-operate. Developers can’t innovate easily because there are no standards. Carriers introduce another barrier, both at the structural and economic level. Friends on different carriers can’t do things together because their carriers won’t them. More commonly, people resist doing what they want to do because it’s either unaffordable or they don’t know how much it will end up costing them.
Many of us take the affordances of the Internet for granted (although, with Net Neutrality being compromised, maybe we shouldn’t…). What made the Internet so powerful is that barriers to participation were relatively low. As ugly a HTML is, that simple standard allowed anyone to make a webpage that could be accessed by anyone, regardless of machine. This paved the way for unbelievable web development efforts, allowing people to focus primarily on their site (although compatibility issues still exist). Pressure to make free websites forced people to develop new business models and the fact that so much was free meant that discussions of a “digital divide” focused on getting people baseline access so that they could do unbelievable numbers of things for free. Companies quickly figured out that it was viable to make basic web communication and information capabilities free in return for ads.
Around the world, more and more people are going mobile. The desire is there. And yet, due to all sorts of barriers, innovation lags behind. Change needs to happen and it needs to happen at multiple levels:
- Handset standards need to be developed and adopted so that applications can be easily built and all of the energy that goes into web development can be channeled towards innovating with the mobile in mind. No one wants to write code for 100 different operating systems.
- New economic models need to be developed so that mobile interaction can flourish.
- Carriers need to allow interactions to occur that cross different carriers.
- Alternatively, mobile innovation needs to bypass carriers by building devices that take advantage of other mechanisms to connect to the network.
- Citizens need to rise up in favor of Net Neutrality and Municipal Wireless so that their rights are not taken away.
I am worried about the state of mobile. Efforts by handsets and carriers to play power games, hoard resources, and lobby against anything that challenges their outdated business models have heavily curtailed innovation and curbed consumer participation. It doesn’t have to be like this.
What excites me about Blyk is that it’s an effort to change the rules. What happens when a key population curtailed by economic resources (a.k.a. youth) are given access in return for advertising? Given its networked model, what happens when entire friend groups start sharing the same service? It’s a critical experiment, one that will teach us a lot about the future of mobile.
November 3rd, 2007
BANKSY | Outdoor work, “Girl TV”
Back in 1999 I used to proclaim that mobile phones were a precious personal medium that brands had to learn to respect. In those days, what a phone could do versus what they are now able is like comparing the Pal-system tv sets of the 1970s with the current blue-ray, HD compatible plasma screens people hang over their fancy high-tech fireplaces. The baby has grown and it wants out of the pocket and into the big wide world of mass information. What does this have to do with advertisement? A lot.
The minute you open your desire for external input to come to you, the whole world wants to say hello. And today, brands have learned to do this in a variety of mediums that it’s hard to avoid. You may say you hate ads, but you sit in the cinema and literally swallow countless minutes of pre-film mini shorts courtesy of Orange, Chanel No. 5 and BMW. Ads that come to you as movies, to be shown at a cinema, then TV and finally streamed or even sold on DVD. This is what they’ve finally learned in ad school: that what turns an ad into something cool that you love watching or that you virally send to your friends has got to do a lot with cross-media moving images. The fact that they have finally made it to a phone screen was inevitable…But it’s not for everyone…. just yet…
The first step is acceptance. The second is identity. When I first heard of Blyk, my first reaction was “they better work with a good ad agency” and most importantly, with brands that people truly want to hear from. In the Blyk world, your phone screen is going to announce that so-and-so is calling you – and you may get all excited or send the call to voicemail…. or a given brand is going to show you some fun creative ad that you may think it’s genius, amusing and worth saving or sharing. It does not matter what brand it is (huge controversial point here), but what the message is and how pleasing it is to watch it. And why is this so? Because a brand advert is not just to sell products but to communicate with the audience. In that respect, a brand sending an ad to your mobile or a friend ringing for a catch-up chat is the same thing.
Brands are everywhere, so why not on my phone? I’d be very annoyed to receive unsolicited ads on my mobile, but if some brands out there that resonate with my lifestyle, or that I want to hear from are prepared to pay for my mobile phone bill…. let the games begin, that’s what I’d say. What is the real difference for me, an 18 year-old groover, with not much cash around, if I sit in front of the tv to watch “Skins” on Channel 4 and an array of brands beam at me from my own telly, or I watch my favourite football team and I cannot avoid reading the Emirates logo on their t-shirts? Brands already talk to me through so many mediums that if for once they are going to share the cost of my lifestyle, I’m actually for it.
I said “talk”. Bad advertisement is just pure yakking… and is just as horrible not just on a mobile screen, but specially on TV. I want to be talked to. I want to know when a brand I relate to has a new product that I want to check out, or a cool ad that I want to forward to my friends, so they continue to agree that I must be super-connected because I always know what goes on.
I have no problem with ads. What I would hate on my phone, and in my life for that matter, is mediocrity, cheap talk, and total misunderstanding of me, what my world is and what I want.
November 1st, 2007
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