This year, their agency delights in the name Spank.

It’s Christmas, so like a proper agency, they decided to put on a party, as you would. But how to showcase their creativity? Well, if the name of the agency is Spank, you have your theme pretty much there. But how do you invite people?

This is the email I received:

Google yourself from anything BUT a mobile device.

If you cant find what we’ve hidden for you, it means you don’t google yourself enough and you need to start doing it more often.

Naturally enough, I googled “Russell Buckley”. And what did I see at the top of results, in the form of a Google AdWords

Click on the link and you get through to the Spanking Good Party website.

How cool is that?

I’m sure that we’ve all come across companies in our careers who we certainly would never want to do business with again and who we wouldn’t recommend to our worst enemies. Whether it’s a question of unscrupulousness or incompetence, some people just are best avoided in the future, if we’ve been unlucky enough to come across them in the first place.

However, I remember thinking about this concept about 10 years ago – and I can certainly remember which company started the train of thought and would never trust them again, even though most of the employees at the time have probably long since left. I’ve even blogged some thoughts about Reputation Management over the years, including here.

But there are a number of issues about this kind of idea:

1. Justice is very often about who has the deepest pockets. If I write that Mr Bastard is not to be trusted and Mr Bastard sues me, if Mr Bastard is determined and very rich, I’m likely to back off when our combined legal costs reach a point that makes me no longer able to sleep at night. Of course, that’s an entirely fictitious Mr Bastard and I’m not suggesting for a moment that if you are actually named Mr Bastard that you’re anything but a wonderful human being and all round good egg.

The brave, Mr Adeo Ressi, the man behind the blacklist, has selected a legal firm as the first company to be featured. So we’ll quickly see how this aspect plays out, I suspect.

2. Anyone who has had any dealings with the law will find that what seems on the surface is a black-and-white case, turns out to be at best a “grey area”. Every dispute has two sides and it’s often very hard to judge where the fault lay. Company A certainly might not have delivered the website they promised. But perhaps it was because Client B failed to specify what was required, kept changing the spec and was generally very slow about giving approvals expediently.

I note that the submissions process doesn’t say anything about accused companies rights to appeal – that doesn’t mean that this process isn’t in place. But assuming that they do want to be fair, the workload involved in running such a service with any degree of scrupulousness will quickly prove to be very challenging if done properly – and worthless if not.

3. I’ve long suspected that the smart answer to this involves some kind of peer-sourced justice (crowd sourcing spreads the net too wide). This would be where the original submissions was reviewed by a small team of proven business people, who have no vested interest in the outcome – perhaps easier said than done, in reality. They can invite the blacklistee to appeal and at that stage, come up with a judgment. This wouldn’t avoid any subsequent litigation, but would share the workload and provide more transparency. But then the peers would need some kind of reassurance that they wouldn’t be embroiled in the subsequent legal penalties.

I certainly praise Adeo Ressi for his bravery and desire to level the playing field and bring justice for his mentees. And maybe the best result we can hope for out of this is that it inspires someone to stand on his shoulders and elegantly solve problems that exist in the Version 1.0.

Keep an eye on the field of Reputation Management – big prizes available for those who get it right.

My initial reaction was one of apathy, fed by the inevitable mess of what happens when the mobile world collides with that of the webhead blogger crowd. Witness this gem, titled “Twitter kills SMS service in some countries over costs. Will someone kill SMS already?”.

Just for emphasis, let’s look at that again: “Will someone kill SMS already?”

If you’re quiet, you can hear me banging my head on the desk. And I’m not the only one. Tom Hume points to a great piece at rawsocket.org with this excellent quote that sums things up for me pretty well:

Like watching an old man curse and scream at the weather, watching webheads complain about the idiosyncrasies of mobile as if they were only that – mere irrelevant idiosyncrasies – can be a test of patience.

Anyway, enough about my reticence to wade into this stuff too deeply. Alfie’s post is a good one, in which he highlights Twitter’s sorta broken (or completely invisible, depending on how generous you’re feeling) business model made this development inevitable. Also, he’s spot-on when he points out the real failure is in how Twitter handled this, by not even attempting to find a stopgap solution — ie something along the lines of “We know this isn’t ideal/is expensive/is a kludge but here’s XXX solution until we can do something better.”

But, with every door that closes, another opens — and Mike Butcher at TechCrunch UK says startups are already lining up to step into the gap and offer SMS to British Twitterers.

FWIW, I think it’s a little unfair to hold Twitter to account for a mobile operator revenue model that’s stifled tons of services over the years (not to mention all the free SMS Twitter’s sent over the past several months). But any sympathy I had disappeared quickly, in light of how they handled things. I can’t help but feel they’ve been a bit lazy in just cutting things off full-stop, without offering some sort of recourse for users who say they’d be willing to pay for SMS services.

So there’s a failure on Twitter’s side, but also a failure on the operator side. To me, the real issue is the latter, and Twitter’s just the latest victim.

I think that Nokia’s bigger push into the web space is, generally, A Good Thing, since for far too long mobile phones have and the web world haven’t played well together. But this acquisition strikes me as a bit odd. We’ve seen plenty of photo- and media-sharing sites from the likes of operators and handset vendors before, but for the most part, they’ve failed next to unaffiliated, web-based services. The biggest question in my mind is what’s more important: that Nokia have and control its own media-sharing site, and develop new revenue opportunities with it, or that its customers have the best tools possible to share media from their mobiles to the sites and services of their choosing?

This isn’t an either/or situation or a zero-sum game; I’m just not convinced that Nokia needs to get into the business of running web services in areas where plenty of established competition exists — and consumers have overwhelmingly chosen that competition. I’m interested to see what Nokia can bring to the table by snapping up Twango, but I hope it doesn’t come at the expense of the continued development of tools to let consumers share their mobile media to a wide range of sites. Perhaps I’m being overly cynical here, but too often in mobile closed thinking has been the default — and if Nokia is truly embracing the Web ethic, it’s got to make openness a priority, and not seek to lock its customers in to its own solutions, either actively, or by making the use of other services much more difficult.

I’ve been impressed over the years by Vijay Chattha, Founder and Chief Talker of VSC Public Relations. Firstly, I’ve been impressed¬†with my¬†blogging hat on,¬†whenever Vijay approached me with stories about his clients. Sure, I¬†haven’t always used them, but they’ve always been well-thought through, researched properly and somewhat unusually, they’re obviously pitched by someone who understands the space. You have to be on the receiving end of constant PR pitches to realise that this is unfortunately very unusual. I get approached to write about dog food and nuclear waste, believe it or not!

More lately, Vijay has been doing a fine job handling Public Relations for AdMob is the US, although the decision to appoint him was nothing to do with me as it happens.

He recently approached me to see if I would be interested running a feature on sharing some secrets of the PR trade and I thought that’s the kind of thing you’ll like to learn about. It’s not a pitch, just good advice, though I’m sure he’d be happy to talk to you if you want.

Over to Vijay:

Even when your business is entirely focused on mobile communication technology, you might find it challenging to express your own business story in words. As the mobile industry explodes, start-up companies (and the big guys) often make weekly announcements, resulting in writers receiving hundreds of press releases, most of which fall short of delivering news likely to earn a headline. Being part of the mobile content industry is truly exciting; rapidly changing and greatly affecting people’s daily lives. Then why, when an industry that is making such a dramatic impact, do many important developments go unnoticed and unreported? Still in its infancy, the mobile content industry needs to educate of the masses, and get everyone as enthusiastic about what is available, and coming next, as we are.

I think about how to explain new mobile technology and mobile content to the media, well, pretty much everyday as part of my job. I thought I’d share some quick tips that I’ve learned over the years that might be of help to Mobhappy readers: 

1) Research

DO your homework. So many companies fail to step outside of their own internal bubble and look at what competitors may be doing. 

DON’T proclaim that a new product or service is the first of its kind, unless you are very very sure it is the one and only.  Get industry newsletters, read insider blogs (like this one), attend relevant trade shows and talk to others in your field. Also keep a global perspective, as a small company in Eastern Europe may have moved to market faster than you. Post on forums to query about what others are doing. I think you’ll find that professionals in the industry are helpful in sharing information and happy to network. 

2) News, not snooze!

DON’T bore your audience. Spend some time thinking about the excitement factor – don’t leave it up to a journalist to figure out what makes your company interesting, they’ve got their own job to handle, not yours.  Avoid industry jargon for mainstream writers, as not everyone understands what SMS, MMS, WAP, Java, BREW, JSRs, Bluetooth, SMIL, WML actually means. Additionally, know your jargon for industry insiders. PMS and PSMS describe different things depending on who you ask and what time of the month it is. 

Of course if you are sending news to ‘Mobile Marketing Magazine’, you most likely will not have to explain that the phrase “mobile marketing” refers to cellphone related messages vs. trucks with advertisements pasted on them. 

DO dig for your company’s hidden news gems and present these to the appropriate audience. A B2B publication may run announcements about new hires, new partnerships and new product and service launches. A B2C publication, will not want this information, but will want to know about developments from your company that matter to the person on the street. Tell a consumer writer about something that matters to the guy that is sitting on the bus or in traffic next to you. If you are discussing a mobile advertising network, you may start with a story like, “Did you know you can surf websites on your phone?..Would you like to know which ones? Or find out how long it takes?…Read on…”
 
3) The Pinocchio Effect

DON’T lace your communications with overblown marketing promises, unnecessary big words or fancy industry jargon. It makes you seem like Pinocchio, telling tall tall tales as everyone watches your nose grows! 

DO pack your sales collateral materials, press information and company newsletter articles with real analysis, data and opinion. Earn trust with truth. Most companies don‚Äôt want to release statistics because they fear that they are exposing themselves too much‚Ķwell then get creative. Think in terms of percentages of growth, not actual hard numbers. Journalists want to comb through the hype to learn what is working now!…not 5 years from now.¬†

4) Know Who’s Who Before you Dial and Smile

DON’T chat up FHM or Rolling Stone magazines when your company announcement of new investor funding is only relevant to venture capital newsletters. 

DO develop a realistic and strategic list of publications and news outlets that will find your news of relevance. Identify the most appropriate person to speak with – is there a beat reporter covering the mobile industry, or a telecommunications editor, or has the publication lumped mobile content into the general coverage area of technology? At large business publications such as The Wall Street Journal, a reporter will be assigned to cover an industry, and specific companies. Some writers watch the big players closely, and others watch newcomers. Watch by-lines (the author’s name) to see who is writing what, and search the Internet to see what they’ve written recently. 

5) Our Industry Communication Challenge: Convergence

DON’T make the mistake of thinking a product or service offered is only relevant to the mobile industry, when it is relevant to other vertical markets. 

DO increase your exposure opportunities, by communicating to relevant convergent industries. Analyse what sector your product or service can reach, and spin your approach to suit varied niche audiences needs. For instance, mobile advertising can be an advertising industry story. Entertainment content, if tied to a known celebrity or brand, may be relevant to Variety as well as Wireless Development News. 

6) Talk the talk, walk the walk but don’t stalk. 

DO Tell your story, deliver sources and statistics, via the journalists preferred method of communications (most often email). And if they tell you ‘no’, accept it. 

DON’T ever Spam contacts with irrelevant information. Clearly there are times when news needs to be distributed to a number of reporters, but be careful not to annoy. No one likes to be forced to be brusque or rude. You’ll build a reputation that could harm you as you try to build your business. 

7) Communicate Through A Variety of Approaches

DON’T make every PR tactic a press release. If you’re company is truly innovative, every division should represent that quality, including your PR program. 

DO consider using news items in company newsletters, an online webinar, dropping short personalized emails to contacts or keeping in touch with key contacts with creative promotions. One company sends out free games for mobile downloads and another mails a promotional CD with music and a letter about recent developments. There are many others, ask you local PR professional to find out what tactic is right for you. 

It’s Not All About the Press

DON’T underestimate the value of alternative audiences.
DO recognize that a briefing meeting with an analyst can be a huge opportunity. A write-up on a blog or even a thread about your company or product in a forum is of value and will often build up your online trail, hey you’re reading this blog aren’t you? 

9) Digital Drives Traffic

DON’T overlook one of the most growing methods of getting out your message – online marketing and advertising. 

DO reserve ad spend budget for websites, microsites, banner ads and online ad campaigns. An online campaign can help you communicate to a very niche or mass audience on a consistent basis. The beauty of online advertising is that it is quantifiable. Within thirty to sixty days, you can decide if your campaign is generating results. What is your advertising plan for the year? How are you determining its effectiveness? The answers may be in the numbers. 

10) What about Word of Mouth?

DON’T be caught out of the loop on some of the more recent tactical strategies companies are using to reach consumers, such as Word of Mouth Marketing (WOM). 

DO consider if a WOM campaign (also known as viral marketing or buzz marketing campaign) works for your campaign objectives. These approaches can be very effective with consumer outreach efforts, if your budget allows, it can be a great way to get the word on the street about what you have to offer. 

You’ll want a neat package of goodies that fully integrates all the tactics you have at your disposal. Develop key message points (many say the magic number is three bullet points) and integrate these throughout your PR, advertising and marketing aspects of your company’s external communications efforts. Be cautious of getting into a situation where one of your communication tentacles is off on a tangent that is off the mark of others, as it confuses your audiences and diffuses your branding efforts. 

A successful communications plan can take some time to develop, and execute. Hiring a communications firm that will be devoted to your company’s objectives can be an excellent investment in growing your business. If you don’t like DIY, consider working with a professional communications agency. Here’s a few things to consider when hiring an agency: 

1) Is the agency knowledgeable about your industry? Find out if they have any history in working with the mobile content industry. Ask them to show you results. What have others said? Find out the buzz on the firm, get to know them from your colleagues in the industry, look up any information about them on the Internet and ask to speak to current or former clients. You probably wouldn’t hire a new employee without a reference check, so do the same with a new agency.

2) Do you like their creative approach? Most firms will offer an initial presentation that will give you a taste of what style of work they offer, and how they will approach working with you. The presentation should both demonstrate a good sense of knowledge, creative and show that they understand your business.

3) Did you like them? Yes, business is personal – if you don’t like them, don’t hire them. Trust your instincts. PR will be a roller coaster ride or ups and downs, is this someone who can deal with both sides?

I hope you find the insights I’ve shared above of value. Every company’s case is different, so if you have specific questions, I’m happy to talk further. Just email me at: vijay AT vscconsulting DOT com
Vijay Chattha is the founder and president of San Francisco based VSC Consulting, an award winning high-tech boutique PR agency. Earlier this year the magazine PR Week nominated him as one of America’s top young PR professionals of 2006. Visit http://www.vscconsulting.com/ for more information.
 

To be honest, my first reaction was “Oh no, not another American Company offering sms short codes to advertisers and thinking that 1. This is new 2. Advertisers were going to fall over themselves to integrate this into their advertisements 3. that similar products have been around for 2 or 3 years in Europe and haven’t worked there either, can be ignored. But having spent a few minutes on the site and chatting to Ariel, this is far from the case and I think what they’re doing is very cool indeed.

Mechanically, TextMarks allows you to go to their site and reserve a keyword or words. You also type in the response you want to send out when people send that word in. Then, when that word is sms’d to 41411, the sender gets back the message you want them to. Very simple – and it’s all free for the time being.

So, as an example, if I want to point you to a post I wrote yesterday on your mobile phone, I could ask you to key in this rather long URL http://mobhappy.com/blog1/2006/08/22/what-should-friendster-do-now/. Or I could ask you to sms MOBH to 41411 and get the link sent to your phone.

One of the neat things about it is that when you’re setting up your keyword/s, the platform allows you to instantly see if the word is available. So, while I type M then O then B, the message says that the word is too short. Then with the H, it suddenly says it’s available. If I was to continue with A, P, P, Y, it then becomes unavailable (I bagged the MobHappy key word too). This is a nice usability feature.

So far, it’s a nice, usable site, but there are other players on both sides of the pond doing similar things. But what sets TextMarks apart is that they are squarely aimed at the consumer User Generated Content angle – not the more obvious B2B advertiser route that everyone else goes after. Their thinking is that they don’t know how people might find this useful, so let’s launch the tool into the wild, give people a few ideas and then sit back and see what they come up with. This strikes me as being a very wise approach, as I’d bet good money that what people end up using this for, won’t be what we might think.

How would you use it? Leave a comment below if you come up with something interesting.

So far (and it is only a few weeks old) people have used it in some cool ways. This blogger is currently travelling in the Arctic Circle and her readers can find out where she is every day by texting wheresdiana to 41411. There’s a restaurant where regulars can subscribe (the site allows subscription, as well as one off responses) to get details of daily specials, or you can get Amazon’s price for a book by sending in the ISBN.

If you’re selling a car, you could put eg FordFocus as a keyword and send people pricing and mileage details. Or put a key word of the address of the house you’re selling on the For Sale board, so people can text for further details, including pictures, available on a wapsite you create.

Potentially the list is endless and we’re only bound by the limits of our imagination.

One of the aspects that fascinates me about mobile is where the phone becomes the link between the real world and the digital one – a virtual mouse, if you like. This application is one way of realising that idea today, in a very practical, simple and usable way, which is available to everyone – or US mobile users for now, anyway.

I think we’ll see some really interesting use cases come out of this, from both “real” users, as well as when the art community starts experimenting and it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.

[tags] textmarks, shortcodes, 41411, amazon [/tags]

Having said that, I did understand most of what the other speakers were saying, so that, at least is progress on the language front. And I did manage to order beer very competently afterwards, but that was a skill I mastered some time ago.

On the panel were

Robert Wiedemann of Vodafone, taking about Orb’s Mein PC, that I wrote about a few weeks ago.

Robert Lang of Fon¬†which hit the headlines, big time, a few months back when they raised a huge amount of money from a blue chip list of investors.¬†Nothing to do with mobile (and not really very much to do with UGC either, to be honest), but interesting nonetheless. Fon encourage people to create their own wifi hotspots, which they sell access to, or give away free, in return for a free access at other nodes. To be honest, I’m a little sceptical about the model as to offer meaningful roaming access, the penetration has to be so intense that I fear critical mass simply won’t be achieved. On the other hand, if a node could be upgraded somehow to give coverage of say 1/2 mile or more to create a mesh, it would be a real winner and maybe that’s the master plan. Companies like Sequoia, Google and Index Ventures are smart cookies and¬†Fon have¬†got an amazing list of advisors, so definitely one to watch.

Mark Gazecki of Atlas Ventures, one of the foremost VCs in the European market gave an interesting talk about the development of media and where mobile fits in with the whole thing. Clearly someone who “gets” mobile which is an interesting contrast with some of the US VCs I’ve met. Of course, if you’re a US VC and are reading this, you’re not included in that huge generalisation. How can you be – you read MobHappy

Mark’s perceptive, if tongue-in-cheek, advice was that if you add “social” to the description of your business model, you’ll substantially increase your company’s valuation.

Vince Staybl of itsmy.com, which is a really cool¬†glimpse at the future of mobile UCG and very much how I see the market developing. It offers a mobile home page, free content, blogging and community features. The famous Anina, the model/blogger/geek (pictured)was in the audience and asked why the site had such limited functionality on the web, which is¬†a very good point as a quick visit will demonstrate. I didn’t really understand Vince’s answer to this, but I guess¬†the functionality¬†is intentional as it seems a very smart operation otherwise.

Maybe more on Anina at a latter point.

Bernhard Palme of Jumbuck, an Australian mobile entertainment company that specializes in dating and games. They work exclusively through operators and have 14.5 million users worldwide. Bernhard had some fascinating stats about USC/communities, which are hard to come by in this part of the market, so very valuable indeed.

Last year, Jumbuck alone accounted for 19% of wap traffic in the UK, which totalled 2 billion page impressions. 30% was accounted for by other mobile community sites, with 51% being “the rest”. Wow. I know that UCG and communities were big, but I thought it was still very much early adopter stuff and set to explode maybe two years down the road.

I think I’ll finish this post with a paraphrased point Mark made though. This market is set to be huge and it’s certainly not too late for start-ups thinking about jumping in. While the battle lines are being drawn up, it’s still very early days and the winners may not even have been thought up yet.

Better get your skates on though.

[tags] user generated content, vodafone, robert wiedemann, communities, atlas ventures, itsmy.com, fon, gazecki, gofresh, jumbuck, anina [/tags]

Nokia’s offering is available in 5 European markets – Denmark, France, Italy, Norway and Spain – and is a free application for N series and S60 handsets. They offer local search via a series of partnerships with content providers, such as Yell.com and Findexa. Once the user has found the listing they want, digital mapping shows the location and instructions on how to get there.

In France and Sweden (coming on board shortly), the application also includes a buddy finder.

So the battle lines are being drawn up and look like this:

1. Traditional online search engines, such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!

2. Handset players like Nokia – expect others to follow soon.

3. Operator services, provided via third party players, such as Jump Tap.

The first two categories have clearly pitched their hats at local search, which I don’t think is going to be nearly as popular as these players believe. Yes, some searches are going to be about the area, but it’s not going to be the most important part of a mobile search service by a long way. Most people know the area they live and work in and the idea of getting your phone to find the nearest ATM or pizza restaurant is not something they need most of the time.

Could it be that the road warrior managers in these companies are mistaking their own requirements for the mass market? People who travel all the time are a tiny percentage of the population, which could explain why these location based services have failed in the past.

I wonder what percentage of computer based search related to local information? I’d guess that the mass market for any kind of search lies elsewhere.

So, if I had to bet on the big winners in mobile search, my money would be on the independent approach, like Jump Tap actually. This is partly political – I don’t think operators are going to play ball with the larger companies for the simple reason that they’ll feel better able to control a white label partner. The other reason is focus. I think a specialist mobile search company has a better chance of inventing the market than a player coming to the table with baggage.

But that’s only an initial feel for the game and it’s going to be a fascinating one to watch in the next few years.

[tags] mobile search, search, google, nokia, yahoo, microsoft, jump tap[/tags]

What I mean is, apart from just sending a snap as a visual cue of what’s happening to you right then (as in “wish you were here” or even “I bet you wish you were here”) you need to invest time and thought into composing the right juxtaposition of image and text – and perhaps audio too. So although a picture might indeed be worth 1,000 words, an sms can do the job far quicker and just as effectively. Not to say more cheaply too.

One of the ways of overcoming this problem would be template MMS construction, which would make dashing off a quick MMS a simpler job. But even now, the options built in on the phone, or even accessible from a mobile website (OK Enrique?) are very limited as far as I know.

But now an Israeli company, IDT Video Technologies, has come up with a very clever bit of kit that solves some of the pain I’ve been pointing to. Their Mobile Chameleon product makes it very easy to change and annotate a simple image, with quite radical results.

IDT don’t sell direct to the user, but via the operator, so there are many ways in which it can work at street level. But one scenario might be that you’re pissed off about something and want to tell a friend in a light hearted way. So you snap yourself with your camera phone like this:

You then send it to your friend, via a special short code, captioning it with “I’m angry”. The short code then routes it through IDT’s server, which sees the keyword “angry” and animates the picture accordingly. When it gets delivered, moments later, your friend sees something like this:

The technology is capable of a lot more than this simple example, like changing the background or putting the head in a new environment:

Of course, there are issues with using this kind of system as I’ve described. For a start, you can’t preview what your photo will look like. And you need to communicate what the options available are for the keywords. So it might work much better as a mobile website, which IDT’s technology supports anyway.

I see the big opportunity here for operators to use this as a great way of promoting MMS usage. In other words, adding this facility as a free feature and using it as a marketing tool. Unfortunately, I think operators will use it to try to charge more for an already highly priced service. Which means that both this technology and MMS will continue to languish sluggishly in the data shallows.

Maybe, an operator somewhere will seize on this and start to maximise the potential of the richer messaging. It’s certainly not THE answer, but it’ll certainly help.