On June 24, 2010 we had the privilege of sponsoring and attending Atlanta’s first ever Mobile Marketing Boot Camp at the Renaissance Waverly Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. The half-day conference was hosted by the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association (AiMA). To make it a truly mobile event, we unveiled AiMA’s first ever mobile website to the crowd during the Luncheon and Keynote Presentation from Coke’s Tom Daly.

In between the rice pilaf (conference mandatory) and “Yahootinis“(conference first), we had the opportunity to hear from a few of the industry’s key influencers as well as discuss trends in the space.

And now for Vert’s Top 10 Mobile Nuggets from the conference.

1. The mobile web is growing at an alarming rate.

2. ROI = Return on Ignoring (The cost of not doing anything)

3. The mobile device is the new “Remote Control” of our world – Sight, Sound, & Motion.

4. Test & Fail…Then Learn & Scale. (Thanks, Tom Daly)

5. The mobile market will experience further segmentation, not consolidation. (Kudos, Gerry Purdy)

6. People share iPads and tablets. They don’t share phones.

7. Doug Busk knows every mobile statistic – ever.

8. Smartphone penetration will overtake feature phones sometime next year (2011)

9. Measuring the success of a mobile campaign is complicated but rewarding.

10. Atlanta is a city ripe with mobile talent and innovation.

As “The Year of Mobile” (again) continues to press on, it will be exciting to see how these nuggets impact the approach and strategy of agencies and the marketing budgets of their clients…

Michael
@mjlentz

Now, pair this mobile explosion with the largest single advertising opportunity in the world and what do you get? Marketing Heaven? Advertising Bliss? Well, apparently not.

We did see the introduction of Qualcomm’s FLO TV which will bring live television to mobile devices. We eyed Megan Fox introducing Motorola’s new Devour phone, and we squirmed watching KGB’s latest sumo-infused spot. What we didn’t see was a traditional television spot capped with a mobile call to action.

Despite the advances of mobile marketing in the past year, no single advertiser was willing to utilize their precious Super Bowl ad time to focus on mobile. Where was my iPhone application download? Why couldn’t I use my phone to text-in to receive more information? Why wasn’t I prodded to vote on something using my phone? Why didn’t I get a mobile coupon from Denny’s?

Although disappointed in the lack of “mobility”, there are some clear reasons why we didn’t see more mobile involvement in this year’s Super Bowl ads:

1. Hard costs associated with SMS campaigns are difficult to project: Imagine budgeting for a campaign where the response rate could not be predicted within +/- 25% points. Now imagine deploying this message to hundreds of millions of people. The Super Bowl is not the best place to test your new mobile strategy as it should be done on a smaller scale with targeted audiences. Since SMS campaigns incur hard costs which are usually passed along to the client, I imagine most Super Bowl advertisers were hesitant to deploy their SMS strategy this year.

2. Limitations and fragmentation among devices: We’ve got iPhones, Android devices, Blackberries, and other feature phones. With an audience in the hundreds of millions, advertisers cannot risk ostracizing certain phone owners through their messaging. Essentially, this kills the notion of promoting any particular application or mobile web feature focused on a particular device.

3. Lack of vision to develop a business case for mobile: According to a recent eMarketer sutdy in January 2010, 32% of marketing professionals in North America do not know how to develop a business case for mobile advertising. This staggering figure cannot go unnoticed. The medium has established itself – it is the marketers falling behind.

4. The Super Bowl has historically worked best as a branding tool: If a brand is willing to invest millions in a single television ad, the return is usually measured in terms of brand awareness and not on a direct response. Since application downloads and SMS responses are the two biggest DR opportunities at a mobile marketer’s disposal, we’ve already discussed why these were not put into play in 2010.

As smartphone sales continue to surge and the mobile web becomes ubiquitous, I believe that 2011 will be THE year of Super Bowl Mobile Advertising. As a Saints fan would ask, “Who dat gonna agree with me?”

-Michael Lentz
@mjlentz

Since the iPad’s release the blogs have been hot with postings concerning the iPads failure to meet expectations. Well Vertmob is going to weed through all those blogs and tell you what is really important… from the future of mobile + social perspective

So at first glace the iPad looks like a neat piece of technology. It’s thin and light. It has a wonderfully large and colorful touch screen display. The UI seems to flow well without much delay (at least from what we can see from videos). The applications native to the device seem to be well thought out and function well. We all know Apple is a user experience design clearing house, no worries there… The problems come when you begin to look at what the iPad lacks.

Right when Steve unlocks the iPad you can immediately see it basically looks like a big iPhone or iPod Touch.  It has the same homescreen layout, the icons look the same, ect.  As he moves through each application, they look great, all catered to the iPad’s specs.  The problem is, they really are the same as the iPhone/iPod Touch apps, and so is the OS, quite literally. This presents a number of problems for people that were hoping for an iTablet of sorts, something with more power, more like a mini laptop.  Running the iPhone OS users are still restricted to running a single application at a time, no multitasking here.  Additionally, just as with an iPhone there is no native way to drag and drop files.  Moving files to your iPad, at this time, can only be done through sync.  On the hardware side the iPad lacks an expansible SD card slot, USB ports, and doesn’t even include a camera.

With each feature the iPad lacked came more criticism from the online community following its announcement yesterday and then again today.  Vert even spoke with a friend and associate editor of the immensely popular blog Engadget to gauge his reactions on the iPad release. Having been at the release event and getting a chance to “fondle” the iPad first hand, he mentioned he felt quite underwhelmed by the device.  He noted it was a big iPhone without voice, that he couldn’t stick in his pocket. It seems many people really expected something more from Apple’s new “Tablet”.  The problem is Apple didn’t release a tablet yesterday, they released something different.  Apple released a device for consuming all different types of media inside a convenient form factor with all the normal Apple bells and whistles.  The iPad will be great for looking at pictures, browsing the web, reading a book, watching a movie and maybe even for using a simple application or game.  However, the iPad is not a tablet pc or laptop computer.  It has to be more than an oversight that Apple left out items like a camera or USB port.  They simply didn’t want them included on the device.  We could speculate the reasons why, but one would assume it might be connected with Apple’s wonderfully booming and profitable laptop business.  Maybe it’s possible Apple didn’t want to cannibalize their currently laptop product offering by creating another option for customers.  Additionally, maybe thats why the price is fairly “affordable”, maybe Apple wants you to have both!  Or maybe they truly weren’t shooting for anything more than a top of the line media consumption device.  We’ll leave all those maybe’s up to you to decide…

Even with the iPad’s, yet so far, negative feedback, the Vert team and I still see quite a lot of hope for the device.  The difference between this device and the iPhone is not everyone will need, want or even have any use for one.  Everyone wants a killer phone, not everyone needs a fancy touch-screen media device.  However, we see great potential for the iPad in education.  Since the introduction of the first Kindle I’ve always wondered when 15 pound textbooks might meet their maker.  The iPad pushes closer to that time.  While some student already carry around editions on their textbooks on Kindles and other e-readers, those devices still lack where the iPad excels.  Could you imagine carrying all your textbooks in one device that could still show you full color images or even video right on the page you were studying?  Or could you imagine a chemistry book application that allowed students to build molecules by dragging, pinching and turning atoms?  That’s just a start…

So we here at Vert are in the same boat as many other people, we wish there was more…however, we do not fail to recognize the iPad has its place and purpose and we think it will fulfill its role well.

If your interested in further info on the iPad check out some of the cool posts below:

- Interest in something other than the iPad, maybe more tablet like?  Check this out.

- What did everyone say about the iPad on Twitter?  Take a look.

- Are people going to buy this thing? Cast your Vote.

~ Matt Griffin
Principal, Creative Technology

Needless to say, we just wanted to play. After a bit of coercion we got our hands on the demo one that “Nakita” the clerk was playing with. It didn’t have a data connection, but we still got to tinker around… here is the video:

Droid First Look with Vert from Vertmob on Vimeo.

First quick impressions:
- It is well constructed, and weighty
- The screen is beautiful and very responsive
- It has force feedback when you touch a button
- Camera is stellar (5MP) and user friendly
- QWERTY keyword is a definite plus, and a great size

The real test will be to see how the battery life stands up to the power hungry Verizon network (there’s a map for that, remember)… Not to mention the uber-hyped navigation feature that caused Garmin stock to tank earlier this week.

Stay tuned kids!
-Kevin