Wednesday & Happy New Year: Top 3 Challenges & Opportunities in 2009

It's the last day of 2008 and everybody is looking back at the year and making predictions for the year ahead. While others are are doing this we will look ahead and focus on the actions required to meet the challenges and opportunities in 2009. The current financial climate is the most talked about challenge with the most common advice being to buckle up and sit still until things improve. For mobile marketing and services we disagree. Even with a financial meltdown there are still great opportunities ahead and that by tackling the challenges highlighted here the mobile marketing industry and in particular Golden Gekko will continue with high two digit growth in 2009.

1. From awareness to transactions
One of the great advantages of the Internet is that there is a direct measurable path from driving awareness of a product (banners, videos, interactive websites, etc) to generating transactions whether it is for travel, physical goods on Amazon or a subscription for an online magazine. Although the mobile may not be able to compete with e-commerce it has another even greater advantage. With the mobile we can link advertising through any media (TV, Radio, Web, Print, etc) to transactions using mobile coupons and ticketing on the high-street. The technology is already available in e.g. 50.000+ retailers across the UK and over 80% of all food food retailers in Sweden but currently not being used due to lack of awareness among marketers and training. Let's quit talking about how difficult it is and just make it happen. I know we will!

Action in 2009: Join together to make mobile transactions happen on a mass market scale across Europe.

2. Stop talking about measurements and start measuring
One of the key barriers to the success of mobile advertising highlighted by the industry in 2008 has been lack of standards for measuring. To tackle this the industry has set up various committees in the IAB, MMA and GSMA with the intention of establishing common metrics and standards. We think however that the attention to this issue is vastly overstated. The MMA has done a fantastic job establishing standards for mobile display advertising although additional improvements will be required over time. The challenges with mobile advertising metrics are almost exactly the same as for the Internet including targeting, impressions, click-through-rates, fraudulent behaviour, etc. Nor is the technology something unique or complicated. So, let's stop using metrics as an excuse for major brands and agencies not investing more money in mobile advertising and focus our energy on delivering great results and proving that they will generate great value with or without perfect metrics.

Action in 2009: Get on with it and deliver the ads, metrics and reports that the clients and partners are asking for.

3. Beyond the iPhone
2008 has certainly been the year of the iPhone and Golden Gekko has received at least one request for an iPhone application every day during the last couple of months despite the fact that the iPhone has limited reach and some major drawbacks in terms of functionality and more specifically distribution. The iPhone has been great for highlighting the need and opportunity for downloadable applications and the creative freedom that applications give brands, agencies and developers. The iPhone is however not the only phone that can deliver a great customer experience. Most of the 10.000+ iPhone applications available on iTunes could just as well have been delivered on the Nokia N95, Blackberry Bold, Samsung F480, Sony-Ericsson C905 or X1, Motorola RAZR2, LG Viewty, HTC Touch and of course the G1. The user experience on the iPhone is great with flashy graphics but the enabling technology for great mobile applications is available on almost any phone which means that mass market reach is possible today.

Action in 2009: Continue to develop great iPhone applications but also show that great applications and services can be delivered to almost any mobile phone enabling mass market reach today!


More challenges will follow as soon as we have tackled the ones above so expect a new top 3 list...

We look forward to a fantastic year for mobile marketing in 2009 and until then Happy New Year!

Golden Gekko

Monday: Key opportunities for mobile marketing in 2009 according to Mobile Marketer

The Mobile Marketer has a great article about the key opportunities for mobile marketing in 2009 looking sector by sector including retailers, car brands, media publishers, etc. The article is spot on in terms of highlighting the opportunities for brands and agencies to generate real bottom-line revenue through mobile marketing today.

For the full article visit: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/opinion/editorials/2328.html

Monday: Golden Gekko News Update

In the past couple of months we have launched lots of new exciting campaigns and partnerships. As a matter of fact Bena at Gomonews managed to announce some of them before we even did.

Here's just a few of them:

iPhone Chrimbell Application
Chrimbell turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a christmas bell. The project was delivered to Ogilvy as there Christmas greeting card. You cand find it by searching for "chrimbell" on iTunes or by visiting http://tinyurl.com/6re6wa

iPhone Application Mockup Viewer
Golden Gekko has developed the iPhone Application Mockup Viewer that that enables us to deliver application mockups to clients in less than 24 hours. The service can also be used to produce customised slide shows.

Golden Gekko also provides a similar platform for all Java enabled mobile phones that has been used to produce more than 30 mockups for client demonstrations and user testing in 2008.

Contact us on sales@goldengekko.com for more information.

Disney Camp Rock
To promote the release of the movie Camp Rock II on DVD, Disney through Carat Mobile in Sweden asked Golden Gekko to produce a fun mobile application that turns almost any java enabled phone into a guitarr and music box. The application also includes wallpapers, ringtones and information about the movie. The app is available for free on http://camprock.golgek.mobi

Partnership with Tribal DDB
In September 2008 Tribal DDB partnered with Golden Gekko for mobile strategy development and production of mobile applications and sites. The partnership has already resulted in a couple
of undisclosed projects for Tribal DDB clients with a lot more to come.

Partnership with Nokia Interactive
In August 2008 Nokia Interactive (the mobile advertising unit of Nokia) partnered with Golden Gekko to support them with mobile website, application and widget development. The partnership has already resulted in over six projects including internal Nokia campaigns and external clients. More to follow about this in the new year.

Friday: Lynx campaign in the news

Mobiadnews has a great article and interview with Peter Sells at BBH about the Lynx campaign here.

http://www.mobiadnews.com/?p=3061

iPhone SDK, Android and Symbian creating more fragmentation

With over 300 million iphone applications downloaded to date and 200m+ applications downloaded every month across all mobile platforms the mobile application market has never been more interesting. But it's not all good. Despite all the positive impact from the iPhone and Android in the last year this is also causing majors headaches for the mobile services industry. Fragmentation is constantly increasing with more OS (iPhone, Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, Moblin Linux, Blackberry, etc), mobile browsers (Opera, Safari, Chrome, etc), application standards (Java, iPhone SDK, Symbian, Android SDK, Brew, 5+ different widget standards, etc). This will increase technical complexity, time to market, costs and potentially kill the chances of the industry really taking off. Imagine having to developing different versions of every software program for Dell, HP, Lenova, Toshiba, Asus, etc.

Developing 4 different OS versions of an application is possible although costly for most mobile services companies. Mobile game developers have dealt with this issue for some time with porting and testing costs making up as much as 80% of the total budgets which is bearable but certainly not profitable. The even bigger challenge however is maintaining, upgrading and supporting 5 different OS versions of an application that is in need of constant change. Unless you are Google, Facebook, MySpace or another business with 100m+ users this is simple not an option if you want to have a profitable business.

What are the options then unless you have unlimited resources for mobile application development?

A) Browser based solution only
Stick to a browser based solution and do everything you can to optimise the service over time and leverage new functionality such as script languages on the devices where this is possible. The negative side of this is that the user experience is always a little bit slow and the design and interaction capabilities very limited. It will very seldom give the user a WOW experience.

B) Automatic porting tools to support all platforms
There are a various porting tools available for porting from Java to Brew, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android etc. These reduce the development efforts but not the optimising and Q&A work. However, they also substantially limit the use of native APIs and functionality across the platforms which means that the ported version is usually based on the most common denominator between the platforms, i.e. a bad compromise.

C) Java and iPhone versions
The only application development standard that works on a majority of handsets is Java Mobile Edition (J2ME). Java is currently available on over 90% of all devices in Europe, 80% in North America (includes packaging for Brew) and about 75% worldwide according to Strategy Analytics. The only multimedia enabled device that does not support Java today is the iPhone. Java definitely has its limitations but in terms of cost efficiency it is the only platform of choice.

In conclusion although the new platforms provide great new capabilities it is very unlikely that the development community will be able to support all of them. The decision on which platforms are used for development must be made on a case by case basis but in most instances Java is the only viable solution for downloadable applications in combination with standard XHTML for browser based services. Despite the competition from new and exciting platforms Java has a good chance to continue to be the platform of choice in the future.

We look forward to further debate on this subject!

Thursday: Best & Worse of the Mobile Web

Have you experienced a website that looks like this on your phone?

Check out the best and worst of the mobile web here by Mobithinking!

Direct link:
http://mobithinking.com/sites/mobithinking.com/files/mobiThinking_BestWorst.pdf

Monday: Almost Famous

Our Director of Business Development Michael Eriksson and Head of Sales in the UK Christine Linder presented at Digital Jam for Engine a couple of weeks ago. The presentation was captured on video and is now available on the web. The presentation provides a great introduction to mobile marketing using downloadable applications developed in Java or for the iPhone.

If you search for Golden Gekko on Youtube you'll find the videos but here are the links.

Episode 1:


Episode 2:


Episode 3:



With 25+ views so far they are not celebrities yet but please help them become famous!

Friday: Really famous

The Lynx FX campaign by BBH in partnership with Golden Gekko has now become so famous that there is even a celebrity video available on Youtube. The award winning campaign truly demonstrates what mobile marketing is all about. A must see!!!



Go to http://m.lynxeffect.com or http://www.lynxeffect.com to find out more!

Thursday: Good Ideas in Mobile

If you have a bit of time to spare on getting inspiration and some ideas on what might happen in mobile 2009 then watch the following video from the "Good Ideas" event in New York last week.

Watch here.

Url: http://www.psfk.com/2008/11/video-good-ideas-in-2009-in-mobile.html

Friday: Golden Gekko picks up three mobile marketing awards in San Diego

Mobile applications that help guys seduce women wins global award for best use of mobile marketing in mobile branding campaign 2008

14 November 2008: Golden Gekko, the leading mobile applications developer for creative marketing campaigns picked up three awards at the Mobile Marketing Awards in San Diego Thursday. The awards include Absolut Vodka in partnership with Great Works for best use of mobile marketing in a branding campaign in North America, Lynx Effect for BBH for best use of mobile marketing in a branding campaign in EMEA and Lynx Effect for best use of mobile marketing in a branding campaign globally.

- This shows that mobile marketing campaigns that go beyond text messaging and WAP-sites can have an amazing impact in terms on brand perception, said Magnus Jern. In both of the award winning campaigns it was the end-user that chose to engage with the brand rather than being pushed into it.

During the last year we’ve seen an explosive growth in downloads of mobile applications and widgets much thanks to the enhanced user experience in comparison to browser based mobile services. The trend has been boosted by the iPhone application store but also by Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry and Sony-Ericsson who all encourage developers to produce applications for their handsets and users to download “cool” applications. Golden Gekko was one of the early advocates of leveraging the application trend in branding campaigns and we now see that it’s paying off as millions of users are consuming mobile marketing applications in a similar way to watching youtube videos by major brands.

- The Lynx campaign is definitely our greatest success so far with the Absolut Drinks application as a close contender. We get calls from media agencies every week who ask if they can use them as industry best practice examples of how mobile marketing should be done, said Jimmy Nordbeck, Marketing Director and Co-founder.

Campaign: Lynx ‘get in there’ mobile tools
Agency: BBH
Client: Unilever/Lynx
Video available here: http://www.goldengekko.com/Videos/LynxEffect.mpg
Mobile site: http://m.lynxeffect.com
Launched in January 2008 for Lynx in the UK the campaign consists of a mobile website and 5 downloadable applications that help the men ‘get in there’ with the women including instruction videos. The campaign has been a massive success with hundreds of thousands of downloads, great viral distribution effect and most importantly, a massive positive response from the men who are now obviously much more successful in the mating game.


Campaign: Absolut Vodka Mobile Drinks
Agency: Great Works
Client: V&S/Absolut Vodka
Mobile site: http://m.absolut.com

The Absolut Drinks mobile campaign launched in the US October 2007 is available to download for free and includes 1000+ drink recipes, top lists of most popular drinks, random drinks, a home bar search function and videos with famous bartenders mixing drinks. The service was launched exclusively to registered members on absolutdrinks.com and had about 50.000 active users in the first 12 months.


For more information, please contact:
Jimmy Nordbeck
Marketing Director
Tel: + 46 708 20 58 00
Email: jn@goldengekko.com


About Golden Gekko
Golden Gekko is a leading international provider of mobile marketing solutions. The company develops award-winning mobile applications and services that run on billions of phones worldwide, including the iPhone. Golden Gekko has already delivered successful projects to leading global brands including Absolut Vodka, Accenture, Cadbury’s, Coca Cola, Novartis, Paramount, Perfetti, Sara Lee, Unilever and Vodafone. Golden Gekko has offices in the England, Sweden, Spain, Cambodia and US. Information about Golden Gekko and its services can be found at www.goldengekko.com

Monday: Golden Gekko in Mobile Entertainment Magazine

Here's an excerpt from the interview with Russel Buckley at Admob:

"...Some brands are already creating imaginative ad-funded mobile apps that really exploit mobile’s uniqueness across all handsets. Golden Gekko’s Lynx deodorant mobile app (part of BBH’s award winning campaign), gave its young male users a bunch of sound effects they could use to amuse women. Later, the brand launched a mobile app replicating the farting chipmunk – and an amazing 500,000 people downloaded it. See, downloads can be measured too. Golden Gekko also found that many consumers were happy to sideload these apps to their phones. This isn’t just a result of the App Store, although I suspect this factor will popularise the method even more. Having said that, I still believe it’s preferable to run ads on the mobile web: apps only have a place when you really can’t achieve the same effect from browsing. It’s still too early to say if the iPhone will be a long-term winner, or just a very important influencer of the market. But it’s certainly a major milestone in the fields of mobile advertising and search. Apple’s iPhone picks up where midinnings wristwatch ads left off... "

Our latest campaigns have further proven that we can achieve massive viral effect through community seeding. More about this to follow shortly...

Friday: Cippi gets even more famous

The Farting Chipmunk developed by Golden Gekko for Air Vigorsol on behalf of BBH is getting more and more famous. Earlier this week our Director of Marketing got interviewed by Metro, which is one of the biggest newspapers in Sweden and here's what they said.

http://www.metro.se/se/article/2008/11/04/12/1202-45/index.xml

Some of you won’t be able to read the article since it’s in Swedish but in summary the article says:
• Steve Jobs didn’t want a farting application in his iphone app store
• Golden Gekko developed a farting app for an Italian chewing gum brand anyway
• The farting chipmunk is now world famous with over half a million downloads
• Jimmy Nordbeck is now world famous for his association with farting chipmunks

More celebrity news to follow...

Tuesday: Golden Gekko campaigns nominated for 3 awards at the Global MMA Awards

Monday: Golden Gekko nominated for 3 awards at the Global MMA

New York; London, UK; Singapore and Sao Paulo, 28 October 2008 — The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) (www.mmaglobal.com), which globally promotes the development and sustainability of mobile marketing, today announced the finalists for the MMA’s Fourth Annual Global Mobile Marketing Awards which honors the companies who are successfully utilizing and leading the adoption of the mobile channel for marketing purposes. The awards will be presented at the Annual Global Awards dinner and ceremony on November 13 in San Diego, concluding the MMA’s Mobile Marketing Forum (www.mobilemarketingforum.com).

Golden Gekko is happy to announce that the following campaigns by us have been chosen as MMA award finalists:

Absolut Drinks in your mobile, Best use of Mobile Marketing Branding in EMEA
Lynx Get In There mobile tools, Best use of Mobile Marketing Branding in EMEA
Cippis Trump Selecta!, Best use of Mobile Marketing Branding in EMEA

Thursday: Thumbs down of the week – Companies presenting Bluetooth as mobile marketing

Bluetooth is a great technology and can be used for distribution of fantastic mobile marketing campaigns and services but it's not a standalone mobile marketing solution. The technology should be presented as one technology among many distribution alternatives and user very carefully.

I don't want to point out anyone specifically but although there are some very serious players out there, many are not and they think it’s ok to spam people walking by as long as they hit their numbers. During the last couple of weeks I've been hit my messages in shopping malls, airports, while walking by stores in the high street, in the cinema and various other places and I'm starting to get annoyed. This might be ok in the short term but in the longer term this will give mobile marketing a bad reputation and the industry cannot afford this if we want to be credible.

When you plan to use proximity marketing the next time think of every person walking by as your dearest friend and treat them that way! No more spamming please!

Wednesday: We love campaign of the week - Kraft Foods 3in1 and 2in1 for Jacobs Soluble Mixes

A great 360° campaign where TV-Spots, print ads, mobile ads and online all lead to a mobile site or a SMS response where customers could leave their address to get a product sample. What we liked about it is
• great execution in terms of clear objectives
• simplicity of the message
• use of cross-media channels for greatest effectiveness

The campaign clearly showed the commercial benefits of a mass market mobile marketing campaign that resulted in over 450.000 requests for samples from people that actually wanted to try the Jacobs Soluble products. Well done!

Tuesday: New mobile technology pick of the week – site.mobi

This is not a new service but it’s definitely worth reminding people of. The .mobi organisation provides this great service powered by mobiSiteGalore as a free online tool that helps you create your very own mobile website including all kinds of functionality as well as monetisation opportunities. The service provides

• A great creation and editing tool with templates, formatting of graphics and text exactly as you want it and the ability to add audio and video
• Mobile websites that are work on almost any mobile phone
• Features such as click-to-call, site search, hit counter and search engine optimisation
• Monetisation functionally including banner adverts and integration with Bango
• A test of your mobile websites readiness
• And much more

Although it’s great for creating your first mobile websites this is not a solution for developers or professional sites. The main cons of the service are that it does not have a content management system and that the templates do not allow for much freedom in terms of design.

Also make sure that you have access to a FTP account before you start because otherwise you have nowhere to publish your completed mobile website. Good luck and please send us the results!

Try out the service on http://site.mobi

Monday: Mobile service pick of the week – Visibility Mobile

Finally a search engine that will only give you search results of sites that are optimised for mobile. After years of searching I bumped into the founder (Bena Roberts) in Budapest at the Mobile Marketing Forum and now I’m happy. Even on a big screen like the iPhone or Nokia N95 the browsing experience of normal websites is very clunky and with unreliable speeds on 3G networks it can take forever to download a normal web page. Try searching for a mobile game or ringtone on Google Mobile. Last time I searched for games I ended up on a web page with flash games that don’t work on my mobile and then on a ringtone page on the web where I could input my phone number which then directed me to a WAP-page which was 3 extra steps rather than just giving me a mobile ringtones page.

The most popular web sites accessed from the mobile (BBC, Facebook, Yahoo, etc) all have a mobile optimised version and we think this will be a necessity for at least another 5 years. Visibility Mobile helps people find content and information through mobile optimised websites. It may take a while for the service to take off but when it does it will be huge!

See http://www.visibilitymobile.com for more information

Golden Gekko in the news this week

This weeks news in the media about Golden Gekko


Golden Gekko nominated as top mobile entertainment company in Sweden by the Magazine Mobil. Read more here.

Famous blogger, chairman of the MMA and Managing Director of Admob in Europe talks about Golden Gekko's creative mobile marketing campaigns on his blog Mohappy.

MoGo News, Bena Roberts interviewed Golden Gekko at the MMA in Budapest. Read more at MoGoNews

Friday: Paris Autumn

This has absolutely nothing to do with mobile...

Sometimes you need a weekend getaway and we choose Paris for a weekend of great food and wine, culture, meeting new people and as the finale watching D’ Arc horse races on the Sunday. It turned into a fantastic weekend in an amazingly beautiful city with colourful autumn leaves, lots of great encounters with wonderful Parisians and a few interesting surprises. I can’t wait to go back again!

Mobile Marketing Association Forum in Budapest 7-8 October – Thumbs up!

I went to the conference this time with somewhat low expectations in terms of participants, speakers and new insights and learning’s. Generally the speakers at conferences of this kind tell you what you already know and spend most of the time selling a product that the other participants don’t care too much about. Despite a bit of this I came back considerably richer in terms of knowledge, experience and new contacts.

Here are a couple of insights from the conference

• 2008 is not the big year of mobile marketing and we doubt that even 2009 will be based on the expectations expressed by the industry but maybe the expectations are set too high
• Major brands are experiencing true success stories both in terms of ROI and reach that makes mobile marketing worthwhile for dedicated budgets going forward and should result in healthy growth but do the media planners buy in to this yet?
• The value chain is a mess and will continue to be a mess until media planners and creative agencies take a serious role in integrating mobile in the overall marketing mix
• Brands, mobile operators and technology companies have very little in common and I wonder if joining them up might do more bad than good – would a brand manager go to a conference with web content management and Internet Service Providers?
• The citizens of this world (an expression borrowed Jonathan MacDonald at Ogilvy) will have the last say in whether marketing on the mobile is a success or not – we can just do our best to make them happy by delivering great value, relevancy and an enjoyable experience

I also had the opportunity to speak at the conference and present our appeal for more creative mobile marketing. You can find the presentation here.

A big thank you to the MMA for organising this great event and to the great speakers and participants. I already look forward to the next one!

Cippi II: The story continues...

Air Vigorsol launches a series of mobisodes based on the famous and extremely popular chipmunk Cippi. The previous mobile campaign with Cippi reached over half a million Italians mostly with viral distribution. The new campaign was launched in cooperation with Vodafone Italy who provides the content for free through the Vodafone live! portal. In addition to the free mobisodes, customers are also offered wallpapers, ringtones and the original Cippi, the farting chipmunk application.

Creative agency BBH developed the campaign concept and produced the content with help from Aardman Studios. Golden Gekko developed the mobile website, optimised the content for mobile and operates the site.

The original Cippi campaign can still be found on http://e.cippi.net

Mobile service by Kiwi helps Russian women with their shoe addiction

Kiwi® launches mobile service for shoe-aholics in Russia. With the mobile shoe addict guide from Kiwi, women will find out who among them is the biggest shoe addict. The guide also provides shoe addicts with a fun interactive quiz to test their skills in matching the shoes and legs of famous celebrities, the chance to win Kiwi Smiling Feet products, free wallpapers of some of the most beautiful shoes in the world and videos including a high heel marathon and a shoe addict’s first visit to the psychologist.

The mobile service is based on market research showing that

• 50% of women own more than 30 pairs of shoes and 8% own more than 100 pairs!
• 55% of men have had to carry their girlfriend home because her feet hurt
• 1 in 3 women admit lying to their partners about buying more shoes

Last but not least the shoe addict guide helps women find the nearest store to get Kiwi Smiling Feet products and make their feet smile again while still wearing beautiful high heeled shoes. Being a shoe addict is no longer a problem!

“We are really excited about this campaign as we believe it’s one of the first campaigns targeted at a mobile audience which is generally not perceived as interested in new mobile services.” says Magnus Jern CEO of Golden Gekko, the company that designed and built the service. “We believe that with a relevant and fun service like this playing on the Sex and the City craze about shoes, a new customer segment will show much greater interest in using mobile services.”

The mobile service is available on the website www.shoemaniac.ru or by sending the word KIWI by SMS to 3299 or visiting the mobile web site m.shoemaniac.ru or through a mobile banner campaign in Russia in cooperation with Nokia Interactive. The service was launched 28 July and service works on over 90% of all phones in Russia. An English version is available on request.

For more information contact Christine Linder, +34 663 306 379 or cl@goldengekko.com or visit www.goldengekko.com.

About Kiwi®

Passion for shoes," that’s what KIWI® is all about.

We believe that not only do people love their shoes but also each pair provides us with a different way to express ourselves. Stylish sneakers for Saturday afternoon, strappy sandals with the perfect black dress or polished leather lace-ups for the boardroom, we all have a style and we all have a shoe to suit it.

For 100 Years, KIWI® has been a trusted expert in shoe care products. Now Kiwi® also provides a range of foot comfort products which helps you to feel as great as you look in your stylish shoes for the whole day. Whether you like to wear 10 cm stilettos or sneakers, Kiwi ®has a foot comfort product designed to fit your style.

KIWI® originated in 1906 and since 1984 it has been a part of the Sara Lee Corporation. To learn more about how we got started and what we’ve done throughout the years, visit our history section. For more information about Sara Lee, visit the website at www.saralee.com.

“Kiwi® We love shoes”.

Old: Golden Gekko News & History 2006-2007

A little bit of history from Golden Gekko!

The old news is available here:
http://www.goldengekko.com/OLD/news.htm

And the old website with the original Golden Gekko logo available here:
http://www.goldengekko.com/OLD/

Old: Golden Gekko News 2006-2007

http://www.goldengekko.com/OLD/news.htm