Believe it or not, mobile applications existed before Apple told the world there was an app for that. Below are a few of the stories from the past 5 years of mobile app development at Golden Gekko.
It all began with a mobile cookbook
Golden Gekko was one of the first companies to believe in mobile marketing and to concentrate on the development of mobile marketing applications. In 2005, this seemed like an absurd idea to most people and businesses.
Arla Food Group, Europe’s second largest dairy company, was the first to make a bet based on the crazy an un-proven idea of mobile apps used in marketing presented by Magnus Jern, Jimmy Nordbeck and Daniel Karlström.
Arla’s website is among the most popular websites in Sweden. The Online Cookbook is one of the main attractions. To further extend the reach of the brand and to bring their services closer to their clients, Arla decided to explore the mobile channel.
The result was a mobile application, based on the online cookbook, including a selection of 330 popular recipes all including one or more Arla products. The app was produced for Java and compatible with over 800 phones covering 95% of all devices in use in Sweden at the time.
During the first 3 months, the mobile cookbook had more than 10.000 downloads and by 2007 Arla Mobile Cookbook was one of the most downloaded mobile applications in Sweden with over 80.000 downloads, mainly thanks to it’s exposure on more than 1 million milk bricks distributed in Sweden.
Read CASE STUDY
Mobile tamagotchi for Pop Idol
In 2008, the TV channel running the Swedish version of Pop Idol, approached Golden Gekko to promote the show. The application we developed was an early example of what today is known and buzzed as “gamification”. A Tamagotchi-type game allowed viewers to compete with other fans in managing a virtual idol.
In the first 4 weeks, Idol Manager had more than 15.000 downloads making it one of the most downloaded connected games ever launched in Sweden. 50% of users registered for the chance to win a date with an Idol and played the game at least twice. The app leveraged social network components at an early stage of their marketing exploitation: the average customer shared the app with about 3 people.
Read CASE STUDY
Mobile apps lead the way in mobile marketing
Golden Gekko stayed on the viral train when teaming up with Unilever to create an app for the Lynx effect campaign. The Lynx campaign's claim “Weapons of Mass Seduction” was also used as the motto of the app. Golden Gekko created an application that turned mobile phones into pulling machines and reached over 150k unique downloads. In 2009, the campaign was extended due to its great success. The Lynx campaign won lots of awards and fame for Golden Gekko and BBH and is still one of the most talked about mobile app campaigns in Europe.
Read CASE STUDY
Mobile apps accelerate to Formula 1
In 2009 Vodafone was the first to fully tap Golden Gekko’s cross platform competences. The Vodafone McLaren app was developed across iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Java and Symbian. It was launched for 10 territories and has hit over 520.000 successful downloads to date. 70% of the users reached were non-Vodafone customers. 1.2m sessions indicate that the average user used the app 2.3 times. Data that exceeded the agreed objectives and expectations for the app.
Building a business on mobile apps and mobile web
In 2010, Golden Gekko launched our first app for European Directories, the publisher of yellow pages in eight countries and our biggest client to date. Golden Gekko has now developed over 150 applications for them, including the 56 core yellow page apps and over 100 verticals, many of which are already in their second version. Today 1.7 million unique users make over 3 million search queries and generate more than 7 million page views in any given month. Since our cooperation began, European Directories has seen constant growth averaging 788%. For European Directories mobile has become a core part of their service offering and the fastest growing area of the business.
Read CASE STUDY
Consumers embrace the value of mobile coupons
Launched on the 14th of July 2011, we supported O2 UK in the delivery of O2 Priority Moments across iPhone, Android, and the servers that tie it all together. Through the app, O2 offers real-time, location-based deals to their over 22 million customers, and the apps have already been downloaded 200.000 times in less than two weeks. For O2 this is only the beginning of the journey and we look forward to being involved in the growth of local offers services in the coming months and years.
Where are we going next?
Mobile has come a long way. It is believed to be the fastest growing market worldwide. Mobile Marketing has evolved tremendously since the first apps we launched five years back and so has Golden Gekko. We have multiplied our staff by 50 in only five years, now being a team of near to 150 talented and engaged people. We are prepared to keep moving at this pace and are excited about all the new and old things to come in the mobile universe.
Thursday 28 July 2011
Thursday 21 July 2011
Web or App? Mobile HTML or HTML5 Sites Vs. Mobile Apps Part 2
Our clients, analysts, partners, media and technical nerds all agree on one thing: there is no agreement on mobile apps vs. mobile web. Last week, our Account Director Caroline van den Bergh spoke at the Getjar Conference in London to shed light on the current situation.
Her speech makes clear why there will be no winner in the near future:
1. Rate of Technology Improvement
- HTML5 is a common standard by WC3 that took 5 years to develop. Getting to the next major release of HTML will take just as long.
iOS and Android are proprietary development standards with at least one major and several minor releases a year (iOS 5 had more than 1500 new APIs)
Innovation will continue to happen at a much faster pace for apps than for the mobile web. To deliver the latest and greatest new features, hardware, user experience and speed, the only option is apps.
2. Discovery
It is still easier to drive traffic to an app than to a mobile website without spending money on advertising. An app is promoted through the appstores, especially when launched. External sites often review and suggest apps to their readers. This creates natural exposure, that is not present for sites.
3. Purpose
Frequently used utilities whose features don’t require an internet connection will benefit greatly from apps. Services that are almost completely updated every day such as news may be easier to deliver through a mobile website, although stickiness may increase with an app.
If you are a well known brand and want to benefit from the mobile channel you probably need to invest in both mobile web and apps. In terms of budget, mobile websites are generally much simpler and therefore cheaper. That said, a mobile website and an app of the same complexity will cost about the same, but you'll have to develop the app again for each new platform – porting between platforms simply doesn't get the quality level that our brands expect.
For more about the cost of developing mobile apps see our previous blogs.
To find out more about mobile web vs apps download the full presentation here.
Wednesday 13 July 2011
Content Marketing for Mobile: Is Republishing RSS Feeds Legal?
In mobile marketing, content is king. Content that provides added value, for example in terms of relevant information, is a strong incentive for customers to consume branded information. Republishing RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds is an easy and popular form to provide such content, but is it really legal?
Agathe Caffier, part of the legal department of Golden Gekko, takes a look at the legal situation when republishing RSS feeds:
- In a world where we are spammed by tons of information every day, RSS feeds simply make sense. I read this very interesting comparison on Master New Media website stating that RSS was like fishing. Their explanation was; “Just like when you go fishing, you give out a lot of free fish food in exchange for a smaller and very targeted crowd waiting to jump and bite your next unique offering. As for the fish gathering around your free food give out, RSS is a tremendously powerful vehicle not only to deliver more efficiently your content but also to enable a self-sufficient army of individual publishers, reporters, bloggers and other news publishers to further spread and deliver it to an infinite number of otherwise unreachable audiences out there.-
The question is: Once the RSS is published, can anyone republish it without permission?
Legally there is a debate. On the one hand some argue that the information contained in the RSS is protected under copyright law, hence cannot be freely republished. However this argument raises another issue. Since the Internet is global, it is unclear which national copyright law applies. On the other hand some say that by distributing your content via an RSS feed, you are giving an implied permission to the reader to republish it.
Some publishers get very irritated by the plagiarism of their RSS content. Websites use the published RSS feeds and republish them to generate traffic for their website or display their ads and hereby generate money.
I think the operative point is the objective that is pursued. If an RSS aggregator republishes the RSS with the intention of sharing information and makes a reference to its originator there are no legal caveats. The line is drawn where republishing is used for advertising or generating money purposes. In fact, you can now find in the terms and conditions of some news publishers' websites a section where with an explicit permission to republish the RSS under the condition that an appropriate attribution to the author is added when appearing on the website. Another possible solution is that news aggregators could contact publishers of RSS directly to obtain their permission for using their content.
In conclusion, if not explicitly indicated, the legal position of aggregation and republishing of RSS feeds is unclear. One should therefore always read the terms and conditions and respect the content author’s wishes. In my opinion republishing the RSS via an aggregator with no profit-making purposes can create a win-win situation.
Thursday 7 July 2011
Guide to Mocial: How to Get Social Media in Your Mobile Strategy
“Social Media is like teenage sex, everyone wants to do it but nobody really knows how” (anonymous)
Social Facts
Facebook, Twitter and Co, are cues that make marketer’s hearts beat faster and hands get sweaty these days.
There are more than 500 million active users on Facebook who spend over 700 billion minutes per month on the social network. (Facebook.com) 140 million Tweets are send out each day and 460 000 new accounts per day are created.
Social networks have an incredible potential, not only in terms of reach. The activities on social networks are what marketers have always dreamt of: People share and recommend content voluntarily and publicly. An average user creates about 90 pieces of content each month and shares it with an average of 130 friends. About 30 billion web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc. are shared on a monthly basis.
Show me love
Sharing branded content is not only mere interaction with the brand, its evangelism. For a brand to show up on a fan’s newsfeed is like a public love declaration. The user publicly commits to the brand or product and lets all their friends know, they love them. The marketing effect goes way beyond multiplying impressions. As information usually is most trusted when it comes from friends, a shared link by a friend raises much more curiosity than any ad could ever do. And since humans are gregarious creatures, a simple “like” can create a form of “peer pressure” effect in favour of the brand.
Mobile and Social Media – the Arranged Wedding
Social media is moving mobile. One third of Facebook posts and half of all Tweets are already coming from a mobile device. And mobile has always been social. 91% of mobile internet access is to socialize. After gaming, social networking is the second most popular mobile app category. 20% of smartphone users check social media apps before getting up in the morning and last thing before going to sleep and night.
How to Mocial with Branded Apps
To leverage social media in a branded app it is not enough to just include a Facebook “share” button. Think social from the very beginning and include sharable content:
- Pre- produced content like news, blogs, videos, fun facts, other type of information
- App generated content like game scores, manipulated pictures, audio, etc.
Most importantly is to know your target group and consider which content they would share with others. Generally people are more likely to share content that is either entertaining or provides a real value in terms of utility or information. Most and foremost men like to share content that positions themselves as experts. Give them content that makes them look good! Women rather share content of common interest, information on social topics, local events, etc.
Golden Gekko has created some apps that have generated great viral effects and we are currently exploring more ways to mocial for our customers.
See example from Heineken’s Star Player App
See example from Lynx Stream App
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