Being Peter Kim

Talking about mobile marketing

As you may know, my research coverage at Forrester has shifted into mobile marketing.  Last night, I moderated a panel discussion last night for MITX  and we talked about the industry for a couple hours with The Weather Channel, ESPN, Carat, g8wave, and Ringleader Digital.  The three biggest points that came up in discussion:

1. Measurement.  It just isn't there today.  There wasn't a lot of discussion of platforms, but it seems like marketers must broker deals with all kinds of players that operate many different systems.
2. Standards.  Like the rise of online ads - lack of formats and standards.  IAB?  MMA?  Marketers, agencies, publishers, platforms, manufacturers, and carriers need to put their heads together to make mobile ad formats work.
3. Education.  Do you want to learn something new today?  Figure out the difference between on- and off-deck, what is WAP, or why does 3G matter.  Learning about this environment sounds strangely like learning about how the web works a decade ago.

Good crowd and good panel.  Lots of iPhone fans.  Lots of Blackberry users.  And lots of great services, products, and ideas out there - but I think some of the technical complexity and immaturity of the current business opportunity keep mainstream media attention away from the space.

I'll be thinking more about this in the future - next month I'll publish a document outlining how interactive marketers can take what they already know and apply to mobile.

The secret to Twitter...really?

Robert Scoble posted recently that he's discovered the secret to Twitter, which is "how many people are you listening to, not how many people are listening to you."  To quote Scoble,

I say bulls**t.

Why?  You just have to read a post from an hour earlier where Scoble tells a great story about microblogging and starting a great impromptu party at a California vineyard.  What made that situation work? People were following his messages, not the other way around.  In fact, the more followers one has, the more difficult it becomes to filter signal vs. noise.

(I meant to say "the more one follows" there, but the same applies, as people typically reciprocate followers.)

What's wrong with considering Twitter as semi-synchronous conversation?  It's not more complicated than people talking, others listening.  Businesses need to have objectives when using social media; people do too.  Your objectives may change over time and they may have varying weights - but everyone has a reason and different people use Twitter differently.

But I'm not going to say that the answer here is something along the lines of "it depends."  (Being an analyst forces the fence-sitting out of you.)  Social media doesn't work well with a uni-directional approach.  That's the domain of traditional advertising.  The secret to Twitter and every other social computing application lies within the conversation and relationships - which requires not only listening, but also speaking, energizing, supporting, and embracing.

Personally, the way I use Twitter has changed - I only have time to jump on once or twice a day usually during the commute, so @ and direct messages have increased value.  But if you follow me, I'll follow you back (unless you're a porn star or sales pitch - which are showing up more often) and look forward to the conversation.  As tired, played out, and 1.0 as the term may be.

Who "must die" now?

The title is borrowed, of course, from Bob Garfield's ongoing digital hatefest of Comcast, complete with its own Facebook group.  But rather than singling any telecom provider out, I think things are in bad shape all around.  Check this out.

Last week, I had Comcast TV and Verizon FIOS (internet, phone) installed.  Comcast was quick, in and out in a couple hours.  But with Verizon, after a few hours of installation, it turns out that the fiber on my street isn't hooked up to the main line at the cross street.  Upon further investigation, the installer discovered that my entire TOWN isn't hooked up to the network.  Oops.

So I called Comcast and they came back out in a couple days, set up phone and internet.  No problem.  Then I discovered, working out of a home office, I'm hogging the phone line like a stormy adolescent middle-schooler.  (Well, actually like me as a stormy adolescent middle-schooler, today's stormy adolescent middle-schoolers use text messaging and IM.  We've got Forrester data on that somewhere.)

So I call Verizon to request a good old-fashioned copper line installation.  Which would help if the power goes out, because with cable, the phone goes dead (same with FIOS, but they provide a battery backup - smart).  But there's a problem - Verizon can't handle a "downgrade" given the fiber already connected to the house, which is actually about as useful as a buried underground clothesline.  So reluctantly, they tell me to get a second Comcast line.

Great.  Online, I see I can get a new line for $10 without voicemail, call forwarding, and all sorts of modern conveniences - I just need POTS, works for me.  The Comcast rep tells me that the $10 line is fine, but I'll have to pay for long distance.  Well, what's long distance?  For starters, "Boston is long distance."  (What?  I live 14 miles away from the center of the city.)  Also, "toll-free numbers are long distance."  (What?  Since when did toll-free not mean free?)  Yeah, "I'm seeing people having to pay for those calls more and more."  OK whatever - give me the $20 deal and add your gold star to the upsell board for today, I just need a 2nd phone line.  I called back the next day, downgraded to the $10 and told Comcast that they needed to give this crazy phone rep a geography lesson, who lives in the Boston area but seems to have the education of Miss South Carolina.

Using Garfield's parlance, is there any company that "must die" in this situation?

In my opinion, it is what it is. Everything works now and I've got a blog post out of it.  Time to move on and get back to work.

Setting up a home office - any advice?

I've been busy with a lot of things, haven't had much time to blog.  One of those activities has been moving into a new house - and now I have an empty home office to fill.

If you work from home - what advice can you give on setting it up well?  Your insight is appreciated.  Thanks!

Do you know about the Online Marketing Suite?

Last week, Omniture invited me to speak at their Summit 08 in Salt Lake City.  As it turns out, I was given the chance to address an audience of over 2,000 interactive marketers about what's going on in the industry.

When it comes to interactive marketing technologies, all signs point in one direction:  The Online Marketing Suite.  My Forrester colleagues Suresh Vittal and Shar VanBoskirk have written on this idea that you should become familiar with:

"Forrester believes that the time is right for the online marketing suite to emerge. This suite, underpinned by a central hub, is the eventual destiny for all online marketing technology and will enable a single view of the customer across channels, provide process tools to support collaboration, centralize optimization, and support a partner ecosystem."

The Online Marketing Suite may not be as sexy as social media, but it's how business gets done...if you haven't heard about this concept, you may want to keep an eye out for it in the future.

Grant McCracken was right

I was in New York today and had a chance to peek into the Conde Nast cafeteria.  Why did I do this?  Because I read a post on Grant McCracken's blog about a year ago about the Frank Gehry-designed space, where he described it like this:

"It's a slightly anxious place, because a) everyone looks fabulous, except of course your devoted anthropologist and, b) they are engaged in the activity that threatens their fabulousness, eating.  This is a world in which a carrot stick counts as calorie loading."

Your devoted marketing analyst has this to say about the place - confirmed, it's full of beautiful people.  Last summer I visited the Google cafeteria in Chelsea - full of smart people.  But the corporate New York cafeteria I'm most familiar with is the the ConEd cafeteria, where I spent quite a bit of time a decade ago.  It's full of...cafeteria food.

Reflections on Istanbul, or don't get punkd like me

Usually when I travel, especially outside the US, I try to squeeze in some personal time to check things out.  This can be critical to maintaining sanity when your job requires a lot of travel;  I'm scheduled to travel 22 out of the first 26 weeks of 2008.  Thankfully I'm not gone four days a week like a management consultant, but it adds up after a while.

I was in Istanbul last week.  I was looking forward to the trip, given that my last time there was January 2000.  However, what happened to me on the first day clouded my desire to explore any further.

I was with my colleague Shar and we were walking back to the hotel after taking a ferry over to Kiz Kulesi.  We were walking up a large hill between the Besiktas football stadium and a large park, towards a group of hotels including the Hyatt, Ritz-Carlton, and Intercontinental.  Mid-way up, some boys catch up to us peddling travel-size tissues.  Which later seemed odd, given that it's rude to blow one's nose in public.  But for some reason, they're just too close.  I didn't understand what they're saying, but they're shoving the tissues at us, so close that I had to push one kid away.  He comes back undeterred, we keep walking, and they suddenly give up.

Shar and I had been discussing the workshop we were going to deliver the next morning, so I reached into my pocket to send an email to our client...and my Blackberry is gone.  I still have my wallet and my Nokia N95 8gb (which I've been loaned from Nokia, it's a more expensive phone) - but the Blackberry is nowhere to be found.  Neither are the tissue boys.

OK.  It's Sunday, so getting help back in the US might be tough, especially because we're seven hours ahead and it's only 8 am there.  After calling the regular AT&T 800 number for customer service, which I already know is closed on Sundays, I find that AT&T has another number:  866-801-3600.  So the SIM is deactivated.  (Later our IT gurus tell me that Blackberry administrators can send a "kill" command - we reactivated my SIM and tried it, but the phone didn't respond.)  Suddenly, I feel disconnected from the world - unable to send a quick text message to my family or browse the latest in Google Reader.

Lessons learned:

• I was a victim of social engineering.  Being in a foreign country, I didn't want to be outright rude to these beggars peddling tissues - but I let them get too close to me.
• Don't carry anything of value in easily accessible pockets, e.g. the sides of your jacket or your back pants pockets.  I've heard of people's neck wallets being robbed...
• Activate the security features on your phone - device and/or SIM lock, including PIN and PUK codes.  It only takes a second to input a 4 - 6 character password to get into your phone.  Now I know why the Europeans I worked with were obsessive about this.
• All states have laws in place where you can place a security freeze your credit file, so only you can permit access to the information with a PIN or password.

In the twelve years or so that I've owned a mobile phone, I've never lost one so I was lazy about device security.  But hopefully you can learn from this before it actually happens to you.  If you have ever been in the same unfortunate position as me, I'd like to hear what you've learned and are now doing differently.