STIMA (Stimulating Marketing) organized an evening seminar on mobile…where we are? And what’s next! Again this type of events shows us how mobile still isn’t working in Belgium and why marketeers keep juicing their traditional marketing approach with social, local and mobile ingredients. 2013 is going to be the year of mobile! But 2010, 2011 and 2012 were and are also the year of mobile….so what’s wrong and why is always next year the ‘new’ year of mobile? It’s all about culture, tradition and “brass balls”! I have written about this a couple of times but marketeers need to rethink strategy, need to rethink campaigns, need to rethink their model!
With Danny De Vriendt (@dannydevriendt), president at Universal Media, opening the evening on what’s mobile all about. Danny correctly stated that SoLoMo isn’t about platforms, or apps. SoLoMo is a strategy, build from the ground up. When people, marketeers, talk about SoLoMo they only see the last mile (the app, or the platform), instead of truly rethinking their strategy.
When doing social, make shure to humanize your brand. Did you ever talk to the logo of your BMW? I didn’t (but I don’t own a BMW…so this is hard for me!) Make your brand human by stating the new of person behind your brands conversation (…although this could be fictitious person as well. Lara from Nestle or Belgacom f.i.). With humanizing you’ll probably be able to engage more as well! It’s better to have interaction then clicks, but be prepared on social you’re on your own! You establish a 1-to-1 relationship with your audience.
In my opinion this is the major problem of present marketing: It’s not ready to interact in the 1-to-1 social sphere! Traditional marketing always aimed for scale and mass audience with the “YeDiLi” – principle (Yell, Disturb, Lie) while in SoLoMo you can’t “YeDiLi”!! SoLoMo is all about context you create in a continuous time frame…don’t think in waves think in duration! (Again a problem in traditional marketing!)
With 2 interesting cases from De Gouden Gids/Truvo with the “aan tafel” -app and TagTagCity a micro level of SoLoMo was introduced. Although “aan tafel” app only LoMo incorporates it has opened new doors for a big brand like Gouden Gids to distribute its contactlistings. All listed restaurants in Gouden Gids are offered in a mobile app, and rated on different levels to help people make a dedicated and supported restaurant choice. You can also add your own rating, but this is less important. I still wonder whether this business model can be successful as a standalone application (in a small-scale economy like Belgium more than 3 uses a month of this app is ambitious). “aan tafel” surfs on the big business model wave of Gouden Gids, which makes it a save haven to start with. Belgium is, up until now,not highly penetrated and used smartphone country!
TagTagCity on the other hand was built from the ground up as a mobile model with a supported business model. TagTagCity incorporates QR-codes (yes they still exist), NFC and short URL to connect ‘tagged’ places, building a semantic geolocalized search engine (if you tag and incorporate your Facebook profile). TagTagCity wants to build a system with places of services over places of interest adding couponing, promotions, …. engaging their users!
Gerd Leonhard (@gleonhard) from The Futures Agency showed what this mobile society could become in the near future. Mobile will disrupt business models even more,creating an interconnected society where the internet of things connects an average of 7 devices with 1 person. Needless to say that privacy will be an illusion and a luxury in the near future. 
Mobile also replaces ownership with access. Services like Spotify and Netflix have changed ownership of music and film into access of music and film. When you stop using the service, you don’t have any rights to the music anymore.
SoLoMo is a huge challenge for marketeers because they need to rethink the traditional marketing….Mobile has an impact on everything everywhere as you can see in the next movie!
Source:
Image – http://blog.ce.org/index.php/2012/05/21/the-rise-of-the-somolo-shopper/solomo/
Movie – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcIwXVKQjsQ
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[…] STIMA (Stimulating Marketing) organized an evening seminar on mobile…where we are? And what’s next! Again this type of events shows us how mobile still isn’t working in Belgium and why marketeers keep juicing their traditional marketing approach with social, local and mobile ingredients. 2013 is going to be the year of mobile! But 2010, 2011 and 2012 were and are also the year of mobile….so what’s wrong and why is always next year the ‘new’ year of mobile? It’s all about culture, tradition and “brass balls”! I have written about this a couple of times but marketeers need to rethink strategy, need to rethink campaigns, need to rethink their model… […]
[…] STIMA (Stimulating Marketing) organized an evening seminar on mobile…where we are? And what’s next! Again this type of events shows us how mobile still isn’t working in Belgium and why marketeers keep juicing their traditional marketing approach with social, local and mobile ingredients. 2013 is going to be the year of mobile! But 2010, 2011 and 2012 were and are also the year of mobile….so what’s wrong and why is always next year the ‘new’ year of mobile? It’s all about culture, tradition and “brass balls”! I have written about this a couple of times but marketeers need to rethink strategy, need to rethink campaigns, need to rethink their model… […]
[…] See on flatworldbusiness.wordpress.com […]
[…] STIMA (Stimulating Marketing) organized an evening seminar on mobile…where we are? And what’s next! Again this type of events shows us how mobile still isn’t working in Belgium and why marketeers keep juicing their traditional marketing approach with social, local and mobile ingredients. 2013 is going to be the year of mobile! But 2010, 2011 and 2012 were and are also the year of mobile….so what’s wrong and why is always next year the ‘new’ year of mobile? It’s all about culture, tradition and “brass balls”! I have written about this a couple of times but marketeers need to rethink strategy, need to rethink campaigns, need to rethink their model… […]
[…] See on flatworldbusiness.wordpress.com […]
[…] STIMA (Stimulating Marketing) organized an evening seminar on mobile…where we are? And what’s next! Again this type of events shows us how mobile still isn’t working in Belgium and why marketeers keep juicing their traditional marketing approach with social, local and mobile ingredients. 2013 is going to be the year of mobile! But 2010, 2011 and 2012 were and are also the year of mobile….so what’s wrong and why is always next year the ‘new’ year of mobile? It’s all about culture, tradition and “brass balls”! I have written about this a couple of times but marketeers need to rethink strategy, need to rethink campaigns, need to rethink their model… […]
[…] See on flatworldbusiness.wordpress.com […]
[…] STIMA (Stimulating Marketing) organized an evening seminar on mobile…where we are? And what’s next! Again this type of events shows us how mobile still isn’t working in Belgium and why marketeers keep juicing their traditional marketing approach with social, local and mobile ingredients. 2013 is going to be the year of mobile! But 2010, 2011 and 2012 were and are also the year of mobile….so what’s wrong and why is always next year the ‘new’ year of mobile? It’s all about culture, tradition and “brass balls”! I have written about this a couple of times but marketeers need to rethink strategy, need to rethink campaigns, need to rethink their model… […]
I totally agree than Marketers have to be more open to SoLoMo but according to me they are already using it A LOT! Almost all big brands develop apps on smartphones for customers being able to check their new collection etc.
So how would you them to use it more? For instance, I have an internship in few months in a company that “hired” me to create FB page, touch younger people thanks to apps on their phone but what could they do more?
Interaction between company and customer? Of course it would be nice but I think that they do not have time to establish a 1-1 relationship?
I agree with the statement „big brands develop apps…. (BMW)“, but in the case of „rather unknown brands / companies“, I disagree.
Since two years I am working for a small and regional company located in austria. Generally, the company is very innovated (based on the fact, that the CEO is also responsible for the sales- and product development department), but SoLoMo is a „new way of thinking“. Small companies do not always have the opportunity do „rethink“ their strategy and be more „social“. In my experience, most of the interaction between customer & company, especially in a small/traditional companys, happen by phone, mail and personal visits (also depending on the industrie the company is operating) ….
But what brings us the mobile phone in the future, for instance in 2020? It is unbelievable how fast the mobile phone increase!
[…] Looking for mobile – Why SoLoMo is hard for marketeers!? (flatworldbusiness.wordpress.com) […]
It would be a great idea to develop apps that help people. For instant the app from Belfius that provides a map with every bank nearby, they even show competing banks. You have to find a way to solve common problems for you (potential) customers. They will probably thank you for it in the future.
What interested me most about this article is making things more human, in my last year as an IT student and KdG we had the IT conference day where Ben de Vleeschauwer gave a presentation about “Designing for humans”. By just changing your strategy or making your product seem more human like adding an mascot that ‘says’ something different everyday can make people tweet/fb and even blog about it. Engaging the people is one of the things that matter te most if you want a good marketing strategy and that’s not even just for mobile but also online.
SoLoMo is interesting due to the fact that it really empathizes with its users. I think it can only be successful if an app is used on a regular basis and if it is really needed.
The biggest reason (in my eyes) why people in Belgium still aren’t running along strongly with the rest of the world on the mobile and app area is because internet services in our country are extremely high priced compared to the rest of the world. But recently a new law has passed against long term mobile contract services and now there’s more room for competition in this field which leads to lower prices which in turn will atract more people to buy new mobile devices and be more social active online.
If this is the case, i believe social marketing will finally find the place it deserves in our country.
I’m truly disappointed in Belgium when it comes to Mobile. Mobile these days has so many oppurtunities but here in Belgium they don’t use half, or even a quarter of its capacity.
Look at Foursquare for example. Pretty huge mobile network but I couldn’t find 1 store (in my village) who would make us of its specials. Even in Antwerp it’s not that common.
The whole story of ‘being-mobile’ is going way too fast in my opinion. People nowadays expect that I’m always reachable while I don’t always want to be.
A few years ago, in 2008 for example, all the ‘being-mobile’ wasn’t there yet and it was therefore not necessarily worse than it is now. On the contrary, I did not feel that I always had to respond immediately to a message without anyone going to be frustrated.
Facebook did go even further a few months ago: now I can already see that my friend whether or not read the message and the same applies to him / her. If I do not answer within a certain time then there will be a question mark sent to put pressure to get an answer etc. Being mobile definitely has its advantages, but sometimes it’s really a disadvantage.
I totally agree with Hans Francken’s opinion. The app has to be used intensively by community and it has to have a certain goal. Without those two key factors, SoLoMo becomes less evident. And let us not forget that, as Cédric Mampaey says, Belgium is a bit disappointing in this case. And not everyone has a smartphone and ofcourse apps.
SoLoMo will only work when customers care to interact with that certain company. The Belfius app might have a nice map of all banks in the area, but why would I use it when I can just use Google Maps, an app I use on a daily basis, thus one I’m used to.
I’m also disappointed in Belgium’s use of mobile apps.
I hate when Belgian companies decide to create their own version of an already international app and then all of a sudden it grows more popular than the international one. For instance: the Gouden Gids app versus Yelp. Why not just use Yelp in this case? It’s established, it works and it gives foreigners the chance to use the app they already know to roam around in our country and see what’s good here…
When it comes to mobile Belgium it isn’t that good. Much people have a smartphone in this country. But Belgium doesn’t use their opportunities to the fullest . For example foursquare, here you can check in at different places. In other countries, for example in France, when you check in at a clothing store and it’s your first time here you get a discount. Here in Belgium I haven’t seen anything like that.
I agree with the things Bart and Geoff have already said. If I’m on the way with my sister, parents or friends, I sometimes want some social silence. But that happens not that much. If I get a message or a private message on Facebook. The sender always want as soon as possible a reaction. If it’s a question about school and I give an answer by an hour, they say it’s not necessary anymore because they have already had an answer from someone else. The currently society wants to communicate as fast as they can! That’s good, but I find that we could not exaggerate!
The mobile internet is pretty sad in Belgium. There are a lot of people with a smartphone. But they can’t use it for the fullest and need to pay a lot of money for bad internet. That is one of the reasons I don’t buy an expensive smartphone. It’s really a missed chance, companies could do some much with Mobile. I’m very disappointed that Belgium is so far behind on the other countries.
I totally agree with Cédric’s opinion!
I think a lot of bar owners or other business don’t see the utility of SoLoMo! Like Cédric said, there should be more utulize from the seller’s side! This is actually an easy medium to attract customers
I agree, there’s a lot of potential that many companies are currently missing out on.
However, this is the case for most B2C companies, such as CocaCola, Nestlé and so on. For B2B companies it is much more difficult to reach their ‘customers’. Furthermore, I believe that it is a mistake to pretend that every company benefits from using mobile app’s and websites. I think most companies do, but customer communication should always be tailor-made.
I hope SoLoMo is yet to reach its peak in Belgium, because right now it’s rather disappointing. Little advantage is being taken of so many opportunities. We pay outrageous prices for mobile internet compared to neighboring countries for instance. It’s a shame.
I totally agree that most marketers do not adapt properly to SoLoMo. An issue might be the effort and consequences it brings with it. It is not only a matter of a different strategy, but involves a lot of resources like time, costs and knowledge. In many cases also an adaptation of the company’s values is required. Such a change is a big one and it carries a big risk of failure. Therefore, many marketers might not dare to adapt to SoLoMo.
I think, at the end there is no way around SoLoMo. The answer to the question why every year is a new year of mobile might be that it is a process. Humans tend to go the way of lowest resistance and the mobile world offers us the possibility to easily access services at any time and no matter where we are. Experiencing the possibility of becoming dynamic in such a way pushes the grows of SoLoMo.
I see the need of SoLoMo and I agree with the opinion that we should rather aim for more interaction, not clicks…
With using mobile in marketing, it is all about crossmedia usage and integrating mobile into all the other marketing measures and the wholistic company strategy and not handling it separately – but it has to fit in there!
Of course, best would be to build up a strategy or business from ground up like the example of TagTagCity. However, not every business can just re-model itself and – maybe also depending on the industry you`re in – it could be hard for companies to really follow the idea of SoLoMo. So for them, 2014, then 2015, then 2016 will still be THE year of mobile, again and again…
i agree absoluty with the Artikel. alot of schools and Marketing company still follow the traditional way of Marketing.its time to rethink and to look forward.social has to have now the over hand in each Marketing Process..
its no way to take another strategy solomo is the future.its just the question of to attend now or to wait and do not gather the seeds of the first time user 😉
2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 …..20XX? Like written in the blog, I think that experts and trend researchers have no idea when the real year of mobile will be. Surely, mobile marketing is a trend what comes always more. But in real life, is it really so integrated? Well, it depends of various demographic, psychographic but also geographic variables. In South Tyrol for example mobile is at the beginning steps. Young people from 13-24 uses mobile applications, older people knwos about that but doesn’t use it. A trend in the little region South Tyrol is the ingration of QR-codes in every offline instrument: ads, folder etc. The interesting thing behind. QR-Codes has a online access of average 0,3% experts says.
There’s no question, as mobile / digitial is the future kids/teenagers need to be aware of the latest development to be able to cope with the future. It’s important for everyone to adjust to the changes happening around you. Therefore I’m not surprised about the studies. It’s the kids who adjust the quickest. However, I’m convincend it’s also important to limit the time spent with digital media. Personal contact is still most important!
For me the transformation to mobile is a logical consequence. Information, personal exchange, work, almost nothing is bound to physical locations anymore. Of course people are switching their lifestyle to mobile – because they are never resting at one place. If there was the possibility to create the data exchange without any device from anywhere of the world – they would switch again….
The only thing which doesn’t adapt as quickly is the strategy behind most business concepts – I mean some even didn’t make the switch to online yet – or made it very badly 😉
I completely agree that marketers have to rethink their traditional marketing. Product presentation or product selling is no longer within the traditional time and place boundaries, but ubiquituos. I work for a company developing product presentations via apps in various forms: company data, image brochures, product specific information, videos, presentations, a flip catalogue of the whole assortment, and also apps connected to the QR-code placed on products providing video-animated product presentation when walking by.