can mobiles kickstart relationship marketing?

Tags: Business,  Design,  Location (LBS),  Theory
April 9, 2008 by Steven

I have seen the concept (and phrase) digital footprints discussed before, and I’ve rather liked it. I am a closet ubicomp fan, after all.

The other day Tomi Ahonen wrote a long futurist vision of increasing digital footprint tracking, and I guess the social consequences of it being more or else in your control. When you have time, I suggest you read it:
http://communities_dominate.blogs.com/brands/2008/04/datamining-our.html

This got so in depth, I was suddenly struck by how similar the whole concept is to any remotely clever marketing folks of the pre- or barely-computer era. It has been eminently possible to track user behavior (purchase patterns and so forth) not just demographics, for a long time. Its traditionally been easier if you sold a wide range of products (Reader’s Digest had this range, and this business intelligence and data on customers stored on computers since the 50s).

Disregarding privacy bits, and the need to set up business relationships with other organizations, it should be even easier more recently with the internet encouraging data interchange. Even more disregarding privacy and business relations, is should be trivial with mobiles for all the reasons Tomi outlines in his post above. You can get a huge amount of information, as an operator or with access to their data, with just traffic analysis, and post-event location tracking, before you even crack into the signaling and messaging channels.

BUT, no one seems to do this. Why? Occasionally when meeting with business owners, on almost any product with high repeat-use rates, I can show off some neat, theoretical, future possibility of reporting and analysis data, mention “1:1 marketing” and eyes light up. But nothing ever seems to come of it.

And its not just my projects. My junk mail is about as poorly targeted as television advertising (the ultimate shotgun approach and the antithesis of targeted marketing possible with mobiles). And those that try to leverage user data often seem to fail in funny ways. Actually, even the mobile advertising I see is targeted almost entirely not at me, implying its not what I would call targeted /at all/.

When I do see something remotely targeted at me or a narrow segment, I notice it because it’s unique and interesting. At home we get catalogs for commercial nursery operators, because we bought a greenhouse for the back yard; HDNet is filled with advertising for high-def DVDs, 5.1 surround systems and related products, because everyone watching the channel has an HD system.



Okay, I gripe a lot. How to fix it? Well, I was all ready to blame the marketing folks for having no vision, but Barbara has an MBA, so I just had to run this by her first. She assures me that people are working on this, but aside from taking money, will and smarts, it takes money.

Yeah, I said money twice. Aside from initial investment to move from the current model (and the perception of what’s wrong with it, anyway), the data is only theoretically free. Aside from actually being charged per transition by operators, et. al. there are inefficiencies associated with all this one-off data retrieval and processing.

Once that is cheaper, then we’ll be ready to figure out how to get over legal, database design, privacy worries and all the usual stuff. Then, maybe the ubquity, awareness, contextuality, individualization and personalization of mobiles will be able to enable relationship marketing the way Tomi dreams.

Another good discussion along some of the same lines (sharing, depth, privacy, legacy data systems) is posted here with plenty of neat links worthy of saving.

Now, you tell me. How would you solve these issues? Or, if you know someone doing it today (or you are, and can talk about it) point it out and let’s discuss.


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1 Comment »

  1. Well it already kickstarted. With those bluetooth marketing going it gained now popularity. My phone now is receiving lots of advertisements when I play games to it.

    -Jan

    Comment by Marketing Articles — April 22, 2008 @ 8:30 pm

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