Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Facing A Life of Paying By Selfie

MasterCard is testing an app that lets customers pay with a selfie. Facial recognition enables the app to verify one’s identity. After registering, users would be able to pay by looking at their phone and blinking once. The blink prevents thieves from showing the app a picture of a face to get around the system.

For those uncomfortable with this, the app can read one’s fingerprint. Or, of course, one can pay with cash.

45% of smartphone owners begin with Amazon when shopping on a smartphone, according to a survey by Mizuho Securities. Google is in the runner-up slot with 16%.

But when it comes to searching for information, 34% begin with the Google search app, followed by 27% typing into the Safari browser, and 19% beginning with the Chrome browser.

An example of the need for more personalization in mobile – I received a text offer for a brown sugar bacon sandwich. Totally random.

The third quarter of 2015 begins and Gogo is still at dialup speed. I’m told by someone in the know that they raised their prices significantly to discourage usage while still making their overall business goal by gouging the poor suckers who use the crappy service.

What is one to do about an Apple Watch tan line. I’m surprised that CNN hasn’t covered this phenomenon and dubbed it Breaking News.

Matti Makkonen, considered the father of SMS, died at 63. He made an enormous contribution to mobile and to marketing. Despite proven results, text messaging is often too quickly dismissed by marketers.

To the next person who uses appsolutely - pow.

Facebook is giving marketers the option of paying for video ads after 10 seconds of viewing instead of three, per the Wall Street Journal.

A diet-based video game claims to make you thinner. Fat chance.

A man claimed that his iPhone 6 overheated, burst into flames. These stories almost always turn out to be hoaxes.

China’s Huawei introduced a phone with a dancing piece of pizza. I’m figuring that it was something about wanting a slice of the market.

Unlike SXSW, the Mobile Marketing Forum Was About Business Results

I proposed a game at the start of this week’s Mobile Marketing Association’s Forum in New York where we would take a drink each time that we heard the word Meerkat.

My tweet stream the previous several days had been nothing short of overrun by Meerkats, which are live video streams sent from phones to all of one’s Twitter followers at once.

I figured that by noon on St. Patrick’s Day, Day 1 of the MMA event, we would all be as inebriated as some of those partying on Fifth Avenue.

I was wrong. There was nary a mention. And I believe that I now know why.

The introduction of something like Meerkat is made for the SXSW crowd, which includes those who crave shiny objects, first looks at innovation, and business models that could lead to great change.

That is actually in sharp contrast to what many came to hear at the MMA show – evidence of business results and proof that some of the products and services launched way before SXSW were moving boxes of tissues and bottles of ketchup while engaging mobile users in meaningful ways.

The most significant conversation in New York was around the latest SMoX (Smart Mobile Cross Marketing Effectiveness) research that was conducted by the MMA and some of its largest and most influential members. Aiming to scientifically assess the interaction of mobile channels and platforms in relation to the broader marketing mix (TV, radio, magazines, Internet, etc.), the exercise was intended to help marketers understand the impact of consumers’ shifting media habits, as well as how to optimize their marketing mix by rebalancing investments.

Here’s what we discovered:

In Coca Cola's Gold Peak Tea campaign, mobile drove 25% of top of mind awareness and 6% of sales despite only 5% of budget.

Mobile in Walmart's Back to School initiative produced a 14% change in shopping intent despite only 7% of the marketing spend.

In a travel card campaign, MasterCard saw mobile display and mobile video work twice as hard in terms of the number of people it converted on image per dollar spent.

The overall takeaway from the new U.S.-focused SMoX research was that the optimal spend for mobile is in the double digits - far more than is being allocated.

Adam Broitman, VP of Global Digital Marketing, MasterCard, called SMoX “a real breakthrough in the mobile marketing industry and the first thorough and comprehensive industry study that proves the true value of mobile.”

Said Tom Daly, Coca-Cola’s mobile lead, “It gives all the teams, particularly in the United States, something to think about.”

Here’s some of what else caught my eyes and ears in New York:

The hype would lead some to believe that paper and coin currency will be gone by the weekend given the advancements in Apple Pay and other mobile wallet products. But, according to MasterCard’s Michael Donnelly, 85% of the world's transactions are still made in cash.

We knew that long-form content has an uphill battle on mobile. And that was before we heard this -- the focused attention span for a consumer is eight seconds, down from 12 in 2000, according to Gfk. For perspective, GfK told us, a goldfish has a nine-second attention span.

Brandon Rhoten, vice president of digital and social media with Wendy’s, gave marketers like me who are a bit long in the tooth a pass on knowing everything about everything.

“There is no reason we should know how to use Tumblr,” he said. “It’s not where we grew up. So the biggest piece of advice I give is, ‘Be humble and back up and say ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’ Go to your partners and talk to them. How can you fit the context of that platform at the same time you stand out?”

Rhoten’s take on Meerkat? Even if a “solution” is perceived by some as cool, if it hasn’t scaled or shown that it can move cheeseburgers, it doesn’t make it into a marketing plan dead set on generating business success.

(article first appeared on Mobile Marketer - http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/opinion/columns/20025.html)