I endlessly daydream about traveling. Whether it’s an upcoming day trip or a two week extravaganza abroad – I can’t wait to hit the road for a new adventure. As a mobile savvy PR pro, my phone is one of my prized travel companions.
While in Newport, OR a few weeks ago, I was skimming Sunset Magazine and learned about a new app that transforms your mobile pictures into postcards, stamps and snail mails them to your loved ones for $1.50. GENIUS.
There are several mobile pic to postcard apps out there, but the one mentioned in Sunset is HazelMail available on BlackBerry and the iPhone. Thanks to the consumer media hit, the app caught my attention, enticed me to download the app and sparked my curiosity to do a little digging on their marketing and communication strategy.
Here’s a little bit about what HazelMail is doing on the comms front:
The company was mentioned in the LA Times blog in a round up post about photo apps
I checked out the Facebook page and they’re posting engaging updates for their followers
Things look slow on the twitter side, but hey, maybe the company is busy developing new product instead of tweeting?
We like this app for a few reasons:
1) The app is useful. HazelMail allows you to actually DO something with the pics you take on your phone. It’s easy to share pics on your social networks or through text, but a personalized postcard offers a new way to share your mobile moments with friends and family.
2) Consumer marketing opportunities for these apps are endless. We’re always on the cusp of a story to tell for a new travel season. Finally taking your beloved summer vacation to sit by the lake to read, relax and savor sunshine? Send a postcard to your best pals from college and let them know you miss them. Sending your kids off to college soon? Send the grandparents a postcard of their new dorm room before you drop them off, sob and drive home.
Overall, HazelMail’s communication strategy is consumer friendly. With a straight-forward app like this, HazelMail does a good job of letting the product do the talking – it’s simple and easy to get.
Finally! After days, weeks and months of speculation, Palm has a new owner in HP.
Our take is that it’s an incredible opportunity for HP to help garner a new audience, and immediately expands the potential impact of Palm. Now HP can take the great work it’s done to market its printers and PCs over to an ever-changing mobile space.
Both HP and Palm have incredible cache with their hardware and software offerings respectively. For years in the U.S., HP has looked to grow its mobile business. It has a number of enterprise-class devices in the market, but this helps HP give more exposure to a new consumer audience. This also helps HP get in the door further with the big mobile operators in the U.S. who have been hesitant to sell its phones in the past.
The challenge will be to marry the hardware experience from HP with the great consumer software offering from Palm to bring great products for HP’s customers. Here are three things they must do to help get back in the game:
Show synergy across the HP portfolio: Outside of Apple, very few mobile phone powers can also say they are a computer power as well. This now gives HP another great device to connect the power of PC+mobile+peripherals. We see HP taking the lead on making it easy for people to print, scan, copy and get that information to and from their mobile phones, tablets and other computing devices. It needs to make that story as crystal clear as possible for consumers that want to buy the end-to-end solution.
Show value to partners: Highlight how this offering is going to help mobile operators make money, as well as software developers focusing on Apple, Android and Windows Mobile to continue to see the value in developing for webOS.
Remember your roots. While HP needs to bolster its consumer message, it also have an opportunity to sell into the various enterprise-ready elements such as security and phone build quality that are critical for road warriors.
What are your thoughts? Can Palm help HP be a big factor in mobility against the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Google and RIM? How does this impact the tablet and PC market as well?
Leading up to Apple’s highly-anticipated announcement of its iPad today, virtually every technology and consumer news outlet had produced preview stories. Now that Steve Jobs has confirmed the news and ushered the media into a reviews frenzy, we can extract a few lessons about what Apple did right to garner so much attention for a late-to-market tablet device.
1. iPhone success helped insert Apple into early, competitive tablet coverage. Times Online’s Dominic Rushe and James Ashton had this to say after CES: “TWO years ago, Apple dominated CES by doing nothing. All the chatter was about the imminent launch of its iPhone after the show. This year Apple did it again… The company has said nothing, confirmed nothing, even iSlate’s name is really speculation, but once more Apple was the talk of Vegas.”
Erica Ogg of CNET reported, “A tablet or slate computer from Apple was basically all anyone wanted to talk about [at CES], and it’s not even a confirmed product yet… Apple’s managed to turn the attention of the entire tech world away from tech’s biggest stage without actually doing or saying anything.”
Although Kindle, Nook and a slew of tablet devices have been in the market (Kindle was announced in May 2009), Apple has been able to dominate competitive coverage for months because of its iPhone legacy. The iPad was positioned as an extension to the success of the iPhone, and that only perpetuated the anticipation.
2. Apple let leaks do the talking for them. “Trusted sources” were frequently referenced as sources for news leaks on blogs and in social media, which kept the buzz alive. Reporters and bloggers were reaching to the depths of patent filing and long-lost interviews searching for clues. Everyone loves a treasure hunt, and Apple let the media chase after its own X on the metaphorical map.
On the evening before the announcement, McGraw-Hill’s CEO confirmed that his company has been working on content distribution for an Apple tablet, saying “We have worked with Apple for quite a while… The tablet is going to be just really terrific.” The leak created another news cycle ahead of the event and only increased the anticipation and fever for Apple.
3. Apple maintained product secrecy. Notice how no preview story ahead of the event featured an Apple spokesperson. Apple never commented on the tablet rumors. Apple’s partners (with exception of McGraw-Hill) never commented on the device. Considering this was probably the most media-hyped announcement since the iPhone, there was a lot of pressure on a lot of people and companies in the know. However, the Apple ecosystem kept the calm before the storm and never put itself in a scenario that compromised the secrecy of the product announcement.
4. Apple delivered a worthy launch event.
Image credit: Engadget
All eyes were on Apple today. “iSlate,” “iTablet,” “#apple” and “Apple Tablet” dominated Twitter trending topics ahead of the event. Every major news outlet with access live-blogged or live-streamed the event. Apple has a model keynote speaker in Steve Jobs and consistently delivers precise, exciting events. Today was no exception.
Considering Apple shared the same news podium today as President Obama’s State of the Union address, the media attention was that much more impressive. And now we know, finally, that we can stream future State of the Union addresses on an Apple iPad.
Today I donated $10 to the American Red Cross to support the catastrophe in Haiti by texting “Haiti” to 90999. It was that simple (See actual screenshot at left).
As of a tweet this morning (Jan. 14), the Red Cross has already raised $3 million dollars through this mobile donation method.
Mobile phones have already been a prominent way of reporting the event, but they also provide a powerful, scalable way to collect the necessary financial support to aid relief efforts.
According to a NY Times article, the texted donations are being handled by a company called mGive, which started the campaign in a joint effort with the State Department and the Red Cross on Jan. 12. The $10 donation I made via mGive will be charged by my carrier, AT&T, which will relay the donation in full to the American Red Cross. mGive typically charges a licensing fee for its software platform, $4 to $1,500 a month, but has removed all fees for this fundraiser.
Unfortunately, CEO Tony Aiello says it typically takes up to 90 days for the charity to receive the donation, but the mGive is trying to expedite the process with carriers to get the money to the Red Cross as soon as possible. So while it feels immediate to make the donation, the impact of the donation is felt long after hitting “Send.” Hopefully this process will continue to improve.
In another mobile fundraising campaign, Haitian-born musician Wyclef Jean is urging people to donate $5 to his charity organization by texting “YELE” to 501501.
Mobile donations are getting massive support, too. The AFP reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the rounds of six morning television news shows where she urged Americans to make 10-dollar donations by cellular telephone.
“If you wish to help, you can text Haiti — H-A-I-T-I — to 90999,” she said on NBC’s Today Show.
Additionally, the White House has endorsed the mGive mobile donation as one of three key ways Americans can assist Haitians.
I am impressed by the support mobile donations have received from top US officials, and am even more impressed with how Americans have embraced mobile donations as a primary resource to provide financial aid during a crisis. I encourage you to make a mobile donation and help those in need.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Sokol Blosser Winery and Willamette Valley Vineyards, two well-known wineries in the Northwest, about how social media and mobile technology have impacted their businesses. As a huge fan of both wineries, I was curious what they thought of these mediums and how they’re doing – not to mention what they’ve learned along the way.
It’s clear both wineries are watching closely what customers – and potential customers – are saying in social media. In fact, both have or are planning to make changes to some of their online properties to better serve the wine customer. Also worth noting, both wineries focus the bulk of their social media activity on building relationships and engaging in dialogue with their customers, not on selling.
Excerpts from my Q&A sessions are below. Thanks to Kitri McGuire of Sokol Blosser and Christine Collier of Willamette Valley Vineyards for their time and expertise.
After reading their responses, let us know what you think! Are you using any wine applications on your mobile devices? Do you visit the social networking pages of wineries to learn more about their products?
Cheers!
Mobile Sherpas: Have you noticed more customers using and talking about mobile applications to get information on wines?
Sokol Blosser (SB): Yes! There are all kinds of sites and apps, like Cellartracker.com, that let you actively search for, track and rate the wines you drink. We can watch what people are saying about our wines and get valuable feedback. We also encourage people in our Tasting Room to Tweet about their experience from their phone when they visit, which is a great real-time way to keep people involved in talking about their experience with our brand.
Willamette Valley Vineyards (WVV): Being an iPhone user myself, I hear about new applications all the time for wine and restaurant reviews. Personally, I usually rely on the waitstaff and, at tastings, talk with the pourer and read the tasting notes. But, we are in the process of making our website more friendly to the online wine buyer. With more people buying wine, gift certificates and accessories online, we are accommodating them.
Mobile Sherpas: How long have your wineries been using social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook? What prompted you to start? What challenges did you face in getting started?
SB: We’ve been on Twitter and Facebook a little over a year, and on Flickr and YouTube a little longer (editor’s note – SB also has a blog). We have a few social media savvy people on staff who were watching the growing online wine community online and we wanted to be a part of that. The biggest challenge in getting started was to map out what our goals were – we did not want to jump in and go whole hog, and then only Tweet every few weeks or never respond to comments on Facebook. So we planned very carefully for how we would represent our brand online: who would be responsible, what the “voice” of Sokol Blosser is, how we would respond, and we wanted to use the sites for relationship building and not specifically selling wine. Because of that plan, we have been very successful in keeping to our original goals and the process has never seemed stressful.
WVV: I was originally brought on in May to create an online presence for Willamette Valley Vineyards. At that time there were only a handful of Oregon wineries embracing this movement. I would say we were one of the early movers, but now I can ramble off a list of 15-20 wineries using social media. We first crated a plan, became involved on Twitter, Facebook and our blog. The biggest challenge with Twitter is the flood of people using it – are people reading our Tweets? And our blog – getting people to interact is the challenge. I’ve actually redesigned the blog to make it more user friendly in an effort to get more people to interact and comment.
Mobile Sherpas: What advice do you have for small wineries and labels looking to grow awareness of their brand?
SB: This is a tough question because there is so much involved and so much that people can do! My main note would be: relationships, relationships, relationships. Those relationships can be in person or online, but when a consumer feels a real connection to a brand, they will be loyal for life – and tell their friends.
WVV: Social media is a great (almost free) way to communicate with our customers. I love that the people choose to be our fan and/or view our site. That means they have an interest in finding out more about us. I take that very seriously, just as if they were making the drive up to visit our tasting room, and tour our winery and vineyards. This being the case, I try to stay very true to our brand and mission. I also try to avoid bombarding customers. I know as a consumer, I don’t want to feel “sold to” and we don’t “sell” to our customers in the tasting room, therefore, I try to avoid using selling language. I just try to spark interest, provide information and some fun.
We Mobile Sherpas are proud to be part of a larger team at Weber Shandwick that produces stellar work every day. While a lot of this work goes behind-the-scenes for clients (as it should), we’re happy to share with you some research our company produced about how Fortune 100 companies are missing opportunities on Twitter.
The white paper, released earlier this week, is called “Do Fortune 100 Companies Need a Twittervention?” and can be downloaded here.
Some of the findings:
73 percent of Fortune 100 companies registered a total of 540 Twitter accounts.
76 percent of those accounts did not post tweets very often
53 percent of the accounts did not display personality, or a consistent tone/voice
52 percent were not actively engaged
50 percent of the Fortune 100 accounts had fewer than 500 followers
15 percent were inactive; of those, 11 percent were merely placeholder accounts
4 percent were abandoned after being used for a specific event.
What does this mean for mobile companies? Immediate opportunity.
If most Fortune 100 companies, including some of the most identifiable brands, are failing to effectively use Twitter, that leaves room for smaller companies to emerge on the level playing field that Twitter provides. Mobile companies are best positioned to be at the forefront of Twitter conversations because they are inherently part of the mobile Twitter experience – providing the software and hardware people use to Tweet on the go.
Remember, Twitter is only one way to reach mobile customers. Companies can also leverage other social applications such as Foursquare or Whrrl, create their own mobile applications or use SMS programs to reach target audiences, too. The key is for companies to understand all of the options and utilize the best combinations to achieve their goals. Twitter is not the only and may not be the best platform for your business; it just tends to be a core component of many mobile strategies today.
You don’t need me to tell you that today’s mobile phone reviewers are busy. New devices, services and applications keep them busy day and night. But what are we doing to help give them what they need?
I talked to two wireless experts at PCMag.com, Sascha Segan and Jamie Lendino, who gave their thoughts on a few key pieces of information they don’t necessarily get from us but desperately need to help them do their job. Take a look at the short video to find out more.
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I thought I’d share this mobile marketing initiative launched by Bright Pink earlier this month. The national non-profit organization , providing education and support to young women at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer, introduced its once a month “Underwire Alerts” to remind women “to stop and think about the girls for a little while.” By simply texting PINK to 59227 or signing up on their web site, women subscribe to monthly text reminders reminding them to perform a Breast Self Exam (BSE).
BSEs are one of the three most common forms of screening test, according to the Bright Pink site, and should be done monthly by women beginning by age 20. As any woman knows, remembering to actually do this is a challenge so I can see where a monthly reminder would help tremendously. I’ve signed up myself. Judging from the Underwire Alerts page on the site, I’m anticipating some humorous reminders that make a serious subject easier to talk about. Stay tuned to Mobile Sherpas and I’ll let you know what the texts say as I receive them each month.
There’s no question that it’s been a tough market for print publications. Those of us who follow all things food and beverage were saddened to hear that Gourmet Magazine announced its pending closure this month after dramatic declines in its advertising numbers. Gourmet is, unfortunately, in good company as many well-known and loved publications have disappeared over the past few years.
While we have lost some great sources of expert food and wine opinion, the good news is that there is a growing number of destinations online and on our mobile devices to access helpful content. That might be a recipe or tips on what wine to pair with your meal. In fact, the online wine industry is growing rapidly, and wine-related startups are seeing a strong infusion of capital thanks to their fundraising efforts. A few recent examples include Vinfolio, which received $4.5 million in funding this year, and Snooth, a virtual retail store and review site, which raised $1 million, also this year. Then there’s Cork’d, which this year re-launched its online property and will soon unveil Cork’d mobile, an application that promises to let users buy and review wine, all from their mobile phone.
Most notably in all this news though is that Wine.com, the respected source for all things wine online, announced that it would be offering an API to third party developers. The significance here is that this gives developers access to the site’s 40,000+ products, which include customer reviews, expert ratings, labels and tasting notes. The idea is that these developers then use the detailed data to develop new, and enhance existing, wine applications. Wine.com CTO Geoffrey Smalling noted, “By giving developers access to the largest, standardized wine database available, consumers will benefit by having even more ways to access information about and purchase wine across different devices and websites.”
Given the time and cost associated with developing content, access to retailer APIs, such as that of Wine.com, will enable third parties to more easily create and enhance mobile applications. This in turn means developers will be able to focus more on what really matters: making a better consumer experience that can lead to sales. Looking ahead, we expect this trend of online retailers opening APIs to continue, both in the online wine business and in other sectors.
Just today, Paolo attended a Seattle book signing where Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV was promoting his new book “Crush It!” Gary drove the point that mobility is a lasting trend not only for wineries but consumer companies at large. He said, “Why would someone pay for a billboard on a bus when all the people riding are looking down at their phones?” Paolo asked Gary during the Q&A what he thought about mobility as an immediate opportunity:
As I mentioned in my video last week, we at Mobile Sherpas are a diverse crew and have expertise in a variety of areas, including food and beverage (which, yes, includes a team of wine experts). Check back here for more on this practice, including a Q&A with Sokol Blosser on how that company is leveraging social media to raise its profile and build advocacy. In the meantime, we’d love to hear what about your favorite wine applications! Some of our favorites here include Snooth, Wine Spectator and Cor.kz.
Recently, Paolo and I attended the BlogWorld and New Media Expo in Las Vegas, designed to gather the largest assembly of social media, bloggers and companies looking to talk about how they are embracing new media. As the concept of new media is, well new, events like these are vital to get a grasp of what’s next, gather ideas from peers and showcase best practices.
We saw several large brands exhibiting, including Technorati, Healthy Choice, eBay and the U.S. Army Accessions Command (the U.S. Army is a Weber Shandwick client).
The concept of social media is inherently mobile, allowing people to use wireless technology to capture, create and distribute their content. Take a look at the short video Paolo and I created that highlights why we think more wireless companies should participate in BlogWorld next year.
