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London Calling joins HungryMobile Opinions in Mobile initiative

I am delighted to have been invited to contribute to a new initative from HungryMobile called Opinions in Mobile. Run by CEO Jan Rezab, Opinions in Mobile is an online platform, where top executives and leaders from the mobile services and mobile entertainment industry respond to questions related to the mobile market. A new question [...]

Rudy De Waele’s Wonderful People 2008

The wonderful Rudy De Waele from m-trends.org has sent me his Flickr set of “wonderful people” he met at conferences across the world in 2008. I was delighted to catch up again with Rudy most recently at the Future of Mobile event in 2008 where he snapped me speaking with Claire Boonstra from www.sprxmobile.com. Rudy, [...]

Google’s unique method of choosing phones for testing

Over at the official Google mobile blog, I saw this very funny short video that shows how the mobile devices team choose devices for testing and which ones they will develop mobile applications for.  Apparently they have over 800 phones for testing! Quoting from their blog: “We’ve put together a video that gives you a behind-the-scenes [...]

New report from Tomi Ahonen details mobile stats in 2008

World renowned mobile commentator, Tomi Ahonen has just sent me a new report titled 7th Mass Media in 2008 which complements his recent book “Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media” and looks at the size of the mobile industry in 2008. I had the pleasure of meeting Tomi at the Future of Mobile conference [...]

Personalised outdoor advertising

I saw this outdoor ad in a London underground lift just before Christmas.  It also reminds me of a similar ad on a digital escalator panel (DEP) in Bond Street in London some months ago. I wonder if CBS Outdoor actually expected Joe to be in this tube lift on the way home from a meeting [...]

Coming to London soon? Grab a Vodafone prepay 1GB modem pack for £39

If you are coming to London (or the UK) for business or pleasure anytime soon, you may want to look at a new deal from Vodafone that provides 1GB of pre-paid mobile broadband AND a USB modem all for £39. What makes this deal different is that the included 1GB of data has a long [...]

The new way of helping lost tourists – Google mobile maps

Being an expat Australian now living in London, I seem to always be the first to spot a lost tourist with an unfolded map in my local area. At the rate of about 2 a week at the moment, either I am approached for directions (I look friendly!) or I make the approach to lost souls [...]

Iconic newspaper advertising

While not strictly mobile advertising, I noted recently in the UK papers that the Newspaper Marketing Agency is running a campaign called “newspapers deliver”.  It is another example of the “advertising in a downturn” approach, also used to good effect by the FT recently. They have modified some iconic newspaper campaigns to stress that newspaper advertising [...]

Mobile advertising in Brazil

One of the great things about running a popular blog on a hot topic such as mobile advertising is that you hear from amazing thought leaders and practitioners from around the world. Recently, I was contacted by Rafael Storch de Freitas who is an account manager with a large agency in Brazil. He was writing to [...]

Mobile advertising recall and a call to action for Creatives

Just what is the effectiveness of mobile advertising?  What is the recall? This question was asked of me recently by a well known planner for a big agency in London.  It is a good question because this is just what clients will be asking him after a campaign – how was our money spent?  Where [...]

Making the case for mobile advertising in a down economy

I came across an excellent summary on Media Post by Michael Weaver titled “Hunker Down Or Double Down? Making The Case for Mobile Advertising In A Down Economy“ Michael makes the point “Mobile advertising is comparatively cheap, highly dynamic (with everything from video and display to text and search options), global, easy to produce, and, most [...]

Maurice Lévy from Publicis on persuasion

I caught an interesting article in the Daily Telegraph on Publicis Chairman and CEO Maurice Lévy. While the focus of the article was about advertising in a downturn, there was a paragraph that caught my eye. In the interview with Rowena Mason, Lévy says “When there is less money, advertising has to be more desirable, more [...]

Carnival of the mobilists 154

Carnival number 154, the final Carnival for 2008 is hosted by C. Enrique Ortiz at About Mobility. It is a terrific selection of the best mobile blogging of the week — capping a stellar Carnival year. Head over there to read posts about Trutap, HSDPA downloads, predictions for 2009, off-deck mobile content and the recent [...]

O2 launches integrated media group

According to a report in the NMA, mobile operator O2 has launched a global media sales division, known as the O2 Media Group. The purpose of the new group is to provide advertisers the ability to reach O2’s 18.7 million subscribers by placing integrated campaigns across mobile, email, online, in-store, direct and experiential channels. O2 [...]

Mobile industry predictions for 2009 part 1

As the year draws to a close, and as I did last year I thought I would prepare some thoughts on what might happen in the mobile industry in 2009. Looking back at some of my 2008 predictions – for some I was pretty spot on – and for others I was woefully incorrect. In [...]

Alan Moore and the allure of the mobile society

I came across a brilliant whitepaper by fellow mobile advertising evangelist Alan Moore titled “The glittering allure of the mobile society”. Alan was asked to author the paper by Microsoft and it is well worth spending 30 minutes or so reading his excellent views on the allure of the mobile that has started to totally [...]

Mobile Industry Thought Leaders New Initiative Launched

I am Immensely proud to be associated with this new phase of Jonathan MacDonald’s “yes we can” change program for mobile advertising.  Full details below. Mobile Industry Thought Leaders Launch Mobile Advertising Information Resource EverySingleOneOfUs unites brands, carriers, publishers, associations and industry experts to identify solutions and best practices that facilitate positive change in the [...]

Frost and Sullivan on mobile advertising

I came across an updated Frost and Sullivan report on mobile advertising titled “Ad-based Content and Communications: A Lucrative Avenue for the Mobile Industry”. The report contains a forecast figure for what they believe mobile advertising will be worth in 2012.  I’m deliberately not going to quote the figure (because these mobile advertising forecasts keep changing [...]

And now an ad from Fanta – but not for grownups

Over at Giles Rhys Jones’ excellent interactive marketing trends blog he has blogged about a new Fanta mobile application developed by the team at Ogilvy Advertising that is quite unique. The team has developed a mobile application for Fanta that is only audible to teenagers. The application is based on the same technology used to deter [...]