What have Japanese hay fever sufferers, stock market junkies, anglers,
and Hello Kitty fans all got in common? The answer, of course, is the
medium of their dreams: welcome to i-mode. From today's pollen count in
Yamagata Prefecture, to the latest movements on the Nikkei, to the
fishing conditions in the Tama River and the cheery "Ohayo Gozaimasu" of
the 6am wake-up call - there's no escaping the incredible range of new
consumer uses for the mobile phone, or the excitement it is
creating.
With an installed base of over 13 million subscribers and 1.5 million
new users every month, it's no wonder the pundits are gasping;
especially when there's a growing scepticism about the alternative
technology protocol, WAP. But some questions now begin to form. Is the
Japanese m.tsunami a precursor to a communications revolution on a truly
oceanic scale?
And, where so much attention has been given to the consumer benefits,
there's a question for marketers and communicators: so what's in it for
us? Is this a new medium? Or a channel? Or what?
The wireless Web, dominated by DoCoMo's i-mode, has turned Japan from
being yesterday's Internet laggard into today's vanguard. High quality
video and audio will soon be available. With the launch of
next-generation G3 services in the summer of 2002, the lead will be
quite definitive.
So far, the whole phenomenon has been characterised by a uniquely
mass-market approach. The critical point here is to differentiate
between rich content, as a spur to adoption, and real usage.
While there are over 20,000 alternative sites on DoCoMo, and many
receive very creditable hits, the weight of usage is towards email (over
75 per cent), followed by entertainment or very simple information, for
instance news or weather. The explosion of 'short mail', particularly
amongst younger subscribers, in turn accounts for the bulk of
e-mail.
Here, I believe some particularly Japanese cultural characteristics are
at play. In a society where interactions are formal and constrained,
m.friendship comes easy and cheap - even to the point of being carried
on between complete strangers. And in a commuting lifestyle where dead
time needs to be filled ("himatsubushi") the mobile Internet offers
relief.
Underlying all this is the fact that the Internet population in Japan
was relatively undeveloped: while the Internet has always been a
somewhat intimidating entity to the Japanese consumer, the mobile
Internet offers reassuringly simple pre-packaged access in site-sized
chunks.
What the Japanese experience shows us is that the serious, sober
characterisation of the mobile Internet in so many market intelligence
reports as an improving, information-led, left-brain entity is a very
different world. If you want surging penetration, then fun,
old-fashioned fun, is the name of the game.
This is a lesson for WAP in Europe and North America. Rather than
positioning itself as a gateway to the whole, wild world of the Web, it
should really be considering whether it is more fruitful to offer
edited, digestible packages of it. It goes against the grain of
'democratic' Internet thinking, but actually it is much better
marketing.
In the meantime, the looming reality in Asia is that in many markets,
the mobile phone will quite simply replace the computer as the source of
Internet access. Consider China: it is possible that there are 60
million mobile phone users currently, compared to 12 million Internet
users. By the end of this year, most mobile phones sold in China will be
WAP-enabled. Companies such as Linktone are already offering telco
content which parallels that of DoCoMo.
Here is a big attraction to marketers: a new base of significant
critical mass, high spending and well profiled, with which to
communicate to their customers. But how?
The early days of the mobile Internet have seen it much touted as an ad
medium. This is fraught with difficulty. Certainly, it is already being
sold as one in Japan - ValueClick Japan charges 100-120 yen per click
for ads on i-mode accessible websites, which in turn receive five to 10
times more hits than regular Internet sites. So far so good. But, in its
own right, this is not yet a prime image building medium. Even when we
project ourselves forward to next year and being able to transmit full
commercials, the ability to replicate the depth of viewing that can be
experienced on a normal sized TV is very limited.
That is why, rather than seeing it as just another medium for the same
material, it will be more attractive to think of it as a medium for
mini-branding. Rather like m&m's are to the Mars Bar, we will need to
design tailor-made brand nuggets which respond to the requirements of
the medium.
A large part of the current issue is visual. How can one achieve graphic
honesty with the brand's look and feel when one is limited to aquarium
green and primitive type? Only 3G, and the larger screens which must in
time come with it, will open up the real opportunity.
The more strategically compelling case for m.marketing is customer
relationships.
We have a new mechanism within CRM; the ability in a pervasive world not
just to gather more information about behaviour, but also to use this to
create time-sensitive and location-sensitive alerts.
The theory is self-evident. However, two notes of caution have to be
sounded.
First, who owns the data? The telco or the advertiser? In the case of
Japan, it is very much DoCoMo - a fact which is likely to strangle at
birth the growth of a genuine CRM business in Japan. Ironically,
marketers may have to look to China where a less monopolistic approach
prevails to see a realisation of the truly big opportunity in Asia.
Secondly, what to do with it when you've got it? Quite simply, it will
overwhelm. Wireless operators tend not to have a simple view of each
customer's experience and behaviour across the organisation and the
different data systems. Brand owners still are very laggard in being
able to merge current on and off line data, and the existing limitations
of their capabilities will define their ability to use new data, in a
way which enables accurate and meaningful personalisation.
Nonetheless, it does offer marketers a golden gift, nothing less than
the re-invention of moments of truth. Since Sven Carlsson invented the
term for Scandinavian Airlines some 30 years ago, it has been a concept
in search of a technology. Now it has found it. The ability to send
messages - text, sound, visual - at critical points in time, or
alongside pervasive trigger points, is truly valuable for brands.
Already in Japan we are seeing the setting up of i-concierge
services.
For instance, mypage offers PDA-like functionality and will mail you
your daily 'to do' list; primitive, maybe, but the shape of better
things to come.
A critical moment of truth which has been notoriously difficult for
brands to influence is the point of purchase. In the old days, Point of
Sale was a marketing weapon, but retailer power killed it off: rest in
peace, the shelf wobbler. Now we have the ability to switch the balance
of power, to create branded in-store service. So imagine the ability to
talk to the brand owner directly, by direct calling to customer service
while actually considering the purchase.
Taken a step further, the customer will have a powerful tool in his hand
not just to exercise his or her purchase decision, but to monitor his or
her satisfaction. I think we will see "satisfaction banks", where
services can be self monitored, or compared on an on-going basis, and
ultimately linked to various pervasive transactions, at the time of the
transaction.
The big revolution of m.marketing, therefore, will be to help leverage
the brand in its channels. This is the arrival of new economy sales
promotion.
Once again, it has the theoretical potential to rebalance the
relationship between retailer and brand, because it will allow brand
marketers to drive customers into stores with offers rather more
directly than now.
Currently, though it is the retailers who show the early
experimentation.
For instance, the entertainment brand Tsutaya in Japan targets its
200,000 strong membership club (of whom 40,000 came via i-mode) with
m.coupons to encourage extra usage, upgrades and so on. Offers can be
geographically triggered, drive the consumer into the store, and are
linked to broader rewards programmes. The critical thing about this sort
of application is not that it can be done, however, but how it is done.
It is the backend - the use of data and targeting - to ensure that
offers are directed to where they are profitable that will make this as
different as targeted sales promotion is from mass money off.
This highlights the critical importance of the off-line brand.
m.marketing will be giving a new dimension to these rather than creating
just another cheap, discount, bargain basement zone rather such as has
been created in the banner space of the Internet. That would be a
desperate waste of the mobile medium.
In the past, a traditional TV advertisement appealed to the consumer at
leisure, and promoted general awareness. Now m.communication and
m.transactions can make specific offers close in time and space to the
purchase. So we can say, for brands, that the unique contribution of the
mobile Internet is that:
- It condenses the gap and makes a link between creating desire and
stimulating a transaction
- It will be a medium for convergence where it matters most
- It will be a highly powerful consumer activation tool
In saying all this, let's not forget though that it needs to be used
creatively. The lesson of Asia so far is that wireless works best when
it is an involving pre-packaged entity - not as a mere gateway offering
access to the entire, untamed Internet.
