OPINION: When site-sized morsels offer sweet taste of Web success

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.

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