Get Mobile the Smart Way

 

It’s pretty much a given that everyone has a mobile phone these days. In fact 96% of 18-35 year olds in Ireland own a smartphone. 60% of these own an iPhone. I myself am the proud owner of a (wait for it)…Nokia C1-01. If you don’t know what that is, well you’re not the only one. I get the most judgemental looks from people when I take my phone out in public and I don’t blame them, because frankly its seen as an antique by now. I only bought it about 2 years ago.

This just shows how much we have progressed when it comes to cellular devices in recent years. When they first appeared, the size of bricks and twice as heavy, they had to be carried around in briefcases no less. Now they’re getting thinner and thinner, and if the latest iPhone 6 is anything to go by, in a few years time they won’t physically exist anymore. There appears to be no limit to how thin a smartphone can be these days, but that’s just one of many interesting points made at the Get Mobile conference on the 11th of November.

The first few statistics are courtesy of Dr. Theo Lynn, who introduced the conference. He also had a few more up his sleeve, such as 90% of us check our phones first thing when we wake up, 87% of us use smartphones on public transport, and a shocking 57% of people (admitted to) using their mobile phone on the toilet. Talk about unhygienic…

Our first speaker was Mark Hughes, CEO of Digifeye, where “every vision is a decision”. Around 250 million images are shared by mobile users everyday, and Digifye lets you look at them and effectively, buy what you see. This led to the creation of Style-Eyes, which allows you to take a picture of someone’s outfit, and find an exact match or similar piece of clothing from over 900 UK and US high street brands. Without apps like this, the ‘Duchess Effect’ (the influence of Kate Middleton, fashionista extraordinaire and royal Brit) and general fashion trends wouldn’t exist to the same extent. All this, available on what used to be a simple mobile phone.

Our next speaker was Cathal Gurrin, a lecturer in computing here in DCU, and a researcher specialising in data analytics. He started with a bang, stating that the iPhone 5 is 6000 times more powerful than the Apollo, a rocket that flew to the moon of all places. Not only that, but smartphones like the iPhone 5 will be seen as about advanced as my Nokia C1-01 in 5 years time.
Cathal also talked a bit about Google Glass, and here is where I can’t really take him seriously. Apparently the recently launched Google Glass will be mainstream by 2015. That’s next year, if you didn’t realise. Sorry?
Maybe I’m being a bit cynical here, but even at the rate at which smartphones and technology are evolving around us, I don’t think, especially here in Ireland, that we’ll all be donning what looks like robot headgear in the next year. On the other hand, that’s the beauty of this day and age, the inability to predict what will come next. The concept of seeing everything through your own eyes, but also through a computer built into your glasses, is something that we used to look at it Star Trek and think “wow that’s so cool!”. Now its actually possible.

Eoin Cruise took to the stage next, the market lead in Ireland for Nokia, soon to be Microsoft Mobile Devices. Come Christmas, not only will I own an antique phone, but I’ll own a rare breed, as Nokia will cease to exist. Eoin talked a bit about how this came about, from the renewal of 2011, the revitalisation of 2012, the momentum of 2013, to the recent consolidation of 2014. In the last few years, a number of objectives were brought forward by Microsoft, including to increase the usage of Microsoft, and also to work on what are termed the “bottom range” of smartphones, ie. the €60-€200 range. He also mentioned Universal Windows Apps, which us business studies students are already well acquainted with from our work on the DICE tourism app project.

The next speaker was Paul Davey, mobile leader of IBM– international business machines if you’ve ever wondered. They claim to have made the first ever smartphone back in 1994, albeit a lot more basic and a lot more clunky and heavy than today. IBM are one of those companies that you hear an awful lot  about, and see their logo floating around a lot, however if you’re like me, you’ve never really quite known who they are or what they do. Are they mobile based? Security based? Are they involved in the process of making airplanes? Believe it or not, the answer to all of the above is yes. They do everything, from app development in partnership with Apple, to working with Twitter, to even assisting the fight against cancer. Impressive resume, to say the least.

It could be quite hard to follow a company curing cancer, in fact our final speaker Alex Meisl, the chair of Wiforia prefaced his talk with “shit, those guys are doing that?”, however he was definitely not outshone by them. Did you know that 1/3 of adults would rather give up sex than their smartphone, and 2/3 adults would forgo alcohol in favour of it? Well now you do. He talked for an hour and a half so for all of our sakes, I’ll stick to the most important points he made (in my opinion) otherwise we’ll be here all day! He talked a lot about app strategy, something I’d never really thought about before, but makes so much sense. Due to the popularity of apps these days, its very common for companies, retailers etc. to feel like they have to make an app fast and get it out there to the public. However how many of them actually sit down and think long and hard about the actual content of their app, and how it can benefit customers? Take John Lewis as an example. By increasing IT expenditure by 600% in 5 years, they doubled their sales, to $16 billion. This is a combination of app development and also showcases the importance of mobile-optimised sites. Considering the fact that 61% of people leave a site immediately if they can’t view it properly on their smartphone, it would be utterly ridiculous for a company to not invest in mobile app development.

I’ll leave you with a question that Alex put to us; what’s holding us back? The answer is quite simply, fear, uncertainty and doubt with regards to the mobile industry. This is nonsensical as it is evident that there is so much potential for businesses to expand and develop and be innovative when it comes to the smartphone. So why not be smart about it?

Getting Social with Media

Get Social, Helix

If you’d never come across ‘Get Social’ before, don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of it either until I attended the conference on Tuesday 14th October. Introduced by Dr Theo Lynn and held in the Helix, myself along with roughly 400 audience members settled down for a 4 hour event, consisting of 7 different speakers from various different companies specializing in social media marketing.

What does this whole Get Social thing actually mean though? Well it focuses on finding out what people are talking about and why they are talking about it. It looks at who’s influential on the world wide web, and uses this information and much more in order the ‘predict the future’ if you will, in terms of what kind of products there will be a market for in the future, whether it be the iPhone 27 (that’s the next model right?) or simple holiday deals. In short, it does a lot more than you may think. When many of us hear “social media” we think ‘Facebook,Twitter, Instagram and Youtube’. The big guns. Created to keep in touch with friends, family and the world’s population. However there’s so much more use they could be put to from a business perspective. Allow me to explain.

The first speaker was Deirdre Hogan, a recent graduate of DCU, and the brains behind Gajo. The “quick and easy way to discover your target audience”. Remember when I mentioned the whole “predicting future products”? That’s primarily what her company does, or is setting out to do since its early days yet. A big part of her job, is the question of how to make machines that can in short, understand our generation. We have a tendency to abbreviate words, use hashtags and generally tweet as if we were deprived of inventions such as spell check. One way Deirdre explained that they overcome this struggle, is to use a process known as ‘Key Word Targeting’. By matching travel agencies, for example with customers tweets about “holidays”, “Spain”, and “travel”, they can narrow down the extensive range of tweets out there, and only target relevant consumers interested in what they’re offering. Simple but effective, especially in this day and age.

Second to take to the stage was Jane McDaid, director of Thinkhouse, a youth communications industry based in both Ireland and the UK. After some initial technical difficulties (always ironic in these technologically orientated events), and the promising words “we are recruiting”, Jane launched into a fascinating video presentation specializing in the “7 Sins of Killer Content” online. Viral videos are a huge part of social media. The smarter they are, the more likely they are to hook a viewer and sell them their product, brand, service or information. So what are the 7 sins you ask?

• Comedy
• Epic
• Emotive
• WTF?
• Zeitgeist
• NSFW (Not Safe for Work)
• Informative (check out the amazing documentary below)

The next speaker was Lucy Campbell, RTE’s marketing director. Her focus is on the needs of the  audience, and following the leadership of digital economy. As technology has evolved and progressed over the last few years, it has been her job to ensure that RTE as a television and radio based medium, has evolved with it. This has led to the creation of services such as RTE Player, a catch up web player that is also available in app form, one which I have used many times myself. Brilliant for keeping on top of Home and Away! She also made a very interesting point, that shocked me when she mentioned that although 89% of adults regularly surf the internet and do most of their online work on smartphones, only 4% of Irish companies actually have mobile-optimized websites. They’re immediately setting themselves up for a loss in my opinion, as unlike RTE they aren’t engaging with the majority of their viewer demographic. Madness, right?

Our next speaker was Alex Coleman, of Wolfgang Digital,a website that although we didn’t immediately recognise it, once reminded of the sex shop story that broke in March this year, we were quick to remember where it got its fame from. However thats not all that Wolfgang are about. They essentially offer digital marketing and advertising to companies of any shape or size and have worked with brands as big as Littlewoods Ireland and Brown Thomas. Alex told some fascinating tales, such as the time Google went down on Thursday 16th August 2013 for less than 5 minutes. In those 5 minutes alone there was a 40% fall in internet usage, giving evidence to the claim that Google makes the world wide web go ’round. Alex also talked about the “Google Effect”, and the ongoing rivalry between Google and Facebook, the two leading social media outlets for advertising. I especially liked his point, about using social media to create brand advocacy, something that is so simple and easy to do, yet I had never really considered it before.

Next we listened to none other than Nicolas Cappiello, the creater of the infamous LinkedIn website, an en-devour to connect the world’s professional community- think of it as a Facebook for business people if you will. Or even better, an online CV. As someone who admittedly had never really come across LinkedIn before, I was confused as to how it could possibly benefit me. Cappiello sold it to me, simply stating that it is for those who “want to be better at what they are doing” and “want to be informed” in terms of the opportunities available for them in their careers. So once I’ve got a spare minute, I’m going to set up an account, because why wouldn’t you want to give yourself every single chance at succeeding in life?

Last but certainly not least was Eric Weaver, the chief social media officer of IPG Mediabrands Worldwide. So he’s kind of a big deal. As you can imagine, after 3 and a half hours of listening to people, your brain might start to switch off, however with his enthusiasm and booming American accent, that didn’t happen at all. He talked about Facebook and paid advertising and asked who was the most important in ensuring the success of a business. Is it the CEO? The staff? The janitor? Nope. Its the consumer. When a consumer shares a link on Twitter, likes a page on Facebook, emails or texts their friend telling them about an amazing product they’ve used, thats essentially free advertising for the company. Its called Social Performance Optimization, and its happening all around us,every minute of every day. Need an example? Throughout the course of this post, I’ve unintentionally advertised for all of the above companies, and it didn’t cost them a single cent.

Social media marketing is without a doubt, where its at right now.