Remote Control for Your Life

Your phone is becoming a digital remote control - just point it at stuff to get info about it sent to your phone.

Here's one of the recent Google Android open source winners who invented a new twist on reading bar codes with your camera phone (though his video example of scanning a CD bar code seems a little antiquated. I mean, who buys CD's anymore? Sheeesh.). This takes the mobile bar code revolution happening in Japan one step further. A handful of start-ups are even working on technology that recognizes the shapes of objects making bar codes obsolete.

It's really fun to see all the innovations taking place with mobile technology. Check out BioWallet, another Android winner.

Innovating Through a Sticky Problem

You can innovate anywhere, on anything. Take the peanut butter jar. That's a pretty mundane item; it's been around forever. And we've also been frustrated forever because you can never quite get that last ooze of peanut butter with your knife way down in the corners of the jar.

Well, someone came up with a pretty good idea to make the peanut butter jar better. Why not put lids on both sides so you can open the bottom and get the last bit out?

Just goes to show you can make anything a little better when you apply some creativity and reinvent from scratch.

The Frontal Lobe is a Marketer's Best Friend.

Among the most important differences that separate us from the animals are 1) A frontal lobe and 2) Opposable thumbs. Learning to use your frontal lobe is, in my opinion, the most powerful marketing tool you have.

Your frontal lobe manages imagination and predicting the future. It's your frontal lobe that predicts that anchovy ice cream is a bad idea. You don't have to taste anchovy ice cream to know it's a bad idea, you just know it is because your frontal lobe tells you it is.

· Steve Job's frontal lobe predicted that people want simple, beautiful technology.
· Herb Kelleher's frontal lobe predicted that people want a low-cost, no-frills airline.
· Art Fry's frontal lobe predicted that people need a way to stick notes anywhere.
· Dean Kamen’s frontal lobe predicted that urbanites everywhere would ditch their cars for a Segway scooter. He should stop taking his frontal lobe so seriously.

I'm not claiming to be a Steve Jobs or a Herb Kelleher, but my frontal lobe is telling me that mobile marketing will one day be bigger than web marketing. It will be the third screen of media. It's targeted. It's efficient. It's permission-based. It's timely (point of sale). It's viral. It's personal. It's measurable. And as long as the mobile operators keep spammers and other marketing mercenaries out, it will be widely accepted by consumers (it already is in Asia and Scandinavia).

That's why I'm using my frontal lobe to predict how mobile marketing and research can energize the campaigns of my clients. And since my clients and I all have opposable thumbs too, we've already accomplished some good work in this area.

Personal Space Issues

Growing up in the west (Utah), I like my space. In the west we don’t wedge ourselves so tightly into subway cars that you know who ate pastrami for lunch. We don’t jockey for position in crowded streets or share tables with strangers in crowded cafes. We’re more into endless horizons, spacious homes and the open road.

Apparently, not everyone understands the concept of the “personal space bubble”.

While hiking through Bryce Canyon National Park this weekend I found myself totally alone on a cliff, breathing in a 300-mile view of red-rock hoodoos and Douglas Fir. Even though the cliff was 1000’s of feet long, a passing group of German tourists ignored all the vacant parts and surrounded me at pheromone distance, seemingly oblivious to any awkward space problems and my evil glare that would have said “I hope you develop a nasty tongue rash” if I knew how to glare in German.

Oh well. Let’s just chalk it up to Europe being a crowded place with space bubble deflation issues and a finicky Utah boy who prizes solitude.

SMS Marketing Fights Food Inflation

To help curb food price gouging, the Italian government has turned to the ultimate information dissemination device for grocery shoppers…mobile phones.

A shopper can text “bananas” to short code 47947 and get an instant SMS reply listing average banana pricing in their area at different types of stores. The system sends price info for various fruits, meats, veggies, dairy products and fish.

If governments recognize mobile as an effective product info service for on-site shoppers, marketers should too.

Don't Play Hard To Get With Your Customers

Some businesses make money by acting too busy for you. Think a trendy night club whose popularity grows as the line grows, wedding planners that can't quite fit you in this month, or a restaurant that's already taking reservations for August. Sometimes scarcity makes customers want you more.

But for most types of businesses, it helps to be eager. Eager to win your business and eager to impress right off the bat.

I'm a new landlord and recently needed to run a background check on a potential tenant. I called a local screening firm and was nonchalantly told by the woman answering the phone that she was eating lunch and would call me back. A little irritated I agreed and waited for a return call. After almost 3 days, they finally got back to me but of course it was too late and I'd already found another service.

Showing customers that you are eager and excited to help goes a long way. Everyone wants to feel wanted, especially your customers.

Direct to the Source

Have you ever had someone try to avoid you? If you're a marketer you know the feeling. Consumers avoid marketers with TiVo, pop-up blockers, email white-lists, caller ID and that last defensive mental moat, selective perception.

In the not-so-far-off future, a new advertising model will emerge: direct incentives in exchange for accepting ads. The perfect way to do this is with mobile phones. Mobile marketing is micro targeted, efficient, personal, location based and relevant. Of course, if people get advertising on their phone, they'll also want to be incentivized with cash or a subsidized phone bill.

Effective mobile marketing goes right to the source, cutting out traditional media entirely. As marketers pay consumers to view their ads directly online and on their phones, traditional media companies lose power, but it will be a positive overall because advertisers will have permission to connect directly to consumers, and consumers will have more control over what kind of marketing they get.