social media is like pinball wizardry Heineken social media head says

This was the second panel at the useful social media conference and it was devoted to customer interaction. This is the report for part 1 in the panel with Lennart Boorsma who works for Heineken (Global Brand Team). The moderator was Mike McGrail from the SocialPenguinBlog

Heineken presentation

It was entitled “igniting conversations” preferably over a beer, Lennart said as part of his introduction.  Heineken believe that it is  social since 1873! Beer is social by definition (as long as you don’t have too much of it though). The idea is to turn digital into a true marketing tool and Lennart sees “social as a means to create engagement and deepen connections with the audience”. Heineken mainly started its social activity 2 years ago with the merger of the most important facebook page and decided to “have more stuff in place” which meant Youtube, Twitter and a few others like Pinterest and Iinstagram. “Nobody is interested in the back-office tools for managing social media” Lennart added. “If you say you implemented a new CMS for Facebook no one is going to be thrilled”. Yet, without it, nothing is possible he said. Nowadays, social has to be embedded in the brief from the start Lennart Boorsma went on.

“Old media used to be like a bowling alley and now it’s like pinball” Lennart said. Your messages are changed and bounce around. Likewise, content has to change and has to be fun and tell a story. It’s theory but it is hard and it takes a lot of time and requires luck too! The goal is to generate more engagement and conversations about the brand. Today a TV commercial isn’t sufficient, one has to provide a real-life experience.

This is why Heineken launched their star player dual screen app to enable football fans to score points as they answer questions wile watching football matches on their TV. It was launched on April 26th and was hugely successful. Yet there are challenges such as latency in the distribution of TV programmes, namely over cable, DSL or satellite, for users must be given a fair chance to answer all the questions in a reasonable timeframe.

Lennart also showed us a new experience around an enhanced TV commercial whereby real customers could “serenade their dates” and it provided more experience than just a classic commercial. 8 hours worth of streaming were delivered, people from 160 countries played, and 4.3 billion hits were achieved. Lennart concluded by saying that they are only at the beginning and that the work is paying off nicely with over 7 million fans now, up from above 2 millions 2 years ago and “one of the fastest growing pages worldwide”. When asked about cost, Lennart added that “when you have a great shareable idea, you don’t need to spend a lot of money”. I couldn’t agree more with that statement.

#leweb12 – hoteltonight: “smartphones are where the market is going”

The Silicon entrepreneur explained that there are 2 main groups of hotel bookers. One is for people who have the time to book in advance, be it for business or leisure, whereas the other group is impulse bookers. These are the ones that Hoteltonight is catering for: “they are presented with last minute deals. Having an app in your pockets truly changes the way you think about hotels” Shank added.

[note: this is a guest post I did yesterday on behalf of the live.orange.com blog]

[Sam Shank, chain start-up entrepreneur and founder of Hoteltonight]

In the US there are a lot of chains but a lot less in the UK. “The ownership is very fragmented, and this is the bread and butter because people can choose and pick up new places that are nice” Shank said.

not just a High end service?

One could be tempted to think that this is a very exclusive service for the rich and wealthy, but Sam Shank disagrees strongly with that statement: “we want to be something for everyone. It goes from luxury hotels to more basic hotels and even business hotels” he said. The application delivers 3 deals from a selection of 20 hotels each night. Hotels are competing amongst themselves and “nothing can be predicted” Shank said. This emphasises the lastminute effect in so far as you can’t choose what hotel to stay in in advance.

the market?

Admittedly, there are “many vendors in the same space” and some are multi-million companies such as Expedia for instance. “The main way hoteltonight competes is from singular focus and mobile, content and merchandising, customer support and online marketing” Shank said. The start-up’s singular focus on mobile, and their advantage on competition is that they have no legacy systems. Most businessmen are using their smartphones on the move but “it is still a challenge when teaching people that they should use only mobiles” Shank added.

In essence, Hoteltonght is focussing only on last minute deals and mobiles are well suited for this. Besides, it’s a marketing channel for hotels because 90% of buyers have never stayed in the selected hotel before.

Shank’s third start-up

Hoteltonight is Sam’s third start-up: “all have been successful but I know that lack of focus is reason number one for failure” Sam Shank explained, and this is why they focus on smart phones, also because “this is where the market is going” he concluded.

mobility in retail industry: main security challenges and prospects

This is an original guest post by Roger Hockaday (picture below and bio at the end of this piece), Aruba Networks. Aruba’s Atmosphere Corporate blog is dedicated to mobile devices. Aruba Networks is a leading provider of next-generation network access solutions for the mobile enterprise (disclosure: Aruba Networks is also a North American customer of my company, Orange)

Risk and Reward: Tablets and Smartphones in Secure Retail

The introduction of smartphones and tablets into the retail environment brings great rewards to the forward looking retailers. They present a disruptive technology and provide an opportunity to innovate both front-of-store and back-of-store operations, yet they also introduce new security risks if their adoption is not properly developed.

The iPad, Android tablets (large and small) and iPod Touches or smartphones are altering the retail experience around the world. Retailers are the midst of a point-of-sale (PoS) transformation from terminals to smartphones and tablets. In fact, many retailers have started embracing them as best practice and, according to a recent poll (Aruba Networks 2012 Retail Survey), 56% of retailers plan to use iPads for Point of Sale in the next two years.

[source: the Aruba networks 2012 retail survey full results at http://bit.ly/arubaretail]

Sales executives in car showrooms use tablets to engage better with prospective customers, remaining by the car to access colour charts, model specification and instantly check stock levels without having to return to their desk. One well known US department store identified the challenge of walk-away customers in the shoe department as sales associates went to bring stock to the customers. The retailer justified the costs associated with the use of tablets by sales assistants simply to prevent customer walk-away as the assistant could now check stock levels, order shoes to be brought onto the sales floor, or offer alternates should the first choice item be unavailable, all while remaining with the customer.

To enable the use of tablets and smartphones in retail it is of course necessary to deploy in-store wireless (more than 50% of retailers surveyed intend this) but this requires a significant overhaul of the legacy networks first put into stores just to facilitate back-office functions such as stock-checking.

The last few years have already seen wireless networks extend onto the sales floor to support Point-of-Sale (hence the need to meet Payment Card Industry standards to protect cardholder and authentication data), but it is a more challenging proposition to support tablets for sales assistants, and even more to offer hotspot services to shoppers (as planned by 37% of retailers by the end of 2014).

In-store wireless enables a new set of mobile applications to allow retailers to engage even further with customers; applications that can push information to customer smartphones and iPads as they walk in the door enabling them to download rich content when and where they want. Combined with store associates empowered to access stock data and process transactions with tablets, it all adds up to an outstanding customer experience.

The challenge is how to manage this expansion of devices, users and applications on the retail network.

Front-of-store wireless requires pervasive coverage (there’s no secret to making a wireless network that works; good coverage combined with proven RF management tools and a management platform that provides real time visibility into the coverage, device location and application performance). The ‘secret sauce’ for retailers is the choice of platform used to manage the discovery of devices on the network, the provisioning of large numbers of devices and users without overwhelming the IT department, the ability deliver guest access with advertising, and delivery of context-based / role based connectivity.

[souce: ibid.]

While the cardholder associations of PCI (PCI standing for Payment Card Industry, with companies such as AMEX, VISA and MasterCard) require different levels of compliance based on transaction volumes, the use of Wi-Fi in an organisation brings a layer of requirements that the retailer must comply with.

Role-based access (as required in PCI DSS) can be as simple as separating employees from customers (or guests). However, in order to provide a more flexible infrastructure it is more logical to create roles based not just on the person (employee, manager, customer), but also the device (iPad, smartphone, handheld scanner), the location (retail outlet, hotspot, corporate office), and application (PoS, database, Internet access). This more holistic approach – one that understands the context in which the network is being used will ultimately provide a more flexible and efficient wireless network than one that simply separates employees from customers.

Security, capacity and flexibility will become the watch-words of the next generation in-store networks. Security to comply with the needs of PCI DSS, capacity to meet the needs of employees and customers using tablets and smartphones, and flexibility to cope with the new applications and rapid changes needed to work in a competitive environment. Tomorrow’s retail network will be very different to yesterdays.

read more

• the Aruba Networks retail survey with full results at http://bit.ly/arubaretail
• using Wifi security on mobile phones and devices
• my report on Kaspersky’s statement about mobile crime at MWC
• Kate Bourdet’s own wrap up of mobile security at MWC
• an interview with Roger Hockaday at IP EXPO ONLINE

about the author

Roger Hockaday is Director of Marketing, Aruba Networks, EMEA. A former executive of Alcatel, Infoblox and Packeteer he is currently responsible for developing end user opportunities and channels to market in the secure government communications sector across EMEA for Aruba Networks.

immersion corporation makes retro gaming experience richer on tablets #mwc12

Reporting live from mobile world congress from Barcelona for Orange Live

Immersion is a San Jose based company which was set up 18 years ago in order to develop force feedback controllers for joystick and other gaming equipment manufacturers such as Sony, Logitech etc. Immersion is now moving into mobile gaming and is working with mobile and tablet device manufacturers in order to add force-feedback into mobile gaming.

Fancy playing Grand Theft Auto on your Android tablet with the same kind of user experience as you used to have on a console or personal computer? Well, this is possible and I even tried it and it works. Immersion, a Nasdaq listed company based in San Jose, Cal. has developed drivers which make it possible for old games like Sonic or GTA to be played on Android tablets with a richer experience. Thanks to the technology developed by immersion, one can get force feedback when slamming the doors of a car or bumping into cars or buildings (don’t try this in real life!). The device is no longer passive and therefore you can have the best of both worlds: the mobile world and the retro game world.

The company is more or less in “stealth mode” to put it in the words of the person I interviewed on the stand, hidden behind large manufacturers of Android tablets that wish to use retro gaming as a means to attract consumers to their Android-based tablets. “Android is open source” the immersion representative said “and therefore, one can gain a lot of control on the platform”.

a new haptic experience

This new haptic experience is made possible through the registration of 1,200 patents, the immersion representative declared. “The software is free” he added, as “we want developers to be able to use it and develop on it; they produce good content and that makes it possible for us to partner with manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, Toshiba, Fujistu to name a few”.

As Glenn Le Santo pointed out in his story on the Live Orange Blog, the mobile world congress is not just about large brands but also a myriad small companies which are part of this ecosystem and make it thrive.

Kaspersky: “we will soon witness cybercrime explosion in the mobile world” #MWC #MWC12

This post was originally written for the Orange Live Blog, reporting live from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

On Tuesday February 27th, I had the opportunity to attend a Press conference organised by Kaspersky security. Eugene Kaspersky himself was present for this big announcement in mobile security. The firm is already widely known for its PC protecting suite and today it made a few important announcements related to its release of parental control suites for mobile devices as well as an advanced protection suite for Android devices. In a flamboyant presentation by one of the Press’s preferred showmen of the software industry, the Russian expert and businessman highlighted the risks that mobile users are facing in the near future. Yet, there has also been criticisms in the industry for scare mongering on the part of security software editors …

Cybercrime will soon be too big to be ignored

15 years ago, Personal computer users didn’t have a clue about cybercrime. Viruses didn’t exist, or were in limited supply, and when they did exist they tended to be rather harmless. Similarly, as of today, many users are still wondering whether cybercrime is real or not when it comes to mobility. Nowadays, PC users aren’t questioning that “malicious software” (aka malware) exists nor that it is a real threat. We all know it’s there and that having a proper antivirus installed and regularly updated is a must-have.  Such was Eugene Kaspersky’s introduction, meaning to announce that cybercrime is just about to soar in the mobile industry.

”IT will split into 2 environments : Android for the home environment and Business with the Windows environment” Kaspersky announced, even though Windows and Nokia my prove him wrong soon as it happens; but we understand what he is hinting at: open environments like Android are easier to pry into and are the prime targets for cyber criminals. “No safe zone will subsist” he added.

Going back into the history of computing, viruses like Chernobyl in 1998 were  so fierce that they made infected machines unusable. The virus would go and reprogram the BIOS (the basic software below Windows which makes your machine work) and damage it beyond repair. This virus and others like Melissa or “I love you” changed people’s minds about cybercrime for ever Kaspersky rightfully remarked.

Cybercrime is moving into mobiles

The Russian expert’s theory is that mobility is going the same route as computers a few years ago because, in his mind, “there are fundamentally no differences between computers and mobile devices”.

“The number of computer threats has reached a plateau” he went on, so there are few or no new players in the PC cybercrime space or otherwise, they would  need to be extremely professional. The computer crime scene is therefore mature enough and there are also other non malware related scams which work well in that space (SPAM, phishing, pharming being the most frequent ones). “Online banking only started in 2001-2002 and this is the reason why crime soared too after those days”, now that mobile equipment is booming (in 2012 there will be more than 484 million smartphones worldwide) “we will witness mobile ‘malware’ explosion” Kaspersky warned while showing us a chart (see picture above) with some very worrying numbers.

“75% of malware is targeted at Android”

“Cybercrime in the mobile industry started as soon as 2005” he added, and Android is now becoming the dominant mobile malware platform. (sign of the times, Android went through 1199 modifications in Dec 2011 because of security threats). Eugene Kaspersky said that he was expecting this to happen and he is now “sure that the trend will follow that of computers in 2000 and beyond. “This is bad news for smartphone manufacturer who will need to add extra processing power to cater for security” he said and added facetiously “this isn’t my fault!”. As the above chart shows, things started to get very bad in 2010 and mostly in 2011. And it’s not just mobile devices and tablets he concluded but all connected devices such as TV screens namely.

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR DEVICE

But it wouldn’t be right to scare all mobile and tablet users without giving them good and straightforward advice with regard to the protection of their devices. And apart from the security suites sold by Kaspersky (and its competitors), common sense is a good method for keeping your mobile data out of harm’s way. Here are Kaspersky’s recommendations:

1. lock your mobile screen
2. use security software (of course, you would expect that coming from a security software editor)
3. back up your mobile data
4. use encryption whenever possible
5. beware of what you install and don’t click on dodgy websites
6. do not jailbreak your device as you would enhance the capability of malicious software to damage the core of your mobile device
7. do not connect to untrusted Wi-Fi points
8. do not skip updates of your OS when they are available
9. do not assume that your mobile device is safer than your PC

2012 predictions

Kaspersky and his teams fortunately do not predict that a mobile IT apocalypse will take place in 2012 but they are pretty certain that Android will be the main target for massive attacks and that 2012 will see the rise of the first massive worms for Android as well as ‘malware’ in official market applications.

“scareware for charlatans”?

A critique of software security companies’ approach to malware protection on mobile devices (not just Kaspersky’s) was fuelled last November by Chris DiBona, leader of open-source software at Google. Kaspersky’s Denis Maslennikov dismissed DiBona’s claims by saying that Google had launched their own anti virus solution soon after. A complete thread of the Kaspersky/Google story is available at this url. It’s a bit early to tell who is right and who is wrong however even though there may be a bit of truth on both sides. Time will tell.

About Kaspersky security

The Russian federation is known for its high concentration of online crime perpetrators but also for being the home of some of the world’s most revered security experts. Kaspersky, named after its founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky, a math lover who used his skills to make surfing safer is one of the leaders in that space. You can find details about their offerings at Kaspersky.com

e-health happening at last and coming to our homes #mwc #mwc12

This post was originally written for the live.orange.com blog, reporting live from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

E-health is no longer a dream and we had further evidence of this at Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona while visiting the “connected house” pavilion. And guess who’s behind this in terms of communications? Orange of course (disclosure: I work for Orange). Let’s zoom into these solutions of a very very near future in which our health and namely that of elderly citizens will be (ethically) monitored and surveyed at a distance.

Qualcomm is an interesting company. Its history goes back to the late 1980’s a time at which it was doing m2m (machine to machine communications) for the transportation sector under the omnitracs brand name. The early 1990’s saw Qualcomm moving into the mobile chips business (in actual fact, they even produced handsets before selling that division to Ericsson) for which it is known to all but their recent move is a radical one and it’s called Qualcommlife. Qualcommlife is an independent spin off from the main company with a funding of $100m (out of the total $500m which are part of the Qualcomm VC fund) I was told by the Qualcomm representative on their stand at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Qualcomm life launched towards the end of 2011 and has now signed an agreement with Orange regarding its brand new NET2 platform, as depicted in the press announcement on the Orange.com website.

health monitoring made easy

Health monitoring isn’t completely new I must admit. I remember our first demos at Orange labs in Paris more than 7 or 8 years ago! Yet this technology is slowly and surely becoming mainstream and this is made possible through the understanding that users want technology to get the job done and not spend hours fixing the wifi or bluetooth interface of their phone. This is exactly what NET2 is doing for you: “grandma doesn’t want to fiddle about with the wifi so we had to build an intelligent device which would pair automatically” the Qualcommlife representative declared. The Net2 gateway (which will be powered by Orange from a network point of view) is meant to do just that.

NET2 is a platform which enables patients to connect their devices (weight scales, blood pressure monitor, glucose monitoring device, …) directly without any complex pairing procedures. “All you have to do is plug in the gateway and it will find the patient’s device automatically Qualcommlife said.

But there are more than many ways of connecting to your GP than the NET2 gateway: standard mobile devices, embedded devices are also possible. You may even connect your treadmill to a remote monitoring device and record your data as seen in the following picture taken in the Connected House pavilion.

At last, here is a simple and promising way of enabling remote health checks, enforcing the remote monitoring and the surveying of patients with a diabetes or a heart condition for instance, in a seamless and easy way. At the end of the day, “national health authorities might even be enticed to encourage the development of such systems in order to enforce country-wide health programs” the Qualcommlife representative added.

This is a major step forward and one more proof that innovations take approximately 10 years to settle and disseminate.

Welcome to the API jungle – part II – what Brands should do

Welcome to the API jungle or why developers must learn how to find, select, integrate APIs and contribute to their improvement and evolution (part II)

by Martin Duval, CEO, Bluenove

The API landscape is extremely dynamic. The following 2 diagrams taken from ProgrammableWeb describe the most common APIs which are used in order to build mash-ups. They show the dominance of major historic players (check the “see all time” diagram) but also the more recent rise of new players such as Twilio in the recent past (last 14 days), as well as the convergence of Cloud Computing and Telecom.

There is yet more evidence of the emergence of this new ecosystem; it is indeed interesting to notice the emergence of new players offering the technical support to manage API infrastructures such as the new Application Enablement Services Business Unit from Alcatel-Lucent (the one that acquired ProgrammableWeb in 2010), Mashery, Apigee, Aepona or 3Scale.

But let’s come back to the relationship between Apps and APIs.

After all, aren’t applications mere channels? To support their promotion, we can reasonably bet that Brands will also create APIs in the future, with probably a more obvious way to demonstrate Return On Investment through the number of innovative apps created by third party creative developers than through the number of downloads KPI[7] of their own app. Brands could therefore propose APIs in order to extend the reach of their products and services.

Here are some suggestions for a few popular Brands[8].

• Nike could create a “Just Size It” API that gives the perfect shoe size from the photo of your feet,
• Evian could create a hydration API that calculates the quantity of water a person needs to drink daily and reminds her when rehydration is needed,
• Netflix has proposed an API to tap into its customers’ creative capabilities, and even organized a contest [9] so as to crowdsource ideas leading to the improvement of the algorithms of its movie recommendation engine,
• French off-licence chain Nicolas could create an API that allows its customers to find and leave recommendations about the wine they buy.

How could these companies support the use of their APIs, and therefore the promotion of their Brand? This would be done by the developers who would make sure to make APIs accessible by the end users on different interfaces, and who would find ways to remunerate themselves through the proposition of new business models.

Of course Brands can still develop some specific applications themselves, but the decision to propose an Open API will offer an unparalleled way to boost exponentially the reach of their promotion.

A lot of marketing managers are sometimes the victims of the ‘gadget syndrome’: they follow the trend getting on board the last fashionable feature to include into their marketing plans. One year it is the ‘Facebook Page’, or the ‘Twitter account’, and the year after the ‘Mobile App’.

But as part of a more sustainable marketing and innovation strategy, the best solution may very well not be an application but rather an Open API.

Another trend to take into account as a booster for the number of APIs, is Open Data. The opening of public data by the administrations (After initiatives in the US with Data.gov and in the UK with Data.gov.uk, Etalab[10] is also about to launch the Data.gouv.fr portal of data sets in December 2011) and French cities such as Rennes[11], Paris[12] or Montpellier[13] have already exposed some data sets with some of them as APIs.

Open Data for businessese

The concept also appeals to businesses as shown by the Bluenove white paper (in French)  entitled “Open Data: what are the issues and the opportunities for the enterprise?” with sponsors such as French railways SNCF, French Post Office Group La Poste, SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT and the French confectionary giant Poult group. The Civil Service, local governments as well as businesses will have to learn how to attract, engage and manage a community of developers but also of entrepreneurs, researchers, academics, students and companies from other industries to motivate them to use their APIs and boost their innovation.

as a conclusion: the fundamental role of developers

Martin Duval, CEO, Bluenove

One the one hand major platforms continue relentlessly to open themselves to to more and more end users thanks to more open developments. On the other hand, developers will try to invent new applications but will also have to use an increasing number of available APIs and use new skills to detect, select, integrate them but also contribute to improve them and even ask for new ones.

One sees new types of requirements, services and skills emerging which keep the collaboration and innovation momentum going between the members of these complex ecosystems among which developers have a fundamental role to play.

__________________

[7] KPI : Key Performance Indicator

[8] Examples from this article on Mashable by Adam Kleinberg : http://mashable.com/2011/01/04/brand-open-api-developers/

[9] One of ’the 12 levers of Open Innovation’ : see http://www.slideshare.net/Bluenove

[10] EtaLab : http://www.etalab.gouv.fr/

[11] Rennes Open Data : http://www.data.rennes-metropole.fr/

[12] Paris : http://www.bluenove.com/publications/revue-de-presse/bluenove-fait-parler-les-donnees-de-la-ville-de-paris-et-le-web/

[13] Montpellier Open Data : http://opendata.montpelliernumerique.fr/Le-projet

Welcome to the API jungle – part I – a surfeit of APIs

Welcome to the API jungle or why developers must learn how to find, select, integrate APIs and contribute to their improvement and evolution (part I)

by Martin Duval, CEO, Bluenove

As I started writing this article at the beginning of October 2011 , the http://www.programmableweb.com/[1] web site indicated on its home page that it has identified 4007 APIs and 6175 mash-ups on a global footprint: At the moment you are reading this piece on the Visionary Marketing, I am certain these numbers are completely outdated. I agree that, Dear Developers, these numbers are still very far from your ‘Ocean of Apps’ but this new ecosystem nevertheless starts to look like a ‘Jungle of APIs’.

First and foremost, let’s take the time to put this notion of Open APIs back into its context. ‘Application Programming Interfaces’ do enable the connection between different IT platforms and the integration of different application and services through the creation of a ‘mash-up’. Open APIs proposed by a mobile or web player aim at helping the creation of an ecosystem around a common platform, therefore forming a dynamic community of creative developers who are given the opportunity to innovate faster and in many more directions, than if  they wished to do it on their own. This is therefore a genuine Open Innovation strategy in which the various players will have to initiate and maintain a long-term bond of trust, based on elements such as stability, sustainability, ease of use of the platform and the APIs, but also based on a win-win relationship with its community of partner developers.

Beyond the major web platforms (Google, Facebook, Ebay, Twitter, Amazon, etc.) that propose to the developers a big set of APIs and of course the main mobile OSes (Iphone, Android, Windows Phone, etc.) offering their SDKs[2] to support the development of mobile applications, similar open programs exist as well in the Telecom industry. Telecom operators such as Orange (with Orange API[3]), Telefonica (with their BlueVia[4] program) or Telenor (with Mobilt Bedriftsnett[5]) also allow access to third parties to some of their network assets such as SMS, click-to-call, location, storage, billing, etc. in order to facilitate the emergence of new services through the innovation potential from developers, start-ups and brands.

A signal demonstrating the need for rationalisation and standardisation in this ‘jungle of APIs’ came up with the GSMA ‘One API’[6] initiative: a success still to be confirmed.

___________________

[1] ProgrammableWeb has been aquired by Alcatel-Lucent in 2010

[2] SDK : Software Development Kit

[3] Orange API : http://api.orange.com/en

[4] BlueVia from Telefonica : https://bluevia.com/en/

[5] Telenor Mobilt Bedriftsnett : http://www.telenor.com/en/news-and-media/press-releases/2009/Telenor-opens-new-interface-to-third-parties

[6] GSMA ‘One API’ : http://www.gsmworld.com/oneapi/

80% of apps are making less than 1,000 downloads – #istrategy

The second panel today at iStrategy, the title of which was “Engaging Your Audience with Mobile Apps”. The panellists were:

• Moderator: Mark Curtis – CEO, Flirtomatic
• Panellists: Alex Musil – EVP Product Marketing, Shazam,
• Noah Everett – Founder, Twitpic
• Konstantinos Papamilitiadis – Product & Engineering, Taptu
• Mark Boerrigter – Digital Marketeer, Green Orange

Mark Curtis described his method at Flirtomatic named “the funnel” which starts with

there is nothing magical behind application marketing

Alex Musil from Shazam said that “it all starts with the value proposition of your app” and the next step is to ensure that the “people who are in the best position to promote your app, know about you”. Then Shazam works on Appstore optimisation (working on keywords). Partner promotion includes carriers he added, but that the most important thing is “word of mouth” which – he said – is the reason why Shazam is adding a million users a month thanks to Word of Mouth. This is what is going to pay out he concluded, in the long term.

“not everyone can get under Apple’s underpants!”

Yet not anyone is Shazam! Mark Boerrigter (Football Meister Dutch app) said that the death rate is high amongst applications. Mark Curtis agreed and said that this was an important statement. He also talked about “the death valley” which Mark is calling “the long tail of despair” and these are the apps which are never downloaded. 80% of apps are flops added K Papamiliatiadis, that is to say that they make less than 1000 downloads! He added that Taptu tested all sorts of things but the only thing that worked was the promotion ads on Android and Apple Appstore. Once you have convinced them, he commented, your adoption rate will be staggering. Yet, Mark Curtis stated that “very few people can get under Apple’s underpants” meaning that few of apps manufacturers can actually sell their business case to Apple.

is product design the new marketing?

“What we haven’t heard here” added Mark Curtis, is that there should be a huge reliance on advertising, which means that a lot of effort has to be put on product design and that “product design [might well become] the new marketing”.