The infographic below gives a simplistic view of the rapid growth of mobile data computing and usage- across all the major devices. The shift towards Tablet, M2M and Smartphones can be clearly seen …

The infographic below gives a simplistic view of the rapid growth of mobile data computing – both online & offline. It can be seen that Asia is projected to become a hotbed of mobile information exchange and marketing…

Catching the customer at the right moment and right location increases the probability of conversion in this age of non-stop marketing. As the travel shoppers move away from the static media avenues like TV, PC, LapTop etc…, the only channel of connecting to them is through their mobile devices – Mobile phone, Smart phones, iPhone, Blackberry…

Image Credit: www.burningthebacon.com

Let’s envisage a simple scenario – You are traveling towards Disneyland with your wife and four kids and you know that everyone in your battalion will be competing with each other to get the best and most number of rides -  your wallet is going to get a serious dent (sure, you are putting up a brave face!). As you get nearer to the dream destination, you receive a message on your GPS / iPhone – The message is a summary of all the discounts that you can avail of inside the DisneyLand by using a promotional code which you just received inside the message. You make a quick mental calculation and suddenly the finances look upbeat – You might be able to take $500 – $700 off your final budget. That’s not bad…Mobile marketing does get a customers’ eye – with extreme targeting

Caesar’s Palace is one first big names in the hospitality segment to utilize the mobile marketing menu – by utilizing the GPS mobile app targeted at visitors. Guests at Caesar’s can get all the on-spot information on their mobile phones – restaurant hours and rates, booking facility, list of performers in The Colosseum. Visitors to Caesars Palace can opt-in for this GPS app which will provide customized discount and offers to venues in proximity to the user. So, as long as you are staying in Caesar’s, your every movement will be tracked just to give you the best offers in your current location. That’s a win-win situation for both Caesar’s and its guests.

And Caesars i s not alone in this race to tap the sentiments of customers when they are most likely to take a decision. This trend is reflected in the exponential growth of mobile marketing and advertising – it is projected to reach $50 billion by 2014 from it’s current figure of $29 billion. According to a Forrester study-

• “54 percent of online business travelers and 48 percent of online leisure travelers who have web-enabled mobile devices have used the channel to look up travel-related information such as a flight’s on-time status, driving directions or hotel room information.”
• “18 percent of business travelers and 15 percent of leisure travelers researched hotel availability on their mobile devices
  in the past year.”

In addition to the point-of-sale persuasion ..aka Location-based marketing, Mobile devices are also being utilized to create opt-in list for future Email Marketing campaigns – Which we will be discussing in our next post.

Now comes the part of my broken promise to myself. As i was about to shift to another shopping AD, i could not help but notice the word Facebook at the bottom of the page – A Facebook profile link of  Woodland ….. www.facebook.com/woodlandadventure. Nothing wrong with utilizing the extra space on your AD when you have bought it, but it did pulled me into mulling over the change in the equation – Print media boosting the digital media for a major brand.

The next thing i know was that i was searching for my elusive scissors to get this AD ready for a scan  – another one hour in blasting off the post. As usual, my dream of a  day out was postponed….

No newspapers from next Sunday….time to Go Green..

But, whoever is a part of human society knows one fact for sure – “There is nothing called a Free lunch”. May be Karl Marx cannot detect it, but the pennies are slipping through the cracks somewhere. Somebody is paying for the hyper-involvement in the social networks.

(Image Credit: www.cartoonstock.com)

Who is at the receiving end?

It’s time for the big bosses to raise a brow….

The UK social media office engagement figures look like this -

2 millions x 1 hour / day = Social involvement during the office hours [Sample size = 1000 British workers]. = $23 billion dollars

Its is estimated that the US social engagement index during the office hours will be higher the British figure and China might be catching up fast – It’s a different reason china decided to ban Google, when in fact Facebook might be making a dent in its productivity as well as communist ideology on an hourly basis.

Well, let’s for a moment jump to the other side of the fence, where the employees are perched – The intelligence that you get out of the chorus is that the social networking is cost-free, global, knowledge-sharing university where years are saved every day – as employees, trouble-shooters and academia share the latest data, theories and algorithm – thus making every desktop a vibrant R&D hub – well, can you beat that?

Well, I agree with this cross-pollination potential of social and professional networks….

Once again, going back to the original spot. Looking from here, the corporate honchos would be in serious doubt whether millisecond is spent in knowledge dissemination and not personal frivolities…leaving it here for the moment….

As expected, it’s a spiraling debate  with too many angles and intangibles….

Adios…

A couple of things went right for Facebook at the same time – First it got a much needed facelift – Second it was splashed all across the TV channels that it was banned Pakistan and Bangladesh for hurting the national sentiments – Now that’s called the perfect recipe for a ‘Top kill’ PR campaign. Google would pay billions to be in FB’s shoes at this time…

Remember Starbucks – the maverick marketing team that changed the way cappuccino cups can be used as billboards… Lets get a glimpse of Starbuck-facebook tango –

So, now you know why the book has a new face…Its the new billboard. If Coffee can be sold here, then why not Ski rentals? Take a look for yourself…That’s economics for you and we know that it works, no matter how many people are after your ass…

Adopting means other than conferences has many disadvantages like messages getting lost in transition, distortions in understanding motives, failure in direct feedback collection, etc. Above all, establishing contact individually with widely spread team members can become a cumbersome process. Conferences overcome all these disadvantages and saves time and energy by allowance of addressing concentrated congregation at one time.

Though business houses are preferring webinars and online conferences, the utility and importance of traditional conferences is not yet ruled out. However, with environmental awareness and corporate social responsibility coming to a mainstay, adoption of green conferences that are a saver on carbon footprint is the need of the hour and earth.

How to design a green conference?

• Paperless invitations: Gone are the days of printed invitations. Printouts are finding their place in the pages of history. Lightening fast emails, newsletters and SMS are a norm. They save paper, consume less energy and utilize already existing mediums to travel across, thereby leaving no carbon footprints of their own.
• Grouped gatherings: Instead of arranging a big conference at a place that demands delegates to travel all across; regrouping and arranging three to four regional conferences will save on carbon footprint in terms of fossil fuel consumption per head.
• On site accommodation: If the conference period is long enough to require delegates to stay overnight or for a couple of days; then arrange accommodation as close as possible to the conference venue to avoid travelling by gas guzzling vehicles. Otherwise, arrange for mass transports like buses to covey to the venue.
• Open venue: Conferences held outdoors in a daytime will do away with artificial illumination and ventilation, and incur minimal electricity consumption. In case indoors are a must, look out for a venue that has plenty of windows or glass panels to allow for natural light and ventilation.
• Electronic material: Kill your urge to distribute printed booklets, leaflets, brochures, etc. Send them via email in advance or after the event. Do not distribute CDs either. They contribute to e-waste after loading onto PCs.
• Platter matter: How about offering altogether vegan menu with organic ingredients cooked with bio-fuels? It may not please your guests but certainly will please our planet.
• Don’t stick to plastic: Your conference should be a no plastic zone. Don’t supply water in plastic bottles, eatables wrapped in plastic or use-and-throw plastic plates. If you must, then ensure that these land up in recycle bin.

It’s the matter of getting started with the first conference. Initiate delegates to propose green ideas and soon it will be a norm greener than expected.

Corporate social responsibilities should not be limited only to social contributions that encompass education, better living, health and cultural exchanges. As major contributors to the planet’s well being, and more appropriately ill being, corporate are realizing their accountability towards restricting further damage to the ecology.

This has, in fact, put many corporate in quandary. It is an imperative for the corporate to adopt advanced technologies to maximize their efficiency. At the same time they are forced to convert to non-conventional methodologies that may not be equally efficient, to preserve the environs.

Advanced technologies, most of which were introduced towards the last quarter of 20th century, are effective in maximizing the utilization of available resources without paying much heed to its impact on the ecology. These technologies were mainly concerned with garnering maximum revenues for the entrepreneurs.

The beginning of 21st century has thrown a spanner in the wheel by inputting the ideology of the corporate with eco-guilty consciousness. Most of the corporate were used as a scapegoat to pass on the blame of endangered ecology and imbalanced growth. Individual contributions towards ecological problems like global warming, pollution, etc, and misplaced government policies were swept under the corporate rags.

The important point that was sidelined was that the corporate are here to make profits. Most of them do it within the legal and ethical framework. They should not be held outright responsible for the damaged caused to the environments.
If the corporate spend their efforts on ecological sustenance, they may have to compromise with a major chunk of their profits. Though the advent of green technology is taking certain strides, it is in nascent stage that still is a far shot from its total acceptance and adaptability.

Corporate may be sitting on a fence as far as changing their designing and manufacturing processes are concerned. However, it looks imperative that they will have to forgo their short term profits in order to gain long term benefits for the planet.