Optism Team | Optism Blog

Author Archive

Apple Provides Consumer Value with Passbook, A Mobile Wallet

By Optism Team, Sep 7, 2012

In June, Apple unveiled the new features of its pending IOS 6 mobile software release, including a new app called, Passbook. This is a mobile app that organizes store cards, gift cards, coupons and even boarding passes and concert tickets. Apple describes Passbook as;

Your boarding passes, movie tickets, retail coupons, loyalty cards, and more are now all in one place. With Passbook, you can scan your iPhone or iPod touch to check in for a flight, get into a movie, and redeem a coupon. You can also see when your coupons expire, where your concert seats are, and the balance left on that all-important coffee bar card.

As of now, Passbook is a more like a “mobile wallet” that doesn’t let you actually purchase goods, but it does organize your bulging wallet full of physical cards and tickets.

With the introduction of Passbook, Apple is squarely focused on convenience for the mobile consumer rather than mobile spending. Users of Passbook would load the electronic versions of their store card, coupons and tickets and then the cards appear into flaps that can be pulled up as needed. Passbook would be time and location sensitive, so for example as a user reached the airport boarding gate the boarding pass appears on the iPhone lock screen.

The location awareness will be a very compelling feature of Passbook. By delivering content to the user when they need it -- makes life easier. The app could record location behaviors and could anticipate a user’s needs, providing even more value. Apple could mine this data to reach out to advertisers with not only historical data but predictive data, i.e. we estimate that 435 people will buy a Mocha Cappuccino at a Starbucks in Dayton, OH today.

The big elephant in the room for the mobile payments industry is Apple’s iTunes. Apple has 400 million active iTunes accounts tied to credit cards that it could connect to Passbook. Apple already has a mountain of consumer data about people; Apple knows the music they like, the apps they have downloaded and the movies they like. Connecting iTunes to Passbook will provide Apple with billions of additional consumer touch points.

Apple made another move in July which could impact Passbook’s eventual entry into actually enabling mobile payments as it was announced the company intends to acquire AuthenTec, a mobile software security and fingerprint authentication company. Apple has not said anything publically about the acquisition, but AuthenTec could provide a fingerprint solution for secure mobile payments. The fingerprint technology could make your mobile payments secure in case you lose your phone as well as eliminating the need for passwords. The technology could be rolled out to the next iPhone after this fall’s introduction.

Apple isn’t the only one making mobile commerce news as there has been a flurry of recent announcements from Apple’s mobile payment competitors; including the Square/Starbucks agreement, the PayPal/Discover partnership and the formation of Merchant Consumer Exchange consortium of big retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, CVS and Best Buy.

For now, Apple is playing it cautious by introducing the Passbook mobile wallet app while it waits for the mobile payments market to mature and evolve. By focusing on delivering a mobile convenience rather than a “mobile payments” app shows that Apple is squarely focused on the needs of the consumer. Apple has not said whether the new iPhone 5 will contain NFC or whether it will connect Passbook to its 400 million iTunes customers.

For Apple, it is not about being first with mobile payments; it is about being the best at delivering value for consumers.

Optism and Etisalat bring Permission Mobile Advertising to Nigeria

By Optism Team, Aug 17, 2012

We are very happy to announce our partnership with Etisalat Nigeria and the official launch of our Optism-enabled permission-based mobile advertising service. During a limited initial launch in the beginning of 2012, more than 800,000 subscribers opted in to participate in the mobile advertising service known as EasyAdz. Now agencies and brands can use the EasyAdz service powered by Optism to engage with all of Etisalat’s 13 million mobile subscribers in Nigeria.

Through Optism, Etisalat Nigeria will enable advertisers to interact with this highly engaged mobile population, with dialogue messages that can be tailored to the recipients’ known preferences. This provides advertisers with two compelling advantages. One, they know that the people they reach want to hear from them — so their messages will not be perceived as spam. Second, because subscribers share a bit about themselves through the opt-in process, advertisers can direct their messages to those people who are interested in their type of product or service.

Amr El-Leithy, head of Alcatel-Lucent's business in the Middle East & Africa: “We are very enthusiastic to again be working with the Etisalat group to bring a more personalized and compelling experience to their customers. After a successful launch of Optism in the UAE it is extremely gratifying to have another member of the group choose our solution for permission-based mobile marketing. We see this as a solid endorsement of the way we are meeting expectations.”

Etisalat Nigeria has seen very impressive results from all of the Optism-supported campaigns including these three success stories.

Nigerian Breweries promoted their “Star” beer brand by inviting a well-targeted audience of males between 18 and 25 years old to be part of a series of music
concerts – called “Star Trek”. With a response rate of more than 30%, and a click-through rate of almost 9%, the campaign created an avenue to reinforce the brand's spirit of fun.

For Coca-Cola, the campaign offered an ‘Open and Win’ opportunity which encouraged people to look under bottle caps for a code which they would then text to see if they had won free airtime. Participants were also encouraged to forward the campaign link to friends – adding a viral, social media element. The campaign had an almost 35% response rate among the 18-25 age group and 6.5% click-thru-rate.

Beverage supplier Sprite offered a ’Triple Slam’ campaign focused on basketball, dance and music – key interests for young people. The focus of the campaign was not to win a prize but to get people to show the world their talents and to ‘like’ Sprite on Facebook. In this campaign, there was a 22% response rate and an 18% click-through rate to the Sprite Facebook page

Read the entire press release and visit our solution page for advertisers or mobile operators to see how Optism can deliver mobile campaign results for you.

Leave a comment
IN: case studies, general, research

Optism Blog Recaps The First Half of 2012 in Mobile

By Optism Team, Aug 10, 2012

August is a good time to reflect so we thought it would be a good time to look back at all the mobile content we have created here on the Optism Blog.

Mobile Marketing

Tap In to the Power of Digital Moms

Trust: A Competitive Advantage for Companies

Let’s Keep Mobile Marketing Simple, To Make It Big (!)

What’s hot in mobile marketing today? Read the IJMM to find out!

What Marketers Need To Know About Mobile Apps

Insightful Book Reveals How To Work, Create & Sell With Digital Natives

Mobile Payments and Mobile Wallets

LevelUp Upends the Mobile Payments Paradigm

Why Mobile Carriers Will (Not) Partner with Google Wallet

What Will Be the Compelling Reason That People Start Using Mobile Payments?

How Come Everyone Is Asking the Wrong Questions About Mobile Wallets?