Optism™

Note: This blog post was written by Peggy Anne Salz and originally published in the Permission Marketing Briefing Room hosted by Optism on the MobileGroove website.

From brands and agencies to Millennials and veteran observers, I encourage each to give their take on the issues and opportunities around mobile — specifically permission-based mobile marketing. Today we take a step back and look at the Big Picture and examine the questions posed in an even bigger debate going on in the industry: what is the value chain? And, more importantly, what is the value of apps?

Who better to ask than Martin Wilson? Martin recently published a critical look at companies’ obsession with delivering iPhone apps (a condition he terms iSyndrome). In it he also urges companies to think through their decision carefully because an iPhone app doesn’t deliver the same value to every customer segment.

For a start, it ignores much of the youth demographic and fails to reach many regions across the globe for whom a simple feature-phone is the only phone. The reaction to his post and how comments via Twitter (and retweeted by mobile experts and influencers including Tomi Ahonen) was tremendous.

I caught up with Martin to ask him to update us on iSyndrome and discuss the wider implications for mobile marketers. In 2008 Martin founded Indigo 102, a leading independent consultancy built on a passion to drive the mobile internet environment. Martin has just come out of stealth mode with a new venture sharply focused on helping clients with branch networks publish content in a consistent, branded and managed manner across platforms to engage consumers. Read the rest of this entry »