Optism™

This week marks our final Permission marketing in the news roundup for 2011. What a great year it has been! To send us all off to year-end celebrations in the right mood, we have reports on Mobile Marketer’s “Marketer of the Year” as well as some inspiring video of mobile campaigns from Mobile Marketing magazine. Also, we hope you will indulge us with our first two pieces, which feature our own recent publications.

Hot off the press, we’d like to draw your attention to a new article by Optism’s Lisa Ciangiulli, published on MobileGroove. In “Why Starbucks’ Mobile Strategy Sets The Bar(rista)” Lisa commends Starbucks for demonstrating their “respect for us (the customer) and a deep understanding of what we need on the move.” Lisa believes the most “effective advertising delivers us value.” And for Lisa, an on-the-go multi-tasking mom and marketing expert, Starbucks delivers the perfect mix of “utility and familiarity.”

Recently named the “Best iPhone Lifestyle App in the U.S.”, the Starbucks app enables people to use their smartphones to make mobile payments, track their Starbucks rewards and send e-gifts to loved ones. In her article, Lisa explores how Starbucks has succeeded by “paying meticulous attention to…the Three Rs of mobile marketing: respect, reinforcement and repeating.”

This week also marked the conclusion of our review of Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing. The series was conceived as a fitting way to celebrate Optism’s one year anniversary. Over the past several months, we’ve featured a chapter-by-chapter review of Seth’s seminal book and analyzed how changes in the mobile and advertising marketplace have impacted the recommendations in his book. We hope you have enjoyed this series. For us, it’s been an opportunity both to be impressed with how innovative Seth’s original work was and to see how far we’ve come as an industry. At Optism, we are firmly committed to permission-based mobile marketing. Read the rest of this entry »

In the final segment of a three-part interview, MobileGroove's Peggy Anne Salz and Ogilvy's Rory Sutherland explore important issues around mobile marketing, such as privacy, the importance of being culturally sensitive and mobile marketing etiquette. Looking towards the future, Sutherland believes marketers need to focus on the value exchange: “How do we improve the value exchange with our existing customers and create new forms of value exchange which enable us profitably to serve more people?”

In Part 1 of the podcast, Mobile Marketing Should Target Moments and Moods, Sutherland talked about how mobile is “spectacularly good” at some things that other channels can’t do. In Part 2, Best Use of Mobile is Customer Service & Feedback, Sutherland explains why he believes that with mobile marketing the ideal behaviour to strive for is customer engagement.

For an agency perspective on the value of mobile marketing, check out part one of Peggy Anne Salz's podcasted interview with Ogilvy's Rory Sutherland on MobileGroove. Mobile, according to Sutherland, is “spectacularly good” at some things that others, like Google, can't do. Mobile can enable brands “to interact with people during target moments (I need something now), target moods (I want something now) and target mindsets (I am considering a purchase, for example).” In the podcast, Sutherland illustrates his points with examples of how companies can take full advantage of mobile marketing's unique capabilities.