The Forrester EMEA Marketing Forum is Just Around the Corner

[Posted by Mark Mulligan]

Follow me on

Forrester’s Marketing Forum EMEA is fast approaching — November 17-18, 2009, in London. I'll be presenting at this event on the topic of 'How Media Will Never be the Same Again'.  The presentation will kick of the Consumer Product Strategy afternoon session focused on series of research we're building that deals with the interplay of media, technology and brands.  We call it the Media Meltdown.  My colleagues Nick Thomas will also be presenting on how the Media Meltdown makes media companies of us all and finally another colleague Ian Fogg will be presenting on how technology companies both shaped and are react to the Media Meltdown.  Before Nick and Ian I'm thrilled to announce that Nokia's Tim Grinsditch will be giving an industry key note to the session which will focus on Nokia's music strategy.  It is a great agenda and I look forward to seeing some of you there

Elsewhere in the event, other leading Forrester analysts will present on leapfrogging competitors out of the recession, enriching online engagement with customers, and which product and service innovations to be ready for. This event provides a platform where marketing and Customer Experience professionals can share innovative best practices, network with peers, benefit from keynotes and track sessions, and pose direct questions to top Forrester analysts during One-On-One Meetings.

 

We have great speakers this year, with keynotes from:

 

Guest Keynote Speakers

·        Bernhard Glock, Former Vice President Global Media Purchases & President World Advertising Federation, P&G

·        Diederick van Thiel, Chief Consumer Marketing Officer, ING Group

·        Conny Kalcher, Vice President Consumer Experiences, LEGO

·        Malcolm Duckett, VP Marketing, Magiq

·        Mike Cripps, Customer Experience Manager, Service Operations, Capital One Financial Services Inc.

·        Kamel Ouadi, Global Digital Media Director, Louis Vuitton

·        Alexandra Wheeler, Director Of Digital Strategy, Starbucks

 

Forrester Keynote Speakers

·        Moira Dorsey, Vice President, Research Director

·        Mary Beth Kemp, Vice President, Principal Analyst

Here are some great ways to maximize your experience:

·        Check this blog for our in-depth updates on keynotes and track sessions.

·        Follow us on Twitter as we plan and launch the Event.

·        Tag your photos and tweets with #FMFE09 to contribute to the conversation.

·        RSVP on our Facebook Event page, and network with attendees.

Take the conversation offline:

On Tuesday November 17, 2009, Forrester hosts a London Tweetup. Tweetups are low-key social events where Twitterers can network and meet the people they tweet with. Anyone can attend; it is an informal atmosphere that allows casual conversations.

 

This tweetup is for anyone who's attending the Forum or lives in the London area. There is no charge for attending the Tweetup, so come meet and mingle with @forrester, @jgownder, @bsimm, @Mark_Mulligan, Alexander Hesse, Peter O'Neill, and others.

Why mobile could reinvent social computing

[Posted by Thomas Husson]

You can also follow me on Twitter at Thomas_Husson

Many innovative start-ups have pioneered mobile social networking in the last few years: BuzzCity, Peperoni, Fring, Nimbuzz, eBuddy, Zyb, Plazes, Loopt, Foursquare and many others demonstrated the potential of the market.

 

In the last few months, a bunch of announcements clearly showed that the convergence between mobile and social computing is gaining traction and attracting the largest stakeholders:

 

·         In September 2009, Facebook announced it had passed the 65,000,000 mobile users' monthly mobile audience mark (which represents more than 20% of a global online audience of 300M users). Bebo, Friendster, MySpace, Orkut also are among the top mobile Web destinations in countries where they have significant online audiences. Twitter partnered with Vodafone and O2 in the UK while offering a mobile VoIP offering with Jajah.

·         Operators such as Vodafone with its “360” initiative and to a lesser extent Orange with “Social Life” are going one step further than just offering access to social networking sites.

·         Handset manufacturers are trying to integrate online social experiences in their devices: INQ gained lot of attention with its INQ 1 (see below a pic from a recent trip in Italy) by winning the “handset of the year” award at MWC, while Nokia recently announced a deeper integration of Facebook in the N97, not to mention the Motoblur product.

 

In the UK, 40% of 16/25 years old are either accessing (17%) or interested in accessing social networking (23%) via their mobile phones. Of course, mobile social computing is primarily a youth activity today. However, it has a strong potential to unlock.   

 

Most of the digital revolution has taken place on the PC so far, with the emergence of email, instant messaging, blogs, photo- and video-sharing sites, and social networks. The ubiquitous nature of mobile phones has changed the way we live and communicate. Letters, diaries, address books, and memories have gone digital, while communication with friends, relatives, and colleagues has never involved such a mix of our personal and professional lives. However, mobile phones are not only communication tools. Mobile phones have unique characteristics that will enhance and modify existing PC-based Social Web experiences.

 

Indeed, mobile social activity is more than just accessing social networking sites while on the go. Mobile phones have the potential to become the hub of Social Computing activities and to be more than just a complement to the PC experience. Mobile phones will increasingly become the glue that holds the social graph together, offering creative tools and immediacy, presence, location, and context when interacting with the real world. The “always on” mobile connected handset frees the Social Web from the chains of the PC and thrusts it into the real world.

 

As Social Computing is still primarily about social communication, traditional telecom and online players will start fighting to tap into consumers’ social address books. It is too early to say who will win the race: stakeholders have different assets, and uncertainties around business models still exist. In fact, stakeholders have no other choice but to collaborate, as no single player can really own a person’s social graph. They need to balance business opportunities with the need to respect consumers’ privacy concerns by providing them with the tools to manage their digital identities.

 

Despite massive communication audiences, traditional online giants have failed so far to turn their communication audiences into social audiences — a lesson that traditional telecom stakeholders should bear in mind! Moving away from personal information management (PIM) to fun, exciting social experiences is not an easy game.

 

If you want to know more about this topic, Forrester Research just published a new report: “Why mobile could reinvent social computing”. Clients can access it here.

 

I had some interesting discussions with my colleagues serving Interactive Marketers and there are still lots of unknown and open issues around the convergence between mobile and social computing. I’d be curious to know your thoughts on this nascent and exciting topic. If you want to share your ideas, feel free to comment below.

Mobile contactless payments in Europe: reality beyond the NFC hype

[Posted by Thomas Husson]

You can also follow me on Twitter at Thomas_Husson

 Hardly a week goes by without a press article or conference reporting how ubiquitous mobile payment services and their adoption are in Japan. Forrester decided to put some figures on the so-called Japanese mass-market reality and to understand why Japan is the declared leader in mobile contactless payment services. What lessons can others learn from the Japanese market and to what extent do they apply to Europe?

There are several reasons why Japan is ahead of the curve among which the role of Felica Networks in the value chain and the scale merchants could benefit from (Sony and DoCoMo invested several dozens of million euros to make sure that retailers and points of sale had the technology to read the chipsets embedded in mobile devices), the loosening of Japan's financial regulations (making it possible for non-banks to become financial services players), operators' role in paving the way for mass market adoption of mobile Internet and higher usage of mobile services (fostering the natural expansion of mobile payments).

Despite this, reality is that the mobile contactless market in Japan is only reaching critical mass, not mass-market adoption. In Europe, conditions differ quite a lot and even if Near-Field Technology is likely to play a key role in the future, the technology is only entering the pre-commercial era.

There are some very positive signs such as banks rolling out NFC payment cards (Barclays in the UK), hypermarket chains like Carrefour adding NFC to their loyalty cards, transporters adding NFC to their transport cards (Navigo, Oyster Card), card networks (Visa, Mastercard) and technology vendors (handset/hardware and smart chip manufacturers) evangelizing the solution, governments offering pre-live conditions (many regions in Europe will help funding live tests such as the one starting next year in Nice). 

However, two key inhibitors will prevent mobile contactless from becoming mainstream anytime soon: conflicting interests and the classic chicken-and-egg situation (handset manufacturers won't start mass production of NFC-capable handsets until the supporting infrastructure is in place) and the huge marketing efforts needed to convince consumers of changing their habits since mobile contactless payments provide only marginal improvements over established systems like cash and credit/debit cards.

However, NFC is much more than a mobile payment technology. It will enable a range of applications and services from various industries, linking together mobile marketing, mobile CRM, and mobile commerce. That's the reason why we believe in its long-term potential.  

If you want for more information, see the full report "Mobile Contactless Payments in Europe: Reality Beyond the NFC Hype".

Forecasting Macworld & CES

Posted by Ian Fogg

The usual predictions, rumours, hype, scaremongering are all in full force this week for the two early January shows. Pundits speculate on what will be announced ahead, and then attempt to retro-fit what products are launched into their world view. It's a dangerous game, and not only because so much of what is written is wrong, and worse, is proven wrong within hours of going online.

 

Much speculation before and during the event has been on the impact of the economy on new products to be announced. The reality is that the major product launches we are seeing now were on final approach when the economy hit the rocks last autumn. Product managers have had time to make small tweaks, or make brave last minute no-go decisions, but not to build from scratch for the 2009 world.

 

This deafening noise of speculation and numerous launches obscures the key strategies with which the most successful companies operate. Too much writing focuses on tactics, such as the specifics of individual new products. But very launches are really ground-breaking. This is why so much media attention focuses on Apple: It's their ability to do something radical and apparently revolutionary which delights headline writers.

 

We'll see later today what Apple launches.

 

Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that it is pursuing the long game. Each individual product meets a need and looks to be profitable but simultaneously ties into other parts of Apple's product range to together move the company forward. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. There are few companies for which that is true.

 

My forecast: Half of peoples' predictions for new Apple products will be completely wrong, a further third will happen but months or years later, and no more than one fifth of the product guesses will come true this week. The most innovative Apple products will come from the spoofers.