“HERE” is the name of Nokia’s new brand.

Unlike Ovi a couple of years ago, this brand will speak for itself. This is all about interaction with places around you, about context. Thanks to a best-of-breed product experience, Nokia is well positioned to deliver the most differentiated location experience.

During “Mapplegate” at the launch of iOS 6, my colleague Ted Schadler explained why it was a strategic imperative for Apple to do its own maps. However, at that time, most consumers and observers were comparing only Apple and Google Maps. The harsh reality was that Nokia couldn’t leverage its strength in the location-based space without an umbrella brand like “here.”

Make no mistake: This is not “HERE by Nokia” or any other form of sub-brand. This is an independent brand. Why? Because the opportunity is bigger than just Nokia.

This is about addressing different types of connected devices — not just mobile phones but also tablets, connected cars, and wearables. As such, “HERE” could play a pivotal role in helping Nokia leverage tomorrow’s new mobile form factors.

A year ago, Forrester fielded a Global Mobile Maturity Online Survey. We interviewed more than 250 executives in charge of their companies’ mobile strategies around the globe.

To help executives and product strategists benchmark and mature their mobile consumer approach, we’re updating this survey.

Planning and organizing for the use of mobile technologies is a complex task. Integrating mobile as part of a broader corporate strategy is even more complex. However some players are leading the way and working on infrastructure, staffing, and competencies that are hard to see unless you look closely. If you want to understand the role that mobile is playing in various organizations, what their objectives are, how they measure the success of their mobile initiatives, and a lot more, you just have to share with us your own perspective and we will aggregate answers. For your efforts, we will share a free copy of the survey results.

If you’re in charge of your company's mobile consumer initiative or if you’re familiar with it, then please take this survey.

Click here to start the questionnaire. 

If you’re not familiar with your company’s mobile consumer approach, please forward this survey to the relevant colleagues who are in charge of defining or implementing your mobile consumer approach. 

·         The survey takes less than 15 minutes to complete.

·         The survey will be live until February 10, 2013.

·         Responses will be kept strictly confidential and published only in an aggregated and anonymous manner.

 Major events — political, natural, or economic — create a lot of eyeballs on a select set of media and stories. But as friends chimed in on Facebook, Twitter, and texts, they shared stories of who stood by them during the crisis. My colleague David Cooperstein and I were discussing what marketers did and should do during a crisis. Do your customers need to hear from you during Hurricane Sandy? We’ve seen a few best practices from companies that are handling communications in a helpful and dignified way. We hope they are useful to our readers in charge of customer communications, both this week and in general.

• USAA's mobile app reduces angst. The USAA Mobile App allows customers to report a property or auto claim, submit photos, and view claims status. Storm-related tweets featured a link to the app so that customers knew how to find it and submit a claim. One friend of mine was able to submit a claim, including photos, in about 2 minutes, allowing him to focus on cleaning up the debris. Its relative ubiquity — available for the iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry — means that any USAA customer with a smartphone can take advantage of these game-changing and life-managing services.

A few minutes ago I had the pleasure of announcing the winners of the 2012 Business-to-Consumer Forrester Groundswell Awards at the Forrester eBusiness Forum in Chicago. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read through, not just the highlights below, but the full entries for all the finalists and all the winners — because once again this year we received many outstanding entries. It’s clear that social media has reached a tipping point, where savvy companies are using social tools to pursue real business objectives rather than simply chasing fans and followers. The 2012 winners put social programs to use in their organizations — successfully marketing their wares, supporting their customers, and generating insights.

Here, then, are our B2C finalists and winners for 2012.

Social Impact (Business-to-Consumer)

Winner

Million Moms Challenge Community by Blog Frog

ABC News and the United Nations Foundation partnered with BlogFrog to raise awareness and funds around issues affecting moms and babies around the world. This program identified more than 800 social influencers and activated them to create trusted content about motherhood. In total, the bloggers reached more than 15 million readers and garnered over 31 million total social media impressions. This in turn led tens of thousands of people to get actively involved: More than 15,000 people signed up for the Million Moms Challenge Community in the first two weeks.

Energizing (Business-to-Consumer)

Winner