Why Nokia should enter the 3D Printer Business

I never worked at Nokia but I did work for them on a number of Consumer Data and Consumer Experience projects as Client Partner for a Berlin based mobile agency. That's the time where I saw first hand, back in 2009, how stubbornly blind they were to what was coming their way. I was one of their first clients back in the 90's when I got my first Nokia 1011 and always loved their phones. I had one till 2010 or so, the last one being the E71. Then came the iPhone, also for me, followed by the Android Tsunami and the rest is history. The latest Lumia models are nice, very nice indeed but I find it hard to believe that they can survive on a "Me has smart phones too". Although nice and refreshing Windows Phone is simply not the disruptive change and jump forward we'd all love to see and have as consumers.

So where should they go from here? My suggestion: they should enter the 3D Printer Business. Here's why.

From past to present

Look up Nokia and on Wikipedia you learn that this company started out in the wood pulp business and then went into the electricity generation business near Tampere in Finland. It added Rubber to its portfolio and started marketing rubber boots under the Nokia Brand Name. It then evolved into a conglomerate of businesses that included over a period of decades, telegraph and telephone cables, bicycles, robots, television, military communication equipment, gas masks and chemicals. The first step towards telecommunications was made in the 70's when they produced a digital switch for telephone exchanges which became the workhorse of the telco industry.

Through its military engineering experience Nokia started experimenting with wireless telephony in the 70's as well and they were directly involved in creating the first communication standards for wireless telephony. Its first GSM phone came out in 1989 and was delivered to Finish telco operator Radiolinja. From there, in less than a decade Nokia quickly dominated the mobile phones business with Motorola and Ericsson in its slipstream.

What does the history of Nokia teach us? Well, they have a lot of experience in engineering, designing and building electronic hardware and they have two decades of programming software for this hardware under their belt. But all of this experience is now at a critical cross road where they risk loosing lots of this heritage if their smartphone business strategy doesn't deliver.


What about 3D printers?

If you believe the hype, 3D printers are going to change the way we live and do business in under two decades from now.
For those who don't know here's why 3D printers are so important:

• They will change the way we produce an increasing number of products dramatically. From prosthetics, via glasses, household items and jewels all the way to the scandal inducing possibility of guns and rifles. 
• This new way of producing one off and personalized goods can potentially make a chunk of what's mass produced today redundant. It will open the door to a new type of retail commerce, i.e. specialized 3D printer stores, that are simply there to turn digital ideas into tangible objects. I'm sure you will see specialized stores springing up because not all printers can deliver all objects. You could metaphorically consider 3D printers as the last missing output module of the internet.
• Although the technology is still in a very early stage and end-results are not always satisfactory, its just a matter of time till we will buy a 3D printer for at home or in the garage and start using it to enhance our daily lives. 

3D printing today is in its infancy. You can buy a 3D printer today for a price that would buy you a sophisticated fridge or washing machine but defining 3D objects, using graphical software, is not an easy task. Of course one can find 3D printer forums and blogs by the dozen and they most will offer  some form of file sharing. Experimentation is still part of the process though but as said before, the promise of being able to print personal objects for a wide variety of applications is getting the attention of an increasing number of consumers, start-ups and businesses. 

So why should Nokia go into the 3D printer business?

Its my strong believe that if any company in the world is capable of entering this space and turning it into a strong new business its Nokia. As I pointed out before they have long standing history in hardware AND software manufacturing. My guess is also that they have access to a well trained workforce and an extensive line up of production partners around the globe. All that's needed is a nod from Stephen Elop and the creation of a 3D printer task force with a R&D budget attached. My  guess is that they'll be able to churn out a 3D printer with an easy to use interface and software within a year. They should not forget to leverage their experience in creating eco-systems. Anyone remembers Ovi or MyNokia? If they create an eco-system around these 3D printers using the same principles as Apple once did with Music and Movies via iTunes, they're in for a healthy future.

So, who introduces me to Mr. Elop so I can pitch the idea? :-)

Thanks for reading my Blog.

Matt

For further reading:
http://3dprintingindustry.com

If you want one yourself check Cubify

Social Media Monitoring @Dmexco 2012 & Generation World

The Demexco Digital Marketing Exposition and Conference in Cologne is already a week behind me and I finally have the time to write a quick update. First and foremost this event is indeed about marketing and less about branding. Even though in today's business environment branding and marketing converge as a result of the growing importance of digital, the majority of the exhibitors are players in the digital marketing service area. From SEO and SMO, via 'classic' email marketing, web-analytics to online video and media placement, the most important players, start-ups and even corporates in these areas where there. Yet there are two topics which caught my eye which are relevant to Branding. Social Media Monitoring and David Sable's Keynote about 'Generation World'.

Watch your Brand

Marketing Dashboards for website statistics and analytics are common tools in marketing today. Whether developed in-house or sourced from an external supplier, they've become the digital equivalent of a plumber's pair of adjustable spanners. With the rise of Social Media a need has risen to monitor discussions, messages and tweets that concern a Brand. 

Over the past two years a number of suppliers and start-ups popped up to address this need. At the Demexco I could only find three serious contenders, one of them being IBM, the other two being TalkWalker and Brandwatch. 

IBM presented a Dashboard based on their Cognos software suite. In a discussion with the sales guy I quickly discovered that they are trying to sell this to the big corporates in Germany. Their challenge there is that they are perceived and probably behave, as a technology provider. Something which is confirmed by the design of their dashboard, the graphs and their selection of parameters. 

Brandwatch had a very nicely looking dashboard which makes a lot of sense for Brand Managers. Their platform can crawl in a couple of European languages and comes across as a fairly mature product with a nice front-end and a website where additional information is available in the form of eBooks and "how-to's".

TalkWalker was probably the best solution for Brand Managers I've seen. Their platform has an easy to grasp interface with intuitive parameters. The nice part about their story is also that they are actually more in the data gathering business and have started to develop the analytics that transforms the data into meaningful indicators. The front-end was actually developed in-house so they can present their data and analytics services better. They claim that their data-set can even look 2 years back in time and can crawl in 50 languages in 49 countries. There platform is also targeted at agencies and research institutions. They are right now very well placed to help Corporate organisations to adopt Brand Monitoring and learn how Social Media Brand Monitoring can be used to improve Branding and how it can contribute to improving Corporate Image and Corporate Design strategy.

Learning by doing

But no matter what the technical solution offers the effectiveness of these platforms depend on how one sets up queries around themes, keywords and combinations of keywords. These then need to be transformed in Brand specific indicators which help Brand Managers to understand what's going on. How these indicators are defined is something each Brand has to learn over time. Finally a Brand needs to decide if certain indicator values require action and what these actions should be.

In any event it is clear that Social Media Brand Monitoring is here to stay and that enterprise tools are available to start this Learning by Doing process.

David Sable's Generation World

The Keynote speeches at Demexco offered a few highlights too, one of them was certainly David Sable's keynote where he explains his Generation World vision. Generation World is about how demographics are changing and globalisation is changing our relationship with brands. It explains why segmentation for marketing purposes in the classic sense is therefor less effective than ever before.

Today we see consumers of over 50 skateboarding and using iPads, something which teenagers are doing as well. Globally we see convergence of consumer behavior around globally available borderless services. In short we see that we are borderless, ageless, more connected but also more siloed.

In this landscape Brands are more and more important as anchor points. At the same time Brands need to understand that consumers are better prepared to choose and they choose based on how a Brand fits their needs. He illustrates this with Uniqlo as a Brand that has a collection that's suitable for a very broad audience of all ages and for both sexes. At the same time American Apparel has understood that their audience is aging and uses therefor senior models for their marketing and advertising.

Consequences of this Generation World are:

- We are in constant Beta, specifically when it comes to digital services.

- Access is the new ownership. In other words I want access to music or books, I don't necessarily need to own them.

- We are craving "Pre-Digital" experiences, like e.g. exchanging recipes and sharing experiences around food they ate. 

- Global resonates locally. We see that global products and services are localized an example that he illustrates using McDonalds and their localized products such as the McVeggie and McFallafel burgers.

He ends with the recommandation to rethink the boundaries of a Brand's audience. 

Generation World is an inspiring vision although I would say that certain assumptions are changing already for the digital native generation. Craving Pre-Digital experiences e.g. is something that digital natives probably see different. For this generation the boundary between digital and real-life is no longer there. Digital experiences are as real as real-life experiences, which means that Brands should be very careful in distinguishing between these two when targeting today's teenagers. Or actually they can use this to their advantage. More specifically this means that conversations on Facebook are as important as a face-to-face meetins if not more important.

This then finally connects the first topic, Social Media Brand Monitoring, with David's speech. Brands should be part of the digital natives generation while being aware of the impact that the Generation World concept has on their Branding and Marketing efforts, knowing that digital conversation are of growing importance.

Accessible Brands & Brand Governance

There are countless examples of Brands having suffered reputational damage in the digital space. 'United Breaks Guitars',  BP increasing their ad presence after the oil spill accident, Sony's Playstation sites being hacked, the list goes on. There are positive examples too, such as the Financial Times successfully launching a web app. By using html 5 they bypass the 30% kickback Apple gets when selling in-app content.
But most examples show how Brands struggle with Social Media, viral videos and technical complexity imposed on them by the interactivity of today's Digital Ecosystem. It is urgent then to define a Digital Brand Strategy.




Why is Digital Different?
To me Digital is just a technology that connects humans with humans but also humans with machines and machines with machines. Digital connections facilitate communication, information exchange, storage and media consumption. In addition there are a few interesting characteristics that have consequences for everyone and that includes Brands, dealing with it.


1. Digital communication is fast as light and viral in nature. Information can reach millions of people in a matter of hours since information can be copied and forwarded immediately with the press of a button. 


2. Digital is cheap and available to a very large part of the global population. A PC in an internet cafe or a smart phone is enough to create and send your own messages. Twitter is the example "par excellence" of a medium that can be used from almost all communication devices, including older smart phones at no cost. But in the right context it reaches further and is faster than any press medium is able to attain. The most recent examples being the protests in Libia and Egypt and the Tsunami in Japan.


3. Digital has a memory that cannot be erased. Paris Hilton can certainly confirm that one of the video's in which she features in her birthday costume will circulate for a while to come. It will an almost eternal reminder of a faux-pas she committed and which she by now might regret.


4. Digital is global. Again the examples of political protesters and the intense use of text messaging in Africa mean that more people have access to internet or more in general digital communication than ever before and the number of digitally enabled people is still rising. 


5. Digital is personal. Facebook has more details about you than you might know. This can be used for a wide variety of purposes. The recent announcement by the Dutch air carrier KLM that they will allow customers to search for a seat next to someone by using Facebook profiles of potential travelers on the same flight illustrates how this can be put to use. The web being so personal means that we start to expect that brands personalize their brand experience around my needs and preferences.


The Brand image disasters from the pas decade clearly illustrate what the consequences of these 5 digital characteristics are. Brands have become accessible because digital is interactive where the interaction can be totally owned and driven by web communities. Brands are as a result more exposed to their customers' opinion and are scrutinized over their actions, communications and responses.




Digital is about Listening, Feedback and Feeding Back
Compared to 'classic' Branding & Brand Management, Digital means that Brands have to deal with potential feedback coming from an increasing set of channels. The following illustrates the difference between classic Brand channels such print and television and the Digital ecosystem. 

The interactive connection between Brands and the Digital Ecosystem means:


- Brands are accessible and will receive Feedback from Digital Communities.
- But Brands also have the opportunity of feeding the Brand Values back into these communities. 
- Digital also creates the opportunity of listening or monitoring how your Brand Values are perceived and live in the Digital eco-system.


I call this the concept of Accessible Brands. Accessibility means that Brands today are more fluid, nonlinear in their development and subject to scrutiny by their clients. The question now is how do you deal with this feedback coming from Digital interactions. How is this connected to the 'classical' Corporate Design & Corporate Identity guidelines.




From Accessible Brands to Brand Governance
The Accessible Brands concept means that Brands have to define a strategy specifically targeted at Digital interactions. How can Brand Managers ensure that Digital interactions are in line with Corporate Design and Corporate Identity guidelines?


It is here where the Brand Governance concept can add real value. What I define by Brand Governance is the following:
- Governance is the act of governing. It relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power or verify performance.
- It consists of either a separate process or is part of management and leadership process.
These processes and systems are typically administered by a government in the public sector and by the Brand Management department in the private sector.


Brand Governance can be seen as an extension of Corporate Design & Corporate Identity guidelines. The guidelines are there to manage expectations in Digital and grant power to e.g. the marketing department to act within the boundaries set. Brand Governance can only be successful if it is monitored in terms of its performance and effectiveness.


Brand Governance can also be regarded as a more specific form of Corporate Governance. It equally implies that stakeholders in the company take responsibility for Brand Communication and Interactions, against a broader Brand Value and Brand Purpose Framework.




What drives Brand Governance?
Brand Governance should be driven by Brand Values. In order for the Governance itself to be credible and effective the Brand Values themselves need to be authentic and positive. 


So before even considering going deep into Digital Space it is important to conduct a Brand Value and Positioning analysis.


Suppose you feel comfortable with your Brand Value Proposition then it is the moment define how your Brand is governed in the Digital Ecosystem.


Governance should then include the following:


- Listen & Monitoring framework
- Planned Actions based on the Brand Values & the Insights generated from Listening & Monitoring
- Show Leadership by taking actions that generate discussions, feedback in line with your  Brand Values and ideally reenforcing them.
- Guide your resources. The marketing people, editors and communication managers should have clear guidelines that help them interact, without boxing them in. At the same time these guidelines should help dealing with emergency situations. But better still they should help preventing catastrophes.




How to do Brand Governance: Easier Done than Said
Since Digital is the "raison d'être" behind The Accessible Brands and Brand Governance concepts, defining them for real world use is a 'brand' new task as well. Although one can define a lot of the guidelines by building on classic Brand CI & CD, adding to it the vast knowledge of expertise coming from the past decade of internet experiences, defining Brand Governance is a fluid process in itself.
Early adopters in Digital that have embraced Social Media at a very early stage have taken risks at first but now benefit from the learnings and best practices they've gathered. If you don't have defined your Brand Governance yet, then I would recommend the following:

1. - Have a good look at your CI & CD and core Brand Values. Are they consistent and based on a credible story. In short is your Brand authentic? 
2. - Listen to existing conversation around your Brand and monitor the discussions.
3. - Define a first framework for Brand Governance guidelines.
4. - Plan interactions
5. - Analyze and learn from these actions and feed them back into your Governance policy.
6. - Repeat step 4 and 5 while never stopping step 2 and occasionally revisiting step 1.

In short go Do and Learn. Or in the famous words of Nike's brand mantra: Just do it!

The Value of Brand Governance

Although no insights and research exists today in the actual value that Digital Brand Governance creates long term for business, it is clear that a quiet a few businesses have suffered already negative impact from Digital Feedback. The costs for the definition of Digital Brand Governance could therefore be allocated under marketing as well as financial risk management. My gut feeling is though that proper Brand Governance will create shareholder value because well managed Accessible Brands are more credible, better visible and closer to the primary revenue sources; their customers. This then can only contribute to the bottom line.

For further reading:

Value of Coporate Governance Lawrence McDonald

Branding Governance: A Participatory Approach to the Brand Building Process
Nicholas Ind, Rune Bjerke, Wiley





























































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What if Homer had a Twitter account?

Today's marketing channel fragmentation can be overwhelming. The difference in brand communication via television commercials and Facebook posts is a stretch for anyone in marketing and brand management. And not only brands are struggling with it, also agencies are trying to answer the all important question: how do I respond to the broadening demand from the client side? What is the glue that holds everything together? So the question is; what if Homer would have had a Twitter account?


The most successful brands tell the most interesting stories. Story-telling is in fact older than written communication. Anyone familiar with Homer and the Odysee probably knows that this famous Greek myth was first passed on by story tellers before it finally got written down.


While it took centuries to go from oral to written. It would take a few more centuries to go from handwritten manuscripts to printing. Basically the 3 first marketing tactics took thousands of years to develop. 


Then we got newspapers, telephone, radio and television. The impact of these channels on both advertising and branding were tremendous but somehow manageable.


Then the internet emerged and branding, marketing and sales have changed almost overnight. 


So here are some thoughts on the recent changes imposed on us by everything digital:

• What would Homer tweet if twitter would have existed in his time?
• Imagine Hannibal and his forces having access to email.
• Would Napoleon have conquered Russia if he would have had a mobile phone?
• Would Shakespeare's Romea & Juliette have ended differently if SMS would have existed at the time? 

Of course these questions are rhetorical. But as a thought start they might get you to realize how profound digital is changing our lives in just two decades... 


What doesn't change is that with regards to the rhetorical questions above leadership made the difference. We know about Homer, Socrates, Napoleon and others because they were somehow bigger than life. They became the equivalent of what we could call a brand today and through that they entered written history.


Today anyone can keep track of himself in writing, video or audio recording but the leadership part has not changed. 


If you look at brands as leaders then anything digital might mean facilitation of brand story leadership but it doesn't necessary mean that all brands succeed over time in the same way as the Napoleon's of yore. Telling a leading story is still that makes the differences between a great and a 'yet another' brand.


Brand story-telling needs to be leading. With this in mind the digital channels need to be evaluated regarding their potential tactical and strategic story-telling contribution. The questions to ask are:

• What defines my brand leadership, regardless of channel?
• Where can digital sustain, support or amplify this story?
• Looking at the digital story scenario today, what will be our story tomorrow both a digital only and a digital combined with 'classic' branding scenario?

Although these questions are pretty obvious the actual answers might reveal much more, specifically if you think about what Homer, Napoleon or even Shakespeare would have done if they would have had Twitter.

Do Mobile Marketing Agencies have a Future?

I had a really good lunch meeting with a great full service marketing agency the other day. The COO asked at some point whether channel oriented marketing agencies, such as mobile marketing agencies actually, have a future. Here is more or less what I answered.

Hybrid vs. Channel marketing

Where it was still cool last year to be or to work for a cutting edge innovative mobile marketing agency, this year the opinions are shifting rapidly. It is clear by now that offering specific mobile applications and site development services provide a certain value add but that from a marketing strategy perspective it is important to offer a broader range of services. It is also clear by now that mobile agencies are struggling. They reach a reasonable size 100 to 200 people with some form of a global presence. But from there growth seems to stall.

The problem in my opinion is that mobile can only to some extent be delivered as a stand alone channel. In traditional ATL marketing has been separated from digital or BTL marketing. A bunch of agencies have popped-up over the last 2 decades boasting a comprehensive 360º service or what I would call hybrid marketing. But none of these agencies have reached the size of the global players like DDB-Tribal, Wunderman or Ogilvy. 

Why is this? The eye-opener for me was one simple question asked by a client during a meeting. During this meeting we tried to convince them that a mobile site was an absolute necessity for the brand. If they really wanted to be present in the best way possible on all mobile devices than they would certainly need our mobile site and hosting platform.

The client simply asked; if you think that a mobile site is so important, can you also provide us with a site and platform solution that:

- Covers our marketing needs for both 'classic' online websites for PC's 

- Proposes an optimized experience for iPad and mobile phones with a focus on smart phones and...

- Facilitating the management of this 'hybrid' website from one single CMS

Although I would have loved to say yes at that point, the actual answer I had to give was of course, no we can't. We can deliver a parallel mobile site experience. In a best case scenario and provided you're willing to pay for the additional effort we can provide you with a site that is connected to your 'classic' site. We maybe able to leverage some of the classic online content but in reality it will require additional resources and workflows to optimize the content and use it via the mobile channel.

In short the client was asking for a more holistic approach that a mobile agency just can't provide. Today I must conclude that just a few agencies are able to deliver a full hybrid approach, including a well-judged creative use of the mobile channel.

Traditional and Digital

I haven't even started to discuss how to combine the traditional marketing channels and digital. There are beautiful examples and case studies of how social, mobile, print, tv and web were put to work for brands. Yet these examples remain few and far between since not many agencies are able to cover the full spectrum. A great many agencies and brands are still struggling with Facebook integration and twitter management. 

So where's the opportunity for mobile?

Mobile is no doubt the channel that will be more and more the first and most often used touch point with a brand. Then again it has its specific use and quirks, specifically when it comes to personalization and brand relationship. This element needs to be combined with the use-case aspects of all the other channels. A large number of attempts to combine web, print, tv and mobile  perspective have been taken already, the most interesting models being based on a use-case based strategy. Bottom line is that agencies can't get away with being 'just digital' or 'just classic' any longer. A full integrated hybrid approach is required. The impact on agencies are potentially significant since it requires a broader set of skills under one roof which may be difficult to manage from a supply and demand perspective in today's fast moving and volatile market. There are a few ways of coping with this volatility. One is to scale-up the agency services across borders and to have a workforce that is international and multi-cultural. Another one is to have solid but flexible parternship engagement with suppliers of specific services.

What all of this implies though is:

- Agencies need resources that are flexible, have a broad range of knowledge that runs from design to technology and from classic print to digital, including social media.

- Agencies need to considers strategies that allow full hybrid marketing services with in-house resources or via a network of freelancers or partners.

- Mobile is going to be more important than web, provided that we include tablets in the definition of the mobile channel.

- Agile responses to client needs with an ability to work with both marketing and IT departments on the client side - across al the marketing channels - are becoming more important than ever.

Questions or comments? I look forward to hearing from you!

For further reading:

The Full Service Agency Model is Dead - Meet the Connectors

by Craig Wilson.

The IT and marketing divide in business - and why it should change

It must be a familiar experience to marketing and IT managers working in Fortune 500 or other large structures. Meetings where the marketing guys talk about brand image, user experience and design and how technology must enable this. Vice versa the tech-guys keep saying that security and scalability are important and that more systems to serve more channels will not fit into the budget.

The C-level insists on having measurable results and to be present in all marketing channels but most and above all on the mobile channel. Oh and of course budgets went down again for next year.

Will this ever work? Without disruptive changes in the way businesses are run today I don't think so. Here's why.

If you're in digital marketing and brand management you ignoring the importance of digital technology is clearly a risk. But likewise, IT managers will have to enter in discussions with the marketing guys since usability, user friendliness, privacy and security issues are so closely related to what technology can and will enable.

In fact today marketing agencies and marketing managers are more successful if they understand technology and are able to have a fairly deep discussion with the IT guy. Take an iPhone application e.g. If you have no clue on what services and features are available on a device and how they can add value to your customers or how it will help you in your campaigns, your IT guys will effectively control your outcome.

But everybody with a bit of experience on either side knows how tough it is for marketing managers to talk about API's, database architecture and offline/online service availability. But IT managers have the same issue with softer values such as user friendliness and great user experience. Nothing better than a command window where you can direct call a services with a bunch of Unix command lines.

So fine, the stage is set and we understand the roles and know the players. But how can a business solve this issue? What is needed to bridge the divide between UX and IT?

Here are a couple of thoughts

Hybrid Teams, hybrid resources

Marketing should not be the exclusive domain of the marketing people. In fact in the most successful projects I've delivered the client had IT and Marketing people in every meeting. The project brief was created by marketing but had to be signed off by an IT director. Although this leads to more effort and increased work load at first, there is efficiency gained at the end of the project because technology supports the creative idea and vice versa. Nobody can hide behind arguments such as: we were never told it had to be this way or we could have told you that this design cannot be enabled by our IT infrastructure.

Finding hybrid resources or training them can be tough. There is a reason why IT developers love code and they don't care much for design. Research shows that human beings do function differently and some of us will just never understand design, others will never be able to read or produce a single line of code. So the most likely options is to have senior resources that over time have built up a hybrid expertise and can bridge the gap between the two disciplines.

MarkITing

More and more toolkits, campaign platforms and white labeled app development concepts are thrown onto the market. Running a campaign on Facebook does not require any deep IT skills unless you want to develop a game. We're slowly moving towards a world where anybody can run a campaign much like anybody can write and publish a book these days, thanks to all the software and digital print services available.

That means that marketing will have to include more 'light' IT skills so that campaigns on Facebook, SEO-tactics and tweets can be managed in an agile way.

Reversely the role of IT will have to include controlling and checking of third party services such as Facebook. Whether this means that pure 'hardcore' in-house software and platform development will be reduced remains to be seen.

Business need to change

The toughest part though is how businesses are organized today and how this will have to change. Hybrid teams and changing skill sets or in the services provided are probably easy to achieve via HR and the strategy department. But is it actually still a good idea to keep IT and Marketing separated. In digital marketing the combination of skill sets within one department will lead to more stride but in my opinion also to better campaigns and better branding.

But maybe this change should go even further. Social Media marketing requires different profiles. A Social Media marketing manager might as well come from the public sector. Softer social political skills might as well be the necessary quality to make a brand successful on mobile and in the social media space.

Now how to measure

Classic touch point measurement as in Unique Visitors, Conversion Rates and Click Troughs will remain important. But how do you measure mobile success or social media success? Should you track the number of Likes, the Evaluations your product gets on Amazon, the number of Friends the brand has? This and other ways of tracking your campaign in the digital space require again resources that have a marketing and IT understanding of the playing field.

Education

Its encouraging to see how Social Marketing, SEO and mobile are popping up as topics in the programs of Business Schools, Universities and Academies. The jury is still out on the quality of these initiatives. Fact is that there are executive programs that address these topics so there's no excuse for execs and board members to continue going uneducated about these topics.

So ultimately

Change is necessary and looking at the current pace of change in digital marketing and branding this is change will be a more and more pressing issue on the agenda of the C-level. Let's see and track how this pans out in the future and how it will improve the playing field for marketeers, IT managers and their agencies.

Windows Phone: Turning the Tiles

The more I hold a Windows Phone 7 (WP7) phone in my hand the more I have to admit that the OS has a certain charm to it. I find it hard to explain why the turning tiles and the quirky and at times erratic navigational paradigms do lend it a charm that is by now lost on me on the iPhone and the iPad.

The question is what would it take to make it a serious contender on the market. Fact is that we now know that Microsoft is seriously supporting and even sponsoring the development of relevant apps for Windows Phone. They are specifically searching for apps that can be ported to the WP platform. Of course having apps in the Windows equivalent of the AppStore is important. But is it enough? As I've pointed out on a few occasions before Apple is not doing itself a great favor with its black box certification process with hardly a chance of parole if your app gets refused. As much as it contributes to a certain quality level of the Apps in the store it also stalls all attempts to create innovative apps that push the envelope of the iPhone or iPad.

Still though if you ask me today I think that the constraints imposed by Apple drive innovation on the other platforms. Whatever doesn't pass or is hard to achieve via iOS will certainly fly on Android, WP and maybe even Symbian 3.

Now going back to WP, why would this OS actually work? Here are 4 reasons:

1. Windows Phone is closely governed by Microsoft which should guarantee inter-device compatibility

2. There are 25 Million Xbox users out there that Microsoft seems to target

3. Microsoft is still king in the B2B market

4. There will always be consumers that want something seriously different (and maybe less expensive if you insist)

Let me elaborate each point a bit more in detail:

1. Google's bet on Android as an open and freely available standard has helped delivering an impressive growth. But they're now about to receive the consequences of this back in the form of a boomerang that has grown by the same proportion as their market share. What we tend to forget is that open means fragmentation, which means head-aches for developers when it comes to compatibility.

Apple is at the total other side of the spectrum with its closely controlled iOS. WP7 sits somewhere in the middle. The OS versions are neatly governed. The use is subject to a license that imposes compatibility. It might be a while till we see more WP7 phones coming to market and specifically for Nokia to catch up but I predict that the ease of app distribution on this platform will be a big plus. This in turn will help consumer acceptance and cross device UX alignment a lot which will make it look and feel much more like a unified brand experience, which is one of the strong points of Apple.

2. The Xbox community has not been served very well when it comes to mobile use of Xbox apps, till WP7 appeared that is. There are now signs that Microsoft will try to use the potential power of this community to push WP7 upwards. 50 games were available at launch and more are coming. Can we expect mobile phones that double as controllers or input devices for Xbox much like the recent Sony Xperia Play? Who knows.

3. Microsoft is still the reference when it comes to business software. Outlook, Exchange Server and even Excel or Word are widely used and can be easily integrated with B2B mobile use. Although specific mobile versions of these apps are still not superbly optimized, the pure integration from a platform and connectivity perspective mostly under existing software licenses are seductive. This might be a big driver for decision makers controlling the mobile phone fleet of big corporates. Imagine the upside of a CityBank not going for iPhone as announced but WP7...

4. Last but not least there's always a group of consumers who want to be different while still having access to the majority of the features that turn a smartphones into such desirable items. The turning tiles are eye catching and some of the form factors of WP7 phones out there could pass as fashion statements. Think of WP7 as the Saab of mobile but then with much better financial back-up.

But what is the real challenge?

As much as WP7 is fairly well put together the eco-system of Microsoft is still a mess. Confusing branding of services and the hotchpotch of channels and touch points have yet to be sorted. From Windows Live to Hotmail, from MSN to msnbc via Windows Market Place, Maps and the Microsoft Store, it is nowhere near the slick Apple iTunes and AppStore system and much more pretentious than Googles all-white and no-frills offerings.

The announcement of Nokia partnering with Microsoft only raises more questions around their Ovi eco-system, not to mention all the other services, channels and platform that Nokia still features today...

Yet a proper well functioning eco-system is very important to keep users interested in your platform and build a true, long-lasting relationship. Unless of course this is not what you're after.

Is there light in all of this? Well, one thing that Microsoft has superbly well sorted for years already is their single sign-on or Passport - or Windows Live ID as its currently called - that they consistently use across their channels. Once you have your login you can pretty much access any Microsoft related service with the same login and password. Google has this too but it is almost no surprise since they've always marketed their services under one brand and from (seemingly) one platform. 

Although I am not sure if they are using this to the full extent they could potentially leverage if they finally decide to axe all those different services and pull all of it together under one brand name.