MoMo London 19/07/10
Opening up was Mike Kirkup, Head of Developer Relations at RIM, who were sponsoring the evening. Mike touched on the theme of “super apps” and promoted the current Blackberry Super App contest with $1.5 million in prize money available, plus take to market support for the winners. Check the contest out here.
Next up was the panel segment to provide advice and insights into the topic for the evening
The panel was chaired by Ben Scott Robinson, creative director at We Love Mobile and included:
(Updated: thanks to Adam Cohen Rose for complete panel details, check out his write up here)
The first question posed was “why apps when mobile web is pretty much ubiquitous?”
Chris was first to respond. He argued that his agency was using mobile apps to compensate for a lack of speed on mobile connections to deliver a better customer experience. He also made the point that an app gave them a much greater ability to customise the UI and better represent his client’s brands than a mobile browser.
Alyssa was first to reference the “A word”, saying Apple had set the gold standard in music (7 Digital are a music company). She said 7 Digital preferred the browser route for their music store as it was ubiquitous. 
Mike tabled that actually much of this current trend towards apps was driven by customer expectation rather than smart technology choices. He cited brands simply publishing shortcuts in Blackberry World seeing uplifts in traffic of 30 – 50% simply because it delivered an app like experience. i.e. it gets your brand (app icon) on the top deck of the handset for instance access. (a shortcut is an icon, which when clicked simply opens the mobile browser and takes you to a mobile website)
Eli highlighted that it is unlikely your entire potential audience is going to be on one or two platforms so choosing apps over web is going to limit your commercial potential, so you have to balance customer experience with business objectives.
This brought the second question around the use of customer demographics. Eli made the telling point that actually there is no evidence that developers are doing anything with demographics or other marketing techniques. The recently published Vision Mobile report Developer Economics 2010, available for free here, thanks to Telefonica’s sponsorship, plug plug!, highlighted that the vast majority of developers still limit their “market research” to testing their app out with friends and colleagues. This is not a long term strategy for success.
Tony highlighted that historically the mobile operator was the shop keeper that kept control of how many apps were offered to its customers. With the rise of the apps stores this limitation has gone, but ironically now the noise issue is becoming a major problem for developers with limited marketing budgets / skills.
Dave made the point that in B2B app distribution, often the users (the employees) are not the purchasers.
Chris highlighted the time sensitivity around demographic data, citing an anecdotal example of seeing more and more kids carrying iPhones, which demographic data does not show. He also cited the case of shared device usage in the home (e.g. siblings both using an iPhone for gaming) These examples present an opportunity for real time network enablers that can tell you what devices are being used, and by who, at that precise point in time.
Mike described the recent success of Blackberry penetrating into the youth market. I think he was over modest to say this was not planned. Blackberry exec’s I know where talking about the need to diversify into consumer 2 – 3 years ago. He put the success down to a simple, well executed proposition: Communication. Blackberry’s initial success was opening better communications for CEO’s. Now Blackberry is enabling better consumer communication via Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry Messenger, signalling a shift from SMS as the primary youth communication method.
Chris then tackled apps as a marketing tool. It was clear there are many brands asking for apps without understanding anything about the mobile space, e.g. the limited reach of an iPhone only play. Chris put this down to:
1) Wanting association (no matter how tenuous) with a cool brand e.g. Apple
2) Seeking a PR opportunity
Tony used Facebook to highlight the discoverability issues. Facebook has 35,000 games and 250,000 apps yet nobody can name more than a dozen. Only the brands and publishers that have the marketing muscle are driving visibility. Tony’s new company Teepee Games aims to address this by aggregating recommended games for consumers.
Eli made the point that none of these issues are new, and are no different to the challenges facing FMCG brands fighting over shelf space in a supermarket like Tesco. The Developer Economics 2010 report highlighted developers were willing to pay for premium store placement, a practice well established in traditional bricks and mortar retailing. Eli also raised a good point that paying for placement may only get you so far. There is still the consumer confidence & trust issue of unknown brands.
Alyssa highlighted that open partnerships was a key element of the marketing mix. 7 Digital has driven downloads by integrating with other partners like Last FM and Shazam. Building relationships with other companies and network operators can help overcome the visibility issues.
Building on Eli’s point Mike stated these issues were not new, but just new people experiencing them for the first time.
Dave made the point that the most valuable real estate was the handset itself, and good old fashioned networking with the mobile operators pays off. Preload is vital (see Shazam as a case in point)
Chris talked about the overall package of actions like PR. Their approach is to create talkability to push the app into the Top 25 of the app store, then let organic downloads drive growth. There is a second hit of PR to promote the app once it drops out of the Top 25.
Eli highlighted an example of good integrated communications where the Royal Society of Arts have their iPhone app pushed by the girl selling tickets at the entrance desk, contrasting that to Selfridges who make no in store reference to their app at all.
Mike commented that RIM have been surprised by the rapid growth of Blackberry Messenger (BBM), with some customers going into retail stores asking for BBM without knowing it comes on a Blackberry device.
When asked about “free” as a marketing tactic Eli commented that makes sense if the app is an extension of your core business e.g. Nike +, but not if your business is the app itself. The point was made that it is very difficult to convert free customers to pay, and freemuim models need to have clear value in the up sell to drive conversion.
Tony made an interesting point contrasting the mindset of Nokia users with iPhone users. Nokia users don’t baulk at paying £5 for a mobile game, where as iPhone users recoil at the thought of a 59p app. Is this an example of a mobile native mindset vs. a web native mindset?
Automated App porting tools came up, and Chris said in his experience they were good for heavy lifting and doing volume, but to ensure his clients brands were correctly represented they always do bespoke work saying the porting solutions always breakdown at the edges. Despite having an employee of Grapple ask a challenging question from the audience only seconds before, they suddenly became invisible when offered the chance to respond to the criticism which led to a beautiful awkward silence that Ricky Gervais would have been proud of.
IMO the best piece of insight from the night came from Chris when asked how developers on a shoe string budget could drive visibility. “Cause trouble” was the answer. He cited You Tube’s early rise to prominence by liberally infringing copyright which didn’t seem to deter Google from buying them. Do something sexy or do something that will get you noticed.
For me the evening highlighted a tech fuelled market approaching commercial maturity. There is no escaping the basic fact that if you are operating in a competitive environment, trying to make yourself heard to your target audience, there has to be a conscious decision to invest in marketing. You simply can’t ignore that fact or attempt to blame the app store owners for somehow letting you down otherwise you will fail.
I keep getting a sense that some developers are still seeking a magic / free solution to their marketing issues. This marketing investment doesn’t need to be scarily expensive, and can be totally outsourced if necessary. Still, it was encouraging to see the debate starting to move away from a purely technology feature led conversation, to at least considering the need to do more than the “throw it against a wall and see if it sticks” approach so commonly seen. Despite “marketing” being an almost taboo word in some developer circles, maybe tonight signalled the beginning of something new…
You can follow the Twitter stream from the event here.
