M-FOOTBALL / CONFERENCE

'The majority of internet access is from mobile phones' Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO Nokia

 

Contagious dropped by the Emirates Stadium yesterday for the M-Football conference, which was all about brands, football, and mobile with a specific focus on the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Here are some highlights from a great day, with some really big players in the mobile scene attending.

JME.net founder Jonathan Macdonald kicked the event off with an interesting insight into what he sees as the similarities between attending a match and going to a gig. The key point to take away is that there are positives (the match, the euphoria, the atmosphere etc) and negatives (travel, queueing, trying to get out, trying to find friends, finding places to eat and drink after). MacDonald questioned what brands could do to help the positives outweigh the negatives. A great example of this would be Orange's GlastoNav App developed in partnership with The Guardian guide, and which amongst other features let users mark the location of their tent on a map, and also showed stage locations alongside line-up listings.

Global Head of O2 Litmus' James Parton left us wondering if small development communities and operator offshoots are the future of app development and will shift the power and distribution away from the central app store on platforms like Android/Symbian etc, although destabilising Apple's mighty App Store might be tougher. Even if they pose less of a threat, these niche communities form a brilliant test bed for the next killer app.

Author and consultant Tomi Ahonen (Mobile as the 7th of the Mass Media) gave a great overview of the mobile market with some stats and insights. He reiterated that mobile as a medium is not dependent on ad money, with massive revenue already in place from ring tones and added services/subscriptions. However, it is the also first personal mass medium, with a built-in payment channel. With mobile you always know who the user is - when four people are sitting in front of a TV, it's impossible to tell who is truly engaged. You and usually only you make calls and send texts from your phone, making you an identifiable user. 

He went on to show some great examples of sports teams integrating mobile into their offering. One of our favourites came from the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team - their season ticket holders can access different cameras throughout stadium on their mobile to watch live action, as well as instant replays. For more information check the following article here. Also of note was publication Canada Hockey News and their 300,000 mobile users. 

And then on to the obligatory Augmented Reality! Claire Boonstra, co-founder of Layar, explained that 'augmented reality is not a functional tool, it is an experience medium'. She also demoed their new technology which allows for the overlaying not only of text-based information, but of objects like music or video in the viewfinder of your cameraphone. Click here for a demonstration of Layar's work with Japanese rapper Seeda.

Dan Parker, founder of mobile marketing agency Sponge, showcased an older SMS based campaign for Coca-Cola in which users could text in to win 250,000 to buy player of their choice. Replies were tailored to the team supported by the person who had just text in, with the message for a Bradford fan something along the lines of 'Bantams v Hull this weekend good luck, lets see if Delvico can score his 100th Goal!', demonstrating a real understanding of who Coca-Cola were talking too. Parker's advice? 'Be topical, and understand who it is you're talking to'. The competition received entries in the millions, and the winners were announced over the stadium speakers to the assembled crowds. The winner picked player Kazim Richards for his team, who become known as the Cola-Cola kid in the media - don't underestimate power of sms promotions!

Patrick Kuwana, Co-Founder of South African based Livemobile, peppered us with a few great stats. Nigeria is largest African mobile market, 150m people, 69m subscribers, 46% penetration - 90% of phones are prepaid, and around 15m owning internet enabled handsets.

AKQA's Dan Rosen and Julian de Rosee showed off the fantastic Nike Boot camp training app, which had a strong emphasis on offline/in the field - much better explained here.

Data from UNESCO Institute for Statistics has revealed that a staggering 75 million children are not in school. Charity 1Goal are trying to do something about this, attempting to leave a marking legacy after the final whistle has blown in South Africa. They will have 75 days to engage 30 million people in the build up to the World Cup, how are they going about it? Digital director Chris Ward believes 'Mobile is one way you can engage the entire planet'.  

WPP's Global Client Leader Mark Linder left us with one of the most important thoughts of the day. 'If you start off in mobile with the approach 'campaign' you are going about things the wrong way, this can leave out utility'