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I’ve been in San Francisco the past few days giving a keynote entitled “Freeing Mobile” at the YPulse Mashup 2008 – organised by YPulse, an authority on youth media. I was privileged to share the stage with representatives from other youth brands including Walt Disney Records and MTV. Overall, it was a very interesting and lively 2-day event with around 400 participants.

There was a focus on the US (naturally), but discussions also touched on some international trends. During my talk, I was able to give a basic overview of the Blyk proposition – 16-24 year olds want free communication in exchange for relevant and interactive mobile advertising.

It was interesting for me because the audience saw Blyk as something completely new with outstanding results (e.g. response rates) and many are wondering why this hasn’t yet taken off in the US. In fact, Blyk recently hit the mainstream radar in the US with CNBC’s recent broadcast of the “Cell Phone Quid Pro Quo” which gave an in-depth look of Blyk and mobile advertising.

Some key discussion topics from YPulse include:

• Difficult to reach: Marketers are still looking for the “killer application” or entry point by which to effectively communicate and reach the youth audience. The major challenge for marketers is do identify this entry point whilst recognising that young people have become more difficult to reach due to rapidly changing, savvy media habits and wavering preferences (e.g. be it social networks or brands / products).

• Lack of understanding: Marketers have a lack of understanding when it comes to young people and are struggling to effectively reach them. Media fragmentation and rise of the digital age have been key factors contributing to this phenomenon.

• iPhone mania: iPhone mania was unbelievably strong amongst the participants at the conference. I see this currently as a very US-centric phenomenon. The capabilities and some statistics of the phone are impressive, but the lack of viewpoints – e.g. concerning limitations in the distribution, price of usage and proprietary technology – are obvious. But it is growing and will be interesting to see the progress.

• Hip-Hop music in marketing: Obviously again a more US centric issue, but there was interesting discussion about the usability of the music genre for marketing purposes along with the limitations and risks involved. There was an impressive line of experts on this panel including rapper MC Hammer.

• Europe is ahead of the curve: Europe is strong in youth related issues and it was agreed that many trends are created overseas.

My overall take? Relevancy and engagement matter to the youth audience and mobile is the perfect media for relevant and interactive communication. Incentivise young people to interact with brands directly by giving them what they want – in Blyk’s case, that’s free communication, “money-can’t-buy” offers and messages from brands they like. That’s the marketer’s point of entry (and long-term relationship) with the youth audience.

All-in-all, a very positive experience. A special thanks to the YPulse organisers for a great event!

I look forward to reading your comments.

As I mentioned in my post last week, I also had an opportunity to meet with BnetTV’s Michelle Sklar while at the FT Business of Mobile Conference. The interview has just been posted to the BnetTV website so take a look when you have some time.

I’ve just spent two days in Brussels at the FT Business of Mobile Conference where I gave a talk on mobile marketing and heard some interesting views on where the industry is heading.

Here are my key take-outs and lessons in mobile marketing:

Listening to your customers
It may seem like an obvious thing to say but having spent two days immersed in the industry the thing that struck me the most was that people are spending too much time trying to monetize existing services and not enough time listening to what customers want and then developing services which meet their needs.

Mobile Internet is accelerating fast
Geraldine Wilson, Yahoo! Europe predicted that by 2016, more users will access the internet from their mobile devices than the fixed PC. Geraldine observed that there are approximately a billion PCs and three billion mobiles and said take up will be more rapid in emerging markets, where people do not have PCs, and mobile is the only way that they can access the internet. It’s also worth having a look at Opera’s new report on how social networks are dominating mobile internet.

Mobile advertising is all about relevance and engagement
Those who continue to use ‘frequency, reach, eyeballs and CPM’ to measure mobile advertising will not succeed. People, especially the young, want dialogue and relevance.

Understanding the ‘third screen’
Stephen Pritchard, the conference Chair, urged companies to recognise mobile as a channel in its own right rather than an extension of the internet. Mobile is communication, not a content channel – TV and Radio are content channels. Free communication and access to relevant information is of the utmost important to mobile users – particularly for young adults. The key with communicating successfully via mobile is to be rich in relevance, engagement and user experience.

Mobile marketing can build brands
There is more to mobile marketing than free coupons encouraging direct response. We are finding that ad campaigns on Blyk can be used to support brand building generate market insight and strengthen consumer relationships. Marketers need to start measuring changes in ‘attitudes’ as well as ‘click-throughs’.

Penguin embraces mobile
Genevieve Shore, Global Digital Director, Penguin Group gave some great insight as to how ‘old media’ like books can thrive in a digital world and use in a highly targeted and effective way. You can read more about how Penguin worked with Blyk to promote Nick Hornby’s Slam.

Advertising is good
There’s a misconception within the industry that mobile users tolerate annoying ads in return for free calls. We’ve found the opposite to be true. Blyk shunned the typical mobile-operator model of simply adding as many subscribers as possible and concentrated on accumulating a deep knowledge of our member base. As a result, response rates average 29% and our members want to engage with brands they like and see advertising as valuable information

Make the most of the mobile medium
Build your campaign around the unique attributes of mobile: ubiquity, immediacy of response, 100% opt-in and personal engagement.

Call for common sense regulation
Sir Alistair Graham, Chairman, PhonepayPlus, took an admirable stance on regulation and called for more dialogue, transparency and championed the use of language that consumers can easily understand. I’m sure the folks at Campaign for Plain English would approve.

I look forward to comments and word of other highlights from anyone that attended the conference. I gave an interview to BnetTV who were covering the show so look out for that when it goes live on Friday 23rd May.

I had a pleasure to participate and speak at Informa mobile advertising and marketing conference this week in Paris. It was interesting to see, how things have (and have not) moved forward in mobile advertising. Topics covered a lot of ground – from Case studies (Coca-Cola and Peugeot) to panel discussions about industry value chain and from Mobile-TV to advertising via SMS.

The need to tap advertising revenue is there, but the means are missing. Overly complex industry value-chain, network and technology issues, lack of collaboration and the absence of consumer data and profiles simply dwarf the entire industry. The distribution simply does not work. That’s why everyone is doing a bit of everything, just to do something.

The thing missing is the BENEFIT. And with this I do not mean benefits for operators, platform providers or the advertisers – it’s the consumers that get nearly nothing out of mobile advertising. Commercial television has been the dominant form of broadcasting. FREE. Netscape introduced FREE internet browsing. Hotmail was the FREE email, Google organized the internet for FREE and enabled simple, spontaneous access to information. Napster created FREE peer-to-peer file sharing. Skype launched FREE internet phone calls… revolutionizing the perception of international phone calls and was the fastest application adoption in the history. Simply put…FREE is GOOD. And I believe that free is also the future of mobile communications, especially for young consumers.
There is one topic that makes the industry discuss: how much advertising can consumers TOLERATE? If you look what mobile industry currently is offering to them – the answer is easy: NONE. There is no BENEFIT for them.

If consumers get a real BENEFIT and receive ads that are relevant and entertaining for them, two things will happen: Free is good and best of all – ads are good.

Blyk has potential beyond imagination. And to be part of a disruptive and potentially revolutionising new medium is very exciting. Blyk brings value to its users and it brings value to advertisers. It brings value to the entire telecommunication industry and to the entire mobile advertising industry. And as always with new things, it brings new and exciting challenges for all.

For decades marketeers have been dreaming of a medium that has the distribution effect of broadcast, targeting capabilities of direct marketing and interactivity found with the internet. And now it’s here.

But are you ready, marketeer?

You will get feedback. What’s good and what’s not. You will be told how to develop your offering, products and services. And the feedback comes directly from your customers, real-time. Not from traditional market research.

Are you ready to co-develop your products? Can you change your campaign within two hours, if it doesn’t work? How will you have this dialogue with Blyk users? How will you respond to the feedback?

Blyk can give you more “reality checks”, more information, more engagement and potentially more sales than any other medium. Now is the time to get prepared, and our entire Blyk team is ready to start the journey with you.