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You’ll find Blyk speaking at the following events at this year’s Mobile World Congress.

• Mobile World Congress Conference Session: Mobile Advertising – Moving to the Strategic Level
Thursday, 19 February
Time: 12:30 – 13:20
Location: Auditorium 3, level 0, Hall 5 (Fira, Barcelona)
Panel discussion – Crossing the chasm to strategic spend
Moderator: Paran Johar, CMO, Jumptap
Panelists:
Timo Ahopelto, Head Business Strategy and Advertising Solutions, Blyk

Cenk Serdar, Chief VAS Management Officer, Turkcell
Antonio de la Rosa Breva, Consume & Online Marketing, Microsoft
Valerie Itey, Mobile Marketing Director UM Digital
Michael Smith, Deputy Director of COI Interactive

• Event: Ogilvy Telco Conference
Thursday, 19 February
Time: 16:15 – 17:00
Location: AC Barcelona Hotel
Panel discussion – Discussion about the ways in which Advertisers and Telecoms providers can work more closely with one another to grow industry and user value
Host: Alain Heureux, IAB Europe President and CEO
Panelists:
Leif Fågelstedt, Chief Operating Officer, Blyk

Alistair Hill, Comscore M:Metrics
Dusan Hamlin, Inside Mobile
Andrew Grill, Gigafone

Friday, 20 February
Time: 10:20-11:00
Location: AC Barcelona Hotel
Presentation: Understanding Customers Better by Using Mobile Media
Speaker: Leif Fågelstedt, Chief Operating Officer, Blyk
– How customer insight forge stronger relationships with your subscribers/members and attracts
advertisers
– Why mobile interactive messaging enables a dialogue with customers that’s not possible through
other channels
– How done right advertising is not viewed as advertising at all but it becomes a service to the end
user

Friday, 20 February
Time: 12:00-1:00
Location: AC Barcelona Hotel
Panel discussion – A Look To The Future. Discussion with Brands & Agency leaders about the prospect of mobile and how it fits in future plans
Host: Jonathan MacDonald – Senior Consultant, Mobile Marketing, OgilvyOne EAME
Panelists:
Leif Fågelstedt, Chief Operating Officer, Blyk
Stefano Frigerio, Global Communication Planning Director, Unilever
Andrew Godley, OgilvyOne London BT Team

Co-founder

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.

PRESS RELEASE FROM CANNES INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING FESTIVAL

June 18, 2008

Global communications network, Leo Burnett Worldwide and Contagious magazine today challenged marketers and their agencies to put people at the heart of their work, rather than brands or the category, at their “Wildfire” seminar.

Suggesting how this year’s seminar differed from years previous, the presenters dubbed the session ‘Creativity, with a Human Touch’. Tom Bernardin, CEO and Chairman of Leo Burnett Worldwide said, “Everything that matters in the advertising business begins and ends with two things: People and Behaviour. Wildfire brands understand this better than any, and as a result thrive within today’s ‘People Era’ – an era when marketers have to be more human in their behaviour, insight and voice than ever before.”

PEOPLE CENTRIC

Fundamental to 2008’s Wildfire seminar was a new appreciation of the most important link in the chain that connects product with idea, and campaign with brand — people — as well as tips on just how to truly interact with those people.

‘This year, we wanted to showcase brands that boast what Leo Burnett calls a truly ‘Humankind’ of attitude to their audience, brands that are actually doing something to deserve a place in people’s lives. In a sense, brands that are about Acts, not just Ads,’ added Bernardin.

ADVERTISING, THAT’S NOT ADVERTISING

Paul Kemp-Robertson, Editorial Director of Contagious magazine dared the audience to let go and be proud of creating work that’s NOT advertising, ‘Because if you do, it might just be the best advertising you ever create,” he said. Continuing with this ‘Acts not Ads’ theme, the audience were advised to think in terms of producing work that’s:

# So well targeted and informative that it feels more like a dialogue or relationship.

# Such a useful service or application that it becomes effortlessly embedded into people’s daily lives.

# Content that is so entertaining that the brand stands on an equal footing with TV shows, newspapers or favourite websites.

“This is what Leo Burnett calls true Humankind territory,” concluded Kemp-Robertson.

WILDFIRE BRANDS WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS

Highlighting the key components of a people-focused Wildfire Brand, Kemp-Robertson and Burnett USA ECD, Reed Collins, treated delegates to a round-up of some of the best-practice examples currently out there. These included:

# Canon, Australia: establishing the brand’s creative credentials by providing a ‘little box of inspiration’ to get photographers out and about, snapping away

# Miles, the Nike+ widget: a cute application acting as a personal trainer and integrated RSS reader, extending the Nike+ experience for its dedicated community

# Coca-Cola, China: a fully interactive, state-of-the-art 15 m high digital Coke bottle to which user-generated content and SMS messages can be instantly uploaded and broadcast live from the bottle

# Samsung: smart placement of branded mobile phone charging stations at airports throughout the world, so travellers need never be incommunicado

# Blyk, UK: a UK mobile phone service proving wildly popular with its 16-24 year old target audience, who agree to receive promotions and marketing messages in exchange for free calls and texts

London, England
17 June 2008

Blyk, the new mobile network for 16-24 year olds funded by advertising, today announced its sponsorship of the D&AD New Blood 2008 Awards and an 18-month relationship with the D&AD 2009 Student Award programme.

Simon Waterfall, President of D&AD said: “D&AD is proud to have Blyk as a main sponsor at this year’s New Blood event. The collaboration embodies our shared value of supporting a new generation of creatives to enhance business performance now and in the future.”

Shaun Gregory, CEO Blyk UK said: “Blyk is committed to educating the industry and ensuring that any brand communications work well when they are executed through mobile. As such, we are delighted to be sponsoring the D&AD New Blood 2008 Awards and the D&AD Student Award programmes 2009.”

If you are attending D&AD New Blood 2008 Awards, Blyk would like to invite you to join the team at the Blyk stand where they will be showcasing the Blyk experience and the unique engagement they have with their members. Visitors will get the opportunity to view Blyk’s creative campaigns, learn more about Blyk’s connection with 16-24 year olds and pick up some goodies in their “chill-out” area.

WHO: Marko Ahtisaari, Blyk Brand and Design
Tom Gutteridge, Blyk UK Head of Creative

WHEN: Monday, 23rd June 2008 from 2 p.m.

WHERE: Earls Court

Blyk’s Marko Ahtisaari will also be participating in a debate entitled “Mobile advertising – A Fad or The Future?” on Tuesday 24th June 2008 at 2 p.m.

I was chairing a day at the Informa MVNO Industry Summit 2008 in Barcelona this week. The discussion focused on how operators and MVNOs can best work together.

Being Blyk – a youth media – puts us in an interesting position. Through connection to preferred brands, Blyk provides more value to youths compared traditional mobile offerings. In fact, Blyk is in a league of its own with the ad funded business model. As a result, most analysts have difficulty fitting Blyk into their MVNO positioning frameworks. Why is that? Because Blyk Media is not an MVNO, although it happens to have operator capabilities in order to serve young people.

Also, many people in the telecommunications industry see mobile advertising similar to the advertising model in Internet – the place to create a high number of impressions and eyeballs for a campaign. On the contrary, mobiles are used to interact and communicate, therefore being a place to engage and build relationships between brands and consumers. It is the most personal media for people, and thus not a natural place for broadcasting.

Another major question discussed during the summit asked “how are MVNOs doing today?” Informa’s Mark Newman shared some statistics that would suggest that MVNO’s are doing quite well: Western European MVNOs have grown subscribers between December 2006 and February 2008 from 40 million to 55 million, which is over 35% in 15 months. In the UK, Spain, Germany and France, MVNOs averaged to 30-40% of net adds (a term that mobile industry uses for new customers) every quarter in 2007.

From an industry point of view, specifically interesting is the wave of MVNOs starting from Northern Europe in early 2000, moving first towards Central Europe a few years later, and now reaching to the south and east. William Barrar from Ovum presented an interesting model. A market becomes ready for MVNOs when: mobile penetration is high; cost to acquire one new customer for operators passes a certain threshold cost; and when revenue generated by one customer is high enough and stops growing.

And what makes an MVNO successful and the relationship with operators work? This was the topic at the Crystal Ball Panel – where champagne was served – at the end of the conference. The panel included Keith Greenfield (Orange UK), Markus Freikamp (T-Mobile International), Dan Armstrong who has been involved in 22 MVNOs (Rabo Mobile), and the undersigned. The panel summarised the two days well: in order to succeed, one needs to create a special relationship between mobile service and the consumer, on top of the economically attractive offer that is the entry ticket for creating the relationship.

All in all, it was two days well spent. Thank you to Informa, all presenters and the active audience.

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.

You will find Blyk speaking at the following venues.

Monday, February 11th

At 2:30pm, Blyk’s CEO and co-founder, Pekka Ala-Pietilä will be delivering a keynote speech at the Mobile Monday Peer Awards Event and Ceremonies held at the Espacio Movistar.

At 4:30pm, you will find Pekka Ala-Pietilä speaking at the CMO Forum, a GSMA event in partnership with OgilvyOne Worldwide. This event will bring together the leaders of the mobile marketing/advertising industry and it focuses on the challenges of increasing the use of the mobile channel for advertising and marketing purposes. The location is Hall 5 of the Fira de Barcelona.
Topics for the event include:

• The role of mobile marketing in the advertising space
• How to make mobile advertising and marketing grow
• Relationship marketing and the mobile space
• Business models and market opportunities

On Tuesday, February 12th

At 4:15pm, Timo Ahopelto, Head of Strategy and Business Development will be presenting ‘Blyk’ at the Mobile Innovation Marketplace. Blyk has been recognised as one of the ‘most innovative’ in the category of Consumer Application or Service.

Finally, I came across an article on Friday related to ‘What’s hot at Mobile World Congress 2008.’ Nice Blyk mention.

We have been meeting with the leading telecom and media analysts in Europe on our recent release related to Goldman Sachs and IFIC joining as new investors, and our country expansion starting with the Netherlands using the Vodafone network.

We have also been discussing our recent advertising results. The average 29% response rate across 498 campaigns ran until January 24th is a result that gets many people asking: how?

In summary: relevance of all ad communications, delivery based on the simple and familiar user experience, and Blyk’s unique media environment in combination make the Blyk Media effective. In fact, most young people don’t see these conversations as advertising but as information they would like to have.

To put the 29% response rate into a perspective: typically media delivers 2% at its best, and cold mobile campaigns 3-6% growing to 13-20% if in-depth profiling data is used, as referred by the DMA Chair Nick Fuller last year.

Marek Pawlowski from MEX recently summarized this quite well: “Much of the success can be attributed to Blyk’s approach to the mobile advertising experience. They use a medium with which the users are already very familiar – messaging – thereby avoiding much of the confusion and pricing uncertainty around clicking through to mobile web-sites. The advertisements are sent as a text or picture message, and are designed to be two-way conversations. Users are invited to respond with a simple reply, e.g. Would you like to receive more information about our discounts on summer holidays? ^Y/N”

The ad format – SMS and MMS messaging used for conversations between brands and members – is currently active in Blyk with 55 advertisers across 14 industries. The simple but rich building blocks are used to create variety and breadth of campaigns to create awareness, build relationships and drive sales. The applied formats are text, picture and video with sound and animation when required. And most importantly, not only rich in pixels, but more so to be rich in interaction and context: highest response rates are generated when relevance and flow of interaction come together in the unique Blyk Media environment – that is difficult or impossible replicate anywhere else.

Finally, and most importantly, young Blyk members are excited and want to join one of the fastest growing youth media in the UK. Blyk is well on track to reach 100,000 members and to become a significant youth media in the UK in its first year of operations. The best feedback we have received so far – unprompted and via our research lab shift6.net – is that the Blyk form of media really works for young people.

Nokia World/Amsterdam, NL – 4th – 5th December
If you’re going to be at Nokia World in Amsterdam, please stop by Hall 2/Stream 3 on the 5th at 14.15 where Pekka Ala-Pietilä, co-founder and CEO of Blyk will be delivering a presentation ‘Breaking the mold: adopting an advertising based business model’. Pekka will also be participating in a panel discussion during the previous day (4 Dec) in the Main Auditorium at 16.30. The topic ‘Where is the value?’ will be moderated by Barry French, Head of Communications, Nokia Siemens Networks and will include panelists Simon Beresford-Wylie, CEO, Nokia Siemens Networks; Wolfgang Weber, CTO, Swisscom Mobile; and Pekka Ala-Pietilä.

Red Herring Global 100 Event/Seattle, WA – 3rd – 5th December
If you happen to be on the other side of the pond, you’ll find Blyk co-founder, Antti Öhrling, speaking on the Digital Media panel on Tuesday, the 4th between 12:00-12:45pm – Room C. The panel will be moderated by Joel Dreyfuss, Editor-in-chief, Red Herring. Antti will also be giving a Blyk company presentation at the same event at 11:45am.

Geoff Morley from Blyk UK will present at IIR Mobile Advertising Conference on advertising-sponsored mobile services and the Blyk Media: the model that is today present in every other media than mobile, from newspapers to television. Geoff will also discuss messaging: the most simple dominant pattern in mobile, and the pattern that forms the most effective format for mobile advertising. For young people, it is natural to get a message and respond to it, just like they communicate with their friends many times every day.

Blyk has teamed up with Vice to run a FREE live music tour, the Unitaur. It’s launching on Monday 29th October 2007 with 10 dates across the UK featuring brilliant acts including: The Teenagers, Crystal Castles (a favourite at Blyk UK HQ), These New Puritans and more.

What’s more, you can play “spot the logo” on the Unitaur site.

Here is the full video of the Blyk launch event on September 24th at the Vinyl Factory in London:

Blyk representatives will be speaking at the following events in June. We hope to see you there.

June 5-6, MEM 2007 in Monte Carlo: Antti Öhrling will be delivering an “Endnote” presentation as a special guest speaker during Day two/Track one. His presentation “The Ultimate Customer Ownership: Launching an MVNO” will begin at 16.00. For details visit: www.mem07.com

June 26-27, NMA and Marketing Week’s “Online Marketing 07″ at the Business Design Centre in London: Pekka Ala-Pietilä will be part of panel discussing “Mobile Myths – How is the user experience of mobile going to change this year? What new challenges are going to emerge for marketers and their agencies?”. The session will take place on the 27th from 2.30-3.15. For details visit: www.onlinemarketingshow.co.uk

Pekka will be speaking on Wednesday, May 16th (day two) of the Financial Times Mobile Media Conference held at The Dorchester in London. The theme of the two day event is “Mobile Media – The business of change. How will mobile media transform the mobile and digital media markets?” Other speakers include representatives from Motorola, Microsoft, Yahoo, Bebo, Reuters Media, AKQA, Cake, Walt Disney and BBC. For details visit www.ftconferences.co.uk/mobilemedia

On the following day, May 17th, Jonathan will be speaking at Visiongain’s Mobile Marketing and Advertising event that will be held at the BSG conference centre in London. For details visit www.visiongain.com/mm

Last Night Jonathan and I were delighted to attend Chinwag, it was an interesting event where we had the chance to meet people with differing and interesting views on mobile advertising and the mobile market in general. A stimulating debate, we look forward to the next one. Thanks to all who offered their encouragement and for all those questions, we look forward to being able to tell everyone more information soon and seeing you at the next event.

Jonathan will be speaking at the Chinwag Live event, today Monday 26th February.

The organisers say “Chinwag Live events seek to lift the lid and cast a quizzical eye on the latest trends in the web and mobile sectors in the full spirit of community participation. The series brings together leading experts and practitioners in the digital industries to share their perspectives and experience. Chinwag’s audience is a broad cross-section of senior decision-makers, creatives, marketers, technologists, business professionals and industry commentators working across web, mobile and other interactive media.”

Other speakers include representatives from O2, AdMob, Fathom Partners and the Mobile Entertainment Magazine. The evening is likely to produce some interesting feedback.

I’ll be speaking at 3GSM on a panel on mobile advertising on the morning of Thursday, February 15th. It is personally very exciting to attend 3GSM from a new perspective.

The answer to the question of our panel – Can mobile advertising fund new content businesses? – is a resounding yes! I will approach the subject from the standpoint of how we started Blyk. At Blyk we came to the conclusion that it is absolutely essential to have the capability of an operator and the ethos of a media. Being an operator Blyk can truly simplify the user experience for both young people and advertisers. Having the ethos of a media Blyk can address the needs of young people and advertisers in a very distinct way.

We believe that the Blyk model gives relevance and value to both young people and advertisers.The cost of service is extremely relevant to the 16-24 year old audience, as is the fact that advertisers can interact with them based on their preferences. In the trials we have run we’ve found that young people really enjoy and engage with the conversational advertising on Blyk. As for the advertisers, we offer them an opportunity for direct engagement with a hard-to-reach young audience with relevant real-time feedback.

What do I expect from 3GSM? I expect to see a lot of momentum around mobile advertising at 3GSM. There are many companies here with important initiatives bringing new revenue streams from advertising to the mobile system. I view this as a very positive development. As advertisers begin to see more opportunities in mobile media, we will see the mobile channel becoming a natural part of the media mix alongside TV, print, radio and online media.

Marko will be speaking today at DLD (Digital, Life, Design) in Munich about Blyk and the future of mobile media on a panel with Hjalmar Winbladh, Alexander Straub and Jeff Pulver. Other speakers on the strong and diverse program include Luc Besson, Linda Stone, Norman Foster, Martin Varsavsky, Marissa Mayer, Caterina Fake, Carlos Bhola, Esther Dyson, Niklas Zennström, Bruce Sterling and Nicholas Negroponte.

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 is giving a keynote speech at the Informa Mobile Advertising & Marketing conference in Paris, Jan 16-17.

First, it has been a great conference with a lot of valuable insight being shared between the participants, and there is still the second day to come. Thanks to Informa for inviting us to give a keynote speech on building a mobile, ad-funded media and operator for young people.

We have had a lot of interesting discussions on Blyk as a mobile media, how we have built it, and why it is being built in this novel way – as a full scale mobile operator. In short, every media starts from understanding its audience, and providing something that is of high value to this specific group of people. In our context in mobile media, the 16-24 year old audience uses – we have done a lot of research on this topic and intend to continue our efforts – their mobiles for talking, texting and… as an alarm clock. This leads to the obvious conclusion: in order to build a mobile media one needs to provide something of great value for its audience, and in mobile it is the two ‘killer applications’ that Blyk provides: free voice and text. And in order to do that, to be able to provide what is most valuable for the 16-24 year old consumers, one technically needs to become an MVNO.

The second key question is how one builds the content into this new mobile media, considering especially that rich content is not consumed in masses via mobile, and is hard and expensive to make attractive. Well…we do in fact have the richest of all media at hand when it comes to user-generated content in everyday communication. One thing that we have observed in all our trials is that the young consumers – in our opinion not surprisingly – start to miss Blyk after the trial ends once the ad user experience is delivered in a fun, enjoyable and relevant Blyk manner.