Category Archives: Mobile in Society

Forget your carbon footprint; do you know what your digital footprint is?

Tomi Ahonen wrote a very interesting blog post about how companies can utilize consumers’ movements, mobile activities and social interaction (their digital footprint) to more effectively market to them. As with pretty much everything Tomi writes, it is worth a read. It is also worth some time actively considering the implications of digital footprints and their use in marketing.

First of all, he talks about how a digital footprint is created:

Take a typical London resident, working in the City. He (or she, we don’t care at this point) spends most weeknights and weekend nights at one area of London, regularly. Lets say the Earl’s Court area. If this customer spends most nights there, that is the real home, the real address. While we don’t know necessarily the street address of this guy, we know at least by cell identity, which section of Earl’s Court the person lives in.

He goes on to explain in a lot more detail about this concept including how to know a person’s interests, lifestyle and decision making processes by what they do and where they go with their mobile phone. It is fascinating reading.

I don’t know about you, but I read these kinds of things differently depending upon whether I am thinking like a marketer or a consumer at the moment I’m reading it.

As a consumer I am shocked to think that someone would be tracking all of my movements and activities based on the fact that I happen to have my cell phone with me at all times. It feels like 1984 all of a sudden (and not in that good-I’m-still-a-senior-in-high-school kind of way).

As a marketer I am excited by the possibilities of being able to use mobile marketing in such a way that it adds so much value to peoples’ lives that they don’t even realize it is marketing. After all, if all marketing/advertising that was presented to you was actually valuable to you, it wouldn’t even feel like marketing. It would feel like life.

After all, providing value with mobile marketing is critical (with or without the whole digital footprint concept) and one I strongly advocate. As I’m explaining in my series about what value to provide with mobile (started here), consumers simply won’t engage with mobile marketing unless there is something in it for them.

What do you think about this digital footprint concept? As a consumer? As a marketer? I’d love to know.

My good friend Angie Pedersen tagged me with the 7 Random Things meme and I am happy to participate but have changed it slightly to be 7 Things About My Mobile Use.

I do this for two reasons. First, I want to keep my blog on topic about mobile and secondly, I am very curious about how other people use their mobile devices. (Surely I can’t be the only one who speed dials accidentally at odd hours – see #1.) Anyway, here goes:

1.
Recently I had to turn off my Speed Dial because I kept dialing my dad’s phone number when I was trying to hit the snooze button on my phone. (On my Treo 700wx the snooze options pop up right on top of the speed dial photos. If I accidentally double tapped the snooze it started dialing. Not a good thing since I routinely set the alarm for 5 AM.)

2.
I put up with an error message showing up on my phone about a program (an alarm clock) that I have uninstalled because I have no idea how to make this error message go away. (This seems like the equivalent of 12:00 flashing over and over again on the VCR.)

3.
I set an alarm to remind me to pick up my daughter from school. I’m afraid that I’ll be so focused on writing my book that I’ll forget.

4.
Evidentially, my phone is a portable alarm clock.

5.
I fervently wish that more of my friends were text messagers. Did I mention this is a fervent wish? I also wish my mom would turn on her cell phone all the time so I could call her on it, but she insists that if she needs to call someone she will turn it on then. At least my dad is reachable – he has three cell phones.

6.
I am the room parent at my daughter’s school and had hoped to be able to text message other parents with alerts. No such luck. Out of 54 parents, only 2 of us text message. Thankfully, 26 of the 27 families do email. Note to Chase’s parents: GET EMAIL!

7.
Since I am in the making wishes mode, I would like to request that Atlantis Quest be made mobile for my Treo so I can play this totally awesome game all the time.

I am now tagging:

YOU.

Please put your 7 Things About My Mobile Use in the comments. Or feel free to blog about it and trackback here.

I saw this video over on Lena’s Zena’s blog, Nothin’ but SocNET while doing some research for the social networking chapter in my book.

It is well worth the 4 minutes to watch it – the concept is excellent and the way the video was done is brilliant. Take a look and then tell me if you agree that these student’s view of the world and how they interact with it means that mobile marketing is undoubtedly the next big thing…the younger generation deals with the world in a whole new way and mobile is huge part of it.

I have to point out that when the message flashes about the “problems” they are facing are not caused by them, that I disagree. If a student chooses to do Facebook instead of listen to the professor, that is their choice and any subsequent problems caused by this are their fault. Again, if a student chooses not to come to class that is their choice and therefore their responsibility.

When I went to college in the 80s we didn’t have as many technological distractions but we certainly found other ways to distract ourselves and had to take responsibility for our own choices – so should these students. Admittedly, it is a pet peeve of mine when people blame the rest of the world for their problems and fail to take responsibility for their own life. Certainly their point about having more than just a blackboard as a teaching tool is valid.

That aside, the video is a fascinating look at technology and how it is so interwoven in the lives of college students. For better or worse.