Vogue and Maxim are UK's Best Cross-Platform Mags

Vogue and Maxim are the only UK-based magazines that are fully-optimised for a multi-platform audience – with iPhone, iPad and Android apps, along with sites specially designed for iPad, Nexus 7 and smartphones – according to research into multi-screen advertising experiences with publishing companies by BrandPerfect.org.

The survey of 100 popular consumer-facing magazines in the US, the UK and Germany found that 93 per cent  don't offer their readers a fully cross-platform experience. 83 per cent of the 78 consumers magazine brands surveyed from the US and UK have an app. 65 per cent of these have an iPhone app and 40 per cent have Android. Almost all  - with notable exceptions like the BBC's Radio Times - have a separate iPad app. But, the report says: “Without satisfactorily audited audience circulation figures available, especially where app are bundled in with print subscriptions or availabe for free, how [do we know] many people are seeing them?"

Fewer mobile sites despite easier targeting

46 per cent of the UK-based magazines assessed by the company and 45 per cent of the German publications did not have a site optimised for smartphones. Just 25 per cent of the US ones were in the same position. The report says: "While many publishers have invested heavily in apps, website readerships are much larger, targetable and easier to analyse."

Many of the publishers offer a scaled version of their desktop site to tablet and smartphone surfers, with varying results.  Glamour magazine in the UK scaled to fit the smaller screen, although the writing becomes rather small, while Wired magazine readers in the UK have to move their screen from side-to-side to read full articles on the scaled site.

Vice and Marie Claire were missing just one of the seven criteria used each - an Android app and an iPad-optimised site respectively.

Written for Mobile Marketing and first published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/vogue-and-maxim-are-uks-best-cross-platform-mags

IBM Creates AllAboard Travel Optimsation Tool for the Ivory Coast

Researchers from IBM have created a map of potential bus routes for the Ivory Coast's largest city, Abidjan, using data collected from more than 500,000 cell phone calls.

Today, 539 buses are supplemented by 5,000 mini-buses and 11,000 taxis to take people around the city, which has a population or more than 3.5m. The AllAboard team believes that re-designing the infrastructure around people's movements could cut travel times in the notoriously busy city by 10 per cent.

As many phones in use in the developing world do not have GPS functionality, the data gathered from phone calls or text messages, which register with a nearby mobile tower. The person's movements can be ascertained as the call is transferred to a different tower or a new call is made near another tower.

The anoymised data from 2.5 bn calls made by 5m phone users was gathered by Orange between December 2011 and April 2012 and released for use in its Data for Development project. This is the largest data release of its kind, according to MIT, which is hosting the NetMob conference where the rest of the projects will be showcased.

“This represents a new front with a potentially large impact on improving urban transportation systems,” said Francesco Calabrese, a researcher at IBM’s research lab in Dubli and a co-author of a paper on the project. “People with cell phones can serve as sensors and be the building blocks of development efforts.”

David Talbot, chief correspondent at the MIT Technology Review, said: “Cell phone data promises to be a boon for many industries. Other research groups are using similar data sets to develop credit histories based on a person’s movements and phone-based transactions, to detect emerging ethnic conflicts, and to predict where people will go after a natural disaster to better serve them when one strikes.

"While in a number of past studies mobile phone data was used to infer travel routes and demand, IBM says this was the first time such data was used in an effort to actually optimize a city transit network."

Written for Mobile Marketing Magaizne and first published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/ibm-creates-allaboard-travel-optimsation-tool-ivory-coast

Will I be pretty, will I be rich?

---

If, like me, you aren’t wealthy or sexy, last week really wasn’t your week. But when is it ever your week? That’s why fashion and adverts were created right? Shoulda, woulda, coulda etc etc etc.
While you’re checking your back fat in the mirror I know your mind has been wandering back to the inevitable question… “WHO IS BRITAIN’S SEXIST WOMAN?

Worry not. It’s Sexy Week at The Sun. Which means our British beauties have been adorning the paper’s pages for your perusal. “Britain has indeed Got Talent – just look at those endless legs!” the piece assures us when commenting on pop idol and BGT on Ice judge Alesha Dixon. Does Arctic Monkey gf 34B Katie tickle your fancy, or good old blonde Rhian Sugden, 26? Both were huge hits on Page 3, if that helps clarify your thoughts. Whose assets do you most admire? With your crucial decision made, you can pop along and vote for your Brittiest Brit on The Sun’s website.

Yet you can’t vote for your Brittiest man, lest he feel ogled and ashamed like the first in the queue at the wedding buffet. Rather unfair I hear you say. Fortunately another ‘who’s who’ went live recently, the Sunday Time’s Brit Rich List. Unfortunately, this is less of a democratic, participatory process, more of a cold hard numbers game. But if you have a penchant for unattractive, older gentlemen, this is your lucky day. STOP PRESS. BALD AGING MAN HAS MORE MONEY THAN YOU.

The top 10 is notably absent of women, much like most who’s whos as we calmly demonstrate our way through the glass ceiling, a former Miss UK makes it in at number nine with her monied hubby. And another rounds of the shortlist along with Mr Rich having both inherited her father’s Heineken fortune. I’m sure he loved her for her great sense of humour and not all the money and free booze. Unlike The Sun’s list, just one of the top 10 rich Britons is British born. And they’re all pretty not-sexy; apart from their wallets.

The Queen (wealthy winner of the Rich List when it started in 1989) isn’t a noted GILF, so she hasn’t even made the shortlist of 50 British fitties. She even slipped down the wealth rankings when they decided not to count her land. Coz as her loyal subjects we really all own her land and can run rabid at Buckingham Palace just like Prince Harry. Wait…

So do you fancy yourself as a regular Billie Piper in a cocktail glass (see image) or are you and your brother just dying to be the next Sri and Gopi Hinduja? They’re billionaire exporters, if you’re into that… Well here’s the disheartening bit.

The BBC notes that in 1989 you would have need ed wealth of £30m (about £65m today) to make it into the Rich Lists top 200. Last year, to get into that same 200, you would have needed £450m. In 1989 the wealth of the top 200 amounted to £38bn. Last year it added up to £289bn. And you actually have to be ‘sexy’ to get into the Sexy Week list. While mere mortals can only learn from Gok Wan one series at a time, it actually turns out that having a bit of dollar isn’t too bad for getting into the fit list either. There’s a Jagger on both. Handy if you’ve got genes like Jagger; less so if you can’t quite afford Jagger’s jeans.

The moral of the story…? Wealth doesn’t guarantee attractiveness, but it can’t hurt. And being hot might make you a bit rich, à la Knightley and Middleton, but you might have to suffer loads of blokes – and even women – staring and judging you for the rest of your life.

Just remember, many studies have shown, that there is no direct link between wealth and happiness. Yes, that is probably just what a poor and unattractive person would say.
::
Illustration by Ben Rider

Written for and first published here: http://www.letsbebrief.co.uk/kirsty-styles-will-i-be-pretty-will-i-be-rich/

MRS 2013: “Next Five Years of Innovation will be Frightening” says Forrester

While the earliest communications innovations had tens and even hundreds of years between them – from the invention of the telephone in 1897 to the first WAP-enabled handset – innovations in smartphones have only been gathering pace.

Addressing the room at the end of the Mobile Retail Summit 2013, Martin Gill, principle analyst for Forrester, said we wouldn’t have even been talking about this at a conference in 2007. “The pace of change is getting faster and faster. That’s not going to slow down. 39 per cent of UK adults now use the mobile internet on a daily basis. If your core customerbase is under-25, that figure reaches 60 per cent.”

“This is not limited to the UK. This is the way in which everyone across the world is using mobile - not just talking but communicating, searching and changing the way they interact with brands.”

But he said this new world, where over half of all searches are mobile and most of those are local, is increasingly difficult to keep up with and manage. In the past, he said, when a customer was in your store, you could be certain that they weren’t on your website, on the phone to your call centre, watching your TV ad or browsing a competitor’s site. “There are mobile specific behaviours that you can’t afford to ignore.”

90 per cent of purchases are still in store

But he highlighted that only 12 per cent of UK consumers have actually bought a product on their mobile phone – including downloads and other digital content. “Only 11 per cent of purchases made in the UK are online. That means 90 per cent are still in physical stores. What people are doing,” he said, “is using their mobile phones to interact with the physical environment.” The top activities are locating a store to check opening hours, researching a product and taking a picture. “People are not in a massive rush to buy on mobile – what they want is help with their physical purchase.

“Whatever you call it – a game changer, the glue or the link – mobile is bringing the best of the physical world and the best of the digital world together to influence consumers in different ways. Brands have the opportunity to touch every different aspect of the customer life cycle.

So what does Forrester predict for the future?

“The future of mobile is absolutely about context. Brands can create mobile unique experiences that only exist because of what the person is doing and the fact that the phone can interact with their environment.” He outlined that the controls, displays and opportunities for data collection will only get smarter, offering the potential for things like biometric security, image projection and chemical sensors for food.

But he said there are simple bits of context that can be better used today. Location, time and making use of user set preferences can all help create a personalised experience. “Are they in store, are they in a competitor’s store, are they about to get on a flight?” Walmart, for example, delivers an app customised for when a customer is in store with content relevant to where they are. Distance, depth, aisle, floor, direction and what time of day it is could all be put to use in the near future.

Next five years will be frightening

Although he said it might not be that useful, he highlighted that the Converse AR app actually works and does what it says - which is a start. “Whether they buy something I don’t know but it’s a vision of what’s to come – what does it look like when I wear it? How does it look or how does it feel?”

“If you were IKEA, you could already know the colour scheme or a room – what colours match? How big is the room? How much do I have in savings? When can I have it delivered? Which stores deliver to my house?

"What we do know is it’s coming at such a fast pace that the level of innovation that the next five years is going to bring will be frightening. And the mouse is dead. There are new ways of interacting with technology and we are not tied to the old user input. We can deliver new user experiences, mobile user experiences.

“If you remember anything, remember mobile is the glue – it brings the best of digital and the best of physical together.”

Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and first published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/mrs2013-next-five-years-innovation-will-be-frightening-says-forrester-analyst

iLove Interactive Women's Magazine Drops onto Your Door Mat

A women's consumer magazine with mCommerce built in has been unveiled in the same week that Bauer has closed the doors at print magazine More!.

Digital Space has announced the launch of the free iLove interactive women's magazine and app, which will be delivered direct to a selected audience of 700,000 households from July.

The editorial content and advertising in the monthly mag will all contain multimedia elements, with a particular focus on driving women to download the app, scan products and buy them on the spot. The company has used data modelling with the help of Royal Mail to identify women who like fashion and beauty and also own a smartphone to ensure that the people targeted will be keen to purchase the products. The company will be able to track scans and purchases made via the app, making them directly attributable.

The audience will be more than double those of Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire, as well as the free magazines from Stylist and ASOS. Will women be able to argue with a free mag with interactive content selected with them in mind delivered straight to their door?

It is also available to a wider audience online and in email editions.


Written for Mobile Markeint Magazine and first published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/ilove-interactive-womens-magazine-drops-your-door-mat