Mobile Marketing Minute with Rob Woodbridge and Greg Hickman Rob Woodbridge

It may seem odd that we think that mobile broke marketing but it did. Honestly. The reasons are plentiful but this is a natural occurrence in the evolution of the craft of marketing. Each new shift brings with it this type of creative destruction - think about the shifts that have occurred as we moved from print to radio to television to the web to mobile. Each step along this path has been met with a total change in the way we market - mobile is no different yet it is the most disruptive because it is mobile. Good and confused? Watch on.

The privacy issue has been slowly bludgeoned to death since we first set foot on digital soil yet slowly but surely we have all given up parts of it for different reasons. The fact is that we all have a price in mind when someone asks us for our personal information - it could be a latte or a discount or a new car - there is a threshold where "no" becomes "yes" and the price is our privacy. Perhaps we have come to accept the truth that privacy as we knew it is dead but why should we accept the current value affixed to it by others? Why should someone else determine that on our behalf? Instead of accepting that our privacy is dead or to wrestle for control of it in an ever-connected world, why not change the rules of how information is shared and what the value IS of that information? In our 3rd prediction we contemplate the future of privacy and how we may be able to arm ourselves for what is to come while, perhaps, earning revenue from sharing what is rightfully ours.

Don't get confused by the title here. We still love mobile. We still think it has changed the world we live in more than many of us realize yet. We still think we are in the soft foam of the real mobile wave that is yet to come. BUT what has happened in the last 18 months is that mobile has gotten more complex as more and more people make it a central part of their business. The reality is that doing mobile properly today is very difficult. We have systems that have been in place inside of companies for years - things like CRM - and systems that are new to this world because of mobile that are trying to somehow talk with those older legacy systems. This causes friction, tension and a whole lot of duplicate data. So what do we do? That's what we talk about in this episode. Don't give up, just adjust what you are trying to do. Don't stop, just start at the right place that will have the most impact on your business with the least complexity. The one thing that is true, the longer you wait, the longer you analyze, the longer you spend deciding your strategy, the more fuel you are adding to your competitor's fire. Stoke your own. It's damn hard but so is the regret you'll have if you don't start now.

Do you think the people talked about bank notes when they emerged in 1861 the way that we talk about mobile payments today? Were they proclaiming that 1862 would be the "year of cash"? That's how I feel about the way we bring mobile payments into the conversation - like it needs to have higher status than the way we've paid for things forever. It doesn't, it is just another form of paying. 3 years from now it will just be another option at the pump. What makes mobile payments interesting are the companies that are changing their business models - or forcing others to do just that. Companies like Starbucks who own the #1 mobile payments app in North America or Venmo and Twitter who are making the things we buy social currency. Greg and I feel 2015 will not only bring with it new advances in the way we pay but also in what we consider currency. The dollar bill has rivals and, for the first time in centuries, they aren't coins.

This is our first (of seven) dives into our 2015 predictions (watch the overview here) and we start with beacons. Those little peel-and-stick bluetooth transmitters that emerged in the second half of 2014 in retail will go far beyond their origins in 2015. We both weigh in on where we think they will be by the end of the year and what the industry will look to them to do - beyond pushing deals and annoying customers.

We are now a full week into 2015 - how are those resolutions going? Every new year brings an onslaught of predictions and, well, we are no different. This is the first of 8 (yes 8!) shows on what to expect in 2015. We start off here with an overview of our 7 predictions and will follow up each of the next 7 weeks with a deeper dive into each one of them. For now, here (along with everyone else) are our things to watch out for in 2015 if you are a part of the mobile marketing world (incidentally, that is everyone...)