“Free G” - not “3G”. We are talking about mobile’s role as a relationship not a sales channel for young consumers.

The money made from mobile will not be made from selling content on the mobile phone but by the cross-selling of other goods and services as a result of generating a strong relationship with the consumer.

Free G - the key points

Give, Get, Grow, Give Up, Guide

1) Give first  - without giving first you will fail to engage young consumers. Look how Red Bull literally gives away their energy drink on campuses to open the dialogue with youth.

2) Get their attention  - attention is your single biggest cost in marketing to young people. Youth indifference has sunk and continues to sink countless widget pushers out their because, no matter how “good” your web2.0 widget is, if it’s not on their radar forget it. Getting on to their radar is all about “giving first” (see point 1) - putting on a rock concert, festival, giving away free airline tickets, paying for campus advocates to hand out free drinks etc.

3) Grow the relationship - traditional marketing campaigns seek only inorganic results. Short term hikes in awareness that do little to create value in the relationships. The marketing of the future will be based on dialogue rather than campaigns, on trust rather than awareness, on loyalty and churn rates rather than ARPU or click throughs. Growing a relationship with young mobile consumers, as with any personal relationship requires trust, transparency, communication and effort. It requires constantly giving rather than only communicating with youth when you want them to buy something from you.

4) Give up on owning the brand - have a word with your marcomms department on this one. Do you see yourself as brand owner or custodian? The key youth “buy-in” occurs at the level of brand ownership. Birkenstock, Jones Soda, Red Bull, Toyota Scion all are brands “owned” by youth. What we understand as an industry to be “personalization” is merely a drop in the ocean. You wouldn’t for example, go personalize next door’s living room nor would you commit emotionally to personalizing some Web2.0 widget. You would, however, be interested in owning a brand that you base your social interaction around. Check out Scion and see how a brand (once Toyota) is now a living breathing youth entity.

5) Guide them towards new purchases - and finally the payback. All that investment had to be leading somewhere. The challenge is that too many of us in this industry want results before stage 5 - perhaps a function of VC and investor expectations. You cannot reap before you sow nor can you truly monetize young consumers before you invest upfront. At stage 5 you have trust - the foundation of any long term relationship. Our own research shows that trust rated the most important factor in choosing between mobile operators. In many cases young consumers made decisions on “perceived trust” - either way the perceptions were as good as real. The mobileYouth 2007 report showed that youth who downloaded a ringtone (paid or not) were more likely to buy a CD or MP3 album from the same artist. With trust, you can cross-sell and guide consumers towards purchase decisions, without you are constantly chasing your tail looking for the “next big thing”.

Overcoming the short termism of “killer apps”, “Web2.0 widgets” and chasing high spending consumers

Our industry’s collective illusion is one based on short termism - that results must happen today, that the answer lies in a quick fix widget such as web2.0 whatever (whatevr?), that the money lies in the higher spending older consumers. All of these are short term solutions to a long term problem - ie how do we create a sustainable and profitable industry.

The answer lies in the opposite of all short termism. That the results happen tomorrow, the answers lie not in technology but understanding consumer behavior, the money lies in building a relationship with young consumers who will come good when the relationship flourishes by buying other goods and services.

This is the essence of Free G. 

Tags | charging models, free, killer apps, trust, web2, widgets