The MoPR Blog

Hold the presses: Email, not social networks, influence young buyers’ decisions. A new poll on internet marketing by ExactTarget has revealed that young adults (18-34) are more likely to shape their decisions based on information from direct and email marketing than they are via social networks.

Mike Bloxham, director of insight and research at Ball State University’s Center for Media Design, said that Internet marketing professionals should not assume that the media chosen by consumers to receive information is the best channel to transmit advertising.

“This is a dangerous assumption to make in a time when consumers are becoming increasingly aware of their level of control over their media experiences,” he continued.

Chalk one up for email marketers, we suppose.

Using Twitter for more than just boring personal updates. More and more organizations are using Twitter to push messaging, talk to customers and “join the conversation.” The latest to join in is Make magazine (a personal favorite here at MoPR). According to Folio magazine, Make is using Twitter for customer service, providing information about magazine events and even offering exclusive deals for Twitter followers. The Make Twitter feed gives readers a personal direct line to the senior editor – who answers each Tweet himself.

Says the Folio piece, the Make editor reads, “…everything from subscription requests to changes of address which number 30-40 a day. With Twitter, users expect a response right away.”

Mobile phone usage increases but users still want easier access to information. Azuki Systems, Inc., announced the results of its first annual U.S. mobile phone user survey to profile trends and emerging behavior. More than 54 percent of those surveyed said their mobile phone usage had increased by more than 25 percent over the last two years, and one in five respondents said it had increased by more than 50 percent. A significant catalyst behind this growth is smart phone adoption, with 62 percent of respondents indicating they either own or will own such a device in the next 12 months.

Despite increased adoption, almost 80 percent of those surveyed said they wished it were easier to access information from the Internet on their mobile phones, and an equal percentage stated they wished it were easier to access rich media on their mobile phones. (We’re working on it!)

Surprisingly, older users are accessing the Web via smartphones more often than their younger peers. The 35 to 44 year-old crowd is spending 60 percent of their mobile usage time each week surfing the Web. Perhaps fueling a significant portion of this growth was iPhone adoption, which according to the survey results appeared strongest among 23 to 44 year-olds.

The survey results also proved good news for mobile advertisers. Almost 70 percent of mobile users surveyed would prefer mobile ads in exchange for free access to mobile content. Additionally, if their mobile phones had location tracking capabilities that would present them with promotions for local businesses, more than 65 percent say they would take advantage of this opportunity.

Cool campaign of the week. File JetBlue under “they get it.” Last week their gorgeous new terminal opened at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK). One way they promoted it was through a short-term WordPress blog called T508. Posts were all filed in one day, starting in the early morning, continuing through the afternoon and late into the night. Most posts were very short on copy and long on photos – photos of the lounge, restaurants, services, but most importantly of the people of JetBlue – and their customers. From a reader perspective it looked like one big, cool party. And if you were media and didn’t get the traditional press release [believe me, they promoted it through other outlets as well – we saw articles and news segments during the week] there’s a simple blurb and link that lets media get in touch.

Blogging doesn’t have to be a boring, corporate affair for organizations. It can be fun while being informative and supporting the brand. Kudos, JetBlue.

You’ve watched the debates and heard the ads, and time is running out to decide and cast your ballot: Who is the best mobility PR agency?

Mobility PR has been nominated in the “Public Relations Firm: Mobile & Wireless Technology” category of the MobileVillage Mobile Star Awards, which means we’re up for Mobile & Wireless PR Agency of year, and we need your vote.

The October 20 voting deadline is fast approaching for the Mobile Star Awards which recognize the top mobile products, achievements and thought leaders as chosen by readers of MobileVillage’s free e-newsletter Go Mobile.

Go Mobile is packed with the web’s top mobile/wireless enterprise news and is delivered approximately every three weeks. The most important trends and news are compiled into a clear concise list of article links so that you do not need to constantly scan multiple news sources for the stories that impact the mobile enterprise industry the most.

This award was tailor-made for Mobility Public Relations as our agency does nothing other than deliver award winning PR programs and results for mobile and wireless technology companies. We hope you agree, and will show us with your vote!

To vote for us and also receive the Go Mobile newsletter for free, please follow these easy steps.

1)    Simply go here and sign up for the free Go Mobile newsletter if you don’t already receive it. Once you are subscribed to the newsletter you are eligible to vote.
2)    Go here and “Click Here to Vote Now,” find the “Wireless & Mobile Technology PR Firm” category towards the bottom of the list, click on us and submit! (Only one vote per email address.)

It’s that easy and takes less than two minutes! And it’s a win/win. You get to vote for your favorite PR firm and you get a valuable newsletter on the mobile space.

We thank you in advance for your vote and your support!

CTIA’s Fall Wireless and I.T. & Entertainment Expo last month brought together companies from all over the wireless space including developers, content owners, systems integrators and solutions providers.  And even though the show felt much smaller than past shows we have a attended, it still managed to attract a crowd of some of the most innovative and cutting edge technologies in the wireless market today.

One such innovative and cutting edge technology comes from SeeqPod. Full disclosure:  I was a huge SeeqPod fan to begin with.  But nothing seals the deal more than meeting with their awesome team on person and getting more familiar with the service and its features.

Here’s a video we did with Seeqpod:

Mobility PR interviews Seeqpod from Mobility Public Relations on Vimeo.

What is it?
SeeqPod is a playable search engine designed specifically for crawling the web to find audio, video, and podcasts.  Described as the search engine for music, SeeqPod  has a reported index of over 8 million songs which are all available on-demand.  It’s instant gratification for the music lover- and we can’t get enough of it here at the MoPR HQ.

How does it work?
Simply type in the song you want to listen to, SeeqPod scours the web for it, and voila-you’ve got your music, on-demand. Create playlists, too, in order to really customize your SeeqPod page.  And of course not every song ever created has made it to the site yet, but I challenge you to search your current favorite tune and NOT find it in the index.

What makes it so compelling to us?
So what’s better than SeeqPod on your computer?  SeeqPod mobile which was released during CTIA.

Steve Doss, SeeqPod’s VP of Mobile and Consumer Electronics, said that the “new Mobile Discovery solution allows for multiple integration options, including the customized cataloguing of music, text and other media…When it comes to music in particular, SeeqPod technology can help your customers discover new songs or rediscover forgotten favorites.”

The uh-oh factor
So now you’ve got your SeeqPod with you anywhere.  Everything seems to be going perfectly- except for that one nasty little issue of a lawsuit currently in the works with the Warner Music Group who is suing the company for profiting on copyrighted works.

Warner claims that it’s an “unlawful music service that directly engages in, encourages, and facilitates the mass infringement of Plaintiffs’ and other intellectual property owners’ copyrighted works.”

Different from music sites like Pandora and Last.fm who have to advertise on their sites in order to afford their signed licensing deals with copyright owners, SeeqPod is currently protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and its “Safe Harbor” clause which allows SeeqPod to continue streaming the music as long as it isn’t hosted on their server.   For the record, it sounds like what SeeqPod is doing is completely legal.  And until someone tells them otherwise, they don’t intend on stopping.  We certainly hope they don’t!

So what does this all mean for the future of music search engines?  No one really knows for sure.  For now, SeeqPod is safe (yippee!) while others like Pandora struggle to gain advertising to pay the high price of royalties.  And since record labels aren’t giving up easily, this battle could wage on for a while.

What do you think?  Should companies like SeeqPod have to pay royalties or are the record labels being too greedy?  Let us know your thoughts.