We Have Moved!
Hey mobile maniacs,
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Happy mobilizing!
Archive | Post by: Guest
Carless? Public Transportation Apps Help Keep you Mobile
Living in Texas and trying to stay mobile without using a car can be tough. While I have a car, this summer I chose to try commuting to work by bus instead of driving. I initially downloaded the Ride Austin iPhone app as a mobile method to help me conquer public transportation in Austin. My $2.99 investment was worth every penny — I literally would be lost without it.
The app helps you find the closest bus or train stop to your location, shows you the schedule for routes that go by that location, and lets you look at route maps.
Chicago, Portland, and Seattle, among 
others, offer apps with real-time bus schedules where each bus is tracked with GPS systems so you know whether your bus is early, late, or right on time. Buster, the Chicago Bus Tracker costs $1.99, while Portland and Seattle’s apps are free.
Acrossair, an app development company, put out augmented reality apps last year for several large cities in which users can find the nearest transit station via their iPhones’ video function. The following is the developer’s description of the New York Nearest Subway app:
“When you load the app, holding it flat, all 33 lines of the New York Subway are displayed in colored arrows. By tilting the phone upwards, you will see the nearest stations: what direction they are in relation to your location, how many miles away they are and what lines they are on. If you continue to tilt the phone upwards, you will see stations further away, as stacked icons.”
In addition to NYC, the $1.
99 Acrossair app is available for cities including London, San Francisco, Madrid, Paris and Tokyo. Some cities also have free versions supported by Apple iAds.
See below for an example of the New York app’s interface or watch a short video on the Acrossair’s website.
The Google Maps app that comes pre-loaded on every iPhone has a pretty nifty public transportation feature as well. It allows you to pick your current location, addresses from your contacts’ informatio
n, or a custom insert and then choose directions to there or from there. You can also choose to depart ‘now’ or select a time in the future, and then are presented with the three routes numbers closest to your departure time, their expected
arrival time, and the total fare for your journey. Not bad for an app that came with the phone! Hindsight is 20/20, and I wish I’d found out about the capabilities of this app before purchasing Ride Austin.
Here is a screenshot showing the next bus I can take from my office to my apartment.
Going careless can be initially daunting but public transportation apps really helped ease the transition for me.
Christmas Morning
While we’ve all been anxiously awaiting these June days—first Apple’s official announcement about the new iPhone, followed by Apple & AT&T consumers flooding both websites, and finally, the day we’ve all been waiting for… June 24th: the official arrival date of Apple’s iPhone 4.
However, Christmas morning has come a little early for a lucky few of us with a number of iPhone 4 preorders arriving up to two days early. I wasn’t able to get the Apple website to let me through until close to 11 PM CST (yes, I tried all day on the 15th), and now—as of 9:20 AM one day early—I just got a call informing me that my new baby was just delivered to my home. Taking an early lunch (it is only 9:45) to go it up.
Stay tuned for a special Mobilisms video post of the first unboxing of our office.
Disclaimer: AT&T is a client of Fleishman-Hillard. All thoughts and opinions expressed in our posts are our own.
You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.
This past Thursday, I had the privilege of hearing @TheTimHayden speak at the Social Media Club of Dallas. Aside from being a fellow bobcat (shout out, Texas State!), he is also an incredible marketer with great tales from campaigns where he has seamlessly integrated the online with the offline.
What I took away from his talk were a lot of solid campaign ideas, a lot of thoughts about what’s to come down the pipeline for marketers and a lot of excitement about the world of mobile.
Needless to say, he got my wheels a’ turnin’.
While digital marketers and communicators can often get caught up in the hype of the next-best-thing, Tim’s talk made it clear that mobile is still something to watch. While he suggests that the application platform will break down into 
something only used for temporary and disposable needs, like a travel guide app for a vacation, he was quick to point out that we haven’t seen the last – or even the half – of what mobile can do.
Less than half of mobile phones in the market today are smart phones. According to the latest data by Gartner, smart phones only made up 17.3 percent of cell phone sales in the first quarter (up from 13.6 percent last year).
So, what does this mean? It means potential – serious potential. As the price for smart phones continues to drop, and service prices continue to drop – the price of entry into the world of mobile has also dropped to attract more and more people. As Tim pointed out, what will happen when all these people have limitless communication capacity in their hand?
Well, we don’t exactly know. Why? Because we haven’t even seen half of our audience yet. And for people who work in mobile and digital, that’s very exciting.
Now is the time to test the behavioral waters and learn. Around the corner waits a whole new group of people; and they are just as hungry for communication and just as eager to join the mobile/social conversation as the groups that came before them.
Marketing Mobility Key For Nonprofit Organizations
There’s a shift going on in the world of technology, and quite literally, in the world’s core. Earthquakes in Haiti and Chile earlier this year proved the latter, and in the wake of these events, non-profit organizations have stepped to the forefront of the mobile world.
Regardless of their cause, nonprofits have some things in common. They generally:
- A) Encourage people to get involved with something.
- B) Push those with resources to give back to (or for) those who don’t.
- C) Point people to come together to achieve common goals.
Recently, non-profit fundraising methods have undergone a great shift and the future of building sustainable donor bases could dependent on harnessing emerging revenue possibilities.
Traditional fundraising efforts include event fundraisers, face-to-face solicitation, and private contributions of dedicated donors. Now, mobile technology has revolutionized that system, as proven by the “text Haiti to 90999” campaign that raised $32 million and counting, the largest mobile fundraising campaign to date. Texting may have just become the new telethon, as it provides a donation outlet that gives donors a convenient and immediate response.
Given the massive response to the Red Cross’s short message service (SMS) Haiti campaign, organizations will surely devote time and resources to perfecting their execution of similar tactics. The question remains: Can this mobile model be replicated, or will people only respond in masses under the worst circumstances that only come around once in awhile?
M+R Strategic Services, MobileActive.org and the Mobile Marketing Association are just a few outlets that have started tracking data for mobile marketing in non-profits. A close look at their findings will identify some of the most important elements for sustaining mobile marketing success. Pardon the cliché, but here are the ABC’s for how to employ mobile best practices year-round with real nonprofit examples.
Awareness and Advocacy
Some have identified obstacles for nonprofit mobile advocacy such as the inability to make a thorough pitch in only 140 characters. Finding success in mobile marketing is not dependent on making the most developed pitch, but instead, on positioning your cause in the forefront of mediums that people are using. If anything, limited space is a blessing in disguise, because it allows nonprofits to only push out the most relevant information about their cause, which is what users desire anyway.
Real World Example:
Project 7 is based in Southlake, Texas and gives back to the world by selling everyday products like bottled water and mints, and then donating 50% of profits to efforts that help cure hunger, homelessness, sickness and war in poor countries. Project 7 is a grass roots campaign, using no celebrity testimonials or paid advertising, so embracing mobile is key.
They own active Facebook , Twitter and Vimeo accounts, which are accessed by many networks of people every day. In urban settings especially, people checking their social media accounts on mobile devices can be made aware that Project 7 products are available at Whole Foods and Caribou Coffee. A percentage of users are likely headed to the grocery store or out for a cup of coffee at some point during their day, making this a perfect opportunity to advocate in a small space.
Bridge Building
Since we are dealing with humanitarian efforts, this could be taken as a literal practice. For this list, however, we’re talking about figurative bridge building. People need to make a connection between their monetary donation and the actual work that will get done as a result. Another way this can play out is that users are made aware of a social responsibility they can fulfill by supporting mobile marketing.
Real World Example:
Cosmetic giant Estee Lauder decided to engage the fight against breast cancer this year with their “World Pink Mosaic” campaign. They built support for the movement through a mobile campaign, and used funds to set up the world’s largest online photo mosaic in the shape of a pink ribbon. Estee Lauder experienced a great response to this campaign, soliciting participants from more than 70 countries. What set it apart from other projects? Donors were able to donate money for cancer research, and add a photo to the mosaic for a true bridge building experience.
Convenience
Even if an organization has the greatest cause in the world, they are fighting an uphill battle for participation if they don’t provide convenient ways to help. The ultimate example of this was the Red Cross Haiti Relief that allowed people to help monetarily simply by sending a text, but there are other ways this plays out.
Real World:
The Bowery Mission has been helping rebuild lives for New York City residents since the late 1800’s through food and shelter provisions, addiction recovery and employment opportunities. In 2009 they launched an SMS campaign designed to raise awareness of the plight of the New York homeless population. They made it convenient for mobile users to participate by texting BOWERY to 368674. More than 47,000 New Yorkers responded to their plea, and many became involved with efforts, thanks largely to the ease and effectiveness of mobile marketing.
(This post was written by Bryce Wilks from LevelTen)