Four Click Freedom

Wednesday I went to Beijing for the advertising event of the year as it came through China on its last stop.  Everyone was very receptive to the idea of Clickboards.  I handed out seventy five business cards and then just got tired of saying:

Who do you work with? What do they do? Well I’m here today representing Clickboards. Clickboards is a new type of Internet advertising that connects the web to feed to mobile.  The reason it is called Clickboards is because they are like banners but you can click on them more than once (making a clicking motion with my hand) and you can enter information into them like your phone number.  Then without leaving the site you are on, the information is sent to your personal coupon feed.  Then those discounts on the feed can be accessed at the point of purchase with your mobile.  The discount is then verified for the vendor and is erased from your feed.

I told a lot of people I was based in Tianjin and why Tianjin was such a perfect test market for the fact that most retailers have no register or computer in the stores and that I was at a point where I just need to start spending money to get it started.  Most people were a little shocked I was from Tianjin.

So…………………. I met a lot of great people from really cool companies. I guess the conclusion is that I am successfully beginning to brand the term Clickboards and I’m still number one when you Google Clickboards.

I did get to thinking if some of these guys wanted to start this in more developed markets, and I tend to believe that having oversimplified Clickboards to get to this point, that it wouldn’t work.  So I am in the clear as far as broadcasting my message.

Next post is about Smart Kiosks and how they are already being installed, and in the beginning of creating Clickboards this was part of the conclusion to the future development of Clickboards.  So now how do I leap frog?

Searching for ’social savings’ I only found Smartypig.com, this actually has to do with putting money in the bank and saving it and people can help you by contributing to your savings.

Searching for ’social shopping’ I found several sites listed here.   They basically use words like Rave, Impartial Advice, Recommend, Community, Wish list, where people in the community act as promoters for products they bought.

Searching for ‘networking discounts’ and ‘network savings’ I found that networking basically means on the web or saving on getting your computer onto the network online.

All have nothing to do with a Social Savings Networked Utility.  The second search I did was the most relevant.  However it requires user interaction after the sale, which I would have to argue is a weak platform.  Even Wikipedia defines ’social shopping’ as making informed decisions from information about products posted by the community.  However, coupons and deals are usually researched or collected prior to the sale, so this system relies on people finding the deals and then becoming self promoters of the products they bought.  And none have anything to do with creating a network where you begin to save more with the more people in your network and the common characteristics in shopping behavior you all share regardless of whether or not you actively promote your shopping behavior.  Network here still just means a group of people not actually webbed together.

One site had the ability to pass coupons to friends where you gain commission from the sale if your friends buy the product.  There was also a site that rewarded you for using the coupons with bigger coupons that you can cash in your points for.  There is still only one degree of separation in these methods.

None of these integrated mobile possibilities.  In the mobile media playground here in Beijing, China, there a system where you buy a card and get access to the discounts around the city as well as 1200 points.  Each time you buy the card you get 1200 more points. These can be used at some locations like cash.  The discounts you recieve are obtained by texting the store code and price of purchase to the number.  A confirmaion text is sent back and you show that to the teller.  There are several similar services.  Again no mobile media has anything to do with a network.

Among the applications Adcentricity will offer, include:

* Call-to-action via SMS, votes, polls, sweepstakes, contests, promotions, coupons, call-back request, text4info, surveys
* The ability to redeem mobile coupons (bar codes), unique PIN numbers (drive2web), ticketing
* Rich content, ringtones, wall papers, games, videos
* Mobile applications such as mobile Internet sites (WAP)
* Smart phone applications

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=103974

*Well the first point is all fun and games.  Very little commitment required from the user to say,  ‘yea you can give me that’ or, ‘yea I think I would vote for that person’ or, ‘put my name on the list so I can possibly win that’ etc.  However, I would find these little games completely annoying if I was notified ten times a day of some new crazy contest that I needed to enter.  I would opt out completely for any of those services.  However a lonely teenager might find this pretty amusing.

*Redeemable coupons with barcodes is excellent.  I’m totally on board to see how they pull that off.  My theory is that most of the coupons will be wasted efforts no matter how they manipulate their targeting.  But using PIN numbers and driving people back to the web is also not what you want.  You actually want to drive people off the web and to the stores.  Brick and mortar establishments aren’t just big fitting rooms where you try stuff on and then go back to the web to buy it.  Stores need traffic, and giving them a coupon when they pass the store on their phone so they can go home and get a discount is counter productive.  I do like having mobile tickets, very functional.

*Rich content, ringtones, wall papers, games, videos: a bunch of junk to me.

*WAP: anything new here?

*Applications: good can’t get enough good ones.  If they keep trying they are bound to come up with a few I like.

The debate is on whether unique users are coming to your site.  Right now cookies are the only way to see how many visitors you are getting and this could be overrated by almost three times because of the deletion of cookies.  And you know this means advertisers will pay more but are now becoming cautious because they want their money’s worth.

So if a site is using their own measuring tools like Google AdSense or their host providers numbers, and these all vary based on the tools used to measure, then where are you going to get numbers that are actually relevant to your product and people’s response.

Clickboards.net acts a second party seller.  Although you do not buy anything on the site, you can acquire information and promotions used to buy the products as well as package deals and rebates for products.  Then when you decide to buy, either directed to the advertisers site, or by going to the brick and mortar store, that is when the first interaction between buyer and seller takes place.  So really the advertiser takes themselves completely out of the picture except for the sale, which is really the way it is supposed to be.