Mobile Marketing is the Mobile Internet
Morinaga is a great example of the content providers that organize their offerings into more sophisticated “mini platforms” that support sales, marketing, and promotion campaigns for off-line products. In other words, they provide mobile content (images, ring tones, etc.) as part of an overall marketing effort (either for themselves or for clients) – usually combined with PC Web or non-electronic channels.
{A little long this week; perhaps better to print and read off-screen.}
Over the past few weeks, the WWJ staff have had the pleasure of producing a series of Web videos for Tokyo’s Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM), a think-tank and research institute of sorts affiliated with the International University of Japan (IUJ).
Last week, we posted an in-depth interview with Professor Jeffery Funk, one of Japan’s leading academic experts on the business models and success factors associated with the wireless Internet (link below). When you’re done reading today’s newsletter, take a few minutes to watch Funk’s interview – it’ll be time well-spent.
My discussion with Jeff got me thinking about what has and has not succeeded on the wireless webs here, and I thought it appropriate to present a brief review.
When you get right down to it, there is only a limited range of content you can actually provide to a celly, namely: ring tones (sound files), pictures (image files), moving pictures (video and 2D/3D graphic files), mini web pages (markup language files), mail (text; both SMS and Internet standard), and Java and BREW applis (executable files and data files).
Note that each of these fundamental content types is limited in some way by the handset’s memory, battery, display, audio chip, or processor, and by the network’s download speed and cost of data.
Using this these fundamental content types, you can then provide applications (i.e. the recipient can execute the Java or BREW appli so as to do something – like play a game), content (sound, images, videos, graphics, mail, mini web pages), and services (like query a database to check train schedules or obtain a map). Essentially, this is what any content provider has to work with. Providers can also deliver other types of data (like GPS data) that the user doesn’t directly access but which gets used nonetheless to define which map should be served.
Obviously, the provision of mobile content itself is a business model that works – otherwise I’d be out of a job. 😉 In other words, there are companies that earn revenue and profits by creating and then delivering mini web pages, text mail, images, ring tones, and applis via the i-mode, EZweb, J-Sky, and H” wireless Internet platforms operated by the carriers.
Subscribers pay to receive this content – almost always on a subscription basis – which is entertaining, fun, useful, or otherwise worth paying for. But if this were the extent of what content providers do with their content, the mobile Internet would be relatively dull.
And while the provision of mobile content is profitable, this is not true for every content provider (and definitely not true for the majority of content providers, official or not). In precisely the same way that “selling books via the PC Web is profitable” is a true statement for Amazon.com and not true for anyone else (or very few others, anyway), it is also correct to say that, on Japan’s mobile webs, only few “pure” content providers have created a profitable business. Why?
Like the case with Amazon, only the largest and most well-known brand names can afford to create the content (which must be updated frequently) or attract a sufficiently large audience (through mobile, PC Web, and off-line advertising channels). It helps to have an existing content-creating mechanism in place, like a newspaper or a karaoke music provider would have. Further, now that the wireless webs here are mature, it’s very difficult to convince the carriers to allow any new content providers onto the official menus since all the categories are fully occupied and, by policy, they limit competition on the portal.
This is not the first time I’ve mentioned the lack of real profitability for all (see WWJ No. 22, link below), and while there is still very little hard data that I can cite to support this (since companies don’t, for obvious reasons, like to release such figures), numerous industry insiders have confirmed this open secret on many occasions over the past 18 months.
So if the Bandais, Disneys, Cybirds, Nikkeis, and Taitos of the world have the mobile content provision business all wrapped up, how can anyone else “do” mobile content at all? The answer is that other companies continue to create and deliver content and services (and new companies join in) as a way to create demand for their other products. In other words, i-mode, EZweb, and J-Sky have become far more important as one-to-one, always-with-you, always-on marketing channels than they are as sales channels for ring tones, etc.
Also, “community-style sites, which offer activities for people to do one-on-one (chat, mail, dating, share hobbies, fan clubs, etc.) continue to arise and continue to attract a lot of usage.
Last week, I happened to buy a Dars chocolate bar, made by Morinaga KK. Sure enough, the wrapper was promoting a campaign centered on “Kinki Kids” (a hyperpopular music group) that has been running since November. There is a code number printed inside each Dars chocolate bar; after registering at their campaign site (–> please provide mail address, password, age, and gender = marketing gold!), you input the code number from each of the Dars chocolate bars that you eat; this allows you to accumulate points. The more points you get, the greater your chance to win concert tickets.
And if you don’t win: No Sweat! No one loses, since there are lots of secondary prizes like Dars original tote bags (colored-keyed to match Dars’ various chocolate wrappers no less…).
Does Morinaga hope to make money from provision of mobile content? Nope – it’s a cost center for them. Does Morinaga hope to sell more chocolate bars, and maybe build up brand loyalty? You bet they do.
Morinaga is a great example of the content providers that organize their offerings into more sophisticated “mini platforms” that support sales, marketing, and promotion campaigns for off-line products. In other words, they provide mobile content (images, ring tones, etc.) as part of an overall marketing effort (either for themselves or for clients) – usually combined with PC Web or non-electronic channels.
In these cases, creating and delivering the mobile content itself may not be profitable, but the overall marketing effort is.
— Daniel Scuka