10 Minute Strategy

In this episode of 10MinuteStrategy, Shore Communications President John Blossom and Marketing Leadership Principal, Peter Propp take a view of the tech and media landscape to make a few predictions about what is actually going to happen in some of the big trending stories.  In December, we’ll review our predictions and see how we did.  John talks about the uber-players in social mobile and search, about the rise of sensors and near-field communications — exciting shifts are coming on those fronts.  Peter talks about the ramifications of the iPhone on Verizon’s CDMA network, LTE, and the Verizon iPhone itself.  Links to further exploration of some of these topics are down below the video.

John Blossom’s 2010 Wrap-up and 2011 Tech Predictions from Content Blogger

A good overview of the considerations that corporations and consumers should take into account before jumping to the iPhone on Verizon.

I recently met Professor Noel Capon and we really hit it off.  If you don’t know of Professor Capon, ask any of your friends who attended Columbia Business School where his marketing class is legend.  Or ask any MBA you know about what Marketing text book they used.  Chances are it was Managing Marketing in the 21st Century, by Noel Capon with James Mac Hulbert.  

So it was with great pleasure that I sat down with Professor Capon a few weeks back.  I think this interview gives a terrific primer on why social and mobile media are important aspects of any marketing strategy along some examples of successful social and mobile efforts.  I hope you enjoy:

I’ve been as enthusiastic as anyone about game layer applications like Foursquare that leverage location based data as a way to earn points.  Here’s a blog post I wrote about the huge opportunity for consumer brands to build their own app phone clients that leverage geolocation and other mobile services.

And the truth is that while Foursquare continues to grow and Gowalla has made some strong partnerships, neither service has been able to maintain strong participation after 2-4 months.  Maybe being the mayor of your local Starbucks or gin joint just doesn’t create a meaningful reason to use standalone location services?

Other game layer ideas and start-ups often focus on geo-caching, where you use your phone and clues to find a prize that’s been hidden.  

But Popsy takes the idea of a prevalent game layer to a new level.  Importantly it is a game layer that is super easy to access, focuses for today on the huge demographic that love professional sports and has a financial model that pays consumers in points for taking the time to answer a trivia question or a predictive (“Is he going to bunt or hit away?”) question.  Have fun, get the answer right, win points — pretty positive experience, right?

I got to know the Popsy team when they launched at this November’s Sports Media and Technology Conference  at the NYC Marriott Marquis. This event had really strong speakers and vendors.  Popsy did its launch event during the cocktail reception and even the typically cynical sports marketing and sports programming crowd could tell that something real, new and different was on the scene.  

Some of the benefits to the businesses:  Popsy gives stadiums and networks a new, fun category of ad inventory to sell. They give brands a new way to get their product in front of engaged consumers.  And venues and brands get access to a huge amount of tracked data.

Benefits for brands, leagues and networks  really strong as well, making me a believer that Popsy may be the first platform to get the game layer right.

Here is part I of my interview with Popsy CEO Ryan Kurek:

And here is part II.  Enjoy!!  Ryan even finds a way to make a Mets game more enjoyable — talk about innovation!

In part II of my interview with IndegoAfrica.org CFO Conor French, we discuss how and why the firm was started (Matt Mitro is the founder and CEO), the objectives the firm started with and the steps Indego Africa takes to make sure they are having a positive impact on the people of Rwanda.  

Conor talks about the balancing act of wanting to measure impact and at the same time avoiding any activity that reduce the productivity of the team in Rwanda.

Thanks to Conor for taking the time to talk about IndegoAfrica   If you are looking for a unique holiday gift, check out their retail site, which includes native African Goods, and specialized goods from designs by Nicole Miller and Anthropologie.

Looking for a great holiday gift that reflects your concerns about the world?  You could do a lot worse than checking out IndegoAfrica.org.  They have great goods from African artisans — with the twist that many of them are based on designs by Western designers like Nicole Miller and Anthropologie, and some very Western items like laptop sleeves and soon, sleeves for iPads. Check out the interview below with IndegoAfrica.org CFO Conor French. Conor really puts a bright light on what it takes to run a social enterprise that intends to be around for a while and we wish them well.

Apologies for the lousy screen resolution. The audio is fine, please bear with my technical difficulties. And the shopping is great at IndegoAfrica.org. Go buy something great for all the special people on your list.

RockMelt has had an impressive debut and already a solid set of updates. RockMelt creates an entire new category of browser, the Social Browser.  We give RockMelt high marks for completeness of vision for Facebook integration, awesome speed and its ability to make RSS Feeds really easy to access.

SkyFire brings Flash to the iPhone, but also social browsing to iPhone and Android in a fee-based mobile browser app.  We are looking forward to future versions of SkyFire to address performance and navigation challenges.

But to really get the details, listen to our discussion below.