For the second year in a row, we’re thrilled to be on Inc. 500|5000’s prestigious list of America’s fastest growing companies.

With our continual strive to deliver outstanding results for our clients, we were thrilled to receive eTail’s Rising Stars award for value, performance and excellence in Service Technology.

5th Finger’s president, Patrick Collins, and vice president, Steen Andersson, have continued to give back to the community through their advisory support and mentorship of the next generation of entrepreneurs. They were both recently recognized with the 2012 Advance 50 For the Future Award for their accomplishments in leading innovation as well as their mentorship efforts.

First, there was SMS.  Next, there was WAP.  Then came early apps on Brew and Java.  Once upon a time the Motorola Razr was the slickest device out there.  Then Palm Treo popped up and everyone had to have one.  A touch screen on a mobile phone in 2005?  Amazing. In mid-2007, Steve Jobs released the iPhone and turned the mobile world on its ear,  (pun intended).  You see where I’m going with this.  We’ve come a long way in terms of technology.   In 24 months, things will no doubt look very different.

The IT Services Vendor
In addition to rapidly evolving mobile technology, we’ve seen a variation in the types of partners brands leverage to enable their mobile initiatives.  Early on, many brands engaged IT Services vendorsto build out their mobile sites, apps and programs.  Whether onshore or offshore, there were pros and cons associated with this services-based approach.  I’ll put it this way: brands learned a lot.  Some lessons were more expensive than others.

The Mobile Platform Provider
Next, was the rise of the mobile platform providers.  Many technologists began to recognize the inherent challenges involved with managing mobile app/site updates, back-end data integration, scalability and security.  So, they built start-ups and brought mobile platform software to market. These technology platforms helped many brands streamline their delivery and partially reduce costs.  Problem solved, right?  The challenge was many of these platform providers had little to offer in the way of mobile marketing strategy or ensuring these mobile apps and sites produced actual business results.  These vendors essentially say: “Here’s your mobile experience. Good luck with that!”  In addition, many of these technology platforms restrict customization from a UI/UX perspective.  This made brand-differentiation difficult.  Many brand mobile websites and apps began to look identical.  This wasn’t ideal.

The Creative Agency
Around the time these platform players emerged, many Creative Agencies decided to put their stake in mobile. This made sense from some standpoints.  The Agencies had pre-existing relationships with the brands, some that had been in place for years. They understood their clients “Brand-DNA” and how to express that.  Additionally, they had the ability to leverage their creative and design resources to differentiate brands through mobile.  A number of very cool apps and mobile sites were released.  While these agencies drove some innovative mobile apps and sites, much of the work was 100% custom.  Costs were egregious, as bread and butter mobile functionalities like Product Catalog or Mobile Store Locators had to be developed from scratch, per project.  Talk about re-inventing the wheel.  There was no platform these agencies deployed from, no mobile tools or software that could enable brands to manage their mobile content or properties.  A lot of money was spent on beautiful apps that were a nightmare to manage.  People lost jobs.  Yes, it got that bad. Thankfully, some mobile players have realized this approach was broken.

The New Breed: Technology Platform/Agency Hybrid

Recently, a new type of provider has emerged with a new approach.  This approach would best be described as a platform/agency hybrid, a blend of the two.  Through years of experience, trial and error, these providers have realized that in order to truly provide value to brands via mobile you must offer both:

1. A technology platform to enable scalability, speed-to-market and cost savings to brands, and

2. An experienced creative and strategic team to guide these mobile programs and ensure both brand differentiation and outstanding results across the business.

In short, technology alone is not enough, and by itself, neither is awesome creative.  For success in mobile, there must be a marriage of the two disciplines.
Many brands have learned through experience as well and have begun to seek out these kinds of partners.  They understand that simply having a mobile presence is not enough. Mobile programs, properties and experiences are increasingly being thought of in the context of a broader Marketing, Loyalty and Product Strategy. As it should be.

Oh – and yes, 5th Finger is a technology platform/agency hybrid.

Solomon Lichter
Business Development Director and Proud Finger

I have spent countless hours in MLR reviews of mobile apps, mobile websites and messaging programs. While every organization has a unique MLR process, there are some basic learnings that can be applied across Pharma companies, big or small. My experience has shown that concentrating on the following 5 basics is key:

• Establish a multi-disciplinary team to establish mobile “Standards” for each tactic for use with black box, non black box, branded and unbranded experiences

• Appoint a person within the organization to participate in all key mobile MLR reviews. This will help ensure consistency and cut down on the back-and-forth that typically occurs

• Get MLR involved early. While you may not have everything flushed out, your goal should be to receive their buy-in to the “concept” of the tactic you want to use

• Not everyone has an iPhone or has experienced a mobile website on a handset.  It is critical that you spend time educating the review team on how the medium works, provide creative examples currently in-market and demo a few Pharma-specific examples that you consider best practice

• Static PDF’s or PowerPoint slides are usually not enough. Help bridge the gap by allowing MLR reviewers to experience your program on a handset or Interactive PDF and use it in the same manner as your intended consumer (HCP or patient)
  

Chris Crichton
VP, Mobile Health
@chrisjcrichton

5th Finger’s Mobile Engineering Team Lead, Chris Brent attended the Google I/O 2012, an annual developer-focused conference held by Google in San Francisco.

He brought back some exciting updates and insights that impact all stakeholders in the mobile space.

From the Android Jelly Bean to the Google Wallet…find out what it all means: Google I/O Insights

We were certainly a big fish (5th Finger Australia) in a small pond (the Australian market), but starting again from scratch here in the U.S. market is not an insignificant undertaking… we would clearly be making ourselves a small fish in a very large pond.

Over those five years of amazing adventures, it’s supremely satisfying to see milestones which make it clear that we are not a small fish in the U.S.…one of those achievements is the success of the Safeway mobile apps.

Safeway’s iPhone app is the #1 Grocery Retail App and is also sitting in the top 20 (and on some days, the top 10) of the Lifestyle section of the Apple Appstore.

And to top it off, to be sitting alongside peers such as Starbucks, Target and Domino’s Pizza is a huge achievement and one that we are all super proud of. It’s been a pleasure to work with the Safeway team on this Mobiel Application and we are looking forward to the next exciting output from our collaboration.

Steen Andersson
co-founder and proud fish, 5th Finger

Why is it that we can clone animals, draw with friends across the world, communicate to hundreds of millions of people in 5 seconds with a click of a button and have computers perform open heart surgery, but it takes 2-3 months to “properly” “by the book” provision and set up a shortcode to mobile carriers standards? Fact: A mobile app can be built, approved, and in the Apple App Store more quickly than an SMS shortcode can get approved.

What is a shortcode? It is 5-6 numerical digits that a user can text into and receive messages from. Sounds super simple and almost “old technology” right? There is an ever-changing, consistently inconsistent, novel-size guideline book meant to help us with the simple task of provisioning a shortcode so it is ready for consumer consumption. By “us” I mean the companies that choose to adhere to mobile carrier’s requests and wishes. The same ones who do not want to get audited by finger pointing third parties who so nicely audit and red-flag shortcodes to mobile carriers. “We” strive to get it right and please our clients, and of course we want the carriers to put their stamp of approval on it. So why is it so hard to get SMS shortcodes approved?

There are many SMS vendors out there that just go for it, don’t ask for approval and take the chance of being audited. Many of these vendors will never get noticed because they do not make their programs known or ask for carrier approval. They don’t worry about legal jargon like STOP to stop, or HELP for help. They don’t worry about the 160 character-eating verbiage such as: “{Sponsor name} one time alerts program” or the required copy of “you will receive up to 6 messages a month” that is now required by the carriers in all welcome SMS messages.

It makes me wonder… Why, if carriers get paid per message along with consumer’s data plan fees, would they wish to slow down this provisioning process? What could be their motivation?

As I mentioned, it takes me 2-3 months to provision an SMS shortcode. During this time I spend about five hours a week dealing with carrier push-back, inconsistency in re-testing results and general sloth-like behavior. Let me put this into context: 5th Finger sends out roughly 1-3 million messages a month. Over 70% of those message profits go straight to the carriers. Hello?! Like I said, even receiving approval and placement in the Apple App Store for my app clients doesn’t even reach this level of manic back and forth.

I respect the need for process but something so simple shouldn’t cost clients and mobile marketing companies so much time, and therefore money. I wouldn’t want this to deter those just trying to get into the world of mobile marketing and trying to play by the book. The security of a properly executed SMS campaign is priceless peace of mind for client and service provider alike.

- Christina Statescu, 5th Finger

Last August, rap superstars Jay-Z and Kayne West utilized a surprising marketing tactic when releasing their critically acclaimed Watch the Throne album. Jay-Z and Kayne chose to initially release their album digitally, with the second wave of their distribution plan was to then produce and release traditional CDs.  As part of the CD release, for two-days they opened a Watch the Throne Pop-up Store in New York City.  A Pop-up Store is a trend seen across industries, to open short-term sales spaces to sell limited or new products. Since Jay-Z’s and Kayne’s raps are littered with their favorite brands, the Watch the Throne Pop-up store also included some of the superstars’ favorite things for fans to buy themselves.  Fan reaction to the Pop-up store was as strong as their album reviews.  Fans found the store an intimate way to feel closer to the artists and understand their vision for the album. It made me think, why not bring this same strategy to mobile loyalty?

Watch the Throne pop-up shop at Openhouse Gallery in New York, 2011. Image owned by Openhouse Gallery

Although some might find their marketing plan not inclusive enough, the duo understood it as a way to thank loyal fans for their support through exclusive sales.

I started to apply this outlook in a discussion a colleague told me that she had with a client.  Her client had never fully launched a mobile strategy for her brand.  However, her client was aware that mobile was a strong audience for the brand because its mobile site visitor traffic was on par with the desktop site traffic.  As a stopgap to the mobile traffic phenomena, the client chose to include an email request form on the mobile site.  The form requested that mobile site visitors leave their email address for more information on mobile offerings.

A significant amount of time had passed since the email request overlay was placed on the mobile site, so now the brand had a database full of email addresses and steady amount of website traffic with no new offerings. This made it apparent it was time for the client to focus on mobile loyalty.

The client now knew there is both a need and demand for a mobile strategy.  But they struggled with how best to repay the mobile site visitors for their loyalty and continued engagement.  I suggested to my colleague a mobile Pop-up Store offering these visitors a preview at next season’s products. In learning from Jay-Z and Kayne we know that Pop-Up Stores are:

• Exclusive and make people feel closer to your brand.  It’s a more personal relationship
• Can happen anywhere commerce takes place. It doesn’t need to be a physical store.  The Rachel Roy brand did a Facebook pop-up store in 2011 to announce her new jewelry collection
• Time sensitive, so the combination of a limited sales and exclusive product make consumers more apt to buy
• Fun. A Pop-Up store should incorporate your brand essence, but can break away from your traditional look and feel to be an unique experience

It’s easy for brands to be attracted to new prospects to grow their business but Jay-Z and Kanye show us that it’s also to our benefit to reward loyal and engaged consumers with mobile loyalty exclusives like Pop-up shops.  Maybe it’s time to show your mobile audience your appreciation.  If you want to talk more about mobile pop-up store ideas or mobile loyalty, reach out to me.

- Kam Taitt, 5th Finger

kam.taitt(at)5thfinger.com

SMS is the obvious choice for those trying to reach non mobile app users, but when you have app users and messages you want to get to your customer, the choice can become a little less clear. Hopefully this chart will help guide you to a decision.

On Twitter and Facebook, I follow a number of major basketball brands, but very rarely am I offered unique content or offers.  It seems to be a missed opportunity because these brands already have commercials and digital creative assets that can be repurposed for mcommerce related promotions.  Brands can also examine season stats to determine who to build mcommerce based campaigns around in the playoffs.  For example, Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder has led the NBA in scoring the past three-seasons.  In 2012, he averaged 28 points a game and never scored fewer than 20 points in consecutive games. I may not be sure that Durant’s team will win the game, but as a brand, I can be confident that he will score points, make highlight plays while scoring points, and be a key contributor to his team’s success.  Brands that are endorsed by Durant should utilize this knowledge by pushing live offer(s) featuring him during his games.  Also, since this tactic is mcommerce based, much like Durant’s points per game average, it can be tracked, measured and optimized.

MLB Tweet Chart From Crowd Riff

I shared this theory with one of my co-workers and she encouraged me to take a deeper analysis of what’s being done by major league sports, not just the NBA.  What I noticed is that leagues like the NFL and MLB do a great job of integrating SMS offers into their telecast.  By texting the correct answer to a trivia questions there is an opportunity to receive prizes and in some cases discounts.  While there is nothing wrong with this strategy, it marginalizes the capabilities of mobile phones and does not fully tap into user behavior.  In addition to SMS, sports leagues should drive ticket sales through apps, merchandise sales through mobile web, and brand awareness through social media.

The next major sporting event will feature the world’s greatest athletes – the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England.  The 2008 Summer Olympics in the US had a domestic viewership of over 200 million people.  To put that number in perspective, the 2011 NBA playoff finals earned around 24 million domestic viewers.  It is also important to note that during the last Olympics’ the Blackberry Storm was CNET’s highest rated smartphone and both iOS and Android were on their first generation of phones.  The combination of the Olympic’s viewership and advancement in mobile phone technology seem to be a good opportunity for brands to test my mcommerce theory and “go for the gold.”

- Kam Taitt, 5th Finger

Belt pictured here is a utility belt created by Fabric Horse

As a former comic book collector and avid reader, I was excited to pass down the tradition of comics to  Brandon, so I invited him to see the Avengers movie with me.  The Avengers is a Marvel comic book franchise that chronicles the adventures of Captain America, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Wasp, Thor, and the Incredible Hulk.  The storyline is entrenched with the recurring themes that teamwork and cool gadgets can conquer any challenge or villain.

To my surprise Brandon declined my invitation! Brandon is very intelligent and inquisitive, so I asked him why he declined to see a movie with one of the greatest team of super heroes ever assembled.  He said that he simply sees nothing great about superheroes.  I said  to Brandon, “Don’t you like their cool gadgets?!”   “No,” he replied, “they have the same powers that I have.”

I was stunned by Brandon’s response,  and the more I questioned his behavior, the more I began to think about Brandon’s generation who has always had mobile technology.

• Super Heroes have utility belts

○      Batman wasn’t blessed with super powers but he used his smarts, wealth, and utility belt to fight crime. His utility belt had the resources that he needed to defeat his foes.  Whether on a tablet or mobile phone, cloud computing allows us to always be equipped with documents, spreadsheets, presentations and more leisurely items like movies and video games.

• Super Heroes have healing powers

○      Whenever injured in battle, Wolverine would quickly recover because his admantium spinal cord made him invincible.  Although mobile technology doesn’t allow us to recover that quickly, it does provide us with apps and mobile websites that keep us plugged into our healthcare networks and doctors.

• Super Heroes have virtual assistants

○      Whenever Tony Stark had a question, he would call upon his super computer Jarvis to answer. Jarvis took up a whole basement floor of the Stark mansion.  We have access to Siri and Vlingo who fit nicely in the palm of our hands

• Super Heroes have voice activated control

○      How many times have we seen Captain America within the clutches of a villain only to see him escape by summoning the Avengers car?!  Mobile technology helps us defeat the villainous winter by remotely unlocking our car doors, starting our engines, and opening our garage doors.

My 8-year old nephew helped me realize that mobile technologies are closing the gap  between my childhood superheroes and modern day reality.  Mobile has the ability to make superheroes of us all, and help to improve the overall quality of our social and professional lives. The question remains, “Are you doing enough with mobile technology to unleash your inner super hero?”   Mobile has given you the technology now you just need to add the creativity.

- Kam Taitt, 5th Finger