Starbucks Mobile Payment App Jolts my Loyalty 300%: a Hint of Gamification

Some context: I am not a coffee power drinker.  I enjoy one cup, not quite every day.  Also, I live & work in Boston’s South End where there are many excellent independent coffee/bakery options.  (Flour, two blocks away is one easy favorite.) Plus Boston is a Dunkin’ town – I need to make a little effort to go to Starbucks. Around one month ago I downloaded the Starbucks mobile payment app on a...

Road Trip! Mobile on the Go

Give me a stretch of open road, my music, some hot wheels and caffeine and I’m a happy camper for hours. Probably from growing up in the Midwest where most fun destinations entailed a road trip past many acres of corn and cows. So how has all the great technology and imagination in the mobile world enhanced our driving and road-tripping experience? Three words: location, social networks, cloud.   Apps are...

Vox Populi: Crowd-Sourcing Mobile App Development

With the app market projected to be $35 billion by 2014 (source: IDC) one of the challenges brands face is to create a mobile experience that succeeds. Part of app success is being discovered, another part is being used, enjoyed and used again. With budgets under pressure to deliver results, the last thing a brand needs is an app that flops. Especially since research shows that “almost 40% are unhappy with...

SMS for Life: 22 ways SMS could improve my life

  I keep ending up in conversations about how SMS is very underutilized. After all, basically all phones can send and receive text messages – not everyone has a smart phone (yet). So here is a quick list of some ways I’d like to integrate texting into my (real & imagined) life. Public transportation: Tell me how long until my bus arrives so I know if I can drink another coffee (or cosmo) Diet...

The Mobile Marketing Bottom Line: getting what you really want

Let’s face facts. When it comes down to it, all businesses are obsessed with one thing: increasing revenue. Consumer engagement and “impulse” conversion to sale are the sweet spots of mobile marketing.    In addition to entertaining and useful utilities that help consumers engage with a brand (e.g., Butterball’s Turkey Text cooking tips, Intuit’s (Turbo Tax) mobile tax prep apps, Panasonic’s Beard...