A mobile marketing platform for the internet of things

Its all about focus & team alignment…

I think back to just a few years ago talking with my great friends Brian, Erik & Barry discussing all these awesome things we could do if we had a technology that could seamlessly connect things in the offline world to the things in the online world. Brainstorming ideas like “imagine if we could turn a t-shirt into a m-commerce portal to cross sell other products” or “what if we could add a social stream to a product and take social proof to a whole new plateau.”

Enter NFC. NFC (near field communication) provided us with an enabler to realize these ideas. A frictionless technology which, by placing your mobile phone close to an area embeded with the technology would ‘auto-magically’ launch a web app. A marketers dream. Every single poster, bus shelter sign, product, mailer all connected to the internet. That web app that launches on touch could be an m-commerce portal, social stream, rich media experience… the possiblities, well…. endless. Payment, peer to peer, hardware, marketing, gaming and the list continues. Endless is a bad thing. Endless possibilities are the center of scope creep.How do you bring focus so you can build a business in the midst of all of these possiblities.

With a technology having so much potential the first order of business was to develop a platform that simplified the complex deployment process and prime the team to remain focused. With all the existing knowldege from mobile, ad ops, online advertising to payment, web, OOH and agency across the team its easy to forget the basics, you don’t know what you don’t know. Its critically important to leave ego at the door and map to the disered outcome vs cool gimmicks.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

In an exercise to adjust our focal lens we broke the organization into two teams, the forward team and the backward team. The forward team focused on building the business process from the start of client introduction while the other team focused on the end goal working backwards from receiving client payment for the program. The outcome was alignment as a team. As a product guy I have it all mapped out upstairs in my head, however that vision isn’t always translating the same across the team. Translating that vision is critical, especially if the goal is to get the team to commit to working towards that vision… call it “Project Rosetta Stone”.

Durning the exercise we were able to see the value in the team members with OOH backgrounds and how their contributions covered key areas; in contrast how those with ad op backgrounds augmented the OOH ideas. Opening up the process to the broader group allowed for those who normally aren’t invovled in this process to contribute. Its invaluable as you never know where the good ideas are going to come from.

You never know where the good ideas are going to come from…

In the end finding business success in all between all of these big ideas boils down to building a business one step at a time. Understanding the importance of focus, team alignment and having a clear, unified and agreed upon path is critical. You can’t build a business in your head, you must build a business with your team. Like a great choir it must all be in sync… in harmony.

Platform demo.