This year’s GSMA Mobile World Congress 2012 brought together last week in Barcelona an industry that has been working during the past year to guess and meet the mobile needs of consumers and businesses. Over 65,000 attendees and 3,000 journalists were asked ‘How do you redefine mobile?’ This theme was much more than about new handsets or associated technology. It was about how the industry can continue to embed itself in our daily life.
While handset manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC, Huawei, Nokia and BlackBerry grabbed the headlines at this year’s congress, it was the operating systems and the application of these that grabbed a lot of the discussion. Mobile commerce was one such subject that was hotly discussed.
Mobile connects people with people. It connects business with people, opening a host of opportunities for news and media outlets, as well as businesses that rely on direct to consumer sales. Just look at the new Guardian advert about the Three Little Piggies to see how new is now shaped by the opinions of people on the move.
While Google and it’s Android operating system was everywhere, Apple and it’s non-attendance were the still benchmark for the many handset manufacturers. Samsung unveiled not just the Note handset, but also a partnership with Visa that would facilitate it’s Near Field Communications (#NFC) capability. With a NFC-sim in place, Samsung will be providing athletes at the London 2012 Olympic Games with handsets through which they can pay for goods, educating the public about the benefits of contactless mobile payments.
Samsung London Olympics NFC enabled mobile
Athletes will just need to open a pre-installed app and with just the swipe of their phone over a RFID Visa reader they’ll be able to pay for purchases of up to say £20. Any purchases over a set preset amount will require the user to enter a security PIN number. Visa hopes to launch this NFC payment service to the public later on in the year, though with a few conditions: you will need a Visa debit or Credit card associated with the service, you mobile operators will need to send you an approved SIM card and your NFC enabled phone will need to be approved by your bank. Seamless it isn’t, but a step in the right direction it is.
Meanwhile, Japanese Mobile Operator NTT DoCoMo unveiled their own NFC offering, which was more consumer-friendly and has been in use in Japan since 2004.
NTT DoCoMo pioneered mobile payments by ‘encouraging’ Sony to design what is now the NFC FeliCa chips that have become the contactless default payment system in Japanese handsets. NFCTimes.com reports that today ‘more than 60 million phones in Japan pack the contactless FeliCa chip, which comes from DoCoMo’s joint venture partner Sony Corp. The chips and associated secure memory can support a range of payment, ticketing and other applications.’ The operator makes it’s money by collecting transaction fees every time a subscriber uses the NFC system.
Extending the service beyond payments, NTT DoCoMo unveiled services where NFC could be used across borders and for mobile ticketing through the Boardwalk Mobile Ticketing, which uses NFC on mobile devices to create a seamless way to engage with events that require ticketing and through which event promoters can further push additional content. In Japan, NTT DoCoMo also provides the subscriber with the opportunity of charging purchases to their monthly bill.
With the continued rise of geo-location marketing pushed by the likes of Foursquare and Facebook, the missing piece in the payment and promotion system is appearing in Asia, where seamless services have produced high consumer sign-up numbers, something that Samsung and Visa need to consider when they roll their own services in western markets
According to Ovum the ‘GSMA estimates that there are now over 100 deployments around the world.’ High-adoption for mobile payment in emerging markets is partly driven by the fact that mobile phone ownership in these markets vastly outnumbers payment card ownerships. In developed markets, the incentive to use NFC and other mobile payment options need to be established through promotions to the user – discounts and coupons that can be redeemed with ones own handset. Location services such as Foursquare could add value and increase sales.
Brands today require a mobile strategy as part of the communications activities. Reaching people wherever they are is going to be central, especially when you consider that at some point within the next 24 months more people will be accessing the web through a mobile device than a desktop. Views and opinions will be in real-time, offers made when target customers are in location.
Mobile and telecoms have embedded themselves in our daily life. They are the channel for business and real-time comment and opinion. They are wire that connects people on social networks. Mobile is redefining itself, and it will continue to do so. Develop a mobile strategy and accept that real-time business is already upon us.
Newman stated that what we are currently seeing in journalism is a, “quiet revolution.” Between 2007-2009 there’s been an explosion in participation, ‘driven by user-friendly internet tools, better connectivity and new mobile devices. Social Networking and UGC have become mainstream activities, accounting for almost 20 per cent of internet time in the UK and involving half of all internet users. This dramatic change has forced traditional news organisations to take note.’ And news outlets have reacted by abandoning attempts ‘to be first for breaking news, focusing instead on being the best at verifying and curating it.’
Super Injunctions, A Failed Tool In Reputation Management
Friday, May 20th, 2011House of Lords member Lord Stoneham of Droxford yesterday used Parliamentary Privilege to make public details of an #injunction that former #RBS Chief Executive Sir Fred Goodwin had on the story that he was involved in an extra-marital affair while the bank was collapsing in front of him.
The comments were made in the Chamber at the Palace of Westminster hours before legal teams met at the High Court to discuss said gagging order, with one party seeking to have it overturned. Sir Fred himself did not object to the removal of the injunction, which enables the media to run with a story that will put plenty of heat on him once again.
Injunctions and super-injunctions have been making the headlines recently because media outlets have been unable to report on the more salacious stories that are doing the rounds about high-profile personalities. The pub gossip that people take part is censured. Some people criticise the judiciary, claiming that it undermines the press. Others believe that Privacy is a basic human right that requires individual mistakes to not be splashed in the press.
My view is that the press and the individuals using these injunctions and super-injunctions are right. The problem is that in between both arguments lies what is known as public interest, a term used by the media as a ‘catch-all.’ With this self-regulated tool, the media can invade the privacy of anybody and any organisation. And there lies the problem. Organisations need to be accountable, as do the people working for them and for government. That said, there is a fine line that divides a mistake from the effect it has on an organisation.
The law has always been a tool in the public relations armoury. Reputation management has used the law to gag a story from being discussed in the media, very much under the impression that if the media is not able to run the story then nobody will know the issues that can be damaging to their clients reputations and trust. This is naïve, stupid and out dated. Public relations is rarely able to repair the damage that requires this kind of force.
Yes, there is a need for Privacy and there is a need for injunctions and super-injunctions. The question is, should they be made available and affordable to everyone? Yes. Should there be further debate on which applications receive one? Yes. Duplicity and double-standard needs to be outted. From a public relations perspective, reputation management is always harder when the damage has been done, even though said damage is not yet in the public arena.
How many times have we as PR professionals held our head in our hands wandering how we can repair the damage by some ill-conceived decision or action?
The current debate about injunctions and super-injunctions is of course in the media because details of many of these have been outted to social networking sites. The fact is that we live in a less media centric world where consumers of news can obtain gossip and stories online. It is this that smashes the legal structure and protection that the law affords to individuals to protect, rightly or wrongly, the privacy and reputation. But this in itself is a misnomer, because sites such as Google, Facebook and Twitter are based overseas in jurisdictions with firm legal structures.
Social and search sites can be notified and given due time to remove content that libels clients. But this course this course of action to protect one’s soiled reputation carries it’s own risk – reputation is about trust and trust is won and lost in the court of public opinion. It is the members of this court – you and I, that gathers information and consumes it. The fact is that we live in a world where there is less control, which is why PR should learn this and work within the new structure that social networking has created.
I have given presentations to a series of law firms, highlighting how social media and it’s central pillar of information sharing, which happens cross jurisdictions can undermine their work. The skills and ability to share information without leaving a trace is there. The internet is a channel that crosses geographical boundaries. There is concern that such tactics are being used within journalism to undermine the case for privacy. It is a case of cat and mouse, and at the moment the media is the mouse the law is the old lethargic cat.
Social media has become a tool that can undermine law and if not undermine then push it into the 21st century. For many the law is just a form of censorship that prevents free speech and public interest. In fact a well-known blog has made available a Google Document listing all the supposed injunctions that currently exist. Today it is a question of if you search you will find.
Reputations today are being saved and more importantly destroyed by our own human willingness to engage in hearsay and gossip. Individuals, companies and brands spend a lot on projecting an image that attracts business. They should be protected, but only if the actions for which they seek an injunction or super injunction are not duplicitous.
Reputation management is today a skill amongst public relations practitioners that requires real-time management. Controlling a crowd is nigh on impossible. Once the damage is done an injunction will only act as a plaster.
PRs have to work not just with the legal court, but importantly the court of public opinion, a court that is a well briefed by content that is available online.
BREAKING NEWS:
It appears that a UK Premier League player has started legal proceedings against Twitter to secure the disclosure of the currently ‘unknown persons’. Legal firm Schillings said in a statement, “to obtain limited information concerning the unlawful use of Twitter by a small number of individuals who may have breached a court order.”
We assume that such action will be taken by a partner law firm in California, though given that the unlawful act has taken place in the UK, a separate legal jurisdiction, it is going to be tricky to see how this works. Of course, if those people who started the allegations are in the UK then they will not be eligible to America’s Constitution First Amendment, which allows free speech.
Tags: #injunction, #rbs, #superinjunction, banking, brand, football, free speech, google, information, law, pr, premier league, public relations, reputation management, social media, social networking, twitter, US
Posted in comment, events, news | No Comments »