MeM Cannes: Why Robbie Williams loves mobile

Robbie Williams manager Tim Clark, of ie music ltd was the keynote this morning at MeM in Cannes.

Some highlights for me: The £80m Robbie deal never was. They just leaked that amount to the Sun and the rest is legend. It was a good deal. Just not that good.

“digital technology has driven a panzer division through copyright."

And to make the point Tim says there are stories that itunes has 2 per cent of the download market, the rest is free. What the percentage actually is, is unknown. But the chances are his guestimate may be conservative.

"We have to find ways of valuing music because if artists aren't paid something there will be no music, I don't just mean the huge megastars, but also people like King Crimson, who I worked with years ago, and who are still touring and making a living. We all have artists like this who have played a part in our lives and they are the bedrock of music."

"The record companies world is changing. I don't care if they can get the digital revolution or not, I work for artists. I have to find the best way possible to get the music from the artist to the fan."

What Tim is driving at here is how record companies are being disintermediated. The role of the artist (the creator of the content) - as represented in this case by the artist's manager is becoming a more important relationship.

Now there are ways to distribute that content more easily, more cheaply and more effectively.

The mobile part in this mix? Well it interested me that Tim revealed Robbie Williams had made five times as much money from his deal with T-mobile Sony Ericsson in one year than he had from his record label. He made most of all from touring (the because effect in full effect!)

Interesting also that Sony Ericsson spent six times as much promoting Robbie's latest album in Australia than EMI did.

The change in who enables the flow of content is making huge economic differences across the globe right now.

Where once managers primary relationships were in connecting artists and record companies now it is in connecting artists with handset manufaturers and operators and social networks.

Mobile advertising: The brands and publishers view

I was in Cannes a week or so back for MeM where I joined Prinz Pinakatt, head of interactive in Europe for Coca Cola and James Davis (who was also at Mobile Internet Portal Strategies this week) Head of Mobile Commercial Development for News Group Digital on a panel titled: “How Brands and Publishers See the Mobile Advertising Market”.
The panel was chaired by Jim Cook of MobiAd News who has just published what we had to say.
Feel free to comment where you choose.

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Your flat-rate data plan is a sub-prime mortgage crisis waiting to happen

Here's a few highlights from the off portal vs on portal panel at MeM today.

Panel members:
jens begemann cop jamster
ray anderson ceo bango
russell buckley admob
paul meyes acme mobile
andrew bud, mef /mblox

Your flat-rate data plan is a sub-prime mortgage crisis waiting to happen.
Andrew Bud suggested that there is an inherent flaw in the mobile internet business model for operators. While they can offer unlimited voice and realistically expect there to be an upper limit on use, or unlimited text and assess their maximum exposure with some accuracy, the same is not true of data. If they sell you all-you-can-eat flat-rate data there is only an upwards spiral with no limit in the costs they will face to satisfy your never-ending demand for more and more data. And this, at the same time as the pressure on price pushes it ever downwards. Effectively the man selling you a flat-rate deal today is writing cheques that can't be cashed into the future.

Two responses from me:
1. The more people use data, the more operators can monetise the services they can offer to content providers: such as LBS, ID, payment mechanisms. If they offer that stuff for free, yes they'll be in trouble.
2. There is an assumption in Andrew's assertion that the cost of carrying data can't fall as fast as our desire and ability to consume it. While I appreciate that we are seeing something of this in the ISPs response to BBC I-player, Youtube and other bandwidth consuming services, isn't it possible that this is just a technology-playing-catch-up hic-cup.
The cost of delivering data has consistenly fallen in the past - why shouldn't it into the future?
The crisis Andrew predicts is also one predicated by who controls the pipes and their own particular business models. If their model was more driven by deriving value from connecting people with people and people with content the picture looks different. (Consider my white paper, communities of purpose are the business units of the 21st century by way of further exploration of that?)
Depending on the economics, far from leading lemming-like to content providers being billed for having their content delivered by the pipe owner (Andrew's prediction), a pipe owner with a a more networked-world business plan would simply welcome each and every additional node.

Q: When operators will switch to open: Services will migrate to the edge of the network. Numbers mean off portal will win and is already winning.
All operators can do is impede this. They cannot stop it.
Operators have to provide services which are useful to content providers and sell that instead (eg the lbs, payment and id stuff we referenced above).
Operators providing content is about growing revenue - but often by losing money. Services which enable off portal activity are about margin. As soon as the operators care more about margin than growth the switch will be instant.

Ray Anderson: 75% in the UK is already off portal, 25%. In the US it's already 50-50, in Japan it's all going off portal. The battle is already won.

Russell Buckley: The winners in mobile are not from old media or the internet, but from the likes of mobile-first businesses such as itsmy and pepperonity. Mobile is a different environment. We have seen huge growth of off portal driven by countries that surprise.
Half our users come from the US. They have adopted the mobile internet like you wouldn't believe.
Serbia has highest per capita consumption of mobile web pages. They are leapfrogging the pc generation. Where this is succeeding they all have flat rate data pricing which grows off portal revenue for all.

Ray Anderson: "Its the internet, stupid, you can't fight about it."
The opertors will win by providing services which connect you anywhere you go. they can offer services by taking payments, knowing id and location, they need a way of getting this to content providers efficiently.
The operator home page won't last very long just as it didn't on the internet.

Russell Buckley: If operators are to offer third party data services to admob etc they need to get on with it. We will find other ways. We already have teams of phds working on solving the issue.

Andrew Bud: If they sit on their backsides long enough and force the content community to work around them they will themselves destroy the future of their own business model

MeM Cannes: Making money from social networks

Here's a few hasty notes from the panel that Gerard Grech of Orange led this morning in Cannes. The topic was communities and social networking and making money from them.

Panel includes Marco Argenti from Dada, Olaf Kroll from Myspace, Antonio Vince Staybl, itsmy and Mark Curtis, from flirtomatic and Arunachulam Nagappan, Newbay.

Question: Is there a difference between old social networks going mobile and starting mobile.

Antonio: mobile only social networks have advantages: itsmy's average age of uploaded content is within the last 24 hours.

Gerard: the more mobile the community the more instant and fresh?

Mark: mobile users log in 8 times a day, web users 3 times a day. usage patterns re times are similar, more use when travelling on mobile.

Mark; 40% have added their location to their profile with no prompting. Only 15% on the web.

Olaf: the big social networks can rely on their user base. myspace on mobile is used for basic communication. pureplay mobile have to add features like easy upload and lbs, which are pretty tricky and won't take off for a while, but that's the value add that the new guys can give.

Antonio: mobile is a new world, we have new isps, we have new operatiing systems, we have new companies.

Mark: It is because you (Olaf/MySpace) are seeing mobile as a subset of users is why you are going to struggle for the next few years. The revenue models are there from mobile social networks. Fixed line social network guys are still trying to find the revenue models to fly!

Marco: we believe the sustainable business model for social networks is a mix of mobile and web.

We make more money than facebook, and facebook is about 100 times bigger. Ads on community have lower click thru rates on line. on mobile the powerful micropayment mechanism works well.

Olaf: we started with a subscription service. didn't work, we then moved to ad-funded model. The cpms are much better, double or three times on mobile compared to online.

antonio: our main revenues today are advertising.

Mark: basic usage is free and we sell premium services, extra fun that people want to pay for. 15% paying for this on mobile - way higher than ads.

Ad models change when a new medium emerges. Internet advertising is currently the model we are using on mobile, it cannot be the end medium. we need to innovate and experiment. Hard to do because the advertisers aren't sold on mobile full stop yet.

Arun: operators were good at making lots of money, they did this even when people knew they could get stuff free on the internet. The big internet players are slowly getting into mobile. When the big boys come in and make everything free the small boys are going to have to change their models.

Mark: when a new medium emerges new companies emerge. there will be new champions. when you go on to an old medium you tend to design with the old medium in mind. facebook myspace etc will get it wrong in the first few iterations but finally will get it spectacularly right.

Re viral: Antonio: With mobile we have the first screen people can show to each other anytime anywhere - that's the real viral power of mobile. We can show what we are doing right there and then and rave about it.


In short a great session. And I'm on Mark and Antonio's side for what it's worth!

Social networks and the broadcast conversation starter

I spoke at EPublishing Innovation Forum in London today and it was fun. The brilliant Vin Crosbie was doing the keynote and I'm delighted to say he came by to say hi after my presentation because I'd reminded him of some important stuff that he usually forgets to say - the why of the internet is people reaching out to find other people. And we had a great conversation.

That highlighted something for me: presenting makes you the deliverer of content - this waves a flag for the start of conversation. As a presenter the audience has acquired some very useful metadata about me and my purpose and that triggers conversation galore once the broadcast (me speaking from the stage) is over. There's a lesson in here about the value of content in a broadcast mode which media could get something from. I'm going to think about this some more.

The other thing is that Vin's keynote covers much of the theoretical framework I'm interested in so I kind of adapted my presentation on the hoof.

I floated an idea I've been toying with in recent days - that perhaps we were guilty of over estimating the impact of the internet before the arrival of ubiquitous social networking.

Social networks have only gained currency in the last five years or so. Is it a coincidence that this has been the same period in which broadcast media has seen its revenues dwindle and its audiences shrink?

The real ease with which groups of purpose can organise in social networks is something that wasn't so easily enabled on forums and in newsgroups of emails.

When new tools become truly ubiquitous change happens. In this case I'm suggesting the new tools isn't simply the internet, it's the refinement of social networks (networking for the masses?)

The process of using social networks has educated a new and huge generation in the value of real-time synchronous communication which is the guts of the formation of communities of purpose.

Just a thought at this stage, and one lashed down at speed driven by battery run-down fear! Your input welcome.

I'm on my way to Cannes now, for MeM and the Meffys. More from there as live as I can make it!

MeM Cannes: Who are you innovating for?

zeemote won two awards at last night's meffys. It's a really trixy bit of tech which functions as a wireless control through which to play games on your mobile phone.

Not exactly part of the thrust towards the converged device then.

I can imagine it selling well – and then being left gathering dust on shelves as it gets constantly forgotten or thought of as just a little too much clutter to carry. At least I can see that scenario in the wealthy west.

But. What if you don't own a games console? What if you don't own a lap top? What if you have no pc?

There are vast tracts of the world for whom the mobile phone will be the user's first contact with the game playing experience.

Considering that reminds me how easy it is to focus on the needs of the people around you when considering innovation. There are very many more opportunities just over your horizon.

More from Cannes Mobile Entertainment Market later.