Over a quarter of a million people – 284,632 – donated $484,702 (£311,625) to good causes during Ramadan in Egypt this year, a 462 per cent increase on 2012’s figure.
$241,000 was raised in the last two days alone for charities including the 57357 Children’s Cancer Hospital, the Egyptian Food Bank and Resala, via TA Telecom’s Megakheir SMS service. Megakheir processes 95 per cent of all mobile giving in the country.
“Donating to charity has always been an integral part of Ramadan, however, the proliferation of mobile technology that the region has seen in recent years has provided the people of Egypt with a highly way of channelling their generosity,” said Amr Shady, CEO and co-founder of TA Telecom. “SMS donation platforms allow charities and NGOs to reach a wider audience, generate more funds and ultimately make a greater difference to society.”
Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/egyptians-give-nearly-half-million-mobile-donations-during-ramadan#kGZzJpe0bimxTMLP.99
Author Archives: kirstystyles1
Vodafone’s 4G Showdown with O2 on 29 August
Vodafone has announced that it will be launching its 4G network on exactly the same day as rival O2, revealing a range of tariffs, benefits and milestones in a bid to outdo its fellow operator.
Although it has only promised a London launch on 29 August – compared to O2’s additional Leeds and Bradford – is says it will have 12 more cities live by the end of the year, where O2 pledged 10. After London, launches in Birmingham, Bradford, Coventry, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield are expected from Vodafone before the end of the year.
EE, O2 and Vodafone have all promised 4G coverage for 98 per cent of the UK population, with EE committing to the end of 2014, Vodafone to the end of 2015 and O2 not yet venturing a date. While O2 limited its detail on customer deals, Vodafone has fully outlined plans for its 24-month, 12-month and SIM-only ‘Red 4G-ready’ payment options.
All Vodafone Red 4G-ready plans come with either Sky Sports Mobile TV or Spotify Premium, plus unlimited calls and texts. They also have unlimited data for the first three months, followed by either 2GB, 4GB or 8GB per month – double the standard allowance on Vodafone’s standard plans. Vodafone’s 24-month plans start at £34 with a handset, while 12-month plans start at £52.
Anyone on a standard Vodafone Red contract that has a 4G-ready device can upgrade for £5 to get Spotify Premium or Sky Sports Mobile TV, double the amount of data and get 4G access. Customers who have a 4G-ready device can get SIM-only deals from £26 a month for 12 months, costing £3 more than EE’s lowest deal, while offering 2GB of data and the free perks for six months, before a charge is added to their plan.
Vodafone is also offering a range of 4G tablet plans, starting at £31 per month for the eight-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab 3, or the Sony Xperia Tablet Z at £37 per month.
Vodafone spent considerably more acquiring its spectrum than O2 – £802m compared to £550m – which it says is down to buying both low-frequency for going further and working better indoors, as well as high-frequency spectrum, giving it greater capacity in densely populated urban areas.
Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/vodafone%E2%80%99s-4g-showdown-o2-29-august#MvgpXmPybOxWLx7g.99
Spotlight: Open Fundraising
Open Fundraising, an ad agency that works exclusively with charities, found itself in a perfect storm three years ago. Just as mobile was becoming the personal communications platform of choice for consumers, the government said that it wouldn’t tax mobile services and operators agreed that they were keen to give as much as possible to charities seeking a new form of revenue here.
This, with the fact that “no one else was doing the same thing”, meant Open Fundraising found itself in the position to help its clients use the mobile channel to increase giving and open up communications with supporters. “We didn’t set out to be a tech company – we did this because no one else could,” says James Briggs, creative director of Open Fundraising.
“Out of nowhere came a really amazing payment system, with a response mechanism for traditional media,” he says. “We thought, ‘wow, what would happen if we tried this out for someone we work with?’. We took out a full-page ad for Christian Aid in the Guardian’s Saturday magazine explaining that every 45 seconds a child dies of malaria and asked people to text ‘net’ to donate.
“The initial response prompted us to try the same in other papers and then on trains and other places where people are hanging around with phones in their hand. This is how we can be sure that people use their phones while they’re on the toilet,” he adds. “Before we knew it, we had thousands of new donors all putting their hands up and saying ‘I want to help children dying from malaria’.”
Premium-rate hangover
As a new form of giving, the effort was not without its challenges. The hangover from the heady days of Crazy Frog meant all SMS campaigns were regulated by the PhonePayPlus trade body, which specified a mandatory STOP opt-out. “But for charities”, says Briggs, “this was not a good message. It was like we were saying ‘we don’t want you’.” Briggs headed down to meet PhonePayPlus with the head of individual giving from UNICEF – which has been “blazing a trail” in mobilising the third sector – to put the case for an alternative system.
PhonePayPlus agreed to change the rules so charities are exempt from having to communicate STOP every month and can instead give the option to SKIP a gift rather than cancel. “We were excited to test that system,” he says. This messaging system is now used by 18 of the top 20 UK charities.
How big is this opportunity?
As early as 2010, explains the company’s MD, Tim Longfoot, the Red Nose Day campaign processed 250,000 donations online, 750,000 using the traditional telethon mechanism, while 4.2m people texted their contribution. Today £150,000 worth of donations pass through Open Fundraising’s Mobilise platform each month and within a year of its launch, the agency expects to have taken more than £1m in mobile gifts. Longfoot says the value and volume is doubling each month too.
“70 per cent of what Open does is still writing to older people,” he says. “The reason we’ve seen such extraordinary growth in our mobile operations is because it’s easy. On the same device that money is taken, communication is overseen. People actually read texts; no one reads corporate charity emails. And the option to skip puts the control firmly in the hands of the donor.”
Donors text back
Open Fundraising ran a campaign for Breakthrough Breast Cancer as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, to “put health information into purses and handbags”. The integrated campaign started with print ads to request information, which was fulfilled with a phone call and followed by monthly reminders to help women follow the advice. “Then we started receiving text replies from women whose lives had been touched by cancer. We were surprised by this, and then we realised we really shouldn’t have been,” Longfoot says. “This is a really personal interaction on exactly the right platform.”
So what about other types of mobile communications? “We are not here to sell you an app,” says Paul de Gregorio, head of mobile with the agency. “That might change as smartphone connections get faster, but SMS is number one for us on mobile today. Simon Cowell knows just how powerful text and TV is. Mobile blurs on and offline, traditional with newer channels.”
Making activists of Middle England
“Our Friends of the Earth bee campaign – where you text ‘bees’ to give £3 and receive bee-friendly flower seeds as a thank you – proved that we were creating activists in ‘Middle England’, not just ‘bored young people’, as had been one accusation,” he says. “People also criticise this as ‘armchair activism’, but it’s exactly the same thing whether you are approached in the street or respond via text to a print ad. In fact, smartphones actually make giving into a mass market.”
“We’re an ad agency using all the marketing tricks to achieve good things,” he adds. “I like advertising – so to be able to do it for good is just amazing. This is the future of where fundraising and change will happen.”
Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/spotlight-open-fundraising#MrTtv2jmX1BRVUVi.99
3 to go 4G in Q4
3 has reported a record £1bn revenue for the first half of 2013, with operating profit more than tripling from the same period last year, up to £86m from £26m.
The company has added 697,000 customers during this time – 168,000 of them in Q2, 2013 – with many opting for the operator’s all-you-can-eat 3G contracts.
Revenue from calls, texts and data reported in the company’s H1 earnings remained flat at £667m – despite CEO David Dyson revealing in June that data usage per person had increased from 1.1GB to 1.8GB every month – but handset revenue increased 30 per cent to £321m in H1.
In a bid to offer greater transparency, 3 has changed the way it measures its customer base, for the first time counting only active accounts used in the last 90 days, of which there are 7.5m, as opposed to the number of people registered with the company in total. This might give the impression that the operator has lost 1.7m customers since it reported Q1 results in March – but these are likely to be prepaid customers who are no longer using their SIM.
Going 4G
The UK’s newest mobile operator, which struggled from 2003 until 2010 to turn a profit, will be shifting its attention to using 4G spectrum allocation by the end of this year. “We’re on track to launch in Q4 and we will offer 4G at no extra charge,” said Guy Middleton, head of corporate communications at 3. “When we switch on our 4G network well over a million of our customers will already have a 4G device, so they will get automatic and hassle-free access in 4G areas without the need to change plans or SIM cards. Everyone on 3 with a 4G device will be able to enjoy our 4G services as we roll out the network across the country to add capacity to what is already the UK’s fastest 3G network.”
The company says its dual carrier 3G network is already 100 times faster than it was when it launched in the UK and claims that its customers might already see speeds in excess of 20MBps. Ofcom considers speeds above 6MBps as a 4G experience. 3’s CEO stated in June that the operator is looking to ensure it has enough capacity rather than headline speeds when its 4G service goes live.
Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/3-go-4g-q4#1QMoJgblFZDXKdkl.99
Sun Erects Digital Paywall
The Sun’s digital content is now behind a paywall, costing subscribers £2 per week after a trial period of two months’ access for just £1.
The Sun’s website – which isn’t optimised for mobile browsers – along with its apps can now only be accessed by paying subscribers. A spokesperson confirmed that the company’s apps will still offer ad placements to advertisers looking to reach its audience behind the paywall.
The digital package can be accessed on iPhone 4 plus or Android handests running version 2.3 and above, but Sun+Goals football content and Sun+Perks offers require iOS6 or Android 4.3 to work.
Print readers can also be part of the fun if they collect 20 unique codes from the newspaper, which will grant them a month’s access to Sun+ across desktop, mobile and tablet.
Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/sun-erects-digital-paywall#SUZEfG5tDrSpumdJ.99
O2 4G Switch On 29 August
O2 has announced its 4G switch on date, with London, Leeds and Bradford the first cities to be covered when the service launches on 29 August. Having spent nearly a full year becoming increasingly overcome with fatEEgue, O2’s announcement could not come a moment too soon.
But it is clear that the second operator to go live with superfast broadband has a lot of catching up to do – EE has already signed up 500,000 customers and its network covers 55 per cent of the population. After launch, O2 has promised 10 more cities by the end of the year: Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Liverpool, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry, Sheffield, Manchester and Edinburgh.
Although O2 has announced plans to match EE’s commitment to reach 98 per cent of the population – and has highlighted that its valuable 800MHz frequency will ensure the service works ‘both indoor and outdoor’ – the company has not yet ventured a deadline for this. EE has pledged to reach 98 per cent of people by the end of 2014, and owns 36 per cent of the country’s total 4G spectrum compared to O2’s 15 per cent.
Tariffs will start at £26 per month – most likely a SIM-only, 500MB-data option akin to the £23 option EE introduced in May – with pay-as-you-go and business packages on the way. EE already has 2,000 UK businesses, including the likes of Renault and Ikea, on its books.
In a clear drive to differentiate itself, O2 has announced a mystery live launch performance at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire to coincide with the switch on, with early-bird ticketing on offer for its Priority Moments customers. 4G customers will also be able to get a free, year-long music package when they sign up direct with O2.
O2 says it spent £550m to secure one of the highest proportions of the lowest frequency spectrum as it travels further and can move better through solid objects. Data usage by its 22.9m existing UK customers has already more than doubled in the last twelve months, the company said. EE, which formed in 2010 from Orange and T-Mobile, revealed it has 27.5m customers in its last earnings call.
Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/o2-4g-switch-29-august#bOOEGeCZ8ujVtR4b.99
Analysis: Yahoo’s Q2 Results and Mayer’s First Year as CEO
Yahoo’s Q2 earnings call is something of a judgement on Marissa Mayer’s first 12 months in the job – as she took over as CEO almost exactly a year ago – but the mixed picture shows that much of the hard work is still to be done.
GAAP revenue stood at $1.14bn (£750m), a seven per cent decrease on a year ago, but on a brighter note, profits increased by 46 per cent to $331m, largely as a result of Yahoo’s investment in Chinese eCommerce site, Alibaba. If you take revenues minus traffic acquisition costs (the money internet companies pay out to affiliates and other third parties who drive traffic to their sites), revenues are down just 1 per cent from $1.08bn to $1.07bn, and remain flat from the previous quarter. Yahoo’s display revenue was $472m, a 12 per cent decrease compared to a year ago, and search was down nine per cent to $418m.
Reacting to the results, Karsten Weide, IDC’s program VP of digital media and entertainment, told Mobile Marketing: “Yahoo’s stock price has gone up by 70 per cent since Marissa Mayer took over, and that has made a lot of people happy. However, most of that growth was due the perceived value of Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba. Alibaba will soon go public, and people think it is going to send a lot of money Yahoo’s way, and theirs.
“In terms of Yahoo’s core business, not much has happened that would justify this increase in stock price. Display advertising has been weak lately. For one, that’s because a lot of display advertising now goes mobile, and Yahoo is weak on the mobile platform. For another, a lot of advertising agencies now want to buy advertising automatically and in this new, so-called ‘programmatic trading’ segment, Yahoo is weak, while Google and Facebook are strong.”
Acquisitions
Yahoo spent a net $1bn in cash for acquisitions during the period, $970m of this on Tumblr. Mayer counts eight buyouts, including Astrid, GoPollGo, MileWise, Loki Studios, Tumblr, Playerscale, Ghostbird and Rondee, plus Summly, although this closed late in Q1 and was announced in the previous earnings call. Eight of these had some mobile element to them, everything from the Summly news aggregator to Astrid’s popular productivity apps and location-aware gaming from Loki Studios.
“Generally, companies of their size are buying mobile start-ups – they need the talent, especially user interface and user experience, along with audience and ideas,” said Julie Ask, VP and principal analyst at Forrester. “Consumers’ time is increasingly spent on mobile devices – whether a phone or a tablet or other. Yahoo and others who depend on ad revenue need large, engaged audiences there – not only for growth, but also to maintain a revenue base.”
While six of these ‘acqui-hire’ companies have closed and been rolled into Yahoo’s mobile teams out of NYC and California, including putting Summly centre stage in the new Yahoo app, Tumblr and cross-platform back-end gaming service Playerscale have remained intact, with Astrid, which had 4m users in September last year, to remain in operation for 90 days from 1 May.
Yahoo believes that the combination of Tumblr and Yahoo will grow its audience to more than 1bn monthly visitors from 300m in Q1. Although a great deal has been made of Yahoo’s aggressive acquisition strategy, totalling 12 for the first half of this year, Google has actually made almost 150 acquisitions in its 12-year history, compared to Yahoo’s 83 in 16 years.
Marcos Sanchez, VP Global Corporate Communications at App Annie, is positive about the work being done to change Yahoo’s fortunes. “From all accounts, Mayer has been doing a great job of breathing life back in to Yahoo, from re-focusing, to improving company morale to revamping products with a definite mobile bent,” he said.
“The mobile products have been streamlined and she’s put a focus on usability, which is likely to be a contributing factor to the apps at least not losing ground. From an acquisition standpoint, don’t forget, there are many reasons for an acquisition, and not just for a technology. Mayer has proven savvy even here, shuttering some, keeping a few alive, but maintaining teams that are focused on bringing yahoo back to its’ glory days.”
Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/analysis-yahoos-q2-earnings-and-meyers-first-year-ceo#pGVPFJh7WI2b55Gf.99
Q&A with novelist Polly Courtney for Let’s Be Brief

It happened by accident. I was working as an investment banker in the city, becoming more and more miserable by the day. I was so disillusioned with my so-called ‘high flying’ career that I felt compelled to write about it so that the world could see the futile work, the hierarchy, the sexism, the greed, narcissism and toxic culture. (This was back in the early 2000s and at that time there was still a perception that banking was an industry that young people should aspire to work in.) Publishers weren’t convinced that readers would want to know about this dark, dirty side, so they suggested I ‘glam it up a bit’. This was the opposite of my goal, so I decided to publish the novel myself. It went on to become one of my best-selling novels, Golden Handcuffs.
I love to expose some kind of injustice in society. My latest novel is written from the perspective of a disenfranchised 15-year-old and set in the build-up to the August riots, covering the various frustrations that led to so many young people taking to the streets in 2011. Poles Apart is about a Polish migrant and the unspoken prejudice she faces in everyday life. Having successfully self-published Golden Handcuffs and Poles Apart, I was thrilled to get a publishing contract with an imprint of HarperCollins. I didn’t realise at the time, but in signing this deal, I was effectively pushing my writing career in a new direction – and not a direction I wanted to go in.
It felt as though the very thing that made my books different (their ‘social conscience’) was being swept aside as book after book came out like mass market fiction with a ‘chick lit’ title and cover. The final straw was when my fifth novel, a story of a young woman grappling with sexism and ‘lad mag culture’, was given the title It’s a Man’s World and adorned with a trashy cover featuring mainly legs that was cloned from a movie poster. I decided to publicly walk out on my publisher at the book launch and announce my return to self-publishing. When I did, lots of authors got in touch to say ‘me too’!
Feral Youth, my latest book – partly because it was such a collaborative effort between me and everyone involved, but mainly because of the subject matter. It was a big step for me, writing from the perspective of an angry teenage girl from South London. I was advised against it; people told me I could never make it authentic – but I was determined to try. I think Alesha’s story is an important one that needs to be told.
The idea of doing something ‘because that’s what everyone does’ makes no sense to me. Everyone wants to earn lots of money. I don’t. Everyone wants a publishing deal. I don’t. Everyone likes to read books that are just like all the other books out there. Really? Well, I don’t.
It’s the message I’m trying to put out with Feral Youth: that we need to think harder about young people and the stereotypes we’re shown in the press. They’re not ‘mindless criminals’ and they’re not ‘feral’. They’re people and they’re a product of their experiences – so why don’t we focus on making those experiences good?
Feral Youth the movie. Seriously!
State of Independence Pop-up Island | 22-28th July 2013
Unit 17 | Boxpark Shoreditch | 2-4 Bethnal Green Rd | London | E1 6GY
Half of MailOnline’s UK Readers are Mobile
The Daily Mail has revealed that 19.9m people in the UK visit the MailOnline site from their mobile device every month, 46 per cent of its monthly web audience here.
According to figures shared exclusively with Mobile Marketing, 12.1m of those use the mobile web on their smartphone, with a further 6.1m using a tablet. The MailOnline for iPhone is its most popular app, the company said, with 2.9m downloads to date, of which there are 641,000 monthly active users and 310,103 daily visitors. On average, 40 visits are made to the app, with sessions lasting 12 minutes and 50 pages viewed.
The Android app has seen 1.1m downloads, with 460,000 monthly users and 147,024 coming back daily. The iPad app has been downloaded 1.4m times. It has 174,000 montlhy users and 42,593 daily users.
The Daily Mail Group has announced a new Sunday edition of its iPad app, called the Mail on Sunday Plus, which will form part of a weekly subscription package or be offered as a one-off purchase. It features re-formatted Sunday magazines You and Event plus more sport, interactive TV listings and 30 puzzles. A seven-day Mail Plus subscription will start at £9.99 per month. Google Play and Kindle users will also see their subscription costs brought in line with iOS users.
Written for Mobile Marketing Magazine and published here: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/content/half-mailonline-uk-readers-are-mobile#loSytwzWJthm7g6w.99
Q&A with Jenny Theolin curator of the first Lolcat exhibition



Soapbox & Sons is a very different entity.
I think ‘LOLCAT – Teh Exhibishun’ was one of my biggest successes. This exhibition was a 4-week long group art show exploring the weird and wonderful world of this popular internet meme.
Yes. I brought together an array of cool cats and witty kitties – including graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, animators, and writers. Ignoring the crudely makeshift LOLCAT aesthetic, each of these artists came up with their unique take on the theme to create a piece of beautiful, amusing and exquisitely crafted LOLCAT art. The exhibition took place at The Framers Gallery and was held in aid of Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.
Independent thinking is just important as collaborative thinking. If you manage to find like-minded individuals/businesses to partner up with; Bob’s your uncle!
My business has only been a limited company for a couple of months, so my biggest hurdles are learning all the business side of things as well as finding new clients.
I have a few big projects in the pipeline; an experiential food/music event, branding and launching a couple new businesses – and am working very hard on the Soapbox & Sons launch event, ‘Beatbox & Sun’, this summer. Keep an eye on Twitter to find out more!
State of Independence Pop-up Island | 22-28th July 2013
Unit 17 | Boxpark Shoreditch | 2-4 Bethnal Green Rd | London | E1 6GY
