21 February, 2012, London: 2Pears, the team that bring you events and networking for creative and startup companies in tech, music and media, are announcing the first Music 4.5 seminar of the year: Music 4.5 Mobile Music – the sound of the future.

Music 4.5 Mobile Music will take place on Thursday 8 March, 2-6pm, in the offices of Lewis Silkin, followed by drinks.

The Mobile Music seminar will explore the new interactive relationship between musicians, music and audiences, facilitated by new tools, devices and impacting on service providers. The focus will be on innovative and disruptive trends and technologies in the market place, looking beyond the mere marketing role of an app or game.

The seminar is created specifically to bring together mobile developers, artists, artist managers, music-tech startups, network operators, record labels, publishers and agencies in the UK and Europe.

More than one billion people will own smartphones by 2016 according to Forrester, while NPD Group estimates that sales of consumer tech devices in the US reached USD 144 billion last year with 10,7 per cent of that being tablets and e-readers, and 8,5 per cent mobile phones. Smart phones are de facto becoming the online device of choice, with the number of people accessing the web from a mobile set to surpass those surfing the web on a computer very soon.

Music 4.5 Mobile Music will kick off with a scene-setting case study on mobile music discovery by Will Mills, music and content director at Shazam, followed by a forward-looking perspective on the entire music and mobile eco-system by Mark Mulligan, the founder of Music Industry Blog.

More in-depth discussions will follow, including a panel on the “app-economy”, its sustainability and marketing fads, with app developers Syd Lawrence of We Make Awesome Sh and David Hamilton of DAM Good Media coming together on a panel with Tim Grimsditch of Six3, previously head of consumer insight at Nokia, and William Lovegrove from Release Consulting, all moderated by Charlotte Mceleny from New Media Age.

Ashley Elsdon, the widely-respected industry expert of PalmSounds, will look at the new interactive relationships developing between music and consumers enabled by new devices and mobile music making tools. Martin Macmillan, founder of Bounce Mobile will focus on how music is being integrated into social gaming, creating new revenue streams and breaking new artists.

The closing debate, led by Edward Bass of Audio Silver Lining, will attempt to bring together the various discussions of the afternoon with Clara Goldsmith, head of creative marketing at Warner Chappell, Michael Breidenbrucker of RjDj, Gareth Williams from music tool developer Liine, and artist manager Leon Alexander of Redlight/Hope Management, looking at the implications of new immersive mobile music, co-created music, and the new generation of music experiences.

Music 4.5 Mobile Music – the sound of the future

14.00 Registrations
14.30 Opening remarks
2Pears welcome and introducing the chair of the day, Cliff Fluet, Lewis Silkin
14.40    The multi-dimensional opportunity of mobile music discovery
How mobile-driven innovation in music discovery is changing the way we think about and consume music.
Will Mills, Shazam
15.05    The mobile eco-system – it is all about churn
How to break into the world of network operators. The paramount importance of The Billing Relationship to the network operators explains a lot of existing business and marketing strategies using content and services to acquire and retain users.
Mark Mulligan, Music Industry Blog
15.30 Debate: The app economy – ruling the world through apps and how to crack the mobile market from a music industry perspective
‘life service’ apps vs ‘one-off’ apps, and product or marketing-led strategies to crack the market?
Debate moderated by: Charlotte Mceleny, New Media Age

panellists:
William Lovegrove, Release Consulting
David Hamilton, DAM Good Media and Pepper
Tim Grimsditch, Six3
Syd Lawrence, We Make Awesome Sh

16.10 Coffee/Tea Break
16.30 Social music: is the social mobile driving mobile music games?
How music is being integrated into social gaming, and being used to benefit the industry in new ways, from creating new revenue streams, to breaking new artists
Martin Macmillan, Bounce Mobile
16.55 Mobile music tools – a sizeable market, but is it only replicating the desktop tools?
Ashley Elsdon, Palm Sounds
17.20    Making mobile music – the new interactive relationship between musicians, music and audience
Enabling people to interact with music – what are the implications on ownership when music is co-created? Immersive mobile music – the new generation of music experience? Licensing of music to mobile games companies as the music is co-created with the user, new music for mobile games, the artist perspective…

Discussion moderated by: Edward James Bass, Audio Silver Lining and TheNextWeb

Panellists:
Clara Goldsmith, Warner Chappell
Michael Breidenbrucker, RjDj
Gareth Williams, Liine
Leon Alexander, Redlight/Hope Management

18.00 – Closing Remarks followed by drinks & networking

The UTalkMarketing MI EXPO 2012 awards entries have now been whittled down and we can announce that the brands and agencies listed below have made it through to the final judging round.
Innovative use of affiliate marketing
MEC & Everything Everywhere
O2 & Awin
Sky & Awin
Shopcade

Innovative use of display
iCrossing & Exodus
ispymarketing & Wowcher

Innovative use of mobile
Fundworks app
Geronimo
Myvouchercodes
Debenhams
Somo & Dominos

Innovative use of search
Debenhams
Vodafone
Wowchers

Innovative use of social media
Geronimo
How to TV
ispymarketing & spam
Shopcade
Wildfire Interactive

Innovative brand strategy of 2012
Allianz – Your cover
ASOS & Nivea
O2 & Awin

Innovative agency of 2012
Digital Window
Grapple
Somo

Innovative start-up 2012
Blottr
Buyalogy
My Task Angel
Performance Horizon
Shopcade

Innovative technology 2012
Upcast
Engage Sciences
Performance Horizon
Rich Relevance
Wildfire

Each has been shortlisted in recognition of their contribution to innovation in marketing. The winners of each category will be announced at the end of MI EXPO, taking place on March 6. The awards will be presented at an evening drinks reception. There are still some tickets available – buy yours here!
Our expert judging panel has whittled the entries down. The  panel includes John V Willshire, founder of Smithery; Michael Hayman, co-founder StartUp Britian; Ian Broom, co-founder Launch48; Tim Brooks, Executive Fellow at London Business School and ex MD of Guardian News & Media; Andy McCormick, innovation editor at UtalkMarketing; and Niall McKinney, CEO at UTalkMarketing.
Soon we will also asking you, our readers, to decide who wins in our final category – the UTalkMarketing Innovative Individual 2012. This category is voted solely for by the UTalkMarketing community so every vote counts! More details will follow shortly – watch this space.
Now in its second year MI EXPO will provide senior marketers’ key insights into the essential technology driven marketing trends for 2012.
Marketing innovation is what sets you apart from your competitors and gives you the edge. With an ever changing array of innovative marketing techniques and new tools emerging into the market, organisations are constantly left confused and overwhelmed.
MI EXPO will help you recognise which technology driven trends you should be adopting and which are just a marketing fad and better left ignored.
MI EXPO will showcase the innovative marketers, technology providers, and tools that will explode in 2012. The conference will bring a spotlight on the marketing innovation “must haves” to achieve success.
Last year’s speakers included Google, Facebook, Groupon, Youtube and Microsoft and this year we have speakers of the same high calibre. With Google as a sponsor and delivering the morning keynote speech, others on this year’s agenda include:
Omid Ashtari, business development director Foursquare and James Clifton, COO at EVRYTHNG. They join Colin Cook, director of marketing at The British Army, Azeem Azhar founder & CEO of PeerIndex, Anna Bateson, Director of Marketing YouTube, EMEA and Chris Bibby, direct marketing & CRM director at Virgin Media.
Check out our full list of speakers here.
At the end of the conference, the MI Awards reception will take place which puts a spotlight on the innovative brands, agencies and technologies pushing boundaries and shaping the direction in which the industry moves.

Attend MI EXPO 2012 and discover:
• techniques that are delivering success for marketers
• digital trends driving the marketplace
• which new platforms are hot, and which are not
• the innovative marketing start-ups for 2012
• new opportunities for marketers in 2012
Join 200 senior marketers on March 6 2012 at the River Room, Altitude 360, for key insights into technology driven trends that will drive your ROI and give you a competitive edge. Book your place now.

Twitter has partnered with American Express to offer customers of both early access to an online advertising platform for small businesses. Set to launch in late March, the first 10,000 eligible businesses that register will receive $100 in free Twitter advertisements when using the platform. The move marks a further step in Twitter’s plans to expand revenue from advertising including promoted Twitter messages and accounts.
On the signup page, Twitter has also announced the offer, inviting American Express card members and merchants to try “our new advertising solution for small businesses”.

The Social games maker Zynga has announced that its users are now spending more than $3m per day on its games, such FarmVille and Words with Friends. The company, which floated on the stock market in the US last year, posted maiden results that surpassed Wall Street estimates, as millions of users spent wildly on “virtual goods” such as cows and sheep for FarmVille and skyscrapers for CityVille. Some 54 million people play Zynga games every day, and 240 million take part every month, the company revealed. One wonders how much time people have to whittle away on online games…..

Red Bull is looking at connected TV for its next major broadcast platform to host its live-event streaming and video-on-demand content.  Red Bull already has a web-based TV channel, redbull.tv, and is incorporating connected TV into the heart of its digital strategy.  The brand is working with digital agency Rockpool Digital, which has created an online content hub that is flash, HTML5 and mobile optimised, featuring exclusive, behind-the-scenes videos of the build-up activity and charting the history of the project.
The brand is tackling a new demographic with the event and will therefore need to use additional digital channels to attract more scientific communities.

SMS Text messages nearly doubled in Brazil between Q4, 2011 and the previous year. An average of 73 text messages were sent per user per month in Q4, 2011, a recent report says compared with 48 messages in Q4, 2010.This growth in uptake means that SMS now represents 37.1 per cent of total VAS revenues in Brazil. Value-added services that Brazilians said they would be willing to pay for include reminders, automatic forwarding to an e-mail account, multiple SIM cards, cloud storage and SMS divert (for these five services, the average price respondents are willing to pay is between 3.4 and 3.8 BRL.

Facebook’s popularity in Brazil has grown rapidly over the past year, and the company may have its biggest competitor to thank for it. In its recent initial public offering filing, Facebook said its number of active users in Brazil had nearly tripled in 2011, finally placing it ahead of Google Inc’s Orkut service as the No. 1 social network in the country. Much of the credit for Facebook’s boost in users in Brazil could sit with Google. While a growing economy and easier credit gave Brazilians the ability to purchase computers and broadband connections, Google’s Orkut gave them a reason to do so in the first place. Orkut offered Brazilians their first taste of social media, with a simple interface and Portuguese language option making it easier to use than competing sites such as Friendster and MySpace. In a highly social culture such as Brazil’s, where even business meetings end in hugs, the site became a national phenomenon.

The luxury hotel chain FourSeasons has unveiled the latest part of an $18m investment to overhaul its web presence and online bookings. The chain has planned the launch of its new website for Asia and the Arabic region this year to take advantage of different approaches to digital media. The chain’s US and European website was re-launched in January in partnership with design agency Huge. The site originally caused controversy due to the $18m price tag attached to it.

The community of UTalkMarketing is invited to vote for their chosen Innovative Individual of 2012 from the shortlisted entries in this year’s MI Awards 2012.

Please review the entry details from our shortlisted candidates below & place your vote today!

Voting will close on Wednesday 29th February with the winner announced during the MI Awards ceremony taking place as part of the MI Expo conference on the 6th March. Full event details can be found here – www.marketinginnovationexpo.com/europe

The shortlisted entries are:
Alistair Crane, CEO & Co-founder of Grapple Mobile
Alistair Crane is the CEO and co-founder of Grapple Mobile. As CEO of Grapple Mobile, Alistair has been responsible for forging partnerships with over 90 of the world’s leading brands including adidas, McDonald’s and P&G to deliver ground-breaking mobile innovation.
In late 2009, the full scale of Alistair’s entrepreneurial potential was revealed when he identified a common problem for brands set out to create the solution. Alistair identified that brands needed to reach the widest possible audience on mobile regardless of smartphone, but that developing for individual platforms was costly and not time effective. Alistair realised that the solution was technology that allowed for the production of cross-platform apps from a single source code. Subsequently Alistair raised funds to acquire a patented platform that enables the time and cost-effective production of high quality cross-platform apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Nokia from a single source code. With this platform at the heart, Grapple has become the leading mobile innovation agency, guiding leading brands through the whole development process from concept to download.

Hugh Fletcher, National Digital Manager, Audi UK
Hugh’s career has been spent bringing innovation to some of the world’s largest car manufacturers including Renault, Peugeot, Volkswagen & Skoda before joining Audi.
Hugh has ensured Audi’s ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ philosophy (‘advancement through technology’) has been applied in the ever-changing world of digital marketing, developing the Audi brand on web, mobile and social platforms, contributing to a record year for Audi.

In a prolific 12 months, Hugh has:
• Launched the m.Audi mobile site – achieving 219,328 unique visitors in the last 10 months and shortlisted for three major industry awards,
• Generated 10.7 million unique visitors on the Audi UK website
• Managed the Audi YouTube Channel – creating 900,000 views in the last 12 months
• Initiated a social media strategy with a strong Audi UK presence on Facebook and Twitter
• Developed mobile apps for major sporting events – Goodwood Festival of Speed and the Le Mans 24 hour race.
• Implemented a search-engine optimisation project that has seen a 20% increase in natural search traffic

Maani Safa, Innovation Director, SOMO
As the man who almost single-handedly brought cool to The Telegraph, Maani was chosen to found and lead the product division of Somo mobile marketing agency back in 2010. His decorated early career saw him heading the Telegraph Media Group’s mobile division, where he was responsible for launching industry-leading mobile products, including the mobile version of The Telegraph, the hugely successful iPhone application, The Telegraph Kindle edition, and the first ever news app for the Android Market. He also set up their innovation Laboratory known as T-labs, the centre of innovation for the company, which was sponsored by Apple, Google and Adobe. At Somo, Maani has spearheaded the growth of the product department and conceptualised many of its most successful creations, including:
• the award winning Audi Le Mans app, which demonstrated the first use of augmented reality in an automotive app in the UK
• the Dominos app suite, which has generated more than £12 million of sales in under a year
• The Conde Nast Glamour apps, one of which, “Fast Beauty” was named in The Times App 500

As technology improves, the amount of data that can be derived from user activity in digital is increasing exponentially. The question is, how much insight can be gained when the data flow is so immense? You can be drowning in data but if it’s not the right data, you learn nothing useful.  Insight into user experience is business critical, as the quality of customer experience can be the key differentiator between a visitor doing business with you, or a competitor.
January 2012 saw the latest in the UserZoom seminar series, bringing experts in usability (UX) and data analytics together for a seminar on Web 2.0 Data Driven Insights. Chaired by Carina Hoogeveen, Marketing Manager, UserZoom, the seminar explored the tools and methods available to drive deeper understanding of user activity and the impact that can have on a business. Experts from UserZoom, Shop Direct Group, Capgemini, Fortune Cookie, ZAAZ and Belron International looked at how data driven insights are changing the digital market and how best to make use of the tools and methods available. Xavier Mestres, Co-CEO, UserZoom, looked at how UX tools and techniques can add a new and insightful layer of information to the digital experience. He focused on the need to combine Voice of Customer (VoC) with web analytics to improve customer experience. Combining VoC and data analysis provides insight, because it enables you to improve the quality of the information available and apply it directly to your business. Web analytics focuses on what is happening – where do visitors come from, why is there a 35% abandonment rate at checkout etc? Adding UX enables a business to understand why – do visitors not like the price, the style, the navigation? Or, as is far more common, are they simply not able to complete their goal based on intent?
Mestres says, “Bringing the ‘what’ together with the ‘why’ enables better business decision making. “ Finding out the answers to key questions can help identify where improvements can be made. As ever those key questions are:
• Why did you come to the site?
• Were you able to complete your goal based on intent?
• If not, why not?
• Would you recommend us (NPS)?
Getting these key answers from real-time visitors helps you to understand the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’. This methodology works for mobile websites and apps (UserZoom patented technology).
While UX has traditionally been used on a project basis, Mestres says that there’s a growing trend to get user experience data on a continuous basis, supporting consistent evolution in digital to continually improve the user experience. He believes that “VoC and Data have a great future together.”
Karen Windahl Finnigan, Head of Rapid Design Visualisation & User Experience (or, as she calls it, the Department of Disruption) at Capgemini, talked about how the importance of UX has moved far beyond the simple consumer experience and is becoming a core internal integration issue for major corporations. This is true for internal integration, or for a series of sites run by a global brand owner. As she points out, large sites use federated systems, slotting different technologies in and out as the site and service grow. The internet of things allows different things/systems/processes to talk to each other. Add UX on top of those sites and systems and it can be responsible for creating the impression of a more joined up and holistic experience. Some companies can have as many as 1500 sites across a range of brands and no way to connect between the backend, customer data or loyalty systems. Ease of use, whether for a customer trying to buy a phone, or for a call centre operator trying to manage the sale, authorisation and customer loyalty programme, is the key.
Another opportunity that UX in the 21st century is providing is a new approach to testing new business models and practices. It can be used to test ideas and even devices – she even elaborated on testing ideas for a device that hasn’t yet been invented, just to see what might be possible. Where she sees UX having most impact is within overall design. She says that today, user experience is pervasive and it’s no longer a tactical option but a systemic approach. She describes the shift as being about the dynamic version of design – taking a product centred approach to the design environment. She says, “Usability is becoming ambient – it’s expected. What we want to explore is the difference between what customers want and what they’re getting. Think about it this way: Creative is dead. Usability is dead. Long live UX.”
Craig Sullivan, Group Customer Experience Manager of Belron International, responsible for Autoglass, lives by a simple mantra – ‘Optimise or Die’. He says that UX is simple – it’s about measuring positive outcomes. The thing to remember, he points out, is that “If products suck it’s not just an unhappy customer, but a direct cost to the bottom line.” Combining user centric design, agile product management and tightly integrated teams, combining UX techniques and tools with web analytics means constant product and service improvement. Sullivan focuses on the idea of lean optimisation – that the goal is to learn, evolve and repeat. He points out that he has no specific launch date or deliverables, but rather a continuous evolution of a product to ensure that it fits customer needs.
The critical point he makes is to design for outcomes. His team will often start with an idea and some historical knowledge but they design for outcomes, clear about the questions they need to ask. The process is focused on course correction, fixing problems and making sure the customer drives the evolution. As he says,” it’s a process that is emotional and customer centric, not designed by the customer, but driven by their needs.“
Sullivan is a big fan of multivariate testing, as well as micro testing – he pointed out that changing two words on one of their French sites made a difference of €300,000. Making a change that fails can be just an informative, the thing to do is to test on funnels and landing pages and make sure, he says, that you ‘use some techniques, not none.”
The seminar ended with the Analytics surgery, where the speakers were joined by other experts, chaired by Justin Cooke, CEO of Fortune Cookie. Joining the panel were Michael Quek, eCommerce Usability Manager, Shop Direct Group and Scott Heron, Managing Director Europe at ZAAZ.
One of the key things that came out of the panel session was the vital importance of combining effective UX tools with web analytics as a risk management tool. Getting it wrong can make a significant difference to the bottom line. And it’s not as if you need to build a massive in-house team. Today’s tools and methods enable everything from MVT testing to remote usability testing and feedback surveys. Sullivan said that tools can leverage the team and, with only two people on his team at present, he would know. Quek supported that view, pointing out that the Shop Direct usability team of two obtained customer feedback from hundreds of people over a 3 month period.
Sullivan also pointed out that good in test isn’t always good in product. Members of the audience raised concerns about the possible bias of customer feedback on the day and Mestres pointed out that all research is biased to an extent, the point is to try as far as possible to reduce the bias by obtaining statistically significant sample sizes, thereby increasing the confidence indicators on the data.
Windahl Finnigan pointed out the importance of linking activity to external events, as well as looking at quantitative and qualitative data. The point is to understand the context, the ‘why behind the activity’, in order to build the most effective solutions. The reality is that data sits in many different places and, as yet, we’re a long way from a truly converged world. The insight driven by the combination of UX and analytics gives us a clear place to start. Heron pointed out that his company monetises the value of different types of conversion, which gives them a systematic  way of prioritising which part of the business to address next.  He says, “let the data be driven by the business decisions that you want to make.”
All the panel agreed that the UX market is evolving and that one of the key issues is hiring the right people. Sullivan says that the tripod of skills required is UX, testing and analytics, but the most important element is critical thinking – if you don’t want to know why, you won’t be able to do the job. Heron agreed that analysis is more than simply reporting.
Justin Cooke says: “I came away with a real 360 view of where we are right now when it comes to web analytics, usability and insight.  If you’re looking to get ahead in User Experience, this type of event is perfect for you because it’s jam-packed full of hints, tips and practical ways that you can do exactly that!”