M-PESA, An African Payment Success

About a fortnight back, we spoke about how the like of M-Pesa is replacing plastic. Today we see why it is such a huge success in Kenya, the place where it started. Olga Morawczynski, a doctoral candidate from the University of Edinburgh who spent 9 months studying customer adoption and usage in Kenya made some interesting observations on the Safaricom run venture. She sights one of the main reasons for M-Pesa’s popularity as the fact that the primary user is the young, male, urban migrant. He is often more educated than his family, he is the one who earns money and chooses the way he wants to transfer it to his family. When he chooses M-Pesa, it is but natural that his family will also have to choose it to be able to receive the money. Another huge factor is the fact that the services of M-Pesa are widespread, often people in rural areas do not have to travel a long time to get their money. Another factor that we have sighted before is the fact that the majority of users are unbanked – the unavailability of a bank account makes them easy adopters of M-Pesa. What is to be seen is that how many other countries will follow in M-Pesa’s path?

I Know What You Did With Your Stimulus Check

Earlier this year, the Congress in United States brought about The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 wherein citizens were given a rebate, a financial stimulus to avert the possibilities of a recession. Totaling a $152 billion in stimulus checks for millions of American households, this act become the basis of a rather interesting website that has been launched since then, to bring together stories of how people spent their stimulus checks. Citizens post their accounts of how they spent their stimulus money, of what they thought of doing with it and what they eventually did. There are stories from all kinds of people who’ve spent their stimulus checks in all kinds of ways, there are people who have vacationed in Europe, there are those who paid off their debts, there are people who bought pets, some who volunteered to teach in Africa, some who spent it on their entrepreneurial dreams. Like is natural of the average American, a lot of people spent their money on basic needs that gave them instant gratification. Pretty sad, because what the government was really aiming at was to reach out and get more of the entrepreneurial kinds to spend money on new ventures and for debt-laden individuals to get out of their crisis. There are some stories that are sad too. Some people who were refused their stimulus checks on various accounts and others who posted stories that went way beyond the stimulus check. Like voicing their distraught over the Bush government first “stealing” their money to kill members of their own family in foreign lands and then giving it back to them. One guy also put up a video of him burning his check just as a “gesture of political indignation”.

Look Alike Logos

Looks like it’s becoming more and more difficult to execute original logo designs. No matter how clever the idea, chances are someone has created a very similar logo. We’re all surrounded by the same influences, exposed to the same shapes, forms and patterns. With the importance of branding in the marketplace, and thousands of designers working on similar projects, it’s obvious ideas will, from time to time, look almost identical. Here are a bunch of look alike logos from Logo Design Lounge.

Carling Invents Mobile Advertising

Carling has launched a new ad campaign and it just might point to the future of advertising. Don’t expect to see this ad in the usual places. You won’t find it in newspapers or on TV. To see the new Carling ad in all its glory, you’ll need a mobile phone, an iPhone really. Mind you, you’ll also have to redraw what you think of when you think of an ad campaign, too. Because the new Carling campaign is not only the best example to date of mobile advertising, it also stretches the definition of what advertising is. iPint (Watch Video Here) blurs the lines between advertising and mobile applications. Read More from The Independent, UK.

The Interactive Corporation. Taking Interactive Communication Beyond Marketing

Forrester’s Steven Noble has an interesting story on how the interactive experience can go well beyond marketing. He explains that just about every communication channel within the organization could benefit if they were to adopt digital media to deliver interactive messages. Here’s his story in full.

Marketing is a great place for interactive experts to test their skills and strategies. However, it’s far from the only area where digital thinking can have a huge impact. Whether to grow your agency or your in-house career, here are a few more opportunities to consider:

Interactive internal communication. Attracting, retaining and harnessing skilled staff is one of the largest challenges facing many organisations. Increasingly, internal communicators are using interactive tools to address these issues. In fact, organisations often experiment with social media for internal communication before they use it externally, because there is no risk to trouble-making-employees if they sign into the social application using their own network IDs because of anonymity. Interactive marketers should take on internal projects if they want a less scary way of proving the power of social media.

Interactive supply chain communication. For consumer electronics firms in particular, it can be incredibly slow and expensive to ensure that retailers worldwide understand how to sell your product. Luckily, smart interactive marketers have a solution: web-based training modules that use video, self-assessment and other tools to deliver the message straight to every salesperson.

Interactive investor communication. CFOs must ensure that all investors have equal and instant access to market-moving information. Clearly, digital distribution channels have a role to play here and interactive marketers should step forward to help make this happen. The other big opportunity is the use of visualisation tools, video and online communities to tell an emotional story to investors, beyond the endless facts and figures.

Interactive media relations. The easier you make it for journalists to find your story, your graphics, your stock video and your contact details, the better they’ll be able to cover your company. Most online media rooms need a complete revamp and savvy interactive marketers should be lending a hand.

Interactive public affairs. Government, citizens and pressure groups all want to see how your organisation is operating and they all want their say. Smart interactive marketers lend their tools to the cause, helping to lower the barriers between the organisation and the public.

All these areas would benefit from the input of interactive marketers. However, each of these is grounded in quite different assumptions to the four Ps of marketing. Moving beyond marketing is a tremendous opportunity for interactive experts who want to grow their agencies or their in-house careers. However, first they must immerse themselves in the complex business issues that motivate everyone from the CFO to the director of human resources.

The Web Doesn’t Care

Seth Godin writes, only like he can. The web has little sympathy for brands and marketing        messages. It’s the first mass marketing medium ever that isn’t supported by ads. It doesn’t exist to make the marketer happy. If a newspaper, a radio station or a TV station doesn’t please advertisers, it disappears. The Net is different. It wasn’t invented by business people and it doesn’t exist to help companies make money. Read More.

Your Own Money Manager

Ever wanted a tool to help you manage your finances better? Here’s help. Mint.com is a free web-based financial management service created by entrepreneur Aaron Patzer. Mint offers intelligent online money management with their software that brings together a users credit card, bank account and credit union data and provides up to date views about his spends. Mint also alerts a user on several accounts; like for instance when he exceeds his personal budget, when he needs to pay a bill or when his bank balance hits a low. Mint connects to more than 5000 leading financial institutions, making it an extensive database. Mint is also very simple, and needs no accounting skills on the part of the user. Making an account and aligning accounts to Mint takes less than five minutes, and after that, it’s the software that gets to work. What is also very interesting is that Mint goes beyond budget analysis. Its extensive database allows it to retrieve the best deals from everywhere. So, if a user’s bank account has a sum of money that is not earning him a considerable interest, Mint will scan through its database and suggest a high interest rate saving account from another bank. And for all this, Mint is a free service for users. Currently, revenue is expected to be generated through lead generation in which Mint.com recommends financial products to its users. Mint provides account access service through a deal with Yodlee, the company known to deliver innovative financial applications to top banks.

M&A wave to hit banks

The Economist has an interesting point of view about how the world is going to change post the M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) wave. The proof that investment banks are keen on feasting on their banking peers by helping them raise capital is hard to miss. For instance, Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s leading investment banks announced a 72% increase in equity-underwriting revenues in the second quarter mostly from the benefit of other banks. So we ask, why? Well, for starters, a lot of business models are falling apart because they weren’t meant to stand tall anyway. The Economist states the example of Wachovia, America’s fourth largest bank that has suffered from the outsize exposure to imploding housing markets in sunny California and is now a potential takeover target. Read about more M&A deals that experts think will happen soon and who might be waiting to benefit from them. However, just a few months back, there were talks of Silicon Valley startups and companies being severely impacted by the Investment Banking crisis.

Riding Cheap On Social Networking

Though car-pooling came to everyone as one of the perfect ways to save fuel, money and the environmet, there was a time when people were weary of sharing a ride with strangers. However, with the recent rise in fuel costs, people have turned to social networking to help subside their fears. For example, Carpool is an application on the popular social networking site Facebook. Interestingly, not only are people using this service to hitch a ride to work, there are requests for people to even join each other on road trips to add to company and subtract costs. Users of this application can either “Request” or “Offer” a ride by selecting “To and From” destinations. Another site called PickupPal claims to be “a global eco-friendly transportation revolution that connects drivers, passengers, and packages with the places they need to go”. Check out more sites from this list.

Agencies As Product Design Companies

Boards Mag has a story on how some of the best agencies in the world have started to develop products and services for their clients. Crispin is interested in lowly sponge, the story reads… Other agencies who are thinking like CPB, AKQA and NewYork’s own Anomaly.