Silvester is well-known for his left-of-centre thinking on trends relevant to marketers and in his latest book, Mobile Mania (published by ad agency Y&R), Silvester states his case as to why mobile is truly set to drive marketing innovation in the future. Forget 360 degree marketing campaigns, he tells marketers, it's the age of the 24/7 campaign.
Bizcomunity: Most people view social media as the key trend of the moment. You take a larger and possibly longer term view of what's happening by arguing that the key is really the fact that it's mobility that's driving social media by making it accessible, compelling and useful. Are you saying marketers should take their cue from this mobility, rather than just social media per se?
Simon Silvester: Social media is one of many trends at the moment that are being driven by 24/7 access to computers and that 24/7 access to computers - always on, always with you and always connected - comes from the fact that many of those computers sit not on desks any more, but within mobile phones.
Where mobile phones and mobile telecoms are more sophisticated, in Korea, social networking was already happening in 2002.
I expect the next big trend to be geotagging - people labelling maps with information and reviews about retailers, tourist sights and other places. This too is being driven by GPS-enabled mobile phones.
Biz: You say that mobiles will become our main computing device in the future - how did you come to this conclusion?
Silvester: You see it already on planes around Europe and the US - the lawyers and management consultants are all travelling with smartphones rather than carrying bulky laptops with them. The people who bought iPads over the past few weeks are saying that they thought it was just a big iPod Touch when they bought it, but now they find it sucking all of their computing needs into it, right up to presentation creation. Around 80% of tweets come from mobile devices. When it comes to the desktop web, over 20% of page requests still comes from 2002's Internet Explorer 6 - because people aren't upgrading their desktop computers as much any more.
Biz: You specifically state that the shift to mobile computing will not be US centric. But will it be English centric?
Silvester: The coolest phones at the moment are in Japan, where 80% of phones sold come with digital terrestrial TV as standard. The most sophisticated text-messagers are Japanese schoolgirls, armed with libraries of symbols and animations on their phones that put Western emoticons to shame. And the world's most prolific text-messagers are not in Europe, but in the Philippines. And mobile payment systems were pioneered, and got widespread adoption first, in Kenya and Tanzania.
Biz: What smart features do you believe will soon be commonplace on mobile phones available in developing markets like that of South Africa?
Silvester: The price of phones drops rapidly, because the cost of producing the digital technology within them also drops rapidly. The US$400 flip-phones that New Yorkers clamoured for in 2005 are now US$20 handsets in the hands of Chinese taxi drivers. Expect the computing heart of the cellphone (but perhaps not the HD colour touch screens) to be in the hands of people on monthly incomes of US$60-US$100 by 2015.
Biz: You argue that marketers have always been over-optimistic about what computers could be used for. What do they predict and expect today that you consider over-optimistic?
Silvester: Marketers see computing technology advancing at exponential speed, and assume that all aspects of the computer will advance at exponential speed. But data transfer rates are not driven by the speed increases given by Moore's Law. It's more likely that demand for mobile bandwidth will rise exponentially, and that supply of bandwidth will not keep up. The cellular web may slow down in the future rather than speed up. The idea that we'll all be watching TV on our mobiles via cellular networks in a few years' time is fantasy.
Biz: You seem to suggest that privacy will carry less and less of a premium as today's teens become adults. Given the furore around privacy and Facebook, and a move towards organic produce and green living for example, why do you disagree that privacy is becoming and will remain an increasingly important issue to consumers and consumer rights advocates?
Silvester: I believe that it's a generational thing. People over 40 in advanced countries are shocked by how increasingly everything they do and say is now searchable on the Internet. People under 25 don't seem to care. They broadcast their GPS position and snaps of themselves on the beach without a care.
Perhaps they will become more private as they age. But it's more likely that they will keep the beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that defined them when they were young. The young videogamers of the ''80s are now middle-aged videogamers. In 10 years' time they'll start installing games consoles in old people's homes. Expect the young people of today to grow older sharing everything online, and not worrying about privacy - perhaps until it's too late!
Biz: Big packaged goods companies discovered TV in the '50s and created brands to use it. You argue that these brands no longer work in the digital/mobile age. Have you seen any of these brands successfully transitioning themselves and are you saying that the rest will fail?
Silvester: I think Unilever's Axe has done some very clever things - the app that turns your mobile phone into a 'metal detector' that squeaks when it 'detects' a piercing as you pass it over your date's body comes to mind. I like the Foursquare app that gives discounts to people who have checked in at more than five Starbucks. I just don't see digital activity creating mass awareness much - and that's a key need of most FMCG brands.
Biz: Finally, what are the key elements to designing successful cellphone-based loyalty schemes?
Silvester: Above all, simplicity. Most loyalty schemes fail because they are too complicated for ordinary consumers to understand, or to keep on understanding after initial sign up. Also most loyalty schemes at the moment rely on your remembering a password - and all my stats show that most people can't remember their password for most of the schemes they have signed up to. Secondly, simplicity. And thirdly, simplicity.
• Find Silvester online at www.silvester.com or follow him on Twitter at @SimonSilvester. Read Mobile Mania online at http://pubs.yr.com/mobilemania.
* Silvester also serves as executive planning director at Wunderman Europe Middle East and Africa.
