Insightful articles, opinion and commentary about mobile and web.

Currently, high street icons are way behind the curve in meeting their customers’ mobile expectations - yet Forrester expects that by the end of 2012, most noteworthy Australian online retail websites will be optimized for mobile (up from 20% of all sites today) or complemented by mobile apps (up from 6% today).

In this podcast, Simon van Wyk talks to Paul Marshall former executive general manager, Digital Innovation at Salmat and former executive general manager at Lasoo about the enormous opportunity that mobile presents to retailers and how to meet the needs of increasingly mobile-savvy shoppers.

 

 The State of Australian Retail from your Mobile: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

HotHouse managing director Simon van Wyk talks to Lucas Challamel, ANZ sales manager for mobile web software company Netbiscuits, about how to develop effective mobile applications in a world where there are more than 6,000 devices to design for.

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 The rise of mobile web applications: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By Simon van Wyk

I interviewed Alfresco Software’s regional sales manager, Barry Costin, on the topic of open source vs. enterprise software for this month’s HotHouse podcast.

Why tackle such a seemingly technical topic for a marketing blog (albeit a marketing and technology blog)? Why should we care about the intricacies of software? Well first, let’s start with some background for marketing-softened brains. Here’s a definition of open source software from How Stuff Works:

“Most software that you buy or download only comes in the compiled ready-to-run version…. It is extremely difficult to modify the compiled version of most applications and nearly impossible to see exactly how the developer created different parts of the program. Most commercial software manufacturers see this as an advantage that keeps other companies from copying their code and using it in a competing product. It also gives them control over the quality and features found in a particular product. read more

HotHouse managing director Simon van Wyk talks to Barry Costin, Regional Sales Manager ANZ for Alfresco Software, an open source enterprise content management software company. Barry talks with Simon about the maturing of open source technology and the demise of “dinosaur” enterprise software solutions.

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 Barry Costin Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By Simon van Wyk

Kenneth Boulding, curmudgeonly scholar, peace activist and founder of the evolutionary economics movement, died in 1993, but if you look at his quotable quotes today, you’d swear he was talking about the iPad, introduced nearly 20 years after his death.

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HotHouse founder Simon van Wyk talks to Peter O’Neill, CEO and founder of 2moro mobile, a mobile development consultancy based in Adelaide. Peter talks with Simon about the iPad phenomenon and why now is the time for marketers to come to grips with mobile applications and mobile sites.

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 Peter O'Neil: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By Simon van Wyk

In How Brands Grow, Byron Sharp writes that “The marketing world is extraordinarily complex, but textbooks fail us when they suggest that this complexity can never be mastered.”

He argues, however, that it’s possible to “come up with some simple rules for ‘branded competition for sales’ (i.e. competition to build a sales base with considerable lasting capability).” Here are his rules, based on empirical evidence:

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By Simon van Wyk

I highly recommend all marketers to read Byron Sharp’s book How Brands Grow check out my podcast with Byron here. His research-based approach to marketing principles is refreshing and challenges a lot of our existing thinking on marketing.

To whet your appetite, here is a selection of the most salient quotes from the book:

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By Simon van Wyk

One of the big buzz phrases in healthcare these days is “evidence-based medicine”. In a nutshell, it means relying on a combination of the best research evidence along with the experience doctors have treating patients as a way of achieving the best outcomes when diagnosing and managing illness.

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HotHouse founder Simon van Wyk talks to Byron Sharp, professor, marketing researcher and head of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute at the University of South Australia. His new book, How Brands Grow, canvasses empirical, observable data on marketing which stands many of the traditional tenets of marketing on their head. Byron talks with Simon about finding repeatable patterns in marketing research, online search advertising, and the similarities between medieval doctors and modern-day marketers.

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 Byron Sharp - Marketing by the numbers.: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download