Across the globe, whenever there is conversation on mobiles, two broad questions are being asked.

How do we adapt desktop web design to cater to mobile?

In the developed markets of the West, with mobile being another cog in ecosystem dominated by desktop (or notebook) access, the questions are all about adapting to mobile. The idea of Responsive Design has been gathering momentum, with web presence responding to different screen sizes. (For more on responsive design, here is the article that started it all http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/)

 How do we create mobile web experiences for first time users?

In mobile first markets like Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, Kenya and Japan (yes, Japan, the pioneering market for mobile innovations before the term smartphone was born), the discourse has already shifted. Consumers in mobile first markets already use their phone as their first screen – using it to write mail even with a notebook open or watching episodes of their favourite shows while on the move. India is a natural member of this brigade. Yet, like many other possibilities Indian, there is far greater potential than current performance.

CMOs, who need to answer both these questions as well as leverage the latent power of the mobile ecosystem for their brands and businesses before their competitors do, are drilling down further. Does one need different renditions of websites for desktop & mobile? Does one need to focus on a singular task, like an app? What is the role for feature phones in the mix? How does one tackle e-commerce via mobiles? Does my particular brand/business even need a full-fledged mobile strategy?

One would recommend a pause. Consider the problem before jumping into a solution. By starting from the users’ context, their lives, how they live and interact among themselves and sometimes, with brands. How brands fit in to their lives, not the other way round.

Kristofer Layon’s insightful observations provide useful reflection:

Devices aren’t mobile, people are. People have been moving forever and whether high tech (say, a space station) or low tech (a cycle) proffer ideas on how to design for mobility.

Mobiles are all about doing. Mobile strategy and mobile implementation are all about enabling people to accomplish something.

Mobiles jostle for attention in busy and crowded contexts. Think about a car and its instrumentation.

Distraction is the natural state of mobile usage. One is invariably doing something else while on a mobile. Sometimes lunch, at other times watching TV or babysitting.

Mobile usage is increasingly in a state of relaxation. In fact, quite a lot of mobile usage is deskbound or sofa-bound.

Mobile interactions are largely about accomplishing specific tasks. Even if the task is about 3 Stars on an Angry Bird Level.

(You can read more here http://www.mobilizingwebsites.net/)

Human behavior – whether at the level of individuals, societies or nations are undergoing seismic shifts. Mobiles have been enabling many of these shifts. Whether it is disruptive (think political activism in repressive regimes), constructive (think disaster relief in Indonesia), expressive (think Facebook/Twitter/Instagram) or spontaneous (think BBM) – it is time to think of the role the mobile ecosystem can play for businesses.

To quote Luke Wroblewski, author of Mobile First, and the inspiration for this post, (http://www.lukew.com/resources/mobile_first.asp), “designing for mobile first not only prepares you for the explosive growth and opportunities in this space, it forces you to focus and enables you to innovate.”

Wanna play?

The next steps are well documented.

Get a bulletproof business plan, push an elevator speech about its potentail impact to all who can fund or reach investors, and then wait for backing and support from venture capitalists, angel investors, early stage funders.

The question of money and funding keeps many potentially great ideas stillborn. Banks need collateral. Succeed or not, money needs to be paid back, with interest. Angel investors, venture capitalists need scale. Success means an exit plan, the path to success means signing away ownership and potential returns.

Or the idea could enlist support via online marketplaces for funding. Kickstarter or Kiva are two of the best known platforms for this. Kickstarter focuses on creative projects, while Kiva is a micro-funding platform.

Let’s look at Kickstarter first.

An online marketplace for ideas, where passion projects find backers, willing to put their money to help make the project come alive.

No ownership dilution. No creeping loss of management control. No interest to be paid. Just a bunch of people who love an idea and fund it, for no financial incentive or reward. Just the satisfaction of helping midwife a great idea, bringing forth a new experience and an interesting, delightful product.

Kickstarter bills itself as the “world’s largest platform for funding creative projects.” The operative words here are “creative” and “projects”.

Why “projects”? A project is well-defined and finite. Kickstarter projects define what they are about, usually through a video submission, set funding expectations and a time period within which funding is supposed to be completed. Once these are fixed, all one has to do is wait and watch. Of course, publicize the project and spread the word.

What is “creative”? A film, an art installation, a music album, a watch, a documentary series, absolutely anything that is new and novel.

A couple of examples.

Computing: The Human Experience, a transmedia documentary series by Grady Booch, Chief Scientist for Computing at IBM, asks for funding thus “I need your help in telling a story, the story of the technology that has changed humanity: computing.”

“Just as Carl Sagan’s Cosmos made the universe understandable and exciting to a mass audience twenty-five years ago (was it really that long ago?) Computing: The Human Experience will inform, inspire, and entertain. We will grab audiences of all ages by the throat and/or brain by telling the story of this incredibly technology that is changing our world…while changing humanity.”

Computing: The Human Experience has raised USD 30329.66, from 349 backers, spread over 22 countries. Read more about it here

Next, perhaps the most funded project on Kickstarter, TikTok and Lunatik Multi-touch WatchKits, have raised USD 942,578 (their original ask was for USD 15,000) from 13,512 backers.

“TikTok and LunaTik simply transform the iPod Nano into the world’s coolest multi-touch watches. The idea to use the Nano as a watch was an obvious one ever since the product was announced. But we wanted to create a collection that was well designed, engineered and manufactured from premium materials and that complemented the impeccable quality of Apple products.”

Read more about this project here.

So what makes Kickstarter work? Why is it a bellwether of the Digital Age?

Transparency
There are no secrets on Kickstarter. Project ideas are shared in all their glory, as are plans, milestones, backers and almost every conceivable detail one can imagine. In my book, such transparency equals confidence and passion.

Sure, one’s precious idea is out in the open. Perhaps someone (or many people) could plagiarize that idea. The world knows who conceived it. And without the original creator’s passion to make the original vision real, chances are the plagiarism will be found out as a pale imitation.

Shared Passion and Stories
Social sharing is built in to Kickstarter. One can pledge support to a project and then help mobilize support or publicity for it via one’s networks. This propels one person’s passion into shared beliefs of the many.

Now, anyone can be a patron of something creative. And earn social capital by telling others. Rocket fuel, wouldn’t you say?

Leveraging Platforms
Kickstarter uses Amazon Payment Services to hold pledges; this acts as an escrow account, until full funding is achieved. Using Amazon makes the service secure and adds an extra layer of trust.

The digital age is all about leveraging platforms through alliances and partnerships. Why re-invent the wheel? Focus on building a new vehicle.

There are several similar services waiting in the wings. Indonesia has a couple of them (http://bursaide.com & http://patungan.co/). While Indian film director Onir raised funds through social media for his critically acclaimed film “I Am”, there is no Indian equivalent to Kickstarter just yet.

Anyone interested?

As one ponders over the opportunity an Indian Kickstarter could provide, a look at Kiva.

Kiva is about “loans that change lives”. It is a microfinance organization which has disbursed over USD 283 millions in loans, money was lent by 688,181 people from over 200 countries to fund 725,056 micro-entrepreneurs. 80% of the beneficiaries have been women.

Now, micro-finance in India has been mired in all sorts of difficulties. Most of these difficulties are well-documented. See this & this for background. From what one has been able to gather, the central issue has been that of raising funds (money has been raised from private equity which demands higher returns).

This is where the Kiva model works beautifully.

Kiva is “a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as USD 25 to help create opportunity around the world.”

Kiva raises money from a large number of lenders, each of whom could lend a minimum sum of USD 25 to any number of qualified projects. The money that one pledges is disbursed to the project, usually a group of micro-entrepreneurs. A project could well be purchasing a batch of sewing machines so that a self-help group of women in Pakistan could earn some money doing job-work. Once the group pays back the money, it is credited back into one’s account. The lender can then decide to fund another project. Ad infinitum. Watch this video – a rather lucid explanation of how Kiva works.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kiva’s model is hybrid. Its raising of funds, exposing projects from the corners of the globe could only happen in the digital age. It disbursement of funds to projects follows feet on ground, something that successful businesses have practiced since the dawn of mass marketing.

Kickstarter and Kiva are literally in two different worlds. Kickstarter seems focusing on the first world, with its involvement with the upper reaches of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, while Kiva seems firmly planted in the third world and focusing on the bottom of the hierarchy of needs. Both are necessary. Both are required.

In their own ways, both are using the tools of the digital age to improve lives and create a better world.

The digital revolution has affected many well-established businesses, for better & for worse. Analog has been ceding ground to digital in almost every sector one can imagine. From travel to photography, from newspapers to running shoes – upstarts are challenging the legacy players. Why should payments be any different?

Payments are different, because two key drivers of the digital revolution have been integral to that industry:

Banks & payment services have had a strong, interconnected ecosystem, before the app store popularized the word ecosystem. The biggest names in the digital age depend on a payment system developed in the mid-60s for an analog world to be who they are (think Amazon, think Travelocity).

Banks & payment services have been at the forefront of technology adoption, beginning with back-offices & then with consumer facing devices (think ATM) & services (think of the last time you had a physical passbook).

But, payments are ubiquitous. Everybody, everywhere has to pay bills. Everybody has had to borrow or repay a small sum from a friend. Everybody has to buy something from a merchant.

And, what is more ubiquitous today than mobile phones? Yes, mobiles are the vanguard of the digital revolution changing the payments industry.

There are currently three major changes afoot, all led by mobiles.

A. Device as a digital wallet

From credit card companies, to Google, to banks & payment service providers, there are several digital wallet initiatives being launched.

Google Wallet, currently being rolled out in the US, is an NFC (near field communication) enabled proximity payment system. It is an app that stores credit card information, pulls in offers & deals and is a proximity payment system.

The pilot test was launched as a three-way partnership between Citibank, Google & MasterCard, with Visa soon to join.

Good time to watch real people using Google Wallet here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

NFC devices are expected to grow in popularity in India & Asia. Some Blackberries and Android phones already have the ability to read NFC. My guess is that it will take a year or two to gain wide currency.

B. Device as a point of sale (POS) cash register

While there are quite a few players in this space, for most people Square is the defacto category. Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter & widely touted as the next Steve Jobs, started Square.

Square has two components – a card reader that can be plugged into the audio port of  an iPhone, iPad or Android device & an app that takes care of card authorization.  The card reader is shipped free of charge.

Once you have a card reader, one can start accepting payments. Whether you are a second-hand bookseller or hobbyist-chocolatier, a credit card payment is suddenly possible. Of course, there is that small matter of the iPhone, iPad or perhaps a cheaper Android.

What makes Square powerful are the analytics tools which come with it. Wait, if you think that means more spreadsheets, take a look at this video

Click here to view the embedded video.

Once you have data, there are a myriad ways to add value. As you just saw. These will enhance usage, create stickiness and hopefully, make Square a juicy enough target for an acquisition. Pundits believe that Apple would probably be interested, again this could be plain rumour.

There are many more mobile device based payment systems. Intuit GoPayment is one of them. Intuit GoPayment works on Blackberries, too, so that is a plus.

Square, I suspect, has both the first mover advantage & a better overall experience.

C. Ecosystem (carriers + devices + social networks + banks ) as an alternative payments mechanism

A slew of players – popmoney, obopay, zong, to name but a few are creating partnerships which make existing bank accounts mobile. They typically leverage the mobile operators services – using the bill as a store of value or simply as a conduit. The bank-led partnerships work a bit differently than the mobile operator-led businesses.

popmoney have this simple graphic to illustrate how they work:            

Most ecosystem partnerships are variations on this theme.

Obopay, another interesting technology play, has been in India for sometime, they have partnerships in place with Nokia for Nokia Money as well as with Union Bank and YES Bank for enabling mobile payments.

The alternative system, which uses the mobile service as a store of value is best illustrated by boku. This makes boku very scalable and relevant in India. It is device independent and depends purely on the mobile network. Here’s how it works:

Finally, some players are using social media, like the  online payment startup Dwolla. Dwolla is challenging plastic by enabling payments through Twitter, Facebook, SMS and other virtual channels by connecting their bank accounts to their Dwolla accounts. The service integrates with social networks to alert payment recipients that there is money waiting for them in their own Dwolla accounts that can be transferred to their bank account. At its core it is an alerts service and depends on banking partnerships to transfer cash.

The elephants in the payments room

Apple, Amazon and to a far lesser extent, Google (Android).

These brands have made buying utterly frictionless, almost habitual.  Amazon’s patented One Click system is literally one click away from accessing your account to pay for a book that you wished for.

What is delightful are the suggestions that Amazon makes based on past buying behaviour. Even past browsing behaviour. And that data prevents one from buying the same book twice.

That is the power of digital.

Each of these players could move into the core of commerce, payments. Perhaps through acquisition. Perhaps through partnerships.

Each leveraging the three key elements of digital business.

Powered by personalization. Enhanced by clever use of data. And ubiquity.

Digital marketing has caused seismic shifts in the way brands interpret themselves to their customers. One can assess some elements of behavior almost immediately (the hated click-through rate is one example), positive attitudes (a Like) or broadcast affinity (an RT); all these in addition to what existed. Add Social + Location + Mobile to this bubbling cauldron and you have a magic potion. (I easily succumb to hyperbole).

The campaign many consider to be the masterclass in digital marketing is Nike +.

In 2007, Nike launched Nike +. It was a sensor that a runner would slip into her shoe; the sensor would then communicate with an iPod and one could then upload the running data to nikeplus.com, where tracking, sharing and planning for further progress became ever easier.

Nike + took the running world by storm. Sales of sensors zoomed. Running clubs seemed to get a new lease of life. People who adopted running as a new year’s resolution were actually running races by the time the year ended.

Runners who didn’t use Nike shoes, were cutting their shoes to insert the Nike + sensors, to take advantage of the singular benefit – it helped people track and improve their running.

In 2010, Nike launched the Nike + GPS app for the iPhone. Now one didn’t need to buy a special pair of shoes, or a sensor. Neither did you need to cut your shoes.

Now is a good time to watch these two quick videos

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Nike Plus takes ‘Just do it’ and actually helps runners get it done. Since its launch, Nike Plus runners have logged more than 100 million miles—enough for more than 400 roundtrips to the moon. It’s little coincidence that Nike steadily increased its running shoe market share from 48 percent in 2006 to 61 percent in 2008. Along the way it created something for brands to aspire to: a product experience that reinforces the brand message.” said Brian Morrissey, one of the best known watchers of digital marketing, in Adweek.

There are six key lessons here, something that any brand could look at.

Personal data is a powerful driver of change: The key features in Nike +/Nike + GPS are data analysis & visualization applied to personal running data. One can slice, dice and display them in multiple ways. One can compare them with others. One can brag about them, of course. And as with all measurements, they provide a powerful urge to improve.

Behavioural change requires regular positive feedback: Applause and positive feedback loops reinforce behavior, urging you to greater heights. In Nike + including celebrity voices & comments add to the entertainment quotient. Gamification, leader boards, badges all are part of these.

People want their social networks to be supporters & competitors: Sharing with social networks help one compete with friends. It also helps recruit them as supporters. Runners feel they can’t slack off because that means letting down their friends!

Digital campaigns can be ubiquitous in consumers’ lives: One of the holy grails in pre-digital marketing was for brands and their vocabulary to be part of popular culture. In the digital era, brands live with their consumers, in their phones, in their networks, in the cloud. Running is a part of runners’ lives and Nike + enhances running by becoming part of a personal arsenal.

Standardized platforms & APIs can help fuel unique brand experiences: Platforms like iOS, Android provide powerful ways to leverage standardized digital behaviours. Increasingly, social networks are releasing APIs which brands can use to create experiences without re-inventing the wheel.

Brands are as much about doing as inspiring: Brands and consumers seemed to inhabit different rooms. Inspiration was the brand’s forte and consumers could choose to behave according to that inspiration or not. By embedding the brand through behaviours propelled by digital technology, brands can be doers, too.

Marketing has never been so exciting. The tools exist. Consumers are embracing these tools in their daily lives (Yes, even in India. A 100 million Facebookers is not small change). All that is required is for brands to re-define their existence in consumers lives. Do brands wish to be at the periphery, using digital as a channel? Or, be as their consumers and use digital to enhance themselves?

What do you think?