At the beginning of this season of Parks and Recreation this scene was in the opening sequence.  I wanted to blog about this episode and partly this scene right away, but I decided to wait off until my last post on this blog.  We all know how wonderful mobile communication is and we've spent the semester learning about mobile advertising.  Knowing the importance of all that, it is also nice to be disconnected every once in a while.  Please don't just stay attached to your phones and social networks, nothing can replace person-to-person communication.  I know that this post is a little unrelated and not really what the purpose of this blog should be, but this is something I feel strong about.  Don't get me wrong, I always have my phone on me and I often live-tweet even the most mundane aspects of my life.  But, people should try disconnecting for even just an hour a day.  Try it out, enjoy life.

Scott Gillum of Forbes recently sat down with the CEO of Adjuggler, John Shomaker.  Adjuggler is a digital ad management technology and media services company.  The purpose of the interview was for Shomaker to inform Gillum of five mobile trends to watch for this holiday season.  The list went as follows:

Mars Chocolate company is going on a full on mobile campaign for the holiday season.  this is centered primarily around their M&M and Dove products.  The campaign they have launched is going to be a very cool experience for the users since the information provided is very useful and interactive for the users, and is extremely handy at this time of the year.  The campaign provides users with information on how to include M&Ms and Dove chocolates into their holiday dessert recipes.  This can be extremely helpful for people looking to change things up for the desserts they usually provide for their family or company holiday parties.
Mars Chocolate has proved to know the importance of jumping on mobile strategies, recognizing the high number of smart phone and tablet sales.  They ran a similar campaign this past March leading up to Easter.  This campaign is primarily based around banner ads and when the user clicks on the ad they are directed to the page that provides the recipes.  This is a very cool and relevant way to reach out and interact with their consumers.  

I recently saw on MCTS's Facebook page that they are going to start integrating QR codes into their bus stops.  Currently these are still in the testing phase.  I personally have yet to see them, they are at bus stops around the UWM campus and some areas of Wisconsin Avenue.  Passengers waiting at these stops will be able to use their smart phones to scan the Quick Response Code and it will tell them when the next bus is scheduled to arrive at that particular stop.  

Mobile Marketer has reported that QR Codes were a smashing success this year on Black Friday.  The report was put out by Scanlife and it claimed that the usage of QR codes went up by 50% on Black Friday.  Reportedly, Scanlife saw over a quarter million scans between 7 pm Eastern Time on Thanksgiving day and 7 pm Eastern Time on Black Friday.  That is a substantial raise from what they get on a typical day.  
One thing that this could indicate is that marketers are starting to find more creative ways to integrate QR Codes into their strategies.  Sometimes the destinations the codes bring you to makes the consumers feel that it is not even worth the scan, but as more research is done people are finding out what works and what doesn't work.  One item that was scanned the most was a recently released DVD.  The offering that came with this code was for a rebate.  That just shows how creative marketers are becoming with using these codes.  That is giving the consumer a benefit they can immediately see, and a reason to scan the code.  

Mobile Marketer has reported that the December issue of Esquire Magazine will be entirely interactive with a mobile device.  They are lauding the fact that this is going to be made possible without the use of either QR Codes or digital water marks.  In order to interact with the magazine the reader will have to be using a Netpage app.  The user will have a variety of ways to experience the magazine.  Users can be directed directly to a site where they can purchase featured item, be directed to a video interview with Bradley Cooper who will be gracing the cover of the magazine, and even the advertisements will be interactive - one Lexus ad will have the car drive off.

Papa Johns restaurant chain is facing a class action lawsuit that can cost them as much as $250 million, due to a failed SMS campaign.  The suit alleges that 500,000 text messages were illegally sent to Papa John's customers across the country.  The Papa John's camp is reporting that the messages were actually sent by a third-party vendor hired by some Papa John's franchises.  The vendor that was hired was OnTime4U.  Allegedly, the company told the Papa John's franchises that it was legal to send text messages to customers without their consent since there was an existing buyer/seller relationship there.  Papa John's then proceeded to give OnTime4U a list of their customers their cell phone numbers.  The company sent out text messages on behalf of Papa John's and now here they are in this sticky situation.  

Mobile Marketer is reporting that a new report by Urban Airship and Wave Collapse suggests push messages really help app retention rates and engagement.  They reviewed 360 apps' push messaging systems and were able to conclude that alone can help retention rates.  Push messages are usually highly relevant to the user and can really help to drive consumers to the app.  The report classified push messaging practices as high quality, average,  or low. The results show that apps that received a "high" are retained at more than double the rate of opted-out users.  Even practices that received a "low" still showed a significant difference in retention rates.  
This study seems to suggest that if your app is not quite up to speed or not implementing push messages into its practices there is a major opportunity being missed there.  Any app is pretty much useless if there is nobody actually visiting it and using it.  Relevant push messages increase engagement by 388% for opt in users.  With numbers like that it would be extremely hard to attempt to debunk them.  Even low quality push messages are effective, do not miss out on that train.  

Mobile Marketer is reporting that Google's net income is down and for the third straight quarter their CPC has dropped.  CPC stands for cost per click for advertisements.  Google's response to this is to do its best to have cohesive marketing strategies from across screens.  As a student of this Mobile Marketing class I know how important that is.  However some strategies feel that Google putting such an emphasis on this could be part of their problem and they should put a heavier concentration on developing marketing strategies for mobile apps.
Google has reported that 1.3 Android devices are being activated everyday.  That is a huge growing market that is just waiting to get tapped into further.  Google still has such a dominate control on the search engine market that cross screen capabilities is not really their problem.  Android has been cracking into the iPhone market and they should expand in the Android Marketplace.  I myself and a former iPhone user that has made the switch to Android and I am not the only person in my family who has done so.  I definitely agree with the strategist who believe there is a lot of money to be made for Google if they can go further into developing marketing for their mobile apps.

More and more Americans are starting to get their news via their mobile device such as their smartphone or tablet.  This would make sense since it has become the norm for a person to have a smartphone as opposed to a regular cell phone, and the popularity of tablets is also on the rise.  The study says that 50% of U.S. adults own either a tablet or a smartphone and 66% of those owners get news on their device.  Although the mobile news is on the rise, desktop and print news is not totally out of the picture which is important to point out.  
I think that it is important that mediums such as desktop and print stay relevant.  There is no question that mobile news is important.  Mobile makes so much information readily available for people while they are on the move, in today's busy society.  However, on such small screens I would question the extent to which journalist can get into detail on the story.  Also, I would wonder how much attention does the reader give to each news story that they read via smart phone.  Mobile could be a great way to introduce a story and get the main facts out there just to get the reader familiar and know the basics of the story.  Then desktop and print could really get into the nitty gritty of a story for readers who would like to learn more and are really interested.