Need to play catch up … took an unplanned blogging break due to heavy workload.  I apologize to those who missed me.  Lot of exciting things have been happening.  Let’s start …

Situational Marketing is hosting the Carnival of the Mobilists #116.  The best post was snagged by Barbara Ballard for her comparison of the Sanyo and Blackberry phones.  Click here to access the link.

I attended the Mobile Advertising Book Event at Stanford yesterday, organized by Mobile Momentum.  I wrote about them earlier (click here for the link).  Details of the event are here.

Authors Chetan Sharma and Victor Melfi gave an interesting presentation about their book “Mobile Advertising”, explaining what they had covered and focused on.  Brian Cowley of AdInfuse, Tony Nethercutt of Admob and Ujjal Kohli of Rhythm New Media participated in a panel discussion with time for questions from the audience.  I was able to have a word with all of them later.  The book is a must-buy for anybody in this field.  I expect somebody will cover the contents of the panel-discussion; most of the stuff was fairly standard fare.

Thanks to Prof. Tom Kosnick and Mohit Gundecha for organizing this event.

Tomi Ahonen has written an interesting post “Permission Based is not enough: Understanding mobile advertising” today which also talks about about User-generated advertising and shares nuggets like “44% of Japanese mobile phone owners click on the links on their ads”.

Andrew Gill, who focuses on mobile advertising, mobile location and local search is hosting the Carnival of the Mobilists #115.  This time the listing spans (among others) Social Effects of Online Networking, Stupid Networks, iPhone,  US Mobile Market numbers and personal Mobile TV Channels.  Thank you Andrew for the hosting.  You can access the site here.

The 2008 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index has been announced.  This is the link to the site.

Thanks to the tectonic shifts in media, marketing and branding are undergoing sea changes that affect the customer-loyalty.  Here’s something interesting from the Wireless/Mobile point of view:

Who Makes The Best Cellphones?

1. Samsung
2. BlackBerry
3. Treo
4. Motorola
5. Nokia
6. Sanyo
7. LG
8. Panasonic, Sony Ericsson (tie)
9. Siemens

This is interesting, considering that Nokia, being the market leader is way down in the 5th position.

Who Gives The Best Wireless Phone Service?

1. Verizon, AT&T (tie)
2. Sprint PCS
3. T-Mobile

It would be interesting to find out how much of a push AT&T got from the iPhone.

Brand Keys has this to say about its research:

Frustrated by the inadequacies of the traditional research toolbox to meaningfully differentiate brands or show any correlation to sales, Dr. Robert Passikoff developed a proprietary system, grounded in clinical psychology, that provides brand equity metrics that accurately predict future in-market consumer behavior and correlate highly with sales and profitability. Brand Keys, Inc. — the New York-based independent boutique Dr. Passikoff founded in 1984 — is the only research consultancy in the world that specializes in customer loyalty engagement.

Chetan Sharma is hosting this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists #114.  As usual, he has made a very delectable selection of the best writing in this area.  Click here to go to the post.

Forum One Communications is hosting their popular Mobile Communities Unconference in the Sheraton in Palo Alto on Thursday, 20 March 2008.  Bill Johnston, Forum One’s Director of Community and Research says:

The intention of the Mobile Communities Unconference is to explore the opportunities with building community via mobile devices.

To register for the Conference, click here.  Readers of this blog can get a $25 discount by entering the discount code “nextnow”.

I will be there and look forward to some stimulating discussions.

This is coming a little late in the week from me.  Mark van ‘t Hooft is hosting the Carnival of the Mobilists #113 on his site Ubiquitous Thoughts.  He is done a great job in selecting some of the best writing in this area.  Thank you Mark.  You can access the link here.