I’m about to start a summer internship position with Coast Capital Savings on Monday as an e-business strategist. Ostensibly my role is to focus on developing a mobile strategy, however I’m sure my role will include getting involved in various areas of Coast’s e-business operations.

As it turns out I wrote a business plan based for my Technology Entrepreneurhsip class on the concept of enabling credit and debit card payment using smart phones. I worked with a great team on this project (hey George, Alan and Ali!) so I was able to dive into all the challenges that involve working with the existing financial infrastructure. Suffice it to say it’s a complicated, complicated space.

But one filled with opportunity for improvement!

So before I officially embark on my Coast internship, here are some thoughts on what I would like to see happen with mobile and payment technology:

Freedom from the Wallet: Above all else, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to leave home without our wallet (ok, maybe you still need your ID, though I definitely foresee a time when we’ll have digital driver’s licenses and such). Any mobile solution should enable all the payment types that your wallet currently handles so we can finally reach the day when we can comfortably leave the home with only our smart phone.

Freedom from Loss: Your personal financial data should never be stored on the mobile device. Always assume that the phone will be lost, stolen or compromised. We were looking at temporary IDs that, along with GPS data, would identify the user securely to the server which stores the sensitive financial data.

Freedom from Contact: We’re living in a world of WiFi and Bluetooth. ‘Germaphobia’ aside, there’s no reason to be sliding your credit or debit card into some unknown device (debit machine). It’s slow, cumbersome, complicated (every machine is different, every interface designed in its own way) and not safe (skimming on the rise). Any solution should rely entirely on the customer using their own, trusted device – their mobile phone.

Freedom to Integrate: We’ve seen repeatedly (with Twitter, Facebook and many others) the value that an active developer community can deliver in creatively using platform technologies. Therefore, any payment technology should include an API that allows developers to leverage the benefits of the payment platform in their own products. In return, the payment platform receives additional business customers: win-win!

Besides allowing you to leave your wallet at home (and the pounds of plastic it contains), another potential benefit for this technology is secure online payments. Though there are numerous online payment technologies, there’s a similar problem for consumers – most of them are unknown to them. Instead they tend to trust the site they’re using or in some cases the third party security certification. But if they trust their smartphone payment app for retail purchases, then there’s no reason why they wouldn’t look to use them for online purchasing. In addition, the app would offer a single, central location to store their receipts (in addition to their credit card statement, of course, though the potential to offer more detailed info is there).

Will mobile payments be realized in the next few years? Absolutely. How and when is still up for grabs (with many different players trying to solve te problem). What I do know is that I can’t wait to one day be able to leave home with only my mobile device in hand, ready to hit the town, knowing that I’ll be able to pay for anything I want! That day can’t come soon enough.

I recently signed up to Groupon. If you haven’t heard about it, you really should check it out. It’s free to sign up and then they send you a daily offer. The offers all appear to be 50% or more, for local restaurants, bars, services and things like that.

Groupon’s the big name in the space, having recently raised $135 million to fund its expansion into Europe (it just announced that it bought CityDeal in Europe expanding its reach to 20 countries). The other big kid on the block is LivingSocial which is trying to challenge Groupon in this billion dollar market. Yes, billion dollar market!

Since Groupon has launched in Vancouver while LivingSocial hasn’t, I’ll focus primarily on my experiences with Groupon, but assuming that their offering is fairly similar, it’s probably worthwhile to look into using both services to market your products.

In a nutshell, Groupon offers businesses a chance to get massive reach with their promotion (for example, a dance studio in Chicago recently sold over 1,000 “groupons” at half the regular price – a huge increase over any of their previous marketing efforts). Consumers meanwhile get a chance at a significant price discount on products or services in their community that they might already use or, as seems to be the case, have never used before but are willing to give it a try. My first groupon was for a $15 gift certificate for Bandidas Tacqueria, a local Mexican restaurant that I’ve been meaning to check out. This promotion prompted me to commit to the restaurant with the purchase of this coupon. What’s great though, is that this is a risk-free offer for both the merchant and the customer. You see, there’s a cap that needs to be reached before the deal is on. So the merchant builds in a minimum level where they break even through volume. If the volume isn’t reached (I’ve yet to see that as the volumes are generally fairly low: 25-50) then the people who bought the initial groupons are not charged and the groupon offer is voided.

If you’re a local merchant, why wouldn’t you get on the Groupon program? It’s essentially a risk-free promotion program leveraging an existing audience of local consumers that want to receive offers. An audience that is excited and eager to try new products or services. An this isn’t your mom’s crocheting circle redeeming these groupons either. Groupon’s audience is young (68% are 18-34), edumacated (80% have bachelor’s degree or higher), single (49%), female (77%), fully employed (75%) and earn a good living (48% earn more than $75,000). This is a great audience to attract to your local business. Treat the lost revenue as a marketing cost and attract hundreds of new trials. Then it’s up to you to convert them to loyal fans.

I’m eager to see ad campaigns start including Groupon offers. You can use an upcoming Groupon offer as a call to action in your other media executions. Or when launching a new product or service with a teaser campaign, it could mention the upcoming Groupon date as a special pre-launch “invite” to try the product or service (actual trial would still be after the launch, but the intent to try would happen before – at a discount). I can see a time (in the not-so-distant future) when ads will include the holy foursome of social media icons: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Groupon (or LivingSocial or whoever will come out on top in this new battleground).

So isn’t it time to get your Groupon on?

I recently went on a tour of Rethink Communications in downtown Vancouver. They’re known as a very creative agency that have delivered some very memorable campaigns over the 10 years they’ve been in existence. This one struck me as simply fantastic though. Low budget, highly creative and right on point. It’s for the Rethink Scholarship at Langara College and it’s well worth the next minute and ten seconds of your time. Check it out!

A lot of people think Jamie Oliver is a prat! Naked Chef?! Who cares?

But over the years he has used his celebrity for real-world good. He started hiring disadvantaged youth in England to work in his restaurants (when there was a line of talented and highly skilled cooks that would have sold their own mother’s off as  dishwashers for the chance to work for free in his kitchen), he went into English schools and changed what kids eat.

And now he’s come to the States in a new series called Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. If you haven’t already seen this show, I strongly urge you to do so. Whether you live in America or in Canada or anywhere else in the world, he’s tackling a real problem that we all face: the industrialization of our food supply has resulted in epidemic obesity levels and an astronomical drop in basic knowledge about nutrition and food preparation.

Now, anyone who knows me that I have a love-hate relationship with food. I love it. And it loves me… too much! So I’m not going to preach to you about how our world works because frankly, I’m still learning a lot of it myself. Through documentaries like Food Inc., shows like Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, even his Ted Talk (he won the Ted Prize for his TV show and his efforts to change American kids’ diets – good on ya, mate!) and my Amazon wish list full of books about sustainable food practice (hello Michael Pollan!) I’m educating myself (slowly) about  how to live my life and how to feed myself as well as I can in today’s incredibly confusing environment.

The basic point is this: we’re at an incredible crossroads in North America. What has made us so successful, the mass industrial complex, is letting us down. We’re getting fatter and slower and incredibly, this is the first generation where the children will live shorter lifespans than their parents. Think about that. We can drop bombs within fractions of an inch, there are people living in a tin can in space for months at a time and yet, we’re reversing the wheels of progress that we’ve made in the past century.

Thankfully there is a movement, of which Jamie Oliver is just one of the more recognizable faces, that is yearning for change. Organic, fresh, local food made from scratch. Where the ingredient list doesn’t look like it was written by NASA. We’re all super busy but take the time to cook some food with your family from scratch. Skip the frozen food aisle (unless it’s to pick up some bags of frozen vegetables, which remarkably are very nutritious!) and buy basic ingredients that you can make a fresh meal with… with love!

This is such a huge topic and it can seem overwhelming. I strongly urge each and everyone of you to start educating yourself, even just a little bit. Watch Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. It will give you a glimpse into how serious this issue is. Then watch Food Inc. and I promise you that you’ll never eat a frozen hamburger patty ever again.

I’ll stop my little rant for now, but do me a favour, watch his Ted Talk below. It’s 20 minutes long and it will inspire you, I promise you!

There’s a great new viral campaign for Toy Story 3 (coming in June) that’s using “old commercials” for the toys used in the movie. What’s cool is that they’re presenting the ads as if they were long-lost VHS tapes of commercials from the 80s. I love the Japanese ad

[youtube]z6dZtNYGlLM[/youtube]

[youtube]v5ZwkcHCVkE[/youtube]

I seem to have a predilection for acoustic singers with hip-hop influences/roots: Everlast, Citizen Cope and now KO all come from or incorporate it for folky, soulful songs that resonate deeply with me.

KO is based in Toronto and the story is that this album is his autobiographical story of how he descended into the drug underworld (and his escape from it). The album, Let’s Blaze, is solid throughout and if you like one song, you’ll like them all. Best of all he’s on tour and coming to Vancouver in May (18th at the Media Club).

[youtube]h2ylO5AFH48[/youtube]

What do you think of KO?

Get KO’s album on iTunes now!

Dear Fellow MBA’ers,

After spending 8 months with you kicking butt and taking names, I feel like I have to point out a few things about how you use email. Why? Because although we’ve learned a ton about how to calculate net present values and when using archetypes in marketing can be effective, we’ve never been given a simple lesson in how to use email effectively (and I can’t in good conscience let you leave the program without at least trying to edumacate you about a few things):

1. Only use Reply All when you want everyone to actually receive your message. On a mailing list of 125 people, I guarantee you that not everyone needs to see your message about finding a project partner or your super witty reply intended for the initial sender. No, really… we don’t!

2. Use spell check before hitting “Send”. Even better, most email clients allow you to turn it on to check as you type. Most people are somewhat forgiving about grammar, especially with non-native speakers, but in today’s world there’s no excuse for not spell checking your emails.

3. Change your email settings so your email shows your full name. When glancing at my inbox, the goal is to know who the message is from based only on the “From” field. If I have to open the message, or worse yet read the entire message, to know who it’s from then there’s a problem.

4. Subject lines are meant to be clear indicators of what the message is about and why I should read it. Be very clear and don’t be afraid to use a longer subject line. We all have widescreen monitors these days, odds are that you’ll run out of words to put in your subject line before my screen runs out of real estate. Bonus: you can set up smart filters based on subject line keywords.

5. When replying to an email make sure the original message is quoted below so it’s clear what you are replying to. Email is supposed to facilitate communication but if I have to dig around in my sent box to see what you are replying to then there’s a problem.

Why am I writing this post? Because email is the primary communication tool that we’ll be using out there in the “real world” and none of us like having our inbox filled with useless messages. In addition, poor use of email reflects poorly on you and you didn’t rock this MBA program just to undermine yourself with poor emailing.

(Note: I’m not implying that I haven’t made these mistakes myself, but I do try to follow these best practices as much as possible.)

Thanks to Seth Godin for his thoughts on the subject.

What email practices do you dislike or would like to see improved?

A good friend of mine recently launched a free eBook entitled “The Entrepreneur’s Social Media Workout eBook”. It’s a short, informative read packed with simple steps to getting your small business “social media fit”.

As a so-called social media “expert”, I confess that even I found useful tips that were new to me… and many valuable tips that I knew I should be doing!

If you’re an entrepreneur (or even intrapreneur), check out this eBook to learn the following:

• What is social media?
• How to use Facebook to promote your business (for FREE)!
• How Twitter can let you engage with potential customers (and potential partners).
• Ways to controlling email effectively (instead of letting it control you)!
• Tips on using email newsletters to grow your business.
• Using LinkedIn to expand your business connections and leverage the experience of its network to answer your pressing business questions.
• How to simply use video to generate fresh, dynamic content.
• How to create quick and painless websites for your business.

Best of all, this eBook is FREE (a great price all entrepreneurs) so there’s no reason not to check it out. It took me about 10-15 minutes to read, though there’s enough content in there to keep you busy doing the exercises for weeks or even months. Full disclosure: Natalie is a friend and I’m a big fan of hers (however, I’m not endorsing it just because of that).

Have you downloaded her book? What do you think of it? Do you see it helping your grow your business?