Rating: GoMo makes a guest appearance on Guardian site
Here’s an interesting piece of branding. The WOMAD (World Of Music And Dance) festival held in Malmsbury over the last weekend [27th – 29th July 2012] had as its media partner, the UK national newspapers – the Guardian and the Observer [Sunday only]. Now the editors say they “are committed to an ‘Open’ form of journalism. So they invited readers to join in by contributing to its web site with their music reviews and festival observations. But it just so happens that the Guardian festivals are sponsored by BlackBerry. Notice how RIM at least acknowledges that the public only recognises its brand. Anyway, as a consequence RIM provided the full kit to enable bloggers to write directly from the event.The blogging kit consisted of a PlayBook tablet which was tethered to a BlackBerry Bold 9900.
GoMobile News didn’t see if there was a cable link to the PlayBook or whether the two were connecting via Wi-Fi.
But the combination provided the necessary link to the big wide world. The connection was surprisingly fast, actually.
We estimate there were around four PlayBooks available to potential bloggers at the Guardian Space concession opposite the Siam tent.
It was easy enough to find and the Guardian/Observer had plenty of keen staff on hand to help explain to amateur bloggers how to enter their copy.
Funnily enough, GoMobile News didn’t find the predictive text facility was that helpful.
To test the system, GoMobile News contributed our own piece which you can find here. Search for tonethefone.
Significantly we mentioned the fact that the MC at Molly’s Bar – one of the smallest onsite stages – described the event as “the thinking person’s music festival. And we think he is quite right.
So –whilst RIM is coming in for a lot of criticism from the media (including us), in this particular case we believe that the marketing team has got the sponsorship right.
What better sector to target than the ‘thinking’ music festival goer?
It’s a shame that GoMobile News only noticed when we got to the event that the Guardian had provided a WOMAD festival app in conjunction with RIM/BlackBerry.
Now GoMobile News has a policy of new taking a valuable handset to a music festival – after having lost a (at-the-time) top notch Nokia handset at a Glastonbury years ago.
But we do happen to have an old BlackBerry Curve 8520 hanging around which we could have afforded to lose.
Those thinking of going to Bestival (6th-9th September 2012) might want to check out the Guardian/BlackBerry app on http:guardian-blckberry.co.uk. Notice how it uses .pdf (acrobat) files for off-line usage.
Before we left for the wilds of Wiltshire, we did take the time to download the official WOMAD Android app – once we had located it.
The app has been created by specialist mobile app developers – AppMajik (who appear to be Australian).
Incidentally, we notice that AppMajik is seeking developers for iOS, Android and Ruby on Rails.
Sadly we didn’t get to use the app in anger because we didn’t have a spare handset and the Motorola RAZR isn’t insured.
