Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I was pretty good at math in high school. But those were the days before classic HP-type calculators made it into the high school classroom. We used slide rule calculators back then. Mine looked a lot like this:

And my math prowess back then was a lot more about Geometry and Trigonometry than Algebra.

Or was it the other way around?

(It has been more than 30 years…)

Anyway, I have a new client, Infinity Softworks, and they’ve been writing calculation software for mobile devices for 12 years. Their PowerOne product was a staple on Palm devices, and Infinity has sold more than 15 million mobile and software calculators.

I believe, though, that things are just about to get interesting… They’ve just launched FastFigures Financial Calculator for the iPhone, available in the AppStore for less than my slide rule cost in 1974.

Mobile Rocks, Even in this Economy

I’m pretty sure it’s not news to many that the mobile space is booming. Even in today’s economic climate. I just ran across some research from Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) in their 2009 Mid Term Forecast (are we there already?), that offered the following stats for advertising growth (yes, I actually said areas of ad growth) this year:

• The Pure-Play Internet & Mobile Services (not sure exactly what their definition of “Pure-Play” is, sorry) segment is still growing but at a slower pace. Previously expected to grow by 15.5% in 2009, VSS now projects an increase of only 9.1% for 2009, down from 11.6% in 2008

• Mobile content and video games will continue to be in demand and record double-digit growth (34.2% and 19.5% respectively), however at significantly lower percentages than originally predicted in their earlier estimate

Elia Freedman, founder of Infinity, is a tech geek and a math geek, and has told me (and blogged) that he feels as if his time has finally come.

He envisioned the mobile application boom years ago, muscled his way through the first few waves, and his new iPhone calculator is so trippy that it both makes me feel like kind of a math dolt, and makes me a little sad I didn’t keep up with more math.

For example - he kept telling me that FF shipped with both a standard calculator and an RPN calculator. I had to look up what RPN meant - Reverse Polish Notation. Cool, but when I tried to watch Elia show how to use FastFigures RPN calculator in the YouTube video he’s cooked up, my brain kind of shuddered.

I’ve got my copy, and while I’ll still use my head to calculate tips - even for odd numbered groups - to prevent Alzheimer’s, I’ll always have FastFigures Financial calculator on my iPhone that can handle Time Value of Money, Commercial and Residential Mortgage Payments, Area Conversions, Powers and Logs, Trig and Hyperbolics, Probabilities, Programmer Math, and more. All for $5.99. Oh my!

In today’s economic climate, it seems a good idea to have a calculator to add up a few taxes here, a bit more savings there… we all know it’s going to take a heck of a lot more than a slide rule calculator to keep up.

It’s something my company, Marqui, pioneered four years ago, and (in doing so) launched an ethical debate that still rages today. This week there have been some very interesting debates on the ethics of sponsored social media because Forrester just issued a report called “Add Sponsored Conversations to your Toolbox.”

(I have to admit, I haven’t read it. At $749, I wonder how many will download the 8-page document… but I digress.)

Over at RWW, Marshall Kirkpatrick took issue with Forrester’s stance in a post titled “Forrester is Wrong about Paying Bloggers“. There’s fascinating dialogue between Marshall and Jeremiah Owyang, (one of the authors of the report) in the comments, as well as others chiming in - so take a moment to read them if you can.

In a post on his personal blog yesterday, Jeremiah listed brands and how they’re paying for marketing their products through the social web - including bloggers.  From Dairy Queen to Mercedes, big brands are experimenting with social media and enticing others with offers to play with them.

I’m absolutely fine with that, but did find (at Marqui) that our brand’s voice wasn’t heard in the debate until we began blogging ourselves, and engaging in the conversations that we were pulled into once the firestorm broke out.

The is NO substitute for having a seat at the table when people are talking about you - and yes, even for you.

So go ahead. Let folks drive your cars, eat your bars and give coupons to their readers… why not? But there are three things you must embrace - having been the impetus of this great debate - from WOMMA’s  Code of Ethics:

Honesty of Relationship: You say who you’re speaking for
Honesty of Opinion: You say what you believe
Honesty of Identity: You never obscure your identity

And I have to admit, it’s fun to watch the sparks fly, four years later, and have them scorching others for once. My hair’s grown back and I’m now concentrating on helping brands protect themselves from what I had to go through in the olden days…