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CMOs: Stand Out In The Mobile Engagement Crush

This week, Facebook Home, an Android app that will change a user’s phone home screen and core features, will make its consumer debut. 

Facebook's Home initiative is the latest salvo in the mobile engagement battle, which has been looming since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, although most are just becoming aware of it now.  In fact, the 'engagement crush' is just beginning and will get much worse in the next few years.

This issue is so significant that CEOs and CMOs of Fortune 500 companies are going to find their jobs in jeopardy if they don't take immediate and decisive action to launch a meaningful mobile strategy for their companies.  Many companies mistakenly think their businesses do not have anything to do with mobile, but that's incorrect:  Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are the way consumers and businesses will interact with brands and each other. This means that every business needs to have a coherent mobile strategy that at its core considers how its customer base will want to interact with it using mobile devices.

I Rented a Tesla Model S for $25/hr From Getaround. This Was My Experience.

On The Best of Sett

Getaround is a car sharing service like Zipcar, except that it uses people's private vehicles instead of a fleet.  It's a bit like AirBnB for cars.  Getaround is part of the "collaborative consumption" movement, which believes that if we could share things we don't use most of the time it would be better for us in a lot of ways.  Sharing cars means less cars on the road, which means less pollution, and generally less "stuff."  

I'd never used Getaround and a few weeks ago I was trying to figure out why.  I pinged Jessica, one of the founders, and told her that what I'd realized was that I didn't want to have to go to someone's house and "borrow" their car.  The thought of actually interacting with the owner of a car was awkward enough that it had kept me from trying the service.

Jessica told me about a new type of rental they now have called "Instant," where I can use the Getaround mobile app to rent a car instantly and unlock it with my phone, meaning I wouldn't have to meet the owner or wait for approval.  (This dovetails really well into my recent blogs about the power of mobile and apps to transform businesses, and how Fortune 1000 CEOs are going to get fired for missing it.)  Getaround Instant was exactly what I was looking for, so my brother-in-law Dal and I decided to give it a try.

I had a few hiccups that Getaround is still working through (for example, Getaround verifies a driver's driving history with the DMV in real-time, and since my last name has a hyphen in it, but the DMV doesn't account for hyphens, my rental request initially broke Getaround's booking system.  But both Jessica and Matt were very proactive at resolving these speed bumps).  Overall the process was incredibly smooth: