• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, August 1, 2013

How often in these pages have we talked and squawked about how mobile media and marketing need to target situations, use cases, user modes -- CONTEXTS? Well, here is a perfect example of an app that is laser focused to leverage a very specific mobile moment -- being stuck in traffic. No, we are not talking about Waze or other traffic crowdsourcing. We are talking about “I’m Stuck,” a new app courtesy of Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and former California Governor and Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger and their Building America’s Future organization.

The app is designed to complain to your congressperson about America’s failing infrastructure. You use the app when stuck in traffic to find and send an email petitioning the pol to take some action. The messages will be titled “I’m Stuck” and read: “Dear Member of Congress. I’m stuck in traffic wasting time, fuel and money. All around me are trucks, commuters, and families delayed and frustrated. Please pay attention to America’s ailing and inadequate infrastructure. It’s important. It’s your decision. It’s past time.”

And yes, you can send an image attachment as well. The idea is to send photos of where the rider is stuck -- on a tarmac, in a tunnel, subway or bus delay, etc. I am inclined to think these pols may be getting more than a few people -- perhaps group shots -- of commuters flipping the bird. Next time you are left waiting endlessly on a train platform, recruit the weary for a mass mooning of their congressperson.

I am reticent to suggest that creating activist apps that capture the mobile moment of peak outrage is going to move the frozen needle of political action. After all, email made writing one’s representatives push-button easy, and all it did was give partisans new ways to skew gauges of public opinion and just raised political tolerance for higher volumes of denunciation.

On the other hand, there is probably something in this for marketers. How many infomercials begins with poorly dramatized moments of frustration? Surely individual apps for specific frustrations would be fragmented and inefficient. We need some enterprising developer to create a universal “I am Pissed” app -- perhaps a big red button.

The app could serve as a portal of pissrd-ness that routes the user to a specific kind of outrage and potential solutions. All of the available solutions would be open for real-time bidding, of course. You want the value of these many slots to accord with the times of day, locations, perhaps even the history of outrage already voiced by specific users.

Now you are targeting people at their optimal moment of need and willingness to engage.

Outrage. It’s not a problem. It is a platform.