The mobile revolution

At the moment however content providers/aggregators dominate with their delivery of ring tones, games, horoscopes, news, weather, sport reports, adult content etc.

What we are also seeing are advertising agencies also starting to offer services in this space by providing SMS campaigns, competitions, barcode entry, quizzes, auctions, mms, mobizines, mobicodes and wap portals.

The reason for this is as clear as daylight - the mobile phone is the most personal form of communicating with one's customers. As consumers move from traditional forms of print media to subscribing to RSS news feeds on the mobile we will see this becoming the bigger part of an agency's value proposition.

I view most of the current activities around mobile media marketing as “pamphlet dropping” which I guess is the historical approach to marketing where you target an audience, drive your brand to them and trust that 10% will identify with what you have to say.

What I am not seeing much of, is clever use of the mobile medium by corporations. Campaigns are driven by basic footfall/reach and/or penetration with little or no regard to the recipient. A perfect example is SMS-based activity - there is so much of it happening and there is no possible way to differentiate your brand.

A Mobile Media Marketing Campaign;
Should be focused
Should be personalised
Should include the use of rich multi media
Should entertain the recipient
Should encourage user-generated content (in other words - INTERACTION with the recipient)
Most importantly, should deliver real time reporting on the activity within the campaign
This way any money spent can be justified and in addition the brand builds a reputation with their customers.

Heads up to Vodacom for their new mobile soap! That is BRILLIANT use of the mobile media platform and a space to watch for future growth as more companies see the value in creating personalised content which engages a consumer.

As a company looking to engage in any form of Mobile Media Marketing Strategy - remember the above-mentioned points, ensure that the people you are dealing with have the ability to fulfil that and most importantly have the technology to deliver the campaign. There is nothing worse than spending an entire budget on a well-designed campaign and being let down because the technology driving the campaign is ineffective. It has to work across all mobile phone platforms, symbian, smart, windows etc and your back end has to facilitate engaging with every type of handset out there - food for thought?