Mobile is on the move

November 03, 2008 By Kristin Laird
Mobile marketing is quickly becoming more than a text to win tactic but still faces barriers according to a panel of experts during the "Mobile Marketing to Die For" session this morning at Marketing Week.
Moderator and senior director, mobile, and interactive, Carlson Marketing, Phil Barrett began the session by asking each member to define mobile marketing.
"At the end of the day mobile marketing is developing an ongoing relationship with consumers that is profile based, finding out what they like, what they dislike and sending them appropriate content based on their specific profile," said Derek Colfer, co-founder, and vice-president strategy, Jambo Mobile Solutions. "If you do not know who you're talking to, you do not know how to sell to them."
Colfer was joined on the panel by Nick Patsiopolous, director, mobile and digital services for Yahoo Canada; Michael O'Farrell, chair dotMobi advisory group, vice-chairman of ooober, and co-author, Mobile Internet for Dummies; and Marc-Henri Magdelenat, director, sales and marketing, Microsoft mobile advertising.
Mobile is a mass media communications vehicle that people should start looking at in an integrated view versus a single track with text-to-win, said O'Farrell.
The panel cited network carriers, devices and agency partners as barriers to engaging brands within the mobile space and including them in a part of the integrated marketing mix.
"The media buyers, we need to work together as an industry to get them more educated and understanding the value of leveraging this new channel," said O'Farrell. "The media agencies need to step it up a notch...mobile is an integrated part of the whole mix, not just a spin off."
And while media agencies have a ways to go, said Magdelenat, mobile carriers also play a significant role with the services and data plans they provide.
"If you don't have enough people browsing the mobile web, you don't have enough reach," he said. "We need to make sure that there's enough people that you can talk to."
Originally published in Marketing Magazine, November 2008

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