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Wireless events: Where are the marketers?

I missed my first CTIA in 4 years this year, but seems like I may not have missed out.  Mobile Marketer’s Editor in Chief is quite disappointed with the absence of mobile marketing at CTIA.  While I understand the frustration, I am not sure it is fair to blame CTIA for this. Sure, they are an industry body with a charter to develop the industry, and sure I agree with the comments of the importance of marketing for wireless to really take off.

But the fact of the matter is that it takes a long time for a whole industry to wake up. And I am talking about the brands and the agencies here. Users have by far outrun the marketing people at agencies in their take-up and use of online entertainment and social networking, to the point where they are scrambling to figure out how to “crack the code”.  AdAge summarized the decline in traditional media brilliantly a couple of days ago (subscription only).  This is affecting the people who have used those channels to advertise.  Add to the fact that mobile is such a technologically complex area to understand – it is easy to understand why marketers fear events like CTIA like the plague. It simply makes them realize how far behind they are.

But there are good news on the horizon. The barometer is probably by seeing the number of “gurus” that have popped up lately to explain the new evolution in social behavior.  Tom Andersson and Seth Godin are old school. Now you have people like Jonathan MacDonald and Steve Rubel (and many, many more) that thanks to the very technologies and trends they talk about achieve fame lots quicker than being written about in Wired and Business Week.

Interestingly, it seems though that users have moved faster than the market in this case, rather than the other way around.  It is somewhat of a reverse of the adoption trend I wrote about the take up of Mobile TV. So as with any trend, CTIA and others just need to be patient.  But surely, 2009 must be the year for mobile TV? 😉

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Marketers beware: iPhone not the only game in town

The latest press from Bango states that iPhones do not even make the top 20 list in terms of data traffic.  This should not come as any surprise to any veteran in the mobile industry, but given the attention the iPhone gets from Mobile Marketer and others, you may have to wonder.  At ad:tech in Sydney two weeks ago, a presenter asked how many people in the audience had an iPhone, whereupon 50% of the audience held their hands up.  I have found that both iPhone and Twitter die-hards proliferate the marketing industry, and when they speak of both products their eyes light up.

Interestingly, you would think the Bango statistics conflict when you read MobiAD News article on AdMob’s metrics.  However, the AdMob research only speaks about Smartphone traffic, not overall moiphone-rulebile data browsing.  Marketers need to understand this, and wipe the dribble of their iPhone screens, to really understand how you hit the mass market – or brands will never be convinced that mobile should be a logical extension of online.  Opera, through their State of the Mobile Web report, and Bango through their Bango Top 20 handsets report, provide a far more balanced view of statistics.  And lastly, to find out about where J2ME traffic is (which is the most widely deployed application platform), GetJar provides some decent insights on this.

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Mobile Marketer (some what biased) Outlook for 2009

Mobile Marketer just  published their Outlook for 2009. There is a lot of general “bla bla” in the report, talking about various growth numbers etc etc.  The best piece is perhaps the interview with Bob Kraut, VP of Marketing for Pizza Hut.  Not only because he is clearly an “actual” marketing exec at a leading brand, not a mobile marketing company die-hard, but he provides some valuable insight to the effect mobile has on their brand.

Also, my recent conversations with investors and others all end up in the question about what the economy will do to so called “experimental” marketing.  While I disagree with the term “experimental” for various reasons, the report from Mobile Marketer certainly believes spending on mobile will grow.  And hearing from Michael Bayle, senior marketing director at Yahoo, that “now is the time to invest and demand greater transparency and proof that their dollars spend in mobile far outperform from an efficacy standpoint traditional media and even [online]” is a good thing as it lends a lot of credibility.

The report also contains a good piece on exactly what a mobile campaign should cost a brand.  But aside from good estimates on the cost, the article offers a far more important insight at the end with this quote: “The reality is that mobile advertising works best in tandem with traditional and online advertising support, which is why [4info] frequently sell integrated cross-media mobile campaigns in conjunction with our publishing partners”. This nails one of the issues of mobile marketing on the head:  Mobile campaigns should not be viewed in isolation of other channels for the campaigns. The trick is to find out how to use mobile as yet another channel, with the benefits and complexity it entails, to enhance you overall campaign. This is a far cry from seeing mobile as “experimental”.

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