Yesterday we had the formal announcement of the new G-phone by T-Mobile who unveiled their new G1 mobile phone which is powered by Google's Android operating system and is bundled with Google software including search, Gmail, Maps and YouTube. This announcement gave me the incentive today to get back to writing about PMA's Digital Marketing Summit that I attended about two weeks ago in downtown NYC. We spent much time discussing mobile marketing during this day, so here are some of the highlights.
One of the sessions at the summit was a panel discussion titled "The World is Changing in the Palm of Your Hand: Make Mobile Marketing and Digital Out of Home work for you". Out of the three people on the panel I was most impressed with what Anthony Iacovone, Chief Strategy Officer at Augme Mobile, had to say. His presentation was focused on how to integrate mobile into our traditional media plans.
This was the first time that I had heard the term 'Traditional Media" referred to as online display ads vs. non-online (TV, Print, Radio, Outdoor, etc). It made me realize that now, 2009, is the time to really start looking at mobile seriously. That coupled with the fact that I have two teenage daughters that show me everyday that their phone is the center of their universe, makes me even more clear that we need to start the integration.
And integration as Anthony said is the key. Just don't set out to "do a mobile marketing program" because the client wants to. The same as we just can't do a viral marketing program because that's the cool thing to do now. But instead look at our current plan and see how we can integrate a viral component, or in this case, a mobile component. We don't necessarily have to recreate the wheel and start from scratch to do this.
Anthony went on to say that mobile can be overlaid to help invigorate your "traditional" media plan. But you shouldn't look at it as just another place to display your banner ad. He called it a "Physical World Bookmark".
Today now with the announcement of the first G-phone we have a new member of the "touch screen" iPhone family. The phones are advancing and the networks are now ready to embrace the growth. However, there are still many barriers and complications, just as there are with serving up video and rich media online today. Anthony referred to this as the "mobile maze"....hundreds of devices with different systems, screen sizes, etc. and with four different major operators.
Here are some of the stats that he shared with us:
- 195 active SMS users in the U.S.
- 65 Million U.S. Mobile Internet users in 2008
- 97% of consumers carry their phone at retail
- It's not just kids who are using the advanced functions
- 100+ brands have used mobile in 2008 advertising plans
- $1.6 billion spent on mobile advertising in 2008 so far
- 34% of brand will use mobile in 2009
I sat in on a presentation earlier this year from Forrester on their Five Year Interactive Marketing Forecast. They predicted at that time that mobile was 18 months out. Now that presentation was back in early March, so second half of 2009 is where we should see mobile really start to trend upward quickly. I think we better start putting mobile into the 2009 plans now.
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