Finally – the year of mobile?
Brian Jacobs, Founder BJ&A, wonders why advertisers aren’t queuing up to use mobile? Maybe because mobile isn’t really an advertising medium at all…
For several years now, it has been ‘the year of mobile’. And yet despite everyone’s best efforts, it hasn’t really happened yet, has it? Why might that be? There were several opinions expressed at MediaTel Group’s recent ‘Come on Mobile… Stand Up and Deliver’ event.
Potentially mobile offers commercial users a truly unique integrated channel.
First, mobile is personal; much more personal than any other channel. This is a benefit and a problem. A benefit in that if consumers are prepared to accept messages, and if they’re prepared to participate in a dialogue with a brand then the result is a truly engaged consumer. On the other hand if consumers just tolerate irrelevant messages from advertisers they care little about, then the result is… well, at best an irritated customer, and at worst a customer for whom hell will freeze over before he or she ever buys anything from your client ever again.
An illustration – a while ago I received a text from an insurance company asking me if I would be interested in a quote for business insurance. I don’t remember giving this company permission to contact me; and I don’t know who to be most irritated with – the company or Vodafone. Yes I run a small business, and yes I have business insurance. Does that make me a likely member of the target market? I would say no – because at no point did I knowingly give permission for anyone to contact me. I suspect my operator would say yes – I’m in the target market, as I opted in (or failed to opt out), even if unknowingly.
It seems to me that simply assuming that consumers are prepared to be contacted if they’ve opted in, or not opted out is incorrect. Certainly they may have consciously agreed to receive messages, but we all know that the opt-in process generally works passively, rather than actively. This is not right – and furthermore raises a huge question: who controls what is done with data about me? I think that when it comes to the most personal channel – my mobile phone – then I should. I want to be in control; I want to decide who I hear from.
Our mobile marketing channel Qustodian (www.qustodian.com) launching in the UK later this year following a successful launch in Spain puts consumers in control. They decide who they hear from; they control their data; they benefit (in cash) from the use to which their data is put; and they decide whether to stay with us, or cancel their involvement with us – something they can do at any time.
But Qustodian is a very small player compared to the major operators. For this medium to really take off it needs the big guys to start applying certain principles around active opt-in and active consumer participation, as opposed to believing that passively collected eyeballs, maybe modified by a broad discriminator such as a location in any way equals engaged consumers.
I believe that mobile can deliver engaged consumers. It can be used for messages in virtually any format – including film, text, static images. It can be used to guide consumers through multiple materials on multiple screens within one campaign. It can offer promotions. It can transact. It can measure effect. Every click is collected and can be used to measure the effect of any activity.
So why aren’t advertisers queuing up to use this new medium? Why aren’t the agencies recommending it? Is it, as one speaker at the MediaTel event suggested because everyone is still obsessed with TV (an odd remark coming from an organisation that itself spends tens of millions on television, presumably because it works for them)? Of course not.
Is it (as was also suggested) because the measurement is imperfect? But as we’ve seen, it’s potentially superior to anything from a 5,000 homes panel, or from an online system that doesn’t identify individuals. Can’t be.
Or is it because agencies can’t make money from mobile? But what about agencies’ vaunted ability to offer media neutral thinking? Surely not.
I think the real reason is that mobile isn’t really an advertising medium at all; it’s a complete marketing channel with everything that that implies. I’m not sure that we are yet able to think of mobile as anything other than an advertising vehicle. And, until we are, until we learn to think in a different way about communicating with customers, until we turn all the talk about integrated thinking into integrated action, mobile won’t fulfil its huge potential.
I agree with Brian in terms of what mobile represents and how the Industry needs to get to grips with its potential. But I was also interested in his comparisons with television.
Post the digital switch many of the interactivity capabilities seen in mobile devices will begin to be seen in the box in the corner of the living room that we used to call a television set. Indeed the convergence event in mobile is already being seen in other technological platforms such as games consoles. But what are the implications of this in terms of the dynamic with groups, such as the family unit, as against individual?
As a university we have begun researching what this means, not just in terms of the use of the technology, but also how this relates to decision making around both the technology itself and the content it carries.