Mobile is working at its best and at its fastest

Gary Cole, commercial director at O2 Media, on new models, agency structures & other ninja tricks driving the mobile sector…

I am pleased to report that my previous article received some very reassuring feedback from several of my agency friends. The relief came in two ways – I didn’t upset any of the ‘one man mobile bobs’ on the agency circuit (unless they’ve kept it quiet), but above all else, the feedback I received was somewhere between a recognition that this singleton/specialist structure needs to be swiftly re-integrated into the main planning and buying function or that I beat them to it and it is already happening.

In fact, just in this last week I have had extremely encouraging meetings with several of the network agencies and I can concur that this restructure is happening right now, with the core planning teams being trained and educated on mobile opportunities. This is a big change from 2011 and this shows our industry working at its best and at its fastest.

So is that it? Job done? Feet back, with mobile fully integrated into all media planning? Of course not. This is very much the start for clients, agencies and media owners getting their arms around this exciting new digital ‘super channel’.

Before I share some new commercial models and ninja tricks that agencies are beginning to deploy, let’s start with a genuinely depressing barrier that my team continue to face – and this is literally recent verbatim from an agency. An agency whose name I will not reveal (but can’t resist telling you the letter D is in the name), actually told us that “mobile might be cool, but we only tell our clients about new things when they ask for it”. Now I’ll leave you to work out whether the D stands for Downwards spiral, Decreasing model or Down right lazy.

People often comment that the agency model is slowly dying (there is that letter again), so let’s unpick this a bit and turn this into some positives and I’ll share how some agencies are seeking to capitalise on a changing landscape. I can only comment on my experience but I am guessing if they apply this to mobile then agencies that implement this kind of thinking are providing a decent sense of thinking and accountability – D take note.

In this last month an agency was bemoaning the fact that their retail client will still revert to making media decisions based on glossy pictures, advertorials and PR creds. So anything digital – forget mobile – is seen as a scary/dirty/less beautiful alternative and therefore pushes back on every proactive and innovative solution the agency takes to them. So one obvious solution here is for both the agency and the digital media owner (I mean O2 Media obviously, I’m not doing this article for free, well I am but you get the point) to play the long term game and work on a risk free/free pilot, which carefully evolves into a funded relationship as the learnings are proven during the pilot itself. You’ll notice I did not say a test, because tests start and stop and invariably one party feels let down when this happens. And often prevents them happening in the future, for both or either side.

Let’s take this sprit and endeavour to the next level, think of it as key account development with a twist. The accelerated journey of testing and learning into partnership creation. I can categorically confirm that I have seen, have executed and am currently working on some executions, which go way beyond media buying and campaign management. Sure, media is the glue of these partnerships and arguably there is a hint of creative solution in there somewhere, but I think it’s more fundamental than that. For a start the model is long term value growth and based on revenue share/mutual success. And what’s more, they include the most cutting edge and effective m-commerce products to drive the success of these deals.

In fact, this is where I still see the biggest differences in stages of new structures being of mobile being integrated into the planning and buying function. The agencies that spend the most with O2 Media ALL have structures like this and they also benefit from the AAA solution service as well. It is no co-incidence.

An additional earthy and important point, I’d also recommend integrating all of your mobile buying and campaign management into the core digital teams (how to run a media agency again). Again, when this happens and mobile is often top of the performance league when analysed holistically with online display campaigns.

Final musings for this month…

If you’re a senior manager from a media owner reading this, I’d certainly say there is a very big role you can play here too – many clients and agencies are crying out for more collaboration on our side. And all of the points above will be better activated with better media owner collaboration.

Finally, a nudge to all business directors and managing partners in agencies; get really involved with these discussions – learn the mobile opportunity now and start planning around long term partnership creation and stop messing around with £10K tests. The Oregon Trail was a committed journey; not a series of little hops.

Econometric modelling, “mobile +1” and creative agencies can wait for another day.