March 07, 2008 | Friday

Dinner report: “Here’s some wrong thoughts on mobile marketing…”

This month’s Directors Dinner looked at the emergence of mobile, and its role in the marketing mix. Martin Bowley, CEO of mobile content provider Pitch, was the guest speaker and Davina Lines, managing director at Netimperative was there to report…

Martin Bowley began the opening presentation by outlining some of the ‘wrong thoughts’ and assumptions made about mobile marketing. He came from an old media world trying to make sense of a new media world. He was the former CEO of Carlton TV and was pushed out a couple of years ago after the merger with Granada.

Following this, he embarked on a trip to India where he really saw mobile in action. There, mobile phones have become the main method of business and communication for the community.

Martin joined Pitch a year ago, where, along with its sister company Splash, it has grown out of the ringtone market and now also provides direct to consumer mobile content, social networking and advanced mobile advertising solutions. 

His view is that when ‘Madison Avenue’ starts to take mobile marketing seriously, that’s when all brands will have a text number on every pack side- although they should be doing it now, he added. 

When you compare mobile to old school media like TV and radio, a world that Martin obviously knows very well, it’s incredibly new and cheap in comparison. Martin decribed TV as ‘déjà vu’ media, as consumers have ‘seen it all before’ with the proliferation of c-list celebrity and reality TV shows. So if a brand is trying to reach a new, engaged, audience mobile provides a fantastic opportunity, particularly for the 16-24 market.

Old media is sold on a peak and off-peak basis, so when Martin was selling TV ads you couldn’t shift Sunday afternoon for love nor money, but you don’t have that issue with mobile. 

Also mobile is much more accountable, which Martin saw as a strength during these times of a possible recession. He said the hope is that mobile and other digital ad media won’t be squeezed as hard as other marketing budgets, as its so cost effective and easily tracked to a sale or response.

Martin was pretty disparaging about the power of social media as even if 500,000 people viewed Cadbury’s ‘Gorilla playing the drums’ advert on YouTube, that’s still only a poor off-peak spot on Channel Five. Martin went on to describe UGC as ‘You’ve Been Framed’ on acid. 

Following the presentation, there was a brief Q&A session for the diners to discuss the issues Martin had raised. 

Matt Brocklehurst, head of marketing at Latitude Group, said: ‘UGC is not just about dogs on skateboards but can have very positive impacts for brands. The “PS3 unboxing” video has got over half a million views. Showing the joy of someone opening his new PS3 can only have a positive effect for the brand, and sales, and it costs Sony nothing. Surely, UGC and the power of viral has got to be of value even if the numbers are fewer maybe people are more engaged or feel the message is more personal to them?”

John Guria at Weboptimiser asked if there was any skill left in old media such as radio. Martin felt that this type of media has become very formulaic in order to keep down costs, although these old media ads are still very expensive, particularly when compared to online advertising.

The joy of mobile is that it’s global, and when they recently launched a new service in the US it got 365,000 subscribers. While this is relatively small. It has the potential to become huge.

Felicia Jackson of Carbon International pointed out that the US market is fragmented, but Martin thought the market was still so large that you can “break parts of it and still win”.

It was Lord Levenshulme who first said, ‘Only half of advertising works, I wish I knew which half’. Its Martin’s view that in the new media world, we are just starting to find out which half through accountable media.

7th March 2008, Net Imperative