Bacon and Texts
February 20 2008

Congratulations to destination marketing agency Fox Kalomaski and mobile network O2 for an excellent 'Introduction to Mobile' breakfast seminar they laid on this morning. In fact, it’s still going on.

O2 Head of Interactive Nigel Dean gave attendees a 20-minute guide to mobile, outlining some of the barriers to adoption – it’s low on marketers’ agenda; the perception that it’s hard to deliver; poor understanding of the channel among agencies; previous poor results – before explaining how many brands are now using mobile, and outlining the opportunities that exist.

Dean ran through some stats on SMS and MMS usage, then went on to cover the mobile web, mobile advertising, and mobile barcodes and ticketing, including O2’s NFC (Near Field Communications) trial, currently taking place in London.

Dean was followed by tireless mobile expert and evangelist Helen Keegan, who gave her own informed take on how brands can and should use the mobile channel.

The key point about the seminar really comes down to the people attending. Whenever I attend mobile seminars and conferences, I am always keen to see how many client-side marketers are there, as this is a good barometer of the level of interest in the channel from the people who count – those with budgets to spend. I’m routinely disappointed at how few turn up.

Today, out of an audience of around 55, made up of agency people, network people and client-side marketers, around half were clients. I didn’t get sight of the full list, but Paddy Power, VisitDenmark and Thai Airlines were three of the brands I saw represented. I imagine, though I don’t know for sure, that most of the brand marketers there were Fox Kalomaski clients, but who cares.

The more client-side marketers not currently using mobile that get a chance to find out what they could be doing with it, the better, and on this basis alone, the event can be judged an unqualified success.

David Murphy
Editor
To read more from this blog click here