Or: Who doesn’t take part now will get the short end of the stick later

Dan Rosen is the head of AKQA, one of the world’s leading digital advertising agencies. And he believes that the time is ripe for serious campaigns in the mobile web.

„People have always been excited about mobile advertising, but they never backed it up with dollars. Now I think they are starting to “walk the walk”.

In an interview with MobiAD News Dan Rosen makes the case for a leap into the pool of mobile advertising. Some companies are yet in the warm water, others still don’t dare to do it.

Pull instead of Push

According to Rosen, not every sort of brand communication is suited for mobile. Mobile advertising has to be different. It would be fatal to impose advertising messages in the style of pop-ups to mobile phone owners. Experts know that the recipe of success is: Better ‘pull’ and no ‘push’.
Winner of the game of advertising is the one who succeeds in persuading people to ‘pull’ an advertising message independently. Dan Rosen takes the christmas campaign of Coca-Cola as an example: „It only ran on the 3UK portal for 12 hours, but over 120,000 people sent branded Coca-Cola Christmas cards to their friends.“

„Making people’s life easier“

Mobile Marketing is suited for awareness and branding. The campaign of Coca-Cola was successful because it gave the consumer something useful, something convenient. „Mobile can work well for convenience, i.e. making people’s life easier.“ According to Rosen, a well-balanced media mix can lead to an amazing success as well. As a prime example, he uses a campaign of Smirnoff where TV, internet and mobile web were combined. The mobile edition of the site is fundamentally different from the internet’s edition. It is giving the customer on the go a useful tool including things like a pocket bartender, a „Vodkapedia“ and a nightlife guide.

The eternal hurdle: standardization

Creativity and innovation: there’d be no limit for imaginations on how to delight the customer best if there wasn’t standing a sign in the way of ideas marked „Incompatible. Please turn over.“
Standardization is still missing in all technical ranks, ranging from operators over handset ressources into design parlors. In addtion to this, the market is still young and growing faster than there are qualified people. But Rosen adds that this is the same situation as in digital advertising some years ago.

Now or never

Dan Rosen is also distributing some advice to companies that want to jump into the still relatively clean swimming pool of mobile advertising. First of all, you should find a strategy fitting to the enterprise, Second, you should launch mobile campaigns with a “test and learn” attitude. And third, you should do it now. Rosen emphazises the advantages of the early-movers: Price, innovation, being the first in your category to show consumers that you want to give them the choice to interact.

Social networks as the driving force

As reported recently, social networking has spread rapidly and widely across the mobile’s displays. Rosen categorizes the social networks even as THE mainspring for the use of the mobile web. What in his opinion is most important in the end and what every company should always keep in mind:“We live in a multi-channel world and brands have to be offering consumers a multi-channel experience.“ Offering, but not ramming down the throat.

This means precisely: pointing to the mobile offer outside of the medium mobile phone. The customer has to claim something actively, again and again. The mobile phone is like a virtual flat, into which you won’t let a salesman rather than into the real flat.