NEW YORK - With a new age of educated and savvy consumers, digital marketing needs to be designed with a post-PC mindset, according to a Digitas executive at the 4th annual Mobile Marketing Day 2012 conference.

During the ?Digitas: The Agency?s View on Mobile Marketing? closing keynote session, an executive from the agency spoke about how mobile is the next breakout channel for digital advertising. The session also gave attendees examples of how some of Digitas? clients are approaching campaigns from a mobile-first perspective.

?The primary way that people are connecting to digital is through mobile,? said Chia Chen, mobile practice lead at Digitas, Boston.

?Mobile allows us to address moments in users? lives that are authentic and organic,? he said.

Mobile appetite
Mr. Chen broke down the formula for a healthy digital strategy into three parts ? pick specific moments to target, choose mobile as the primary device for a campaign and incorporate paid mobile.

Users constantly have their mobile devices on them from the moment they wake up to when they go to sleep, which creates a wide gap of time that marketers can use to market to consumers.

According to Mr. Chen, to make the most of a campaign, it is important to pick one specific moment in a consumer?s day to market towards.

Consumers who use mobile devices live in both a digital world and a physical world, giving mobile the opportunity to bridge the two places.

An example of mobile marketing that affects a consumer in a specific moment is a mobile booking. The hotels and accommodations industry has seen that a large chunk of mobile bookings are made on the same day that a consumer is traveling, showing how consumers are using their handsets in a time of need.

Digitas recently worked with luxury appliance manufacturer Jenn-Air to design a mobile application that uses augmented reality to let consumers envision how particular Jenn-Air products would look in their homes. Users can take a picture of their kitchen and add a Jenn-Air appliance to get a better perspective on what their kitchen would look like.

The Jenn-Air app idea came from talking to consumers who described an experience trying to envision how an appliance would fit into their home.

Therefore, it is critical to consider consumer insights when making big digital marketing decisions, per Mr. Chen.

Mr. Chen also talked about how marketing a mobile app is a science. For the recent Jenn-Air app launch, it is being promoted on the appliance company?s Web site.

Mobile first
Thinking with a mobile-first point of view also means thinking about how campaigns will flow across multiple screens.

Web marketing gives brands the opportunity to target someone while they are stationary and most likely either at home or at work. Mobile marketing on the other hand is about a brand being a part of someone doing something while they are on the go.

Smart brands have created mobile Web sites that let users interact with the company in an easy-to-read and navigable way. However, the next phase of mobile Web development will need to be geared towards HTML5-based technologies with a one-size-fits-all format.

Mr. Chen used the Boston Globe as an example of a publisher who is embracing HTML5 technology to give readers a richer mobile Web experience.

For Buick?s ?Moment of Truth? campaign, which Digitas worked on, the goal was to show consumers how the automaker was contemporary and innovative with a social media program designed for mobile devices.

The campaign revolved around aggregating all social media for Buick ? whether it was positive or negative ?into one space that was designed for mobile devices. The campaign found that 70 percent of online visits came from mobile devices, enforcing the tie between social media consumption and mobile.

Paid mobile
Although mobile is getting attention as a must-have channel for brands, the bottom line is that it is still receiving a small part of budgets.

In some cases, mobile can get approximately one percent of a brand?s marketing budget, making it a nearly sum-zero game.

To rationalize brand?s mobile spend, companies should see realize that by using the channel they are able to target users across multiple screens.

?The most important idea is to embrace the idea that consumers have embraced the post-PC world, so digital marketers have to embrace it as well to make mobile a core piece versus a silo,? Mr. Chen said.

Final Take
Chia Chen is mobile practice lead at Digitas, Boston