INMA marketing conference taps mobile for engagement, ticketing

By Dan Butcher

April 29, 2010

Mobiento powered the Light Graffiti feature on INMA's mobile site

Ad agency Mobiento has produced an innovative mobile Web site for the INMA conference, an industry forum for interactive marketing in Norway where mobile is the center of attention.

Every year, INMA arranges a conference and award called Gulltaggen, “the Golden Tag.” INMA is using mobile features such as the Light Graffiti art project to engage attendees of the Gulltaggen award ceremony, which takes place tonight, the last night of the conference.

“This is a major event that has grown to be one of the top European conferences for interactive marketing,” said Frans Borgstrand, CEO of Mobiento Norway, Oslo. “The Light Graffiti project offers an out of the ordinary feature to the event visitors, and shows that mobile can be truly creative medium.”

The project is a collaboration between INMA, Gule Sider, the main sponsor, McCann, which was responsible for much of the creative, Scandinavian Design Group, Mobile Liquid Barcodes, which powered the mobile ticketing service, and Mobiento, the mobile agency and production company.

This year prominent speakers at INMA include Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Group, Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, and Guy Kawasaki, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and blogger who made his name as a marketing guru for Apple.

Sir Richard Branson is founder and chairman of Virgin Group

Gulltaggen attendees receive a text message with a link to the mobile site at http://m.gulltaggen.no.

Mobile graffiti
One of the main features of the mobile site is Light Graffiti. This is an art project, where the visitors draw light patterns over a map based on their physical location.

Each visitor will create their own piece of art. The pictures are shown and altered in real time on big monitors at the event arena.

Steve Ballmer is CEO of Microsoft

The site is also being used for event ticketing. All visitors—approximately 3,000—will receive a text message with a link that connects to an integrated page of the Web site.

A unique ticket bar code will be shown and scanned from the phone at the event entry. The mobile ticket is the only ticketing solution—no printed tickets will be used.

The Gulltaggen mobile site also features an event program, information about the keynote speakers and other practical information.

The user experience of the site was developed with an “application-like feeling” in mind, according to Mobiento.

“The Gulltaggen mobile site is, to our knowledge, probably one of the most advanced browsing based mobile sites yet,” Mr. Borgstrand said. “The navigation, the content presentation, the use of GPS, the personalization of graffiti and ticketing, are advanced stuff that you normally only see in iPhone apps.

“The response has been very positive,” he said. “The visitors are surprised that such great user experience can be provided on a mobile Web site.

“Such graphics and features are normally only seen in apps.”