The mobile marketing medium is starting to gain wider acceptance, with old-school agencies such as Merkle jumping on the bandwagon and making a case for the industry among its clients.

According to an April 2010 Borrell Associates report, mobile marketing, which reached $2.7 billion last year, is expected to grow 84 percent annually, hitting $57 billion by 2014.

To support clients' interactive needs, Merkle last year introduced its mobile marketing practice, which has since developed and executed mobile campaigns for a broad range of clients such as Lord & Taylor, Samsung, Ask.com, T.G.I. Friday's, Men's Warehouse and The National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Mike Ricci, vice president and mobile practice leader at Merkle, Denver, came to Mobile Marketer?s New York office. Senior Editor Giselle Tsirulnik interviewed him on key trends in mobile and even got him to talk about the work he did with the National Wildlife Federation after the Gulf Oil Spill.

Here is what Mr. Ricci said:

What is the current state of mobile marketing?
Like many providers in the space, we see enormous impetus in this market and feel it is now beyond the experimental phase.

Companies are finally looking to make mobile a mainstream part of what they are doing.

What are some of the challenges in the mobile space?
Today, what we are seeing is a lack of strategy that guides mobile.

Historically people are doing SMS, apps and mobile Web but are not tying those mediums together. We are trying to fill that void.

We are Samsung and Lord & Taylor?s mobile agency of record and are responsible for their overarching strategy.

Do brands and retailers get mobile?
I think they are starting to get it in a big way. We are seeing an enormous amount of interest from brands.

They understand it is relevant and that they need to be on mobile, but brands are searching for the right way to put it into use. They need an overarching strategy.

What can mobile marketers do to make sure that brands and agencies understand mobile?s importance?
I?ve been in the mobile space for about seven years at companies like ABC, CBS, Disney, Financial Times, eBay and Reuters.

Together with some of these brands I have helped put forward mobile strategies, so I know what works and does not work. We have a rich and deep experience at Merkle and try to bring that experience to the forefront to help clients.

Merkle has been in the mobile space for about a year and a half now.  The way that we look at mobile is it is as integral as the Web, social media, online and email. 

All the analytics help better understand the consumer and their preferences. For example, with WAP we have a full scale of analytics that tell us about browse behavior and we take this into the CRM systems and we holistically understand who the consumer is and how they prefer to be communicated with.

Mobile is an important aspect of CRM profiling.

Can you talk about some cool mobile campaigns that impressed you recently?
We were contacted by National Wildlife Federation right after the oil spill.

We devised a strategy where mobile was the centerpiece.

Donors were encouraged to text the keyword WILDLIFE to the short code 20222 to make a micro-donation of $10 to the NWF Gulf Oil Spill Restoration Fund.

Merkle architected an interactive campaign for them that used email, online, social media, PR and television to get the word out about the text-to-give.

Mobile became a means of activating traditional media and PR efforts.

The effort ran in collaboration with the Mobile Giving Foundation and had the support of all the wireless carriers.

We did a lot to get the attention of the media, which publicized the text-to-give.

Larry King invited the CEO of NWF and allowed us to publicize the mobile giving initiative. Soon the text-to-give call-to-action was being publicized on MSNBC by Rachel Maddow.

During a telethon for the disaster, $1.8 million was donated in total across all donor channels. 

The other cool part of this campaign was getting celebrities involved. We had a huge social media effort to virally broadcast our message and we targeted celebrities that care about wildlife.

Tory Spelling, Lindsey Lohan, Debbie Maser, Justin Beber and Alyssa Milano all joined the cause by spreading the word about the text-to-give.

The celebrities began very actively promoting the text-to-give on Twitter and Facebook. It was amazing the amount of celebrity traffic and the retweets that were a result.

Alyssa Milano became very involved. She became a spokeswoman and while she was at the telethon the guy from the Old Spice commercial began to flirt with her on Twitter.

She had a YouTube response to Mr. Old Spice. She said that in order for him to win her affections he would need to donate $100,000 to the NWF.

Here is the video:

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We were also able to find corporate-cause partners for the campaign and got some organizations to use the call to action as well.

In the latter part of the campaign, we were able to get $1 million from U.S. Airways and they put the text-to-give call to action onto in-flight entertainment and tray liners.

All those things in concert gave us massive attention and gave a model of fundraising that marries all channels of marketing.

Final take
Merkle's Mr. Ricci explains his company's role in the mobile ecosystem:
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