Mobile is much-awaited convergence box: OMMA Mobile speaker

By Giselle Abramovich

February 8, 2008

Jeremy Wright is global director of brand strategy at Nokia Interactive

NEW YORK – The entry of large companies such as Nokia, Yahoo and Google into mobile will create a marketing ecosystem that is more flexible and open so that brands, agencies, publishers and operators will all have a slice of the mobile advertising pie.

This was the topic of discussion at OMMA Mobile’s keynote session with Jeremy Wright, global director of brand strategy at Nokia Interactive. He said audience eyeballs are moving to interactive screens.

“The single-most important medium that people have is their wireless device,” Mr. Wright told an audience of mobile marketers attending the MediaPost-organized event. “It’s the convergence box everyone’s been talking about. Mobile is not just a smaller version of a big screen.”

Mr. Wright said that so far most mobile efforts were conducted to spark offline engagement or improve response from other channels.

Mobile is social, personal and expressive. It is always accessible and therefore promises immediacy as people tend to act on impulses.

“[However], more than three-quarters of Americans are annoyed just thinking about mobile ads,” Mr. Wright said. “Make sure you are relevant, rewarding and the user has control.”

Most Americans are using their mobile phones to search for maps and directions, weather, local information, news, entertainment, sports and finance.

Advertisers need more awareness in this channel for it to gain wider acceptance. Advertisers believe there is too much misinformation in the mobile channel and fear the fact that it does not have rules of thumb, Mr. Wright said.

The No. 1 goal for advertisers is not to disrupt the consumer, he said. It is important to provide information the consumer will appreciate because an angry consumer does not translate into a loyal customer.

Another word of caution to mobile marketers: Don’t kill consumers with messages. Sending one that is thought-out is better than sending 500 that are random and make no sense in terms of the consumer’s needs.

“Use data for more relevant ads, which will make users more optimistic about getting advertisements on their handsets,” Mr. Wright said.