NEW YORK ? An Estee Lauder executive at the 2011 Mobile Marketing Forum last week said that most ? if not all ? of its brands will have a mobile Web site in the near future.

During the ?What?s Needed to Create the Chief Mobile Officer?,? session, the executive pointed to the importance of commerce and engagement in mobile. The exec also emphasized that different brands have different needs.

?Most or all of the brands will have a mobile Web site ? that is just going to be part of the menu, ?said Jessica Rotnicki, head of ecommerce, North America, at Estee Lauder Companies, New York.

?A lot of the other content is being lead by different brands at a different pace,? she said. ?There are a lot of brand led initiatives that need different features and deliverables.?

The other panelists included Philippe Browning, vice president of CBS Mobile, New York; Guatam Lohia, executive vice president of emerging technologies at Blast Radius, Vancouver, Canada; and Joe Lalley, vice president of digital products for global digital media at MTV Networks, New York. The panel was moderated by Gary Schwartz, chief executive officer at Impact Mobile, Toronto, Canada.

Where mobile sits
For most of the Estee Lauder beauty brands, which include Clinique, Jo Malone and Aveda, one of the overarching goals is to provide high-touch service with consumers having a one-on-one experience with the brand.

?We are trying to translate this to mobile devices ? we are working through that but it is about engagement,? Ms. Rotnicki said.

Commerce, however, is also a concern.

?Mobile commerce is critical,? she said. ?I want to balance engagement with some ROI and some meaningful reason why they would want to shop the brand via mobile.?

The individual brand teams are very focused on connecting the consumer to the brand.

One way Estee Lauder is addressing this is by exploring mobile video.

?We are exploring engagement around video and how to make the brands the expert,? Ms. Rotnicki said. ?That?s a really important piece of equity.?

Importance of mobile
The panelists discussed where responsibility for mobile sits within organizations.

?It is sometimes tough to find the mobile champion,? Blast Radius' Mr. Lohia said. ?It varies by organization -- there are some organizations that are more advanced and more mature ? some are still learning.?

One of Blast Radius? less advanced clients, for example, feels mobile still needs to be driven within the organization so it is trying to set up a cross-organization mobile team. Other marketers have already taken such steps, however, per Mr. Lohia.

Where mobile is already an integral part of an organization, it can be beneficial to start thinking about how to create the best experiences for customers across channels and not just in terms of what you should be doing in mobile.

And...action
Because of the ways that mobile is more personal and engaging than other channels, it can make sense to have someone who is in charge of the customer experience across channels.

?It is better to have a chief experience officer,? said Mr. Lohia.

?Because the mobile connection will be more effective at times than the Internet, you want to make sure  that the experiences are good and there is consistency in the brand,? he said.

?There are some areas where you will want to change your service offering because of mobile and build something compelling that will allow you to interact with consumers in a new way.?

Mobile, for example, is good for getting someone to do something like text to a shortcode.
MTV recently approached the planning for its music awards thinking about what experiences it wanted to create for the music.

?Try to think about how to get to the best experiences for your audience and in terms of what you want  to do,? MTV?s Mr. Lalley said.

CBS Mobile looks to the various brands to see what they want to bring to mobile.

?The organization looks to the mobile team to help guide them as they make decisions about mobile strategy,? CBS' Mr. Browning said.

His division tries to maintain analytics so there is consistency, make sure everyone is writing to a common code and find the strengths of the Web team that can be translated to mobile.

?We are looking at ways to have people interact with content via mobile -- that?s an exciting area,? Mr. Browning said.

Final Take
Chantal Tode, Mobile Marketer