Yesterday evening’s Mobile Marketing Association Brand & Agency Briefing was full of interesting revelations. The event was poorly attended, but I think those who did turn up will be glad they did.

There was a media theme to proceedings, with presentations from Global Radio (home of Capital, Gold, Heart and Xfm among others), ITV and The Telegraph, plus a cameo from Tigerspike MD Nic Newman about his firm’s work on The Times’ Eureka iPad app.

First up, Tim Ferris, head of interactive partnerships at Global Radio, took us through the company’s history of doing stuff on mobile, which included a campaign dating back to 2000, in which listeners could text in with their choice of record, and receive a return SMS telling them what time it would be played. 11 years ago. Ferris went on to reveal the company’s plans to produce radio apps in which the signal would be broadcast via FM, rather than 3G, in order to reduce data consumption and improve sound quality.

Next up, Richard Hicks, mobile sales manager, commercial and online, for ITV, who admitted: “We have been behind on a lot of our mobile strategy, and we are changing that this year.” Hicks went on to tell delegates that clickthrough (or as Hicks prefers to call it “tapthrough”) rates for video clips on the iPad are 3 – 6x those on a PC, and revealed that the mobile version of ITV Player, ITV’s catch-up service for mobile and tablet devices, is available now for Android, and launching on other platforms in the next couple of weeks.

Hicks was followed by Tim Rowell, director of mobile product development at The Telegraph, who took delegates through the newspaper publisher’s journey onto mobile over the last 12 months. Rowell revealed that The Telegraph was given a pre-release version of the original iPad by Apple. “It was chained to a desk in a room and it did have a camera” he said. (Not being an Apple obsessive, I’m not sure how much of a revelation this is. If it is big news, I expect Twitter to take it on from here.)

Rowell showed a concept video of what The Telegraph proposed to do with its iPad app. It was jaw-droppingly brilliant, to the point where, until I realised this was not what they ended up with, I was almost heading for the door to go and buy an iPad so I could download it. In this version of the app, you could zoom into news from any part of the world, categorize the content in any number of ways, and navigate your way through it in just as many. A bit like a good comedy scene retold, it was one of those things you had to see for yourself, but with great comic timing, as the video ended, Rowell simply said. “We didn’t build that.”

To decide what they should build, The Telegraph, working with Tigerspike, created a very simple app with a selection of content from the newspaper, and asked users for feedback on it. Some of this feedback was surprising, to me at least. Like the fact that users wanted something finite and finishable, rather than something that was constantly updated. Tigerspike’s Newman put this down to people’s desire for a sense of completion in today’s always-on world. And as Rowell pointed out, anyone who wants an update on a story can just head for The Telegraph website on their iPad.

The other thing that came across loud and clear in the research was that no-one wanted to pay for the app. “The most anyone said they would be willing to pay was 5p per day,” said Rowell. “Something like 94 per cent [of the 20,000 people surveyed] said they would never pay.”

Despite this, the final (or make that latest) version of the app – Rowell later said the most exciting thing about mobile was the way that every week, you have to forget everything you discussed last week about your mobile strategy and start again – sells for £1.19 per day, or £9.99 per month, though The Telegraph’s 340,000 print subscribers can get it for free.

Rowell said The Telegraph was one of the first publishers to use Apple’s auto-renewable subscription service, adding that he was not fazed by the 30 per cent cut Apple takes. “When someone buys our newspaper in the newsagents, they take a 28 per cent cut; Apple is just another distribution channel,” he said.  

He also quoted figures from YouGov showing that there are more over-55s than under-35s with iPads in the UK, adding that some Telegraph print subscribers had bought an iPad, mainly to get their free iPad version. These, he said, probably included the 200 or so who phoned up to complain the app wasn’t working properly. Turned out their iPads were still in as-sold Airplane mode…

And finally, Nic Newman, who showed a video demo of the Eureka app, explained how there were 650 different user journeys though it, noted that the app market is still its infancy, and then, prompted by a question from the audience, had a brief rant at retailers who under-invest in their mobile sites and so produce identikit versions. “They spend a fortune on making their stores look good and the branded carrier bags, then when they come to mobile, they forget everything that makes them unique,” he said. But he ended on a more positive note, saying that any app that could combine content, fun and utility, stood a good chance of success.

All in all, a couple of hours very well spent. The MMA deserved a better turnout for the event. Those who weren’t there missed out.

David Murphy

Editor