It’s the end of a packed two days at the MMA’s Mobile Marketing Forum Europe in London. At the start of proceedings yesterday morning, MMA chief marketing officer, Paul Berney, who is wrapping things up now, said: “The time for evangelising the mobile channel is past. It’s time to educate and execute. We have moved from why to how.”
And over the course of the two days, with brands queuing up to sing mobile’s praises, it’s been easy to agree with this sentiment. I noted down a few of the soundbites and stats that have come from the various presenters over the past couple of days. Here are just a few:
“20% of Rimmel’s customers were trying to access the website via mobile.”
“Mobile has fundamentally changed the way we connect and communicate with consumers.”
“People have relationships with the mobile channel that they don’t have with any other media channel.”
“This amazing device – people have this passionate feeling about it – it can go places and do things no other medium can.”
As I write this, in fact, Berney is running through some of these very soundbites. And yet, in the penultimate session of the day, we had two agency people, the ones who try to get budgets out of their clients to do stuff on mobile, talking candidly about the problems they face in getting these budgets.
I don’t know what the answer to this conundrum is, other than for the companies doing great stuff on mobile to keep banging home the same message – that it works. Slowly but surely, judging by the calibre of brands and speakers taking to the stage over the past couple of days, I think it is getting through.
David Murphy
Editor