The 5% Mobile Challenge

During a mobile advertising presentation at a recent digital marketing conference, I heard the presenter say sheepishly that this was not “the year of mobile”.  Besides injecting a self-defeating note into an otherwise interesting and compelling presentation, I have a hard time understanding why some people feel a need to constantly parrot this statement.
Mobile is [...]

Building New Bridges at Digital Cement

As announced on Twitter and picked up by Profectio, I recently joined Toronto-based agency Digital Cement as their Manager, Mobile Marketing Solutions.
It’s a new position for the company, but a natural one given their mandate to “help leading organizations start, grow, deepen and measure relationships with their most valuable customers.”  They’ve got a lot of [...]

Mobile Makes Me…Think of Pie

Mobile’s a new enough channel that some sort of education/explanation is still usually required when introducing the marketing opportunities to internal, brand or agency partners.This is especially true when reviewing the right tactics to reach your target audience.
iPhone applications get most of the attention in marketing/technology circles. While the device’s market share is growing steadily, [...]

My Refresh Events Talk: the deck and some final thoughts

Last Monday (July 20th), I spoke at Refresh Event’s Stay Fresh 10 session. The topic was how mobile can be used to engage and grow communities.
I took the line that let’s not focus on emerging applications and top of the line handsets. While they offer the richest experiences and most robust tools, they make up [...]

Refresh Events: Talking You Down From The Bleeding Edge

On Monday July 20th I’ll be speaking at Refresh Events’ Stay Fresh 10. If you’re not familiar with Refresh Events here’s what they say about themselves:
Refresh Events encourages collaborative partnerships, fosters education at all skill levels and creates networking opportunities within the Toronto interactive community.
I’ll be sharing some thoughts on the role mobile marketing can [...]

Connections, Context & Content, Part 13: final thoughts

Go Forth & Mobilize
In many respects, mobile remains an emerging communications and media channel. While consumer adoption of mobile has reached a critical mass and features such as mobile messaging are tightly integrated into day-to-day use, use of the medium as a channel for corporate and brand communications is still at a formative stage. Marketers [...]

Three Ways to Fail Spectacularly at Mobile Marketing

With mobile devices basically glued to the hips & ears of most people, they’re a marketing channel filled with powerful opportunities for brand engagement, direct response and relationship marketing.  The device, though, gets a disproportionate share of attention – what’s the latest & greatest handset, what new features or software/applications are being introduced, etc…
It’s important [...]

Connections, Context & Content, Part 12: Mobile and Crisis Communications

Mobile & Crisis Communications
The final public relations practice to examine is crisis communications. In many ways, the uses for mobile in supporting crisis communications efforts are minor modifications of what has been discussed previously in this series.  The main difference, as with all crisis communications, is the importance that prior planning plays in successful execution.
It [...]

What A Corporate Mobile Role Looks Like

I’ve argued elsewhere that Canadian companies and agencies should take a serious look at bringing mobile marketing expertise ‘in-house’.
For agencies, it makes the most sense in full-service, promo and direct response/relationship marketing shops. Digital agencies also need to understand mobile at the very least for mobile web and application builds. Having in-house mobile expertise won’t [...]

Connections, Context & Content, Part 10: Mobile and Media Relations

Mobile & Media Relations

While mobile cannot replace the benefits of building trusting and mutually beneficial relationships with members of the media, there are ways that it can support media relation activities. Valerie Christopherson offers this list of uses for mobile in media relations:

sending invitations to press conferences;
querying prospective media targets during a media tour [...]