Lucidity

There is a lot of chatter concerning the mobile universe, and it can be easy to get lost in a cloud of buzz words. QR codes, Digital OOH, SMS, Mobisodes, WAP sites, Widgets and dot Mobi sites are just a few of the facets of the mobile world – a world that many Canadians still assume begins with text messaging and ends with browsing for movie times online. But mobile marketing is booming on an international scale, driven on the consumer side by some very exciting new hardware and software technologies that have captured people’s imaginations, and on the marketing side by the opportunity to build relationships with consumers on a one-to-one basis, and quantify their success.

Mobile is one of the fastest-growing channels on the marketing landscape. Mobile device adoption is estimated at 80% in the U.S. Canadians sent approximately 10.1 billion person-to-person text messages in 2007 – more than double the previous year’s total. And it’s not just the under 20s who are texting like mad: studies estimate that 80% of Gen X and approximately 70% of baby boomers have mobile phones that support text messaging, with 22% of Gen X and more than 10% of boomers texting daily.*

While the limitations of texting may seem insurmountable at first glance, particularly in contrast to traditional, broad-bandwidth advertising and marketing approaches, it is by virtue of being a cool medium more personal, more intimate, and more participatory than old-school channels. A simple response mechanism, as part of an integrated multi-channel campaign, can use short codes or QR codes as a permission-based gateway to richer, interactive communications via mobile browser, e-mail, and/or laptops and desktops. Once a conversation is initiated, through any one of a number of out-of-home media, the “third screen” can serve as an information kiosk, salesperson, catalogue or response card long after the consumer has left the store, transit shelter or theatre.

There’s no mistaking public interest in the newest gadgets (or, more accurately, Steve Jobs’ newest gadget), and predictions about adoption and the future of data rates in Canada are common mainstream news items. In future posts we’ll be exploring a few hypothetical and real-world scenarios in depth, covering not only SMS but a variety of digital/mobile applications that take the shifting Canadian mobile landscape – and your future customers – into account. These are exciting times in the mobile space, and the first brands to take a sure-footed leap into these uncharted waters are bound to make a memorable and market-defining splash. We look forward to being your springboard.

*Source: InsightExpress Understanding the Mobile Consumer