Commentary

It's the Consumer Stupid

Initiative's chief strategy officer Eric Bader kicked off MediaPost's first Mobile Summit event (in sunny Lake Takoe) with the message that mobile marketing isn't about devices or platforms but about consumers, or as put it, focusing on "consumers who are mobile." A slide show of failed or forgotten devices including the Newton, the Segway, and more recently, the Kin, helped to drive home the point. And since it's all about consumers, bread-and-butter tactics including creativity and consumer insights apply.

But content and context in mobile advertising should be used drive action rather than just brand awarness. "Action is where the sweet spot is in mobile," he said. That means reaching mobile users wherever they are--at the gym, commuting, in a store or traveling.

But Bader warns that agencies shouldn't try to take dollars from already-starved digital budgets because there simply isn't much there to start. Instead, funding for mobile marketing programs should come from email, direct marketing and other channels that he believes are vulnerable to inroads from mobile. "Earn dollars away from underperforming media," he said. At the same time he conceded that mobile itself isn't a mass medium today, but still an emerging, personal format.

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