• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, September 25, 2013

After two days at the MediaPost OMMA Global Conference this week, there’s little doubt about the future of mobile commerce.

This dawned on me as I listened to many of the presentations, most notably the opening keynote address yesterday by Coca-Cola Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer Joe Tripodi.

It’s not that Tripodi spoke about mobile payments, the sales funnel or any of that, he didn’t.  

Rather, he spoke of how a well-known, global brand can connect with consumers and how technology allows those real-time connections, which was the overall theme of the show.

Numerous speakers throughout the event mentioned mobile in the context of being transformational, including Tripodi.

For context, Coca-Cola operates in more than 200 countries and has been rated the most valuable global brand by Interbrand a dozen years in a row.

In the 1880s, the brand was the first to introduce couponing and direct-mail campaigns. In the early 1960s it was among the first to experiment with color TV ads.

This decade it has dominated Facebook, ranking as the most-popular consumer brand, with more than 73 million likes.

Tripodi noted that more than 80% of outreach about the brand is by fans. "We have to facilitate conversation around the brand; think big, start small and act fast,” he said. “Fundamentally, it's disrupt or be disrupted, because there's no status quo.”

And that’s that state of mobile and mobile commerce.

It’s not about using a mobile phone to buy a Coke, although that can and will be done.

It’s more about the behavioral change that goes along with global and total global connectivity.

When global powerhouses the size of Coca-Cola turn to mobile commerce, which they inevitably will, the magnitude will dwarf what’s happening today.

And for the future growth of mobile commerce, that will be the real thing.