In the afternoon’s first keynote, Sarah Liang Kress, director of interactive marketing, L’Oreal USA, talked about how the cosmetics giant has aligned its mobile strategy with its three main audiences: cosmetological students, professional hairdressers, and consumers. Based on its own data and third-party research, L’Oreal wound creating an iPad app for students to use in class, a smartphone app for hairdressers, and a mobile site to reach the wider consumer audience. For students at its academy, being issued an iPad and companion classroom app, it led to cost-savings on textbooks and an increase in applications. The smartphone app aimed at …

Per every Web penetration report you've ever seen, ever wonder about those 1% of consumers who aren't online? Those are hairstylists (!), half-joked Sarah Liang Kress, Director of Interactive Marketing at L'Oreal USA, during an afternoon keynote at OMMA Mobile. "Hairstylists are late [Web] adopters," she said -- or, at least, they were when personal computers dominated Web access. Now that mobile has overtaken PCs, hairstylists -- and, likely, other professionals without any need for a desk -- are catching up. "They're early adopters when it comes to mobile, because the one device they have is their smartphone," according to …

Where’s the money? That’s Phonevalley CEO Alexandre Mars’ beef with spending on the media side, where mobile budgets are often still tiny--$25,000 campaigns--compared to digital and traditional channels. If mobile is truly to be at the core of marketing activities as Digitas CEO Colin Kinsella noted in his keynote address at OMMA Mobile, then spending first off has to increase. On a panel looking at why mobile is getting more love on within agencies and brands, Mars also acknowledged agencies have to do a better job selling mobile to clients as as a key part of the marketing mix. He …

It's an age-old question: If a marketer puts a QR code in an in-flight magazine -- on a flight without Wi-Fi -- what was said marketer smoking? The answer -- as it recently occurred to Allison Owen, Digital Media Specialist at The Integer Group -- is obvious. (Crack, we assume.) It is, however, a perfect example of the many ill-conceived mobile marketing campaigns out there, today. Likewise, Brian Stoller, Leader of Digital Strategy at Mindshare North America, hatea seeing QR codes in subways in New York City. Even if he did want to engage with the campaigns, which Stoller admits …

Re mobile, what's the worst possible move a marketer can make? Siloing your budget, says Colin Kinsella, CEO of Digitas North America. Siloing guarantees "epic failure," Kinsella warns OMMA Mobile attendees. "Clients don't come to us with a mobile budget; they come to us with a plan to reach consumers," he says. Luckily (sort of) for most marketers, the bulk of ad dollars have not yet shifted to mobile, so they still have time to do it right. Also of note, Kinsella says not to forget about story telling. Marketers "need to tell better stories," he says, "and figure out …

Colin Kinsella, CEO, Digitas North America, is now on stage discussing some of the obstacles that must be overcome before mobile marketing can get more traction. His advice: set mobile free from being siloed from other channels; put mobile at the core of everything you're doing; and tell great stories, that is add an emtional element to the utility and deliver value. If you have a siloed mobile budget, "you're headed for an epic failure," warns Kinsella. It has to be connected to a client's wider digital budget embracing online, social media and other areas.

"It's About Our Customers, Not The Medium" panel moderator Thom Kennon posed an interesting question to his panelists at OMMA Mobile this morning. Kennon, senior vice president of strategy at Y&R, asked how many of them were utilizing "cross-channel cookies" - digital code that could track their consumers' behavior across mobile, Web and other platforms.

It's not even noon, and we at OMMA Mobile are already knee-deep in cross-channel marketing issues. If you don't have a way to track your consumers across all platforms, you should "drop everything else," and figure that out, says Josh insists Glantz, VP and General Manager at Publishers Clearing House Online. Another related issue is "bad analytics," in the words of Johann Huber-Gutierrez, Director of Convergence and Mobile Strategy at Resource Interactive. Without naming names, Huber-Gutierrez said the top analytics providers can't follow campaigns across channels. Regarding tracking cookies, he said: "They break ... across different platforms." Redemption codes are …

In the day's first panel focused on engaging customers directly on mobile, executives from companies including Tasti D-Lite, Century 21 and Publishers Clearinghouse agreed that mobile users are willling to provide personal information if they think they're getting something of value in return. That data can then be compared to usage on a company's desktop site to provide a more consistent experience, as well as match up that first-party data with third-party data from other sources from Facebook to credit card transactions. Tasti D-Lite's VP of Technology B.J. Emerson, explained the company two years ago began integrating Facebook, Foursquare and …

By the way, if you'd like to see The Mobile Playbook discussed by Google's Tim Reis at OMMA Mobile this morning, you can access it at -- ironically -- on the Web, right here: http://www.themobileplaybook.com/