Give all the questions about scale a rest, marketers pleaded at OMMA Mobile on Wedesday. It's nice -- and obviously more efficient -- but not always possible, or even ideal, they said. "We should be okay with something that doesn't scale," said JiYoung Kim, SVP of strategy and new solutions at Ansible Mobile. From campaign to campaign, "It's not all one size fits all," noted Webster Lewin, Principal and Mobile & Social Media Strategist at WLOGLOBAL. Meanwhile, Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, wasn't so willing to surrender scale. "The whole reason we have ad formats is to decrease friction," …

Mobile may appear to be a great playground for experimentation, but be careful not to lose your brand personality along the way. Those words of caution come from Tricia Nichols, Global Lead of Consumer Engagement, Media Innovation & Partnerships for the Gap Brand. "Tread lightly," she told attendees of OMMA Mobile on Wednesday. But, don't shy away from doing great work, either, Nichols added. To that end, when working with your agency, "Don't give them a traditional media or digital brief," she said. For bigger, better results, "Give them the higher level brief." Sitting on a panel together, Nichols' colleagues …

For Papa John’s, keeping things simple in mobile is key. Speaking on an OMMA Mobile panel on “Contextualizing the Brand,” John Ensign, VP, global digital marketing, at Papa John’s noted that the pizza chain launched mobile ordering in 2007, relying on SMS text, because few people then actually had smartphones. But he said texting remains a key tool for customer interaction because people don’t necessarily want to deal with the hassle of downloading and registering an app. The takeaway: don’t overcomplicate mobile because people don’t always want the bells and whistles.  

Dunkin’ Donuts has become known as a mobile innovator in the retail space, through its embrace of mobile promotions, Twitter and its branded apps. But in a keynote at OMMA Mobile, Dunkin' Brands President, Global Marketing & Innovation, John Costello, emphasized that brands shouldn’t get caught up in mobile tech.  For Dunkin’ Donuts, that means figuring out how to use mobile to keep its 60-year-old brands (including Baskin-Robbins) relevant. In that vein, he said it’s crucial to look honestly assess what’s working and what’s not and be willing to reinvent the brand. Identifying the core brand personality is also key. …

Real time marketing for social media can work for marketers -- but not always as planned.At a OMMA Social panel on real-time marketing, panelists praised the likes of DiGiorno Pizza’s social media efforts around NBC’s "The Sound of Music” last December, which came with prepared social media tweets in conjunction with each of the musical numbers.For example, tweets were like: "#TheSoundOfMusicLive Can't believe pizza isn't one of her favorite things smh"   But Alex Josephson, head of brand strategy, East Coast for Twitter, says the likes of American Express should also be noted for its quick …

Google's really onto something with Twitch, the gaming-centric online video service that it's expected to buy at any moment. That's according to Sarah DaVanzo, Chief Cultural Strategy Officer at Omnicom "startup" sparks & honey. Marketers need to think of Twitch as the ultimate real-time "medium for connecting with consumers," she told OMMA Social attendees on Tuesday. Twitch streams all the top "eSports" competitions, which DaVanzo considers ideal marketing mediums. Regardless of the channel, sparks & honey takes a "70/30 approach" to real-time marketing, DaVanzo noted. For any campaign, 70% of the content is planned (and pre-approved by legal and the …

In the interest of advertising, a growing number of marketers and new media execs think publishers have all but given up trying to protect their editorial independence. Publishers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal "used to be hallowed ground," said Ranvir Guiral, co-founder of Chute, a social photo-aggregation service. Now, they and other elite publications are loosely "playing with business models," in Guiral's words -- and essentially giving brands free reign. As such, "It's a great time to be a brand," he said. Publishers' newfound looseness remains unique to the Web, noted Heather Bergstein, Director of …

Is the future of social media marketing one big native ad? No one at OMMA Social, today, seems to think so. More attendees and panelists are open to the idea that the future of native is all social, however. The more native -- or authentic -- an ad looks in social channels (where consumers now spend a majority of their online and mobile time), the greater the engagement, said Jason Stein, founder and president of boutique agency Laundry Service. Blake Landro, Global Lead for Brand Solutions at Google, couldn't agree more. "We want content to feel authentic," he said.

While Facebook remains the 800-pound gorilla of social media marketing, photo-sharing network Instagram has the potential to outstrip its parent company. That’s according to Michoel Ogince, Director, Platform & Product Strategy, Big Fuel Communications, who made the case for Instagram in a presentation at OMMA Social. Citing a study looking at seven brands from social analytics firm Zuum, Ogince said Instagram has 3.6 times the number of engagements as Facebook, a community ratio a hundred times higher, and is gaining fans five times faster than Facebook. The key, he says, is the emotional connection that Instagram affords by emphasizing images …

Per day, how many filtered photos should brands be posting on Instagram? It's hardly a science, but one-to-two pics per day will keep the yawns away, but not overwhelm your followers. So Michoel Ogince, director of platform & product strategy at Big Fuel Communications, told attendees of OMMA Social on Tuesday. Unfortunately, measuring the success of such efforts is the tricky part, according to Ogince. Presently, there is no way to measure, say, how a couple of ice cream close-ups on Ben & Jerry's Instagram page drove (or didn't drive) in store sales. Ever the optimist, Ogince is confident that …