The release of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Australian Entertainment and Media Outlook 2012-16 report highlights the importance of mobile to the media and advertising industries.
PwC predicted last month that mobile advertising and m-commerce would be among the fastest-growing segments in media over the next four years.
Mobile-ad spends are predicted to achieve compound annual growth of 46 per cent to 2016, compared with 10.3 per cent for the total internet market.
The advent of mobile is driving a new set of behaviours and emotional attachments that are changing marketing forever: limitless amounts of content are available at the touch of a button and, according to Google, 74 per cent of Australians don't leave home without their smart phone.
Consumers are seeking deeply personal connections through their phone. People are moving towards the consumption of value, seeking relevant entertainment, information and services. Marketers must earn consumer interest through these means. "Queen of the Net" Mary Meeker recently said we were now at the point of the "re-imagination of nearly everything -- powered by new devices + connectivity + (user interface) + beauty".
Mobile is driving some core changes to basic marketing principles and in Australia we must take heed of how these affect our activity, in the following ways.
lMake things people want
Marketers have two choices, says innovationist John V. Willshire: to make things people want, or to make people want things. We spend the majority of our time, efforts and budget on the latter. The paradigm shift here is to move out of the silo of traditional marketing practices that exploit existing demand (advertising) and instead move towards the creation of demand (value).
lForget the formula
We're now seeing mobile push the demand for "real marketing", an approach coined by Stephen King (the marketing legend, not the novelist) in the mid-1980s. This innovates based on real feedback from the market: it doesn't really matter what you say about your products, it matters what people say about your products.
lMake it real
Another way to start with the customer is to focus on the personal experience. To make things on mobile that people want, consider what they value about your brand, product or service.
lDiscover connected mobile cultures
To create amazing experiences for customers, brands need to focus on convergence -- the point where people and technology combine. Apple's new Passbook technology, due to be released towards the end of the year, is a great example. Passbook organises huge amounts of information, all within a person's phone or tablet, helping brands connect with consumers when they're in a relevant environment.
At your local cafe, for example, your phone will recognise where you are and update your loyalty card automatically. You'll be able to hold store credit and gift cards in your phone. The days of carrying a wallet stuffed with cards will be behind us. And this gives brands yet another chance to build a meaningful connection.
lCreate shared value
The level of engagement on mobile devices depends largely on the value returned to the user. The challenge for marketers is to create shared value that allows the brand and the user to benefit.
One business that has nailed this is Jana, a mobile-phone marketing agency founded by MIT Media Lab researcher Nathan Eagle that reaches billions of hard-to-reach consumers across the developing world. Jana sends out surveys, advertisements and information, rewarding respondents with free air time or discounts with selected companies.
Jana has formed partnerships with at least 230 mobile phone operators in 80 countries, opening up access to more than two billion customers. The UN is one of its first major customers.
Instead of sending teams all over the world to conduct surveys, the UN can now use Jana to solicit 75,000 responses from more than 5000 people in 23 countries at a fraction of the cost.
Jana has used mobile to provide an enormous amount of value to the UN in terms of money, time and data.
Marketers who can re-imagine what we do in a mobile world will reap the benefits.
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