Mobile under the shadows of digital : MMA

With a slew of developments poised for phone devices and infrastructure, the next decade promises to be an exciting ride for the mobile phone industry.

“Demand for mobile industry has continued to grow and with the upcoming launch of 4G in countries such as Malaysia and India, will make a quantum leap for the mobile industry,” commented Rohit Dadwal, managing director, Asia-Pacific, Mobile Marketing Association.

A recent research report by Inmobi suggested that 46 per cent of customers were open to receiving mobile advertisements and a whopping 54 per cent majority consented to receiving personalised ads.

According to Barney Loehnis, head of digital, Asia Pacific, Ogilvy, "Brands must treat mobile as a strategic long-term strategy. While SMS messaging is a popular way of getting customer’s attention, location-based utility services, apps platform, video streaming etc have not been entirely leveraged,” Loehnis said.

Loehnis goes on to add that although brands can replicate their digital initiatives, he belives that mobile is under the shadow of digital and a better roadmap for its success is required.

Rajiv Hiranandani, co-founder and executive director, Altruist – Mobile2Win agrees. “Marketers have treated mobile phones as media buy opportunities. Instead, brand marketers must remember that mobile marketing is not a sales-oriented approach; instead offers huge opportunities as an interactive on-the-go medium,” Hiranandani says.

He goes on to say, “Each coming year is said to be the year of mobile marketing. The reason why marketers have not invested in it as eagerly is because the mobile marketing platform does not offer adequate metrics. This has often made it difficult to measure the success of a campaign.”

Rahul Welde, VP, Media (Asia Pacific), Unilever remains optimistic. “We have used the mobile platform for numerous campaigns and it has been a raging success. I personally see a huge potential in mobile marketing and I am certain there will be many success stories coming out in the next decade,” he concludes.