Mobile Marketing: It’s In the Mix

The first stage in mobile marketing’s inevitable evolution is officially over, and it is time to bring the industry forward into its next era of integration with larger branding initiatives. So say companies that are in the process of developing technologies and marketing campaigns that will bring the medium to the next level in 2005 and 2006. A year ago, the carriers themselves were the largest clients and true believers in the handset’s potential as a marketing device; this year, the big brands are pretty much all in.

“It’s been staggering; it’s really taken off,” says Jeff Philbin of Vibes Media, whose clients now include Hershey, Anheuser Busch and ESPN. “We’re very heavily into Fortune 500 campaigns,” adds Darrin Hegemier, chief marketing officer at Global Wireless Entertainment (GWE), which manages mobile initiative for Calloway Golf, Evel Knievel and the Reef extreme sports brand. Both Vibes and GWE exemplify the next waves of mobile campaigns.

The mobile-marketing industry is way beyond sending a Dunkin’ Donuts latte coupon via SMS. Both Vibes and GWE are leveraging the cellphone’s ubiquity to make mobile a part of an ongoing conversation with a brand on a global basis. “Everyone learned in the last year that you can’t do a 60-day messaging campaign regionally with a [brand] and be successful,” Hegemier tells sister publication Wireless Business Forecast. “It’s not fully integrated with marketing and vertically integrated with other marketing. No platform will do it for you. It takes a comprehensive multi-year strategy.”

The mobile platform’s real-time properties are about to be leveraged even more aggressively this year as marketers invite users themselves to contribute content to an event. Vibes has begun using its Live Text-2-Screen and Pix-2-Screen platforms that let users submit text and images that go directly to a screen behind a band or on a “jumbo-tron” at a venue. Vibes used it for a Motorola promotion in Times Square on New Year’s Eve and for the current “Green Day” tour. It is running in-bar programs for Maxim and Bud Light, where customers can text-2-screen as a kind of flirting. An iRadio application lets radio listeners text song requests and contest entries to a station without getting a busy signal