“Put your best people on mobile. It’s where the puck is headed.” This call to action from Google’s Eric Schmidt poses a critical challenge for clients and agencies engaged across the whole spectrum of marketing communications. The best brains in marketing will be in no doubt about the impact mobile is having as a true game-changer for today’s global brands. Yet mobile commands a mere 2 per cent or 3 per cent of today’s marketing budgets, and precious little attention.

Mobile training is a key priority for brands, their agencies and the smartest graduates seeking dynamic, fast-moving and rewarding careers in business and commerce.
The time has come for all business executives to grasp the changing habits of consumers and the central importance of mobile to delivering a seamless customer experience. At each stage of the customer lifecycle – acquisition, transaction and retention – mobile provides a unique level of personalised, targeted, time- and location-sensitive rich brand engagement and interaction. Mobile also provides real time measurement of response for precise ROI analysis.

Many brands choose to brush the mobile question under the carpet, or pay lip service to embracing mobile – due, in part, to a lack of awareness of mobile and the benefits it can deliver for an organisation. For many, a mobile strategy comprises a branded app, often developed at considerable cost, attracting a modest number of downloads and providing a worrying lack of engaging content, or a decent user experience. More often than not, the app is an afterthought, shares little in common with valuable consumer insight or the brand’s marketing strategy, and does not fit the data strategy. This response misses the opportunity. Unfortunately, it is all too common.

The good news is that mobile has now moved from a “bolt on task”, delegated to a junior marketing executive, to a core communications channel, with its own budget line and agenda point at the Board meeting. We have data from comScore and the GSM Association (GSMA) to prove growing mobile penetration and usage for a growing number of actions, as well as case studies demonstrating seismic shifts in brand awareness, interactions and transactions via mobile. And, of course, a relentless wave of new smartphones and tablets which redefine where, when and how we use our mobiles to engage with our preferred brands.