Wot No Mobile?

We got news yesterday of a new ad campaign that Orange is running to promote its Pay As You Go ‘Animal’ packages. With a £6 million budget, Orange is putting some serious money behind it. According to the release, the eight-week campaign will run over TV, print, outdoor and online from 19 May. No mention of mobile there, but maybe “online” covers it. Er, apparently not. We asked the Orange press office if there was any mobile acitivity included in the campaign and just got their reply:
“No there isn’t but we will keep you updated.”
Maybe I’m being over-picky, but this strikes me as odd. If a mobile network can spend £6 million on an ad campaign and not set aside any of the budget for mobile, why should other advertisers show any faith in the channel?
Perhaps the target audience for the campaign is one which Orange does not believe uses the mobile Internet or would respond positively to advertising in the mobile channel, but if this was the case, you would have thought Orange would have made the point when they responded to our enquiry.
Odd.

David Murphy
Editor