Here To Stay

A few weeks ago, I was approached by a digital agency and asked to contribute a piece on mobile marketing to a magazine it produces to send out to customers and prospects. The choice of subject was mine, and while they wouldn’t be able to pay me, it would be good PR for the site. So I agreed and thought about what to write about.
Within a couple of minutes, I realised there was one thing that really got my goat, and that’s the campaign mentality that those brands that bother with the mobile Internet tend to bring to the space. 
What I mean by this is that you hear from to time of some great mobile sites, maybe for the launch of a new car, or around some big event like the Euro 2008 football championship that’s just coming to a conclusion. But if you take information (news, weather etc.) and mobile content sites (ringtones et al) out of the equation, how many brands bother to create and maintain a dedicated mobile Internet site in the way they do a website? Does Sony have one? Persil? Ikea?
If I’m honest, I don’t know, and if I’m honest again, I have to say I blow a bit hot and cold on the mobile web. Those news and information sites are really useful when you have 10 minutes to kill, but if Sony or Ikea did put up a permanent mobile Internet site, would I really bother to look at it very often? I don’t know.
Despite this, I am encouraged by the fact that in the past few days, I have heard of a few examples of companies establishing a permanent presence on the mobile web. Help the Aged (see story below) is the latest. Smirnoff.mobi is another. At a conference a couple of months back when I raised this issue, someone pointed out that Guinness had been so impressed by the performance of a mobile site built for St. Patrick’s Day that it was looking to make the site a permanent fixture. And in a meeting with digital agency Graphico earlier this week, MD Graham Darracott told me that the company is seeking to include a WAP site proposal with every new website project it takes on.
These are still just isolated examples, for sure. And no-one can say whether they will prove a success. But at least there are now a few brands and agencies out there now trying to promote the idea of a permanent, dedicated, interactive mobile site that is optimised for the mobile device.
In this respect at least, the mobile web is going through what the Internet went through a decade or so ago. It seems incredible now, but there was a time when even big brands wondered whether the Internet was a place they really needed to be.
I don’t think it’s a given that these brands will naturally fall in line over the next couple of years and build their mobile sites. But the more brands that are out there on the mobile web, the more it will become second nature to consumers to pay them a visit on their mobile, and from where I’m sitting, I can’t see who would lose out in this scenario.

David Murphy
Editor