MIG Gears Up for Mobile Dogfight

Mobile Interactive Group (MIG) was formed two years ago out of O2s interactive division. When O2 took the decision to decommission the division, General Manager Barry Houlihan and his team saw an opportunity, and over the course of the next 12 months, reassembled themselves into MIG. 12 months later, the company is in rude health. It recently announced an extension to a lucrative and high-profile contract with ITV, turns over 22 million, and has ambitious growth plans. MMM Editor David Murphy caught up with MIG Managing Director Barry Hoolihan to find out more.

MM: How did the original ITV deal come about?

BH: We put the first mobile contract into ITV while we were at O2, and from there, in the course of delivering mobile services to ITV, we have built good relationships with their key people. Weve always had a good understanding of their business, so when we  pitched for the business as MIG the following year, we could lay out a 4-year plan that included details of what the business needed to do to accelerate the mobile interactive schedule and incorporate new technologies that would enable it to lead the market. We were pushing on an open door because they liked our team, from our technical people to our commercial people. So as a supplier, we ticked all the boxes, and weve been working with them as MIG since May 2005.

MM: And has it been a case of steady progress? Evolution rather than revolution?

BH: Thats right. You dont switch it on overnight. It takes a long time to get the trust factor going. You have to get familiarised. But on any given day now, we have over 100 campaigns running for ITV across the network so they are probably the largest user of text in Europe.

MM: Thats impressive. Can you give us four or five that are running today as examples?

BH: Sure. Theres a text competition on This Morning; news alerts for regional news programmes; a Text TV Screen for Love Island; a CD promotion for Emmerdale; and then text voting on various programmes. We support all of this, and everything else we do for them, 24/7 operationally.

MM: So just to give an idea of the rate of progress, if you go back to three months into the contract, around this time last year, how many campaigns or projects would you have been handling?

BH: Probably only half of what were doing now. But the numbers also reflect the number of interactive programmes that are running. The new series of X Factor is coming up, and that will have loads of mobile content, including voting, video blogging, and lots more.

MM: So where do you think mobile marketing is right now?

BH: Well I think the premium-rate industry is in decline, because personalisation and the downloading of stuff has been hit hard by consumer lack of faith and the regulatory laws that have been imposed on the industry. That sector has dropped by 35-40% in the last nine months. So generally speaking, the mobile transactional part of the market is a tough one to be in. The significant thing about us is that we have targeted the media sector, which is one of the only growth areas, because its a very simple, transactional-based business, things like voting and Text TV, rather than a subscription-based model. This is why our turnover now matches mobile companies that have been in the market for 10 years, and by the end of the next financial year, we will have overtaken them.

MM: So can you tell us about your own growth plans?

BH: We are looking for more funding. We have significant interest from the finance sector, and also significant interest from the industry. We are raising a couple of million (pounds) to invest in infrastructure and build out our core IP and execute on our Phase 2 strategy.

MM: Which is?

BH: We have broken the business down into five key components. The first is transactional mobile billing. Number two is a mobile software development business, developing carrier-grade, high-speed mobile platforms. The third is to build on our mobile video production facilities to make them carrier grade. Number four is to build a mobile participation platform, with user-generated content and lots of other stuff. Then the final component is a mobile marketing and advertising division that includes traditional mobile marketing services, and mobile advertiser services for network operators.
This has been three to four months in the planning, and we are now in execution mode, where we have carved the business up, we are moving to new premises to allow for growth, and we expect the money to be in the business by late September. We need to be ready to execute on all this by the end of October, because we have secured some major contracts in each respective area.
Because of the nature of the business were building, at one end we have what mBlox and Bango have. At the other end, we have what Sponge have got. And in video, we have what Movix have got. So we are a very attractive business, winning contracts in all areas, so we think that any media business that wanted to take mobile seriously would take a serious look at us.

MM: And when do you think mobile marketing will move beyond the hardcore of clients who seem to really get it?

BH: To give you an example, we have a contract with ITV Advertising Sales, who are responsible for 1.7 billion of advertising. ITV sell the airtime, and now we provide mobile interactive advertising solutions to their advertisers, so we have empowered their ad sales team with the products and the technology, and given them a simple way of delivering for advertisers. In the last few months, weve had Lucozade and LOreal (using mobile) and there are some other big names coming up.
Channel 4 have just started to do it as well, and this is where its going to be driven from.    The major media influences, the people who are responsible for a large part of where the budgets going to be spent, helping their clients to understand the technology at the point of sale.
This will be the climate-changing factor will start to change the market. There is a lot of movement for clients to get aligned with the big media companies, and for the media companies, to get in with the client at the point where they are going to run a campaign. If the airtime is six or seven figures and the mobile element is coming in at less than 10,000, its a complete no-brainer.
Its very measurable too. We can provide an enormous amount of statistics on how people interact and at what time of day. Its over a 100% addressable mkt. Compare that to Red Button, where only 8-9 million people have a set top box. In the next three months, we will be doing at least 10 interactive campaigns a month, and these are all new users of the mobile channel, so its good for the market.
Also, the mobile advertising business we have launched, Fourth Screen, is a very untraditional mobile marketing business. We represent the sales inventory on the mobile network operators, so we are the Doubleclick for mobile.
When we got Canon to sponsor the World Cup video clips on 3, this was significant, because they were a first-time mobile advertiser, and the fact they sponsored content meant the end-user got it for free. For 3, it was great because they could market it heavily, so they grew their data usage and introduced a broad new spectrum of consumers who used data services for first time.
This is where the market needs to go, bringing in a raft of traditional media advertisers who have not embraced mobile marketing, and follow the ad-funded model because  it works and ticks a massive box for the networks, because their main ambition in life is to provide value and retain the customer. This is where we are focusing a lot of our energies right now.

MM: Barry, I think that answers the question! Thanks and good luck with your plans.

BH: Thank you.