Do Mobile Marketing Agencies have a Future?

I had a really good lunch meeting with a great full service marketing agency the other day. The COO asked at some point whether channel oriented marketing agencies, such as mobile marketing agencies actually, have a future. Here is more or less what I answered.

Hybrid vs. Channel marketing

Where it was still cool last year to be or to work for a cutting edge innovative mobile marketing agency, this year the opinions are shifting rapidly. It is clear by now that offering specific mobile applications and site development services provide a certain value add but that from a marketing strategy perspective it is important to offer a broader range of services. It is also clear by now that mobile agencies are struggling. They reach a reasonable size 100 to 200 people with some form of a global presence. But from there growth seems to stall.

The problem in my opinion is that mobile can only to some extent be delivered as a stand alone channel. In traditional ATL marketing has been separated from digital or BTL marketing. A bunch of agencies have popped-up over the last 2 decades boasting a comprehensive 360º service or what I would call hybrid marketing. But none of these agencies have reached the size of the global players like DDB-Tribal, Wunderman or Ogilvy. 

Why is this? The eye-opener for me was one simple question asked by a client during a meeting. During this meeting we tried to convince them that a mobile site was an absolute necessity for the brand. If they really wanted to be present in the best way possible on all mobile devices than they would certainly need our mobile site and hosting platform.

The client simply asked; if you think that a mobile site is so important, can you also provide us with a site and platform solution that:

- Covers our marketing needs for both 'classic' online websites for PC's 

- Proposes an optimized experience for iPad and mobile phones with a focus on smart phones and...

- Facilitating the management of this 'hybrid' website from one single CMS

Although I would have loved to say yes at that point, the actual answer I had to give was of course, no we can't. We can deliver a parallel mobile site experience. In a best case scenario and provided you're willing to pay for the additional effort we can provide you with a site that is connected to your 'classic' site. We maybe able to leverage some of the classic online content but in reality it will require additional resources and workflows to optimize the content and use it via the mobile channel.

In short the client was asking for a more holistic approach that a mobile agency just can't provide. Today I must conclude that just a few agencies are able to deliver a full hybrid approach, including a well-judged creative use of the mobile channel.

Traditional and Digital

I haven't even started to discuss how to combine the traditional marketing channels and digital. There are beautiful examples and case studies of how social, mobile, print, tv and web were put to work for brands. Yet these examples remain few and far between since not many agencies are able to cover the full spectrum. A great many agencies and brands are still struggling with Facebook integration and twitter management. 

So where's the opportunity for mobile?

Mobile is no doubt the channel that will be more and more the first and most often used touch point with a brand. Then again it has its specific use and quirks, specifically when it comes to personalization and brand relationship. This element needs to be combined with the use-case aspects of all the other channels. A large number of attempts to combine web, print, tv and mobile  perspective have been taken already, the most interesting models being based on a use-case based strategy. Bottom line is that agencies can't get away with being 'just digital' or 'just classic' any longer. A full integrated hybrid approach is required. The impact on agencies are potentially significant since it requires a broader set of skills under one roof which may be difficult to manage from a supply and demand perspective in today's fast moving and volatile market. There are a few ways of coping with this volatility. One is to scale-up the agency services across borders and to have a workforce that is international and multi-cultural. Another one is to have solid but flexible parternship engagement with suppliers of specific services.

What all of this implies though is:

- Agencies need resources that are flexible, have a broad range of knowledge that runs from design to technology and from classic print to digital, including social media.

- Agencies need to considers strategies that allow full hybrid marketing services with in-house resources or via a network of freelancers or partners.

- Mobile is going to be more important than web, provided that we include tablets in the definition of the mobile channel.

- Agile responses to client needs with an ability to work with both marketing and IT departments on the client side - across al the marketing channels - are becoming more important than ever.

Questions or comments? I look forward to hearing from you!

For further reading:

The Full Service Agency Model is Dead - Meet the Connectors

by Craig Wilson.

The IT and marketing divide in business - and why it should change

It must be a familiar experience to marketing and IT managers working in Fortune 500 or other large structures. Meetings where the marketing guys talk about brand image, user experience and design and how technology must enable this. Vice versa the tech-guys keep saying that security and scalability are important and that more systems to serve more channels will not fit into the budget.

The C-level insists on having measurable results and to be present in all marketing channels but most and above all on the mobile channel. Oh and of course budgets went down again for next year.

Will this ever work? Without disruptive changes in the way businesses are run today I don't think so. Here's why.

If you're in digital marketing and brand management you ignoring the importance of digital technology is clearly a risk. But likewise, IT managers will have to enter in discussions with the marketing guys since usability, user friendliness, privacy and security issues are so closely related to what technology can and will enable.

In fact today marketing agencies and marketing managers are more successful if they understand technology and are able to have a fairly deep discussion with the IT guy. Take an iPhone application e.g. If you have no clue on what services and features are available on a device and how they can add value to your customers or how it will help you in your campaigns, your IT guys will effectively control your outcome.

But everybody with a bit of experience on either side knows how tough it is for marketing managers to talk about API's, database architecture and offline/online service availability. But IT managers have the same issue with softer values such as user friendliness and great user experience. Nothing better than a command window where you can direct call a services with a bunch of Unix command lines.

So fine, the stage is set and we understand the roles and know the players. But how can a business solve this issue? What is needed to bridge the divide between UX and IT?

Here are a couple of thoughts

Hybrid Teams, hybrid resources

Marketing should not be the exclusive domain of the marketing people. In fact in the most successful projects I've delivered the client had IT and Marketing people in every meeting. The project brief was created by marketing but had to be signed off by an IT director. Although this leads to more effort and increased work load at first, there is efficiency gained at the end of the project because technology supports the creative idea and vice versa. Nobody can hide behind arguments such as: we were never told it had to be this way or we could have told you that this design cannot be enabled by our IT infrastructure.

Finding hybrid resources or training them can be tough. There is a reason why IT developers love code and they don't care much for design. Research shows that human beings do function differently and some of us will just never understand design, others will never be able to read or produce a single line of code. So the most likely options is to have senior resources that over time have built up a hybrid expertise and can bridge the gap between the two disciplines.

MarkITing

More and more toolkits, campaign platforms and white labeled app development concepts are thrown onto the market. Running a campaign on Facebook does not require any deep IT skills unless you want to develop a game. We're slowly moving towards a world where anybody can run a campaign much like anybody can write and publish a book these days, thanks to all the software and digital print services available.

That means that marketing will have to include more 'light' IT skills so that campaigns on Facebook, SEO-tactics and tweets can be managed in an agile way.

Reversely the role of IT will have to include controlling and checking of third party services such as Facebook. Whether this means that pure 'hardcore' in-house software and platform development will be reduced remains to be seen.

Business need to change

The toughest part though is how businesses are organized today and how this will have to change. Hybrid teams and changing skill sets or in the services provided are probably easy to achieve via HR and the strategy department. But is it actually still a good idea to keep IT and Marketing separated. In digital marketing the combination of skill sets within one department will lead to more stride but in my opinion also to better campaigns and better branding.

But maybe this change should go even further. Social Media marketing requires different profiles. A Social Media marketing manager might as well come from the public sector. Softer social political skills might as well be the necessary quality to make a brand successful on mobile and in the social media space.

Now how to measure

Classic touch point measurement as in Unique Visitors, Conversion Rates and Click Troughs will remain important. But how do you measure mobile success or social media success? Should you track the number of Likes, the Evaluations your product gets on Amazon, the number of Friends the brand has? This and other ways of tracking your campaign in the digital space require again resources that have a marketing and IT understanding of the playing field.

Education

Its encouraging to see how Social Marketing, SEO and mobile are popping up as topics in the programs of Business Schools, Universities and Academies. The jury is still out on the quality of these initiatives. Fact is that there are executive programs that address these topics so there's no excuse for execs and board members to continue going uneducated about these topics.

So ultimately

Change is necessary and looking at the current pace of change in digital marketing and branding this is change will be a more and more pressing issue on the agenda of the C-level. Let's see and track how this pans out in the future and how it will improve the playing field for marketeers, IT managers and their agencies.

Pigbook

Here is one of the best discussion starters I've seen in a while...

Just think about it. What is Facebook selling?

That would be consumer insights and targeted advertising based on these insights if you ask me. But without further interpretation, knowing what your potential or real customer prefers, talks about or reveals is maybe not exactly what you want to sell them.

Give your customer what he or she wants is what I often hear. But how do we know what they want? Yes we can listen to them, observe them, track them or put them in categories. And we can do all of this on Facebook.

Henri Ford said: if I would have asked my customers what they want they answer: faster horses. He then gave them a car...

Now what's my point here. On the one hand Facebook is brilliant. It has clout, momentum, lots of conversations, remarks, media and games. Data galore and insights by the truck load. Yet do you really behave like you do in every day life?

I bet that most of us take care about what we post and how we phrase things. These days employers, candidates and family will be able to take a sneak peak at your profile unless you've completely shielded it off for the outside world.

So is Facebook seeing us as we are or is it dealing with my Facebook-me? What will this do to the value of using Facebook for media, marketing and branding purposes? I can't help thinking that while the younger generation might live their life on Facebook, it is nothing more than a billboard at your local supermarket that happens to have an enormous amount of content and a million ways of spending your entire life on it if you choose so.

These questions came up when looking at the Facebook and You cartoon the first time and I am still no further as to how to answer them.

Naturally the power of Facebook to reach out and touch your customers, to convey a brand message or a story is there. But what are the limits imposed by the fact that we know we're being watched and we know that total privacy nor the right to forget, i.e. for your profile or data on your profile to cease and desist completely are part of Facebook's corporate values.

So are we behaving differently on Facebook compared to every day life. Are we e.g. more honest because we know or feel we're being watched? A quick search via Google showed that sciences says this is the case but I am convinced that quite a few users do not even realize that Facebook and a great many others are watching over their shoulders.

So in short, will we keep using the barn and eat the free food and deal with the consequences that come with this? Do we know if Facebook generates skewed behavior or do we go with an even stronger statement: our behavior on Facebook is what brands need to deal with in the future.

To be continued.

Matt