In brief:

After months of researching my chapter contribution to an upcoming book on marketing to Digital Natives, it’s increasingly clear that mobile advertising companies – and their view of “consumers” needs — must evolve.

Mobile is a fiercely personal device and people – particularly empowered Digital Natives – want content and advertising on their terms. (I purposely mix content and advertising here because they are becoming one and the same thing.)

Another shift in the marketplace: our requirement to have a say in the content/advertising we are willing to receive. This came through loud and clear in the research/interviews I conducted for Mobile Advertising Research U.K. 2009 project, a research project endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) to expertly document the state of the mobile advertising industry in the U.K.

Among the findings (based on 1,000+ consumer online responses and 20+ interviews with operators, enablers, agencies, and brands): only 32 percent of the 1,000+ consumers surveyed had a positive attitude toward receiving advertising messages on their mobile phone. However, that number rose to 64 percent, provided people were properly “incentivized,” and 70 percent if they were incentivized and “in control” of their mobile advertising experience.

Connect the dots, as an increasing number of mobile advertising companies and ecosystem companies have begun to do, and it’s clear that the capability to provide permission-based mobile advertising (with an easy opt-in/opt-out option) could become table stakes.

MOBILE PIONEERS

Companies such as BuzzCity’s myGamma and gofresh’s itsmy.com, mobile social networks turned mobile social ad networks, need little convincing. They made the strategic decision in 2007-08 to allow their verified members to choose the channel of advertising they would accept. Of course, this wasn’t just out of respect for the individual member. Opt-in also allows advertisers to better target their key demographic (example: sports enthusiasts with sports ads) and ensure members who receive a marketing message actually listen.

In my own mobile advertising road test/white paper (PDF) on behalf road test on behalf of Bango, a provider of mobile analytics solutions and MSG supporter, showed that this was indeed a plus for my own campaigns. In fact, I gave BuzzCity the highest marks overall because its opt-in allowed me to deliver effective mobile advertising. (Happy coincidence — I have an interview with BuzzCity CEO KF Lai next week and gofresh’s Vince Staybl has also just reached out to me from his NY trip to offer me a pre-briefing on some significant news, so watch this space.)

JUMPTAP CONSUMER INTELLIGENCE

Jumptap, a provider of mobile advertising solutions that also operates a major mobile ad network, aims to tackle these shortcomings. The company announced this week that is will implement a new feature in mid-year (translated: by end-June) that “enables mobile consumers to manage their own profiles for a more personalized brand experience.”

The focus is on permission-based advertising and on putting the consumer (individual) at the center of their advertising experience. In a nutshell, the feature will enable visitors to participating websites in Jumptap’s ad network to chose the mobile advertising content that interest them – and the choice to opt-out of the process altogether. (Specifically, all publishers in the network will be able to participate. Participating publishers will need to include a link to Jumptap’s profile manager.)

What’s the user experience?

People can choose from a variety of some 29 advertising content categories, including automotive, careers, chat & email, entertainment, finance, fitness, food & drink and games, as the slide below illustrates.

What’s at work (and how) in the background? And how does Jumptap avoid potentially presenting the same people with the same ads?

JumpTap operates a premium mobile advertising network with a penetration of approx. 50 million unique visits a month in the U.S. alone.

Predictably, Jumptap’s IP, which includes patented technology, mobile search algorithms and proprietary know-how around targeting and relevancy (which I have analyzed in this post), plays a huge role in delivering people mobile advertising they will likely find relevant and useful. The company counts unique visitors based on “distinct IDs we get from carriers, cookies, request headers and device IDs.” This can vary across network. “In instances where we don’t have a unique ID, we estimate the number of unique visitors based on page views/unique user that we see elsewhere in the network.”

INTERVIEW WITH PARAN JOHAR

Armed with this background I caught up with Jumptap CMO to learn still more about the nuts & bolts of this ambitious solution and what is says about the company’s wider mobile advertising strategy.

Q: Jumptap is one of a growing group of companies sharply focused on putting the consumer at the center of the mobile advertising ecosystem? Why is this important and what do you offer people?

A: What we’re now seeing is a new wave of mobile advertising right, with the focus on customer intelligence and really putting the customer at the forefront of the mobile advertising ecosystem. Many companies got lost and focused on other constituents: operators, publishers and advertisers. They are all important people, but we are putting the customer at the forefront of the mobile advertising ecosystem, and the way we’re doing that is allowing them to manage their own profiles in a really simple format. This also drives the relevancy of ads.

The concept of is revolutionary but because everyone else has been trying to satisfy other constituents. By driving customer intelligence you’re going to see a higher engagement rate. If you see a higher engagement rate, you’re going to see advertisers who are getting better ROI. If they’re getting a better ROI, you’re going to be able to charge them more. If you can charge them more, by default, you get a better publishing yield so you’re really taking care of all these other constituents by focusing on your core audience, which is the customer, and driving the customer intelligence.

Q: Other companies have a similar approach. And just last week Alcatel-Lucent broke on the scene with a mobile advertising solution that is the subject of a larger report I am currently writing. In it I argue that permission-based advertising is a good fit with messaging because you build a conversation that – in turn – can improve the customer data. But your focus is display….

A: Yes, it’s only about display and it’s not about behavioural targeting. What this is about is empowering consumers to choose their category of interest. That’s one component of the data that will drive the delivery of relevant advertising. It goes into the user profile. And then there might be a component related to context, a component related to carrier data, a component related to publishers’ data – or a keyword from a search. All these are components and the ultimate goal is to drive consumer relevancy through this focus on consumer intelligence– and the better we can understand our mobile ad network, the better we can serve relevant ads to consumers.

Throughout this process three things are critical. One is full-transparency. Two is respecting their privacy and making sure all this data is completely anonymous. And third is preference. We’re allowing them to tell advertisers ‘these are my categories of preference.’

Q: What’s the roll out and what are plans beyond the iPhone?

A: That’s a great question. We’re rolling this out at the end of Q2, and you’re going to get a link to a Beta site where you can go in on your iPhone – or any device – and just scroll through and change categories of interest to suit you. It’s incredibly simple. The idea was to keep it as simple as possible.

Q: It it’s for all handsets from the get-go?

A: It is for all handsets and all advertisers. It’s on iPhone and on mobile Internet, so it’s going to be limited at first. But, as it rolls out, it’s going to obviously develop [momentum]. The goal is ultimately to drive more relevant advertising to everyone on all handsets.

Q: I mentioned that other companies have placed some form of permission-based advertising at the core of what they do. Take BuzzCity. BuzzCity even surveys its members and shares this anonymized information with advertisers to help them target their audience. From an initial look at Jumptap is different because it offers the data to third-party publishers. This would perhaps be the differentiating factor. At the other end of the spectrum there is Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism solution, [a solution that harnesses permission-based advertising – specifically, text messaging – to improve targeting.] So, there are other flavors out there…

A: No one else is doing this the way we are. It is absolutely one of our key differentiators. We also have 80 percent of the carrier business in the U.S. AT&T works with two sales partners, right? One is Jumptap and the other is Yahoo. Needless to say, we’re in good company.

We also have the broadest IP portfolio of any mobile ad network. And we have our pay-per-lick performance marketplace that allows users to bid at a keyword level, category, handset or carrier. We’re the only ones who have all of that.

You bring up the mobile social networks such as BuzzCity. I think it’s a little bit different within a social media construct. That is one component that can be added to the user profile, certainly. But remember we are not taking a siloed approach. It’s not just contextual, not just consumer category information, not just behavioural, not just carrier information. It is all of these components aggregated across multiple forms of data to drive relevancy. That’s our consumer intelligence.

Q: Another part of this might be that you are a neutral network. You belong to a group of ad networks – including the likes of Millennial Media and inMobi – that is not in the Google or Apple camp…

A: I think that’s a great way to break out the marketplace now and there are three groups, so to speak. There’s a lot coming from Apple that I agree with — and there’s a lot that I don’t. On the one hand, Steve Jobs came out publicly and said that mobile advertising sucks and that he has this goal of driving relevancy right to his network. That’s something we applaud. It’s very much in line with our strategy of customer intelligence, so that I think is dead-on.

The piece I don’t think is dead-on is his approach. He’s almost creating a walled garden for himself, almost an AOL of the mobile Internet. Advertisers really don’t care where their ad runs. They care about reaching their audience, not the device. iPhone happens to be the sexy thing right now, but Android will be the next sexy thing – and it [Android] is already is starting to catch a lot of that limelight.

Imagine you were a TV buyer and you had to buy a 30 second TV spot and you had to be cognisant of whether your audience is watching television on a Samsung, Sony or Pioneer TV set. And then you had to worry about whether they were watching it over cable, satellite or a dish network. And then you had to customize your creative accordingly. And so on. It doesn’t make for an efficient marketplace and that’s where I think Apple is missing the boat a little bit. They’re becoming a walled garden in advertising, which I think is not good for the mobile advertising ecosystem in the long term.

Q: Finally, where is the excitement?

A: We’re doing a lot in rich media. Our Unified Rich Media Platform [which I detail further down] delivers the industry’s broadest set of rich media units – for both mobile Web and in apps – all from one network. And our rich media platform is completely open. So, if you’re a rich media buyer for you plug right into our system. We work with iPhone, Android, Palm, and Blackberry. We’re an open system and we help advertisers reach their target audience.

***

MY TAKE: Permission-based advertising sits at the core of a variety of approaches and solutions I analyze in my upcoming report for GigaOM PRO, a project that has evolved from a SWOT analysis of mobile advertising solutions (including Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism and JumpTap’s solution powered by “consumer intelligence”) into a wider discussion of the business value of permission-based (opt-in).

We have ample evidence that permission-based messaging delivers positive results and response rates. A messaging approach also allows brands and other companies in the ecosystem to build on this personal profiling data (with the individual’s permission) by adding questions to refine the profile. This way, an individual who has signed up for car ads (a broad topic) might divulge that they are more into Audi than BMW and even say why they prefer one over the other. All voluntary information an advertiser would no doubt value.

Display is a different. It’s more one-way than two-way, and there is a danger of “spamming” people with repeat advertising because there aren’t enough ads in a category – or because the ad networks can’t identify unique users (and therefore gauge whether an individual user has seen the same ad already, or not). Jumptap claims to have addressed the latter with its IP, technology and techniques that allow the ad network to identify 50 million uniques per month in the U.S. alone.

This week’s announcement builds on that foundation. The focus is to increase the value and relevancy of mobile display ads. (Thus, Jumptap does not compete with companies that focus on mobile messaging and direct marketing.) To achieve this Jumptap inputs the advertising categories chosen by the individual into a much larger, more sophisticated equation that includes data from carriers, searches and some context. This covers the bases to provide people a better user experience (provided there is a good supply of ads in each category), and that should certainly lead to high advertiser ROI and publisher yields. Of course, the proof is in the numbers. We’ll have to wait a while for those. In the meantime, Jumptap’s move can be read as an important confirmation that all advertising – not just messaging – is correctly evolving to provide people more of a say in what they get.

Disclaimer: Bango is an MSG supporter with a branded thought leadership presence on this website; Jumptap has been an MSG supporter and sponsored a series of podcasts.

What do developers really want/need in order to make apps and (ultimately) make money?

Why is this question key? Put simply, the companies that get this right will have insights to build the correct mix of capabilities to forge and support a tight-knit developer community, creating relationships that will allow them to take a central spot in the emerging apps value web (not chain – it’s not that kind of a game).

There are no easy answers, but the panels and discussions during the dev day confirm that developers — creative people who are interested in cash AND community – are likely to gravitate to platforms and app stores that help them cultivate and connect with their fans.

LITMUS LEARNINGS

I first started thinking this through during Mobile World Congress (MWC) and the no-holds barred session I moderated on OneAPI. The panel – made up of the architects behind this milestone move: Nauby Jacob, VP, Users Experience, Bell Canada; Larry Baziw, Director Next Generation Services Strategy, Rogers Wireless; SandipMuckerjee, VP of Business Strategy and Marketing, Alcatel Lucent; Shane Logan, Director, Services and Collaboration, Telus; and Al Snyder CEO, Aepona – examined what developers require and how/why operators and enablers can/must work together to deliver. The positive feedback has been overwhelming and I have reached out to each of the participants to participate in a follow-up roundtable podcast on MSG, so watch this space.

(By way of background, the GSMA launched the commercial pilot in Canada as part of its OneAPI initiative, working with Canada’s leading operators to demonstrate the viability and benefits of providing developers standardized APIs for mobile networks. The pilot in Canada – the topic of my MWC panel – represents the first time developers are able to gain commercial access to the network assets of multiple operators from a single gateway. )

But it was the opening presentation by Paul Golding – pioneer, long-time thought leader in the mobile applications space and, more recently, a consultant to O2 Telefonica — that challenged everything we (think) we know about developers.

When Paul took the podium and showed the opening slide – where he had purposely crossed out the title of the planned presentation and replaced the words “Supporting Developers” with “EmPOWERING Developers” — it was clear that this was no marketing-speak. His message to us: Developers need feature-rich APIs and much, much more. (Indeed, Paul’s thinking on this topic left a deep and lasting impression, and I am pleased to report that Paul has agreed to join MSG’s roster of authors and contribute a guest column that builds on his simple, elegant and path-breaking ideas.)

In his presentation (here on SlideShare) Paul introduces three kinds of “power” that interest/attract developers most.

CONNECTED POWER is all about the APIs and platforms that allow developers to reach customers; CASH POWER is all about the APIs and platforms that allow developers to earn money (directly or indirectly); and COOL POWER is all about the APIs and platforms that allow developers to do something cool and interesting (translated: innovate).

Sure, it’s about technology (CASH POWER). But it’s also about harnessing everything we know from the business books about encouraging and channeling creative energy to cultivate developer communities that make great apps to delight the customer (CONNECTED POWER).

And – with a nod to Eric von Hippel, my favorite interview, author of Democratizing Innovation and THE authority on innovation – it’s about connecting developers with their lead users — the users who have a high incentive to solve a problem and the ability to innovate (COOL POWER). Combine all that (translated: enable all that) and it can yield a developer community and a selection of apps that can truly set the bar.

As Paul pointed out: O2 Litmus has recruited 7,000+ O2 UK customers and then helped developer connect with them to gain insights and – interestingly – lay the groundwork for a kind of app developer fan club that provides developers important feedback and critical buzz. (After all, fans will share their picks of favorite apps and cool developers with others – creating the same kind of virtuous cycle than can catapult local bands to rock heroes.)

Paul has an even better idea: Operators can help the process by simply putting fans in touch with developers. “Add some other cool brands to the mix and then let things happen.”

At this juncture, I am also reminded of Mob4Hire and the traction it has gained for its awesome concept which combines crowd sourcing with app testing. It’s a super-sharp business model that Paul Poutanen, Mob4Hire President and Founder, tells me he is expanding to allow people testing the apps to rank/share the ones they like most with everyone else. A great grassroots way to help apps get discovered and gain mindshare. More about this in an exclusive interview with Paul later this month.

The takeaway here: helping developers connect with people (fans) is emerging as key requirement of app stores and platforms.

NOKIA DEV DAY

When Mobile Monday Austria reached out to me to speak at its event over the weekend, one that also allowed me access to developers and other people who love mobile, I was thrilled. It offered me an important opportunity to sanity-check some of Paul’s key messages and test a few of my own ideas about the future of app marketing.

Cool Power: Yes, it matters – a lot! An informal poll of developers yielded a welcome confirmation of the qualities platforms/app store providers must have beyond awesome, rich-feature APIs. Put simply, developers require “partners” that help them create apps and generate revenues. And they will align themselves (eagerly) with those companies that make a conscious effort to help them connect with customers, cultivate fans and allow them to feel that they have made a contribution that matters in the scheme of things. For some developers, a functioning feedback loop tops the list. For others, being able to believe that the platform provider really listens, absorbs, respects and internalizes constructive criticism is paramount.

This came across loud and clear when naxxatoe, a developer in the audience, took the microphone to tell Nokia execs what should be at the top of their Ovi agenda. “It’s about connecting people,” he said, unaware of the play on Nokia’s own motto (Connecting People).

Kudos to naxxatoe for saying what had to be said and my respect goes to Jure Sustersic, Forum Nokia Biz Dev Manager EMEA, for seeking out naxxatoe and other developers between sessions to hear them out on what they loved – and hated – about Ovi. (Inspired by this exchange I have decided to produce an informal series of podcasts to give these developers a voice. My sincere thanks to naxxatoe for challenging me to think and see things very differently. I look forward to showcasing his ideas in the first in the series later this month.)

SUPERMARKETS VS FARMERS MARKETS

Regular readers will know that I am a great believer in the individual. We will accept the content we want on our terms – and we are most likely to accept content (and mobile marketing/advertising can be considered a form of content) if it is in tune with our interests, passions and context. Mobile (an intensely personal device) allows us to communicate all of the above, allowing (with our permission!) content and services companies a way to connect the dots and provide us with stuff (content, services, apps, advertising and all things digital) we are likely to appreciate.

Obviously, there is little room in the scheme of things for one-site-fits all. In fact, our requirement (even demand) for stuff we want the way we want it sits at the core of the Long Tail. While Chris Anderson didn’t explore mobile in his milestone book, we have nonetheless witnessed the impact in mobile. It began with an avalanche of content and then a plethora of portals where we could find it. (Well – content discovery and search is another issue altogether…)

Fast forward and we are witnessing the emergence of a Long Tail of app stores.

My Mobile Monday presentation (which included the findings of the recent Netsize Mobile Trends Survey) explored the evidence for this mega-trend and why this could be good news for developers. For one it means more choice for us (a key requirement for a successful app store, according to the Netsize survey). But it also means more choice for the developers, many of whom told me they are actively seeking alternatives to the Apple app store where they have to beg for shelf space (so that their app might be accepted/included) and then pray for promotion (so that their app might be featured where people can find and buy it).

With 25+ app stores and counting we can’t say we have a Long Tail. But there are more options then ever before. Want an enterprise app? A good chance you might find it at Ondeego. How about a porn app? MiKandi is a good bet. And the list goes on…

With these observations (and in preparation for my talk) I reached out to Mike Lurye, Director, Product Marketing Amdocs Interactive. After an invigorating brainstorm session we agreed that there will be many kinds of app stores, managed in many different ways.

There will be Supermarkets (app stores such as the Apple app store) where the provider gives suppliers shelf space, sets the prices and is pretty much focused on moving merchandise and making money. And there will be Farmers Markets (niche app stores and operator app stores – and combinations of the two) where the relationship between the supplier (a farmer with fresh produce) and the customer (people who really appreciate the opportunity to buy organic) is what clinches the deal.

Surprisingly, it was this observation and the suggestion that there will be marketplaces that fit their needs that got the buzz. Developers took the microphone and told me they  would indeed want to sell their apps via a farmers market – if they could. Several even asked me how they could get into contact with a Long Tail app store.

And – thanks to Mike – I can point to a little known example that shows this approach is not only an ideal – it is also an ideal business model making money – now. (BTW, I am also pleased to report that Mike has also agreed to a podcast to explore the supermarket/farmers market analogy and much more! I’m scheduling the appointment as we speak, so check back regularly or follow us on Twitter.

MALAYSIA SHOWS THE WAY?

Malaysian mobile operator Maxis has an app store and a mission: “to nurture and foster interesting developer applications for our community.” (An excerpt from this must-see video interview with Nava Wathan, Director 1Maxis, Maxis Communications.)

In Nava’s view, the operator app store is not impacted by handset app stores because consumers “will go both ways.” They will go to the Supermarkets (my wording) and they will also visit the Farmers Market. In the case of Maxis, the farmers market approach revolves around its sharp focus on local Malaysian apps “more relevant to the Malaysian consumer.” Thus, Maxis is the place to go for “something that is Malaysian.”

But it’s not just about enabling choice; the operator benefits from enabling payment. Maxis has opened up billing APIs for micropayments in apps and is looking to do the same for location, P2P sharing and advertising (allowing the developer to pull an add from Maxis instead of talking to ad agencies around Malaysia).Finally Nava sees that his company can also play a key role in connecting its developers with markets outside Malaysia. Put another way, Maxis can expand the reach of local developers by “surfacing our apps from our local developer community” on app stores run by the handset makers.

My take: As my upcoming series of podcasts will show, developers want to make money but they also demand a feedback channel that will allow them to consistently create better apps for their fans/customers. (After all, recurring revenues are the key to real and sustainable business). They also want some more say in how their apps are marketed and assurances that the app store/platform provider that they – like a farmers market – will do what they can to help developers build and nurture the relationships they need to innovate and – ultimately – succeed. One-off sales or fan following? Developers appear to want the latter. It’s now up to the providers to decide what they want to be (supermarkets or farmers markets) and execute. I know that Nokia has taken careful note of developer’s gripes and suggestions during the event and I will reach out to Nokia soon for their thoughts.

***

My personal thanks to the organizers of this excellent event — Aleksandra Schmid and Philipp Nagele (Mobile Monday Austria) and Mark A.M. Kramer. It was a great idea to link a mobile developer event with a Mobile Monday. It has exposed me to new ideas and allowed me to make some new friends. Warmest regards to naxxatoe and to the other developers who connected with me to share their platform likes/dislikes, and to Dave Dempsey from Radio FM4, who moderated the event and brought some valuable views into the discussion. If ever someone has the interest and empathy to bridge the divide between developers and everyone one else it’s Dave. I hope someone reaches out to him to do just that…I’m sure the results would rock!

Regular readers will recall that MSG was commissioned to conduct Mobile Advertising UK, a research project research endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), to expertly document the state of the mobile advertising industry in the U.K. and identify growth opportunities in the emerging mobile advertising marketplace. The report – which combines valuable consumer insights gathered by ÆNEAS Strategy Consulting and Management (coordinated by my esteemed colleagues Tarik Fawzi and Atva van Zanten) and qualitative research based on 20+ interviews with operators, enablers, agencies, and brands contributed by MSG – will be formally released in July.

In the meantime, allow me to share some of the key findings and data points based on an online survey of 1,000+ UK mobile users. (And please follow along in the complete presentation below via SlideShare, and listen in to this audio interview via The Really Mobile Project, where I put some of the stats into perspective.)

At a glance:

• Today the mobile advertising market in the U.K. totals nearly GBP 30 million ($48 million).
• Mobile advertising accounts for only 0.16 percent of the total advertising market – which is where Internet advertising was in 1998.
• ÆNEAS Strategy forecasts that mobile advertising will see accelerated growth in four years and so account for a significant portion of advertising spending. Drivers include: A calculated growth rate of 99 percent in 2008 vs. 2007; the overall shift towards digital advertising; and increased demand for targeting, reach, and a medium that -like no other – allows advertisers to identify and track unique visitors. (For more on this unique capability and the benefits I encourage you to read my own road test of mobile analytics solutions.)
• Only 32 percent of those surveyed have a positive attitude about receiving advertising on their mobile phone. However, 64 percent said they would accept advertising is they are properly incentivized, and 70 percent said they would accept mobile advertising if they are incentivized AND in control.
• The majority of those surveyed felt 5 advertising messages per day was the limit of what they would accept.

Unsurprisingly, youth are most familiar with mobile advertising channels (specifically rich media such as MMS and in-game advertising (approaches we know from the likes of Unkasoft). What’s more a whopping 84 percent of youth surveyed has a positive attitude toward mobile advertising if incentivized. The bottom line: Acceptance of mobile advertising is right up there with TV and other more traditional media IF we can get our head around what incentives to offer and develop the mechanisms that put people in control.

No clue on the right incentives, but it’s not a given that companies need to offer cash to capture people’s attention. In the fireside chat I recorded with Rory Sutherland, Ogilvy UK Vice Chairman, we discuss the value of branded utilities and life-simplifying services. Will people accept advertising if the pay-off is less stress/more convenience? It sure looks that way!

Rory Sutherland audio interview

A highlight for both me and the audience was the entertaining and educational fireside chat with Rory, whose interest in -well – us and the finer points of behavioral psychology brought much-needed balance and big-picture vision to the discussion. As he points out in this recent opinion column in New Media Age: The job at hand is to use ideas to turn human understanding into business advantage. During our interview he made it clear that mobile is a medium perfectly suited to achieve just this goal. (Listen to the audio interview here. It’s 28:40 – but time flies when you’re having fun – and this sheer genius!

A few excerpts that made us think:

YES WE CAN!: Mobile can change people’s behavior – primarily because it takes the heavy-lifting out of doing things we might not do otherwise. Case in point: Charity. A moment of “epiphany” for Rory was the huge response to SMS campaigns asking for donations, although we have assumed that youth is not a demographic to give so generously. As he put it: “If this technology can change behavior that significantly, then who cares how good it is at advertising. Advertising is about changing opinions as a half-way house to changing their behavior.” The bottom line: If you can change people’s behavior from the get-go with mobile, then it deserves a top-notch spot in our campaigns.

LIFE-SIMPLYING: Rory’s message: Don’t dismiss branded utility because it’s unglamorous. Being brandedly useful is key. (And here is an example from Rory’s Twitter feed that illustrates this approach. The IBM Scout is a branded app that helps people get the most out of the Wimbledon 2009 Championships, providing live coverage of just about everything.

COUCH POTATOES: Let’s face it – many of us are. Rory figured this out when he was watching a line of cars at a drive-in ordering fast-food. Not one got out of the car to order at the counter – even though it was empty. Connect the dots, and it’s clear we are all a bit lazy. Apply this observation on basic human behavior to mobile and you have a powerful combination indeed! We will likely reach to the medium at hand (the personal device we have with us at all times) because it’s more convenient. “Channel preference almost trumps brand preference.” Some people may prefer Pizza Hut, but if they can order from Dominos by text, then they will likely switch for this reason. The bottom line: “Modality and modal preferences seem in a weird way to trump other things.”

WHAT’S THE POINT?: We have lost sight of what mobile can do. (A point that also came out in the research I conducted.) We’re hung up on old models and enamored of new technology, and we are missing some big opportunities. Imagine using text campaigns to encourage impulse savings instead of impulse buying. Or how about a brand that simply harnesses mobile to improve listening? As Rory pointed out: “Advertising is talking and listening. That’s a perfectly reasonable form of marketing, and mobile brilliant and you can do it in real-time.”

METRICS: We have become prisoners of our own metrics. To show us how ridiculous our obsession has become, Rory compares media buyers to alcoholics. “Alcoholics buy booze on a single metric: How much alcohol do I get per pound (GBP), and this is how media buyers buy media.”

MOBILE MATTERS:  “Mobile has been the medium of first resort and dangerous to neglect it which is probably why Google has been scared. Search has been the first place you go on the Web and mobile preempts this in some respects.”

By way of background, Rory’s bio:

Born in Usk, Monmouthshire in 1965, Rory read Classics at Christ’s College, Cambridge, before joining Ogilvy as a Graduate Trainee in 1988. After 18 months spent as the world’s worst account handler (as a desperate remedial measure he was once booked onto a time management course, but got the date wrong) Rory became a copywriter in June 1990. He has worked on Amex, BT, Compaq, Microsoft, IBM, BUPA, easyJet, Unilever, winning a few awards along the way. He was appointed Creative Director of OgilvyOne in 1997 and ECD in 1998. In 2005 he was appointed Vice Chairman on the Ogilvy Group in the UK in recognition of his improved timekeeping.

By an amazing stroke of luck (his brother is an academic) Rory first used the Internet in 1987. Hence he had the advantage in 1994 of knowing what it was and what it might do a few years ahead of many colleagues. Most people would have combined this knowledge of marketing and technology to make a fortune; not Rory. Instead he became the first Briton to have his credit card details stolen online, thereby losing £22.45.

In his spare time, Rory collects self-aggrandizing job titles. He was President of the Direct Jury at Cannes in 2007, and was elected President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising in 2009. He is also the Technology Correspondent of the Spectator, the world’s oldest English language magazine. At quiet moments in the proceedings over the next few days you may like to pay a furtive visit to his blog at http://snipr.com/da9bq

Rory is married with twin daughters of 7 (Hetty and Millie) and lives in the former home of Napoleon III in Brasted in Kent. Unfortunately in the attic.

Listen to the podcast here.