The Era of Mobile Marketing

Late last year, Google announced its acquisition of Admob (whose mobile platform has been particularly popular on iPhones), days after Apple declared it had accepted a landmark 100,000 iPhone apps. Admob’sacquisition has signalled a change in not only the mobile marketing industry, but the mobile user’s attitude towards mobile marketing.

Mobile marketing has had an interesting history. A decade after the first short mobile message (SMS) was sent in 1992, mobile marketing took off, beginning with the Labbatt Brewing Company’s launching of a SMS short code marketing campaign in 2002. However, for a number of years, mobile marketing was seen as intrusive and a violation of one’s privacy.

This all changed when Apple opened its App Store in 2008, wherein it rewarded 70% of the revenues of the designer and seller of an app. It was at this point that mobile marketing began to soar. Apps developed by normal, everyday people opened up new levels of creativity, capitalised by astute companies, such as Pizza Hut, Gap and BMW, which utilised the growing popularity of Apps among touch-screen phone users to reach their target audience. Importantly, brands caught onto the idea that mobile marketing is most effective not when it’s an intrusive ‘advert’, but when it can be integrated into the life of the mobile user as a useful tool to enhance their everyday life.

A recent study by HipCricket revealed this change in attitudes towards mobile marketing. 85% of respondents agreed that the mobile web was a valuable source for interesting information and nearly a third regularly scanned retailers’ mobile websites to seek out promotions. Of those who had received mobile marketing offers, 47% had brand recall.

But what does this mean for Generation Y in business? While many apps are marketing tools, companies like Perq have developed an app to help employees manage their time off. AdMob reports that one fifth of iPhone users are 18-24, implying Generation Y’s increasing interest in the iPhone, so what better way then, for employers to engage and manage their Generation Y employees than with an app? An app for time management, an app for tips on priority-setting, an app to help plan travel to client meetings... Generation Y seeks fun at work and this is a great way for employers to help create such an environment for this high-achieving cohort.