5 Lessons learned from the Mobile Breakfast: Brands in Motion with John Hardl

Marketing Magazine hosted the Mobile Breakfast: Brands in motion recently in Toronto and Montreal featuring John Hardl who is a global advisor to P&G on mobile marketing.

There were over 100 marketers at the Toronto event and over 70 in Montreal from Fortune 500 companies in Auto, Financial, Pharma, and Retail.

John delivered an engaging presentation that covered his definition of mobile marketing and presented several case studies on how he has been leveraging mobile as an essential part of his marketing mix for Proctor & Gamble.

Here are some key takeaways / lessons learned from his presentation:

1) Ad placements on carrier platforms in the U.S. are resulting in great ROI & engagement. In some campaigns, John experiences a higher number of unique visitors on mobile compared to web.

2) Mobile web is part of every campaign - but people would rather SMS for the initial engagement / opt-in process than provide an email address in a mobile web form. Mobile web has worked great in retail when purchase decisions are being made. Consumers are pulling up sites on what colour lipstick to buy for example.

3) Marketers buy audiences - not tools… so be sure to partner with a mobile marketing agency that will partner with you - not just sell you a nifty platform or tool box.  

4) Mobile works best as part of integrated marketing strategy. John has experienced great lift from magazine ads and television that include a call to action to an SMS short code or mobile website.

5) Mobile provides a constant engagement mechanism in a fragmented world.

In Canada, we don’t have access to a lot of inventory from the carriers for mobile banner placements - but this bound to change soon.  Because consumer data plans are not yet fixed or really cheap like they are in the U.S., mobile web in Canada is not as integrated into an overall marketing campaign as it is already in the

U.S. With 98% carrier coverage in Canada for mobile and over 19 million devices in use, it’s only a matter of time before we are able to integrate mobile marketing as part of our overall marketing mix to the same degree as our colleagues in the U.S.