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.

Although often referred to as the “third screen” – there are actually more mobile devices (2.8 billion) world wide than internet PCs and TVs combined (2.5 billion)!  

A few reports have been released over the last week that highlight the fact that adoption continues to grow in Canada and how people (and marketers) are using Mobile devices are changing too.

Here are some highlights:

Text Messaging (SMS):  793.3 million text messages were sent in June 2007 alone – or about 26.5 million per day. 4.3 billion text messages were sent up until June of this year – which equals the total of all text messages sent in 2006. It’s very possible that we’ll see upwards of 10 billion text messages sent this year in Canada.  One reason driving this trend is the mass adoption of all you can eat SMS plans in Canada. For about $10 / month, you can text all you want.  Marketers have also been getting more into the game – there are about 300 active shortcodes in Canada right now.  Source: CWTA

Mobile Ad serving: According to Admob – one of the world’s largest mobile marketplace, 42% of all mobile ad impressions (text and browse) are U.S. based. India is next at 10%, followed by South Africa at 6.9% and the UK at 5.4%. Canada’s inventory represents only 1.6%. Although mobile ads can be served many different ways (downloads, mobile communities, news & information mobile web portals), Canadian carriers have not yet embraced mobile ad serving like in other countries. Look for this to change soon.

Mobile Browse: With no “all you can eat” data plans yet available to the consumer in Canada, usage of Mobile browse is still pretty low at around 11%.  This is less than half the world’s average which is around 25%.  In countries where data plans are either fixed or really cheap, the mobile web has really taken off. The top 5 markets for the mobile web are the U.S., India, South Africa, UK, and Indonesia.  Also interesting is that 4 of the top 10 mobile devices in the U.S. are PDAs – three blackberry models and the Samsung blackjack.  Until the Canadian carriers offer really cheap or fixed data plans, we don’t expect the same growth in mobile web as other mobile channels. This may all change when the iphone eventually makes it way to Canada…so stay tuned!

It’s been an exciting year so far for Mobile. It may be time to start referring to mobile as the “first” screen.

Hot off the presses – check out Marketing Magazine’s current issue which has a focus on brands in motion: how mobile is revolutionizing marketing in Canada.

1) Brand Power

2) I want my PDA

3) Measuring Mobile 

Although Canada still falls behind even the U.S. in mobile penetration and usage, we are at a point where it’s hard to argue that the Mobile channel is not relevant in Canada. How are you incorporating mobile into your marketing plan?

In support of their issue on Mobile, Marketing Magazine is hosting two Executive breakfast meetings this week in Toronto and Montreal featuring special guest speaker John Hadl, Mobile Adviser to Procter & Gamble US, will discuss the role of mobile in a consumer-centric, media-fragmented world.

As part of the two meetings I’ll be presenting a case study on how a leading Automotive company has gone beyond “text to win” to create true customer engagement in the Mobile channel in Canada. President & CEO Michael Carter from MyThumb Interactive will also be presenting a case study on how a leading beer company has created engagement through mobile.

The announcement of Google buying Jaiku is making waves in the industry. Imran Ali at Mobile Messaging 2.0 is calling it the most significant acquisition ever by Google. I’m calling it the continuation of a cold war arms race between Nokia and Google for world domination. Well World Mobile domination (the new WMD?) anyway.

From the East (or near-East… or near-near-East) there is Nokia. They are already world leaders in the mobile device space and have a neat mobile social network called MOSH. With their acquisition of Enpocket they now have a best in class mobile ad-delivery platform. With their acquisition of NAVTEQ they now have a best in class GPS-based mapping system to compete in the location based services (LBS) space.  With the Gartner Group forecasting that GPS based handsets will grow to around 40% by 2011 from 13% in 2007, clearly GPS or LBS could become the next killer mobile application. With all these acquisitions in the social networking / content space, Nokia is starting to look a lot like Google… 

From the West we have Google. They own search world wide and have become a massive advertising power with their Google AdWords platform…. a platform that is now being offered for free for mobile for a limited time.  Some have speculated that a mobile AdWords platform could subsidize carrier costs for the eventual release of a Google phone into the marketplace. Imagine a 3G phone loaded with Google widgets that costs little to nothing for the consumer. The g-phone could be an i-phone killer… or anything Nokia killer.

Combine the Google acquisition of Jaiku with the other recent announcement that Google also purchased Zingku – a mobile social utility tool that is web and SMS based and we have the makings of a mobile social networking platform that will rival all others.  Consider that Google already has a great installed base with Orkut (which is more popular than facebook in some parts of the world), it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that they’ll be playing in the mobile social networking space very soon. With all these acquisitions and developments, Google is starting to look a lot like Nokia…

Who will win this cold war…or will one buy the other eventually? One thing is for sure, following the mobile space is going to be very interesting over the next 18 months!

UPDATE 10/11: Nokia is also going into mobile search – check out this article on mobile semantic search!

Do you twitter? It’s a question I recently posed on my facebook account. Only a handful even knew what Twitter was…only three actually admitted to having a Twitter account.

Twitter is a really neat free social utility tool – it essentially allows you to post very short messages about what you are currently doing RIGHT NOW to the Twitter website – which you can personalize. This is very similar to creating status updates on MSN messenger or facebook…or even setting up email or SMS auto-replies.

The neat thing about Twitter is that you can follow somebody’s Twitter in many ways – either through a website (by visiting their site), as an update on your IM, as a SMS alert, RSS, or email. Think of it as micro-blogging – or blogging for people who don’t have enough to say to actually blog… or for people who want to say a few things but don’t want to create an entire blog posting around it.

I created my own Twitter account and admit i’m struggling to really find a use for it. After investing significant time in building my social equity on facebook, why do i need a separate social utility tool for status updates when facebook already does this automatically to my network of friends? Do i really want to tell people what i’m up to all the time? Do people even care? Will people accept my invitation to join Twitter in a lame attempt to make my twitter page more popular? I’m thinking the answer is no to all of the above.

Having said that, some people have said that Twitter has become a hot newswire – industry insight and news is sometimes available through a Twitter feed before it hits the blogs or news pages. I guess that’s important for some industry people…but does anybody else really care if they hear about industry news 3 hours before they read it in their RSS newsreader? One sign that Twitter has become a hit is the fact there are lots of imitations now available globally – like Pownce, Jaiku and Dodgeball.  Wikipedia reports that there are over 100 knock-offs of Twitter now. It seems like instant messaging 2.0 has arrived. 

As marketers, how do we leverage this channel to reach our audiences and deliver messages? If you are marketing an established personality (or trying to create one), this is an interesting space to play in. Celebrities and politicians have setup their own Twitter pages in order to connect with a younger audience. U.S. presidential candidate Obama has his own Twitter page here.

In previous blog posts I’ve discussed the idea around “Identity 2.0” or creating a way for people to manage their online profiles centrally so that they don’t need to manage multiple accounts or create new ones when they want to join new communities. I would suggest the same thing is or will be needed for micro-blogging to go mainstream.  Wouldn’t it be great if somebody created a widget that automatically updated my status on all my channels? In this scenario all I would do is create a status update on facebook and watch (or not) as the widget automatically publishes my status to Twitter, Pownce, MSN Messenger, my RSS feed, personal website, blog,  or email. I reference facebook because it’s easy, it’s already there and there is already huge social equity in the platform.  

If Twitter can build more social equity beyond the early adopter tech / celebrity / politician communities, it has a great chance of being really useful. The best way to do this will be through real integration with facebook, myspace, and all other social networking tools

UPDATE 10/07: IF you actually click on the Twitter settings within facebook, you can have Twitter automatically update your facebook status. Sweet!

Social networks and text messaging have changed the way people interact with each other… and now it’s changed the way bars and clubs promote their events.  Gone are the days of the promotional flyer as your principle communication device. 

A long time friend living in Ottawa reports that his promotional printing business has dropped to almost nothing over the last 7 months. Having been in the business for over 10 years, he’s seen his share of ups and downs…but nothing like this before. The reason? He reports that promoters have moved to social networking platforms (primarily facebook) and text messaging for all their outreach work.  By now we are all aware of the popularity of facebook (Toronto is currently the second largest network within facebook in the world), but did you know that we are on pace to send over 8 billion text messages this year in Canada? Last year Canadians sent 4.3 billion messages – which was three times more then the previous year!  

Besides the continued adoption of SMS and the creation of niche social networking sites or micro-sites within existing platforms, what’s next? One candidate is the eventual adoption of MMS or multimedia messaging service. Going from SMS (or text messaging) to MMS is like going from radio to TV. SMS is still the killer application for mobile marketing, but MMS is coming and could change the way we promote our events, brands, or services. Again.

Instead of sending a message with a link to a site where you can register for an event… imagine sending a VIP ticket via MMS that can be used as entry into your event, meeting, or conference? Or imagine sending coupons to mobile devices that are redeemable at your favorite retailer?

The technological barriers in sending MMS betwen carriers has been resolved. As soon as carriers introduce pricing that makes MMS affordable (much like they did a few years ago with all you can eat SMS plans), we will see another paradigm shift in how people and marketers interact with each other. This should be interesting.