Digital

Mobile Marketing, with Nihal Mehta

Nihal Mehta is CEO and founder of Ipsh! a mobile marketing firm that began in the States and is now expanding into Europe. Founded 5 years ago, they were one of the first agencies to focus solely on marketing over mobile devices.

Their website is really good with lots of news stories - good source of research.

In August this year in the UK alone 3.6 billion texts messages were sent. Bearing this in mind I thought it might be interesting to ask Nihal some questions to understand a bit more about what mobile marketing is and what challenges he faces.

For more UK mobile stats and lots of information, check out Text It - Very useful.

Mobhappy is also a very good mobile marketing blog from the States.

Mobile Marketing, with Nihal Mehta

How would you define what ipsh does?

Ipsh is a mobile marketing agency that connects brands to consumers through mobile phones and mobile technology.

What is the range of the mobile marketing offering?

Our offering is no longer limited to the purely executional - we now provide stragey and creative for our clients. We are helping brands extend their presence over mobile devices.

When mobile marketing first appeared agencies that did it were limited to providing just the technology, but now we are advising clients about the how, where, when and why of their campaigns. It is a much more wholistic approach to things; the clients will now come to us and say, "We have this problem, how can we solve it?" as opposed to "We want you to do XYZ mobile campaign for us."

You can now reach over 2 billion handsets worldwide using SMS. That's a lot of people.

What is your role within ipsh?

As CEO I provide vision and strategic input alongside overseeing new business and internal management.

What motivated you to set ipsh up?

I started a website after college called phillytonight.com which informed people about events happening in the evening in Philadelphia. This expanded to 13 cities worldwide and then we began to offer information over SMS. Then the dotcom bubble burst and so we had to look to new ways to monetise our assets so we created ipsh.

The company was run out of my apartment in San Francisco for 3 years, in true start up style!

How did you make ipsh a success?

Our major strength has always been our complete focus on helping brands in their mobile strategy; we never diluted our offering.

The great thing is now that the market has finally arrived - it has caught up with all the predictions we have been making for the last 5 and a half years. We now have a tangible and viable market for our products and services and with our association with Omnicom there can be no doubts about our credibility.

What keeps you up at night?

How to make the business more profitable. How to increase the depth of our offering to clients - not just increasing the number of new services we can offer them but expanding the services we already offer.

What qualities do you admire in others?

Passion. People who are passionate about what they do, whatever that may be. If they are doing something they love, then they are already a success no matter how good they may actually be.

What frustrates you in others?

A lack of passion, living for the 9-5 routine. The kind of people who are hanging on to something they should have let go a long time ago, like a relationship. They have yet to end it out of sheer apathy.

What trends or changes in consumer behaviour have you noticed?

Consumers are now a lot more knowledgable - they know all about the possible uses of mobile phones. Also the demographic of people interacting with mobile technology is getting older - take ringtones. The demographic of people buying these is getting older and older.

What is the future for ipsh?

The future is to get brands to truly understand the mobile strategy and have dedicated account teams for certain brands as in a large traditional agency.

What is your favourite piece of communication at the moment?

Any piece of communication that can capture the brand message and the brand demographic perfectly is my idea of great communication. The best example I have of this at the moment is the apple vs pc ad running in the States at the moment.

Digital and the Future - Nigel Palmer

As this blog is all about giving people a better understanding of the marketing industry, I will be interviewing a series of people who are far more knowledgable than me about what they do and anything else that comes to mind.

This interview is with Nigel Palmer, Head of Account Management at Agency Republic (NIgel is no longer with Republic, he is Business Director at Saatchi and Saatchi. We talked about account management (which is one of the jobs most grads end up doing when they start), digital and what the future holds for digital agencies. Enjoy, and let me know whether you agree, or what you think.

So, Nigel, what is account management all about? What does it mean?

Account people, or 'suits' as they are affectionately known are the client's advocate within the agency and the agency's advocate with the client. You have to represent the client's best interests to the agency, and vice versa.

And what is the difference between above and below the line?

There is a common myth that there is a huge difference between above and below the line. IN reality the rule of communications is the same and it is:

Who is the communication targeted at?

What is it trying to achieve?

The analysis for a TV ad, a viral piece of digital, a mobile campaign, is all the same. The discipline is the same - only the technicalities and execution differ.

A better way to divide up the industry is between broadcast and relationship.

Broadcast is made up of TV, radio, print, outdoor - essentially passive media.

Relationship focused channels are less passive, and aimed at establishing meaningful relationships with consumers. Such channels are DM, digital, brand experience, sales promotion.

Now digital actually sits across both broadcast and relationship - there is out and out broadcast advertising online (banner ads) but also the internet is the most powerful relationship building tool in the world.

As someone who has worked in account management in digital advertising for a number of years, can you tell me your views on the digital advertising industry?

One of the most major questions is how long will digital be solely the preserve of specialists? Above the line agencies (i.e. traditional TV, print and outdoor ad agencies) are now starting to invest in digital.

The next generation of people growing up will not consider digital to be an extra channel, like TV, radio or mobile because it will all be the same thing, it will all be converged onto one platform and won't get split out as it does at the moment.

if you accept that in the near future TV, mobile and internet will be converged onto one platform, and if you also accept that agencies should mimic what is going on in society, you have to ask yourself when will agencies begin to mimic the convergence that is happening in the real world.

Arguably digital agencies are at the peak of their 'independent' period - we are approaching the cross roads - will digital agencies become the new behemoths, like the traditional ad agencies are now, or will they get swallowed by the traditional agencies?

It's a question of who will prosper - and some traditional agencies are appearing more and more like dinosaurs.

However the major advantage above the line agencies have is that they have very senior client relationships - in some cases with CEOs or Chairmen of the Board.

This means they are holding all the cards - if they can adapt, then they have the upper hand.

What are the most important online brands?

Google and Ebay, without a doubt.

Simple, yet incredibly effective and original (in the case of Ebay).

In Ebay's case it also demonstrates the power of word of mouth, and the amplifying effect the internet has on it. If you post something on a blog, there is the chance that thousands of people will see what you have written, and then act on that, or write something themselves.

TV advertising did not kick start Ebay - people did.

What is your favourite piece of communication currently?

The Volkswagen Golf GTI and Jetta site - (find it here) where you can build your own cars and in the case of the GTI see it being raced round a track with a the stunning Helga, and in the case of Jetta crash it into a bizarre range of stuff.

It is an example of true interaction and of the combination of extreme personalisation the web can provide and meaningful brand experience.

Digital is the only way something like this can be done.

Many more interviews to come. Nigel talks about grads here.

Cheers

Steve