Mobile marketing emerging as brand promotion aid worldwide

According to The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) many of the world's top brands say that mobile marketing is now a core part of their marketing strategies.

As testified by brands such as Auto Trader, the BBC, BMW, Coca-Cola, Deutsche Post, Lufthansa, Nestlé, Nike, Pepsi and Procter and Gamble at the Mobile Marketing Forum in Berlin, when mobile is integrated into the wider marketing mix and employed in a way that ensures measurement and tracking, it delivers enormously effective campaigns with real business value.

Specific campaign spends and performance metrics were included and many of the results were spectacular when compared to the targets and results achieved through other channels alone.

178 onsite attendees representing brands (25 per cent), agencies (25 per cent), operators (10 per cent), technology enablers (30 per cent)  and 202 live web stream subscribers from around the world gathered to hear how BMW uses mobile as a relevant consumer touch point to offer real value to its customers, how usability - short, simple and fast mechanics - is key for Lufthansa and how Procter and Gamble's use of mobile has resulted in 80 per cent brand recall.

At the the Mobile Marketing Forum in Berlin speakers echoed the message that if a brand is not incorporating mobile into its overall strategy, it is already behind in its marketing efforts.

''Consumers are changing,'' said Hinde Pagani, Coca-Cola's senior mobile marketing manager, Global Interactive Marketing, in her keynote on Coca-Cola's global approach to mobile marketing. ''Audiences are changing dramatically, especially the younger ones. They live with technology, using it to consume more media, generate more conversations and befriend more brands than ever. Mobile is at the centre of this media revolution. For us it is critical to understand this new device, to interact with teens and youth where they spend their time and deliver engaging and compelling brand experiences. So we add mobile to the marketing mix in pretty much all of our markets.''

Lufthansa's Marcus Casey, director of global ecommerce and mobile services, said in his presentation on the use of mobile within the airline industry, ''The services that we have set up for our customers using the mobile channel such as flight booking and check in have been a great success for us and are an ideal fit with our clientele. We've received an extremely positive response which indicates huge acceptance among our consumer base and a massive future for mobile marketing services in the travel industry and beyond.''