Alexander’s Blog

“Groundbreaking”

“Eye opening”

“I learned a lot”

That is how delegates described their experience at this years’ Thinking Mobile™ Conference, which was held on Thursday, 20 August 2009 at the IDC Conference Center in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Well, apart from a technical glitch (the IDC could not get their ISDN line fully up and running for the video conference link with our US key note speaker Kim Dushinski in Denver, Colorado, so delegates could hear but not see her), the conference went smoothly. Even though we featured a tight, tight program with twelve speakers in only one day, we finished on time.

This was mainly thanks to the conference Chair, Angus Robinson of Brandsh Media, who ran a tight ship, as well as the discipline of our speakers.

The main aim of the conference was to give delegates who are in marketing and advertising an overview of practical mobile marketing solutions, to de-mystify “mobile” and to warn of unethical practices. Delegates included representatives of companies like Clientele Life, Saatchi & Saatchi, ETV, SABC, SAB Miller, Coca Cola, NBC, Media24, Spar, Associated Magazines, The Don Hotel Group, Google, Private Property and a variety of smaller companies and agencies.

In many cases it was necessary to take delegates back to Marketing 101. I was surprised to see that, for example, while most delegates were in marketing and advertising, they struggled to recognize the definition of “marketing” by Kotler, THE classic marketing guru and did not know how Nielsen gather their data on TV ratings.

When it comes to mobile marketing, many marketers seem to forget everything they know about marketing and get starry eyes when they hear about and see a mobile marketing application. More often than not they are introduced to mobile marketing by a developer and delve into mobile marketing by investing in the “tool” rather than thinking first about how this “tool” can fit in and benefit their overall marketing strategy and objectives.

This is much like talking to the guy who services the printing press instead of an advertising agency when planning a print campaign

Write this down three times: A developer, IT guy or technician is NOT a mobile marketer!

Let’s face it, most mobile conferences and gatherings either focus entirely on the technical aspects of this exciting new marketing tool called “mobile”, or are shameless sales pitches for the services of one company while disguising themselves as local chapters or subsidiaries of international mobile marketing get togethers and agencies. The Thinking Mobile™ Conference seems to have filled a void in providing much needed, basic, objective information about mobile marketing.

But do not take my word for it

You can download and read all speaker presentations HERE.

Also read the various Biz Community articles by their journalist Issa Sikiti da Silva, who attended the conference, HERE.

If you would like to find out how YOU can best get started in mobile marketing, visit myMOBworld.com from your computer or myMOBworld.mobi from your mobile or simply drop me a line to alex@mymobworld.com