Ad Age Insights' Mobile Marketing quarterly series explores
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metrics currently available to figure out a mobile strategy. The
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Leave the house today and you need three things: wallet, keys
and phone. By tomorrow it will be just the one. We'll use a phone
to pay a restaurant bill and point it at the car to start the
engine to drive home. And when Near Field Communication (NFC) kicks
in, things are going to get really interesting. You'll be able to
bump your phone to pay at cash registers, to check in at venues and
even verify identity. That's crazy fast progress.
But cool tools and functionality aren't what is making us more
dependent on the phone than the family member. And it's not the
critical factor for brands to watch. The way our phones track our
personal use of data is going to open up a whole new channel for
personalized digital content direct to consumers' pockets.
Our phones already know more details than our moms ever will:
where we are, who we are with, what we're saying to them and what
we just did (possibly with photographic evidence). Tomorrow's
models are going to be smarter, learning from our mobile behavior
and feeding a digital experience more closely geared to our
lifestyle choices and the brands we love – or who are loving
us.
The latest smartphone to hit the streets – Apple's iPhone 4S –already seems
like a letdown. It is as if no-type voice commands to change
appointments and text contacts, or the ability to find any sushi
restaurant in any urban city on earth - plus directions to get
there - are now just not enough for us. With each successive
product launch we will ask unbelievable things from our phones and
it's the fault of people like the late, great Steve Jobs. He
re-calibrated both what the humble phone can do and what we now
demand.
So as customers line up to get that new iPhone and advertisers
line up to target them, where will we end up? Will consumers freely
accept ongoing eerily personalized prompts and content directed to
them and their phones? Will brand advertisers act responsibly or
see a gold rush?
Time will tell. Until then, only one thing is sure. Mobile has
cut the apron strings to the desktop, left mom behind, and it's up
to each of us to at least call her and make it right.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marcus Fischer is CEO
space150, the digital agency with offices in New York, Los Angeles
and Minneapolis. He can be reached at
[email protected]