Why mobile matters

 5th February 2015    Life of PR 
 Ben Smith

It is likely that more than 40% of your company’s digital interaction and engagement occur on a mobile device.

Within this context PRmoment and Cohn & Wolfe put on a Brands on Mobile event. Speakers included Kristine Newman, VP Mobile Engagement, Cohn & Wolfe, Rob Mansfield, Senior Editor, Age UK and Emma Hart, Ex Head of PR, O2

Here are some thoughts from the speakers on how businesses must integrate mobile into their communications:

Cohn & Wolfe’s Kristin Newman illustrated how there has been a surge in global mobile traffic from 2010 to 2015, and is now at a point where total smart phone subscriptions have neared the total world population.

Smartphone subscriptions worldwide:

And at a micro level, number of mobile devices per household is likely to increase massively over the next decade….

Surge in global mobile traffic:

Kristin discussed three elements to help your business put mobile at the centre of your communications.

1. Content immersion

The key is to follow your audience and enable them to engage and participate. Some good examples here include the IKEA 2015 catalogue app and Nivea Sun Kids Brazil protection.

Here is a video explaining how the Nivea campaign worked:

2. Small screen, big world.

Businesses need to bring a story to their mobile communications and realise that even though mobile can be a great hub of connectivity it's important to engage and interact with the environment around us.

Unilever's Candyspace: Times Square Takeover drawing demonstration in the US was a nice example of this.

3. Happy ever after awareness

A trainers store in Guatemala called Hijack offers a great example of this method .

These guys used mobile geographical tracking technology to target their customers who had downloaded their App and who were visiting local rival stores. The App featured a countdown discount that decreased every second. It encouraged customers to leg it to Hijack’s store as quickly as possible so that they retained as much discount as possible. It also created some very nice video content, genuine or not…

HIJACK - MEAT PACK GUATEMALA - from GranjaCreativa on Vimeo.

This is a really nice example of a small business using mobile communications well. In my experience SMEs often believe that mobile solutions are beyond their scope of marketing but this example shows that this is far from the case.