Mobile Marketing Set to Take Off

"Mobile (phone) marketing is a 'pull' medium, as opposed to a 'push' medium, in that it can pull a call to action and create a dialog—unlike radio or TV, which is one-way and tries to push you into an action," Philbin said.

Advertisers need to understand the nature of the mobile phone market, panelists agreed. Marketing via mobile phone will work if it engages the user and if it creates a two-way conversation that is of interest to the user.

Mobile phone marketing has only been around for two or three years, although there are examples of successful campaigns, Cuneo said. and several panelists did point out some examples of good branding/marketing via mobile phones, including:

• a Pontiac campaign in which camera phone users were asked to take a picture of a Pontiac and e-mail it to the company to enter a drawing to win a car (it elicited 250,000 responses)
  
  
• PlayStation 2 users were asked to message their fathers on Father's Day (400,000 responses)
  
  
• various kinds of product placements (such as Coca-Cola, BMW autos, etc.) in mobile phone games.
  

Maria Mandel, of Ogilvy , said that she thought "search on mobile phones will take off as an advertising engine" in the next few years, and that this will bring a lot of new opportunities for advertisers.

"Right now, this reminds me of when the Internet was just ready to take off," Mandel said. "At the moment, it's kind of a free-for-all. The business models aren't quite worked out yet. It will evolve and take some time, but it will be an important space."