Mobile Marketing Association Forum in Budapest 7-8 October – Thumbs up!

I went to the conference this time with somewhat low expectations in terms of participants, speakers and new insights and learning’s. Generally the speakers at conferences of this kind tell you what you already know and spend most of the time selling a product that the other participants don’t care too much about. Despite a bit of this I came back considerably richer in terms of knowledge, experience and new contacts.

Here are a couple of insights from the conference

• 2008 is not the big year of mobile marketing and we doubt that even 2009 will be based on the expectations expressed by the industry but maybe the expectations are set too high
• Major brands are experiencing true success stories both in terms of ROI and reach that makes mobile marketing worthwhile for dedicated budgets going forward and should result in healthy growth but do the media planners buy in to this yet?
• The value chain is a mess and will continue to be a mess until media planners and creative agencies take a serious role in integrating mobile in the overall marketing mix
• Brands, mobile operators and technology companies have very little in common and I wonder if joining them up might do more bad than good – would a brand manager go to a conference with web content management and Internet Service Providers?
• The citizens of this world (an expression borrowed Jonathan MacDonald at Ogilvy) will have the last say in whether marketing on the mobile is a success or not – we can just do our best to make them happy by delivering great value, relevancy and an enjoyable experience

I also had the opportunity to speak at the conference and present our appeal for more creative mobile marketing. You can find the presentation here.

A big thank you to the MMA for organising this great event and to the great speakers and participants. I already look forward to the next one!