Dump the parachute before you talk to the ad community

Rating: talking targeting alone is for rookies

By Annie Turner

Always fun to meet the guys from Medio Systems because they fizz with ideas and have brains so big I’m surprised they can hold their heads up. Omar Tawakol is the company’s chief advertising officer, in charge of its MobileNow Ad Network launched at CTIA in March. We met at the Langham Hotel in London yesterday and I complained that I was sick to death of hearing that the way forward for mobile advertising was the ‘segment of one’ approach – that is being able to market to individuals – when what many, many advertisers want is indiscriminate reach. Furthermore, as Mr Tawakol pointed out, ad agencies are set up to get their 15% of a big ad campaign, so have no motivation to slice it into lots of smaller ones – it would be more work for the same or less money.

Anyway, he said, “The telecoms guys who preach advertising to highly targeted individuals are rookies. When I first started visiting ad agencies and big brands evangelising about that too, one person told me, ‘You can tell you’ve just parachuted in from Silicon Valley, you’re still dragging your chute behind you.’ It’s not that simple.”

He went on to say, “If you’re Procter & Gamble, selling deodorants and soaps – things that everyone needs – you’re going to sell a bit differently to the Hispanic or Indian or black American communities, and if you’re targeting young mothers, it’s different to grandma, but we’re still talking about marketing to a big group of people. On the other hand, if someone is thinking of buying a car, an SUV say, then you have a seven week window every four years in which you can try to influence their choice. Anything outside that is a waste of time and the person won’t look at it. It depends what you’re selling and who is selling it.”

I feel a bit like someone who found an oasis in a desert.

Mr Tawakol also went on to talk about Medio’s findings since the launch of MobileNow Ad Network and a different way of segmenting the market – I’ll be writing about this in detail in the July issue of Mobile Advertising & Marketing Analyst which will be published on 19th of this month.

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3. Medio MobileNow new Mobile Performance Ad Network from Medio Systems
4. Mobile Marketing Forum, Barcelona: talk from Richard Saggers, still advertising staggers
5. Ofcom report shows that in a clamouring mobile market, the Irish talk more than anyone else