MMA Brands and Agencies event at BAFTA London with BA, The Guardian and Ogilvy

Mobile Marketing Association

Yesterday, I would have disputed the fact that the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) could win the appeal of Brands and Agencies.  The organisation with over 700 members (including my other company visibility mobile); I believed was made up of industry “know it alls” and early adopters.

But that was yesterday. Today, there is no disputing that the MMA is an organisation that pulls in brands and agencies. What changed my mind?

Well quite simply it was the event that took place at BAFTA in London last night. It was an event that should engage Brands and Agencies and make start the education lesson into the mobile space. It was nothing short of a way of ensuring that mobile was never left off the brand advertising campaign plan.
There were three eloquent presenters. The first Chris Carmichael from BA.comunravelled the airlines hit and miss mobile campaigns from 2001. The account demonstrated that BA had used SMS within the barcode space very effectively from day one. But other mobile Internet objectives such as WAP check-in and Vodafone WAP portal failed very early on.
He said that the iPhone had revolutionised the market and that it’s BA iPhone app was a Top 10 app for months and is now a Top 10 travel app (online check-in). Other interesting stats included 70K downloads of the app; 200% growth in mobile traffic and 95K unique visitors on mobile last month.
During his presentation Chris mentioned barcodes so (after telling him that a simple re-direct from an online to a mobile site was terrible for Organic mobile traffic – I asked him what the mobile barcode strategy was. His response made the hall roar as he said, “he didn’t have one”.
The best question however came from Illico Elia from Reuters. Who said, I used online check-in and it cost me GBP 45.

The Guardian
I must apologise I know the man’s name was Steve, but I don’t get his surname. Anyway the presentation from The Guardian was very very useful. He said the quote of the moment,
“if you are in publishing and you can’t be found online – then you don’t exist”.

He spoke about the Guaridan Anywhere strategy which would enable anyone to use or re-use The Guardian content at will. I thought this was very interesting and ambitious as there was no mention of actually monetisation of the re-used content.  I mean open is good but without a business model you become a charity and I don’t think that traffic alone is a strong enough business model. But that is my opinion and I need to sit down and do a lot more research!

Anyway , there was  lesson in his talk. It was a sincere to the point presentation.

Finally Rory Sutherland from Ogilvy spoke. Now, I had heard in the past that he was a great speaker so my expectations were high. For the second time that evening, I wasn’t disappointed.  But because I stopped taking notes and started enjoying the talk, I can’t shower you with amazing quotes. But all in all it was a great speech that applauded the end of a very very good evening.

Congratulations to Paul Berney and Scott Seaborn (who couldn’t make it as his wife went into labour!) on a well attended, enjoyable evening.