“Somewhere as a country, we’re too obsessed with a number – we might want to communicate with only a small number of consumers, said Tushar Vyas, National Director- Interaction for GroupM during the final session, on mobile marketing, at 3GSM India summit, and I couldn’t agree more. Rajiv Hiranandani, Country Head of Mobile2Win believes that right now, the space needs to be evangelized, like Internet advertising was. There are around 130-150 brands, with around 3 to 5 percent kept aside for mobile marketing. The biggest opportunity is WAP based advertising. In-game advertising – if done subtly – can be effective. Mobile2win did a racing game for Castrol in China that worked well. Cross promotions are important. Anup Jain, GM-Brand Marketing for Whirlpool feels that as a client, they’re just flirting with the medium. Advertisers need to be exposed to the benefits of mobile marketing, like what’s being done for radio. The problem is with the marketer – they don’t think mobile, but of adapting print or a video to the mobile. There’s a vacuum in terms of ideation. They ran a teaser campaign (patni ko maska lagana hain kya? To 8558 par sms kare) on the news ticker on one of the channels, and just gave a number to SMS to – it cost them Rs.10k, and they got around 35,000 SMS’. It’s just that advertisers have more confidence in TV. The cost of customer acquisition varies from season to season. “Give me an application that can tell me the details of the next person who wants to buy a fridge, and I’ll give you top dollar for it”, he says.
Pankaj Sethi, President – VAS for Tata Teleservices feels that the operator isn’t alone to blame for mobile spam, since some marketers do sequential calling; an opt-in mechanism has to be evolved. He hopes that mobile will not go the Internet way. According to him, there’s a third party ecosystem in the works. The biggest piece of the pie is SMS, followed by Voice, CRBT and data connectivity.
Vyas added that opportunity perhaps lies in branding applications that are useful - like a branded EMI calculator. According to his estimates, the total mobile marketing in 2006 amounted to Rs.15-20 crores.
Vinod Thadani, Business Director for Interaction at Group M asked about advergaming as a means of marketing. Hiranandani responded that advergaming is a branding opportunity, and not based on returns on investment. Calculating ROI and costs may not work, since the game, like the one they made for Castrol, was sold to consumers. In India, two or three brands have done it, but operators want money for it, and consumers have to pay. GPRS might emerge as an option there.