Of Mechanical Bulls and Mobile Marketing’s Best Practices in Denver

Mobile marketing continues its rapid growth in to a mainstream marketing channel. In December, I attended 3rd Mobile Marketing Association’s Consumer Best Practices Forum in Denver. It’s amazing that in three short years this consumer best practices meeting, which originally was just a small get together in Vail, Colorado has mushroomed to over 200+ participants. All for a one‑day forum on the best practices for consumers, how marketers must conduct themselves, and how to maximize the mobile marketing channel with regard to consumer best practices on behalf of the marketers and the carriers and everyone in the global marketing food chain. This industry is not only alive, it is aggressive in its desire to not screw up this channel like fax, voice and email have with an old-school disregard for relevance and permission-based marketing.

You have to remember I’m comparing this to having grown up within the e‑mail marketing world where even in 1998 the dialogue around spam and best practices was virtually non-existent. Remember in 1998 when marketers were asking if e‑mail marketing would ever be a a valid channel?! And will businesses ever use it? And here we are today and e‑mail marketing is simultaneously hugely successful and yet that success has been tremendously trampled from a lack of best practices and self-regulation.

We marketers are coming up on 10 years to machinate the definition of spam…and there’s not a State legislature that’s not dealing with this today. We’ve got probably every state in the union this year introducing even more legislation on how to manage e‑mail and what marketers can and can’t do…mobile marketing still holds promise as a pristine environment.

Anyway…back to the MMA’s CBP Forum: Chaired by Verizon’s Dave Oberholzer, what was at first a small gathering of twelve people in 2005 has mushroomed in to over 200 participants this year…even drawing a dozen or so international participants.

The Mobile Marketing Association’s relevance worldwide is huge right now. There’s not a major brand that does not have some form of a mobile marketing initiative operating or about to be implemented.

While the temperatures in Denver were cold, the forum discussion was hot, especially around preventing the devaluation of the channel through aggressive (and perhaps by some views predatory) marketing promotions that are akin to the “1-900″ number marketing of the late 80’s/early90’s.

One of the hottest topics still is the logistical issues around shortcodes. I would have relished more of that discussion, however, at this meeting it was bittersweet as I announced my resignation from co-chairing the Common Short Code Working Group.

John DeFranco of Weiner and Flein gave an outstanding presentation on the FTC’s concerns with many of the mobile marketing promotions that are suspect in value. The so-called “ringtones and chat” subscription fees are most definitely on the FTC, CTIA the carriers and the MMA’s radar.

Top Five Issues for Mobile Marketing Promotions

1. Misrepresentations and deceptive omissions and misstatements are illegal.
2. Use the word ‘Free’ with caution
3. Disclaimers must be clear and conspicuously disclosed
   1. Prominence
   2. Presentation
   3. Placement
   4. Proximity
4. Remember 900 numbers gaffe
   1. Total cost is flat fee
   2. Per minute rate is tx
   3. Range of fees
   4. Cost of transfer

Technorati tags: mobile, mobile marketing, best practices, consumer, spam, marketing