Mindblossom recently launched a Mobile and IVR program for adidas alongside muchmusic.com to promote the adidas house party campaign.

For more information on the campaign and how to enter, visit Much Music.

Nine years ago, when I had my first foray into digital marketing, I remember the largest barrier we would see in the advertising world was that there was a large percentage of brands, companies and traditional media planners that would show no consideration to “online advertising”. We then started to see a movement where they would throw a minimal portion of the budget into online for “testing”. Thankfully I now rarely hear the word “hits” in relation to the number of views on a website, and digital or interactive advertising has evolved nicely and become a necessity in any integrated marketing plan.

However we are now embarking on a new journey and I see myself yet again part of an advertising movement that right now is in it’s infancy in Canada. Mobile marketing has gained great momentum in Asia, Europe with the US is following suite. Canada can be seen at the tail end with some great mobile evangelists pushing for change. There are, of course, many barriers that exist in the telecommunications industry that have prevented growth and are carrier specific. However day by day, we see positive changes in the industry, with our carriers, handsets, and with the adoption of mobile within Canada. A recent Harris / Decima survey has reported mobile penetration in Canada at 72% - up from 64% in 2006. With so many Canadians connected to their mobile phones, my obvious excitement stems from the opportunities we can potentially leverage in this new forum.

However, what I’m seeing is a lot of confusion in the marketplace in terms of how to leverage mobile. I am brought back to the early years of ‘online’ where people weren’t sure what to do and thought that a one off tiny test would prove the measure of the media. The same thing seems to be happening in mobile; confused and uncertain, tiny budgets are being allocated to “tests”. A one off SMS campaign, a voting application, a mobile banner campaign here and there. But that has never been my approach. To operate in such a fragmented way, will never resolve the original business problem and most definitely not demonstrate the true power and opportunity that mobile provides. Mobile should be viewed as one of the arms of an integrated marketing mix that has touch points across all forms of media that your target audience interacts with. Simply put, it is one part of the whole. We need to consider what the business opportunity or problem is, what are our marketing objectives, what type of experience do we want to enable? At that point, we will best be able to determine how to leverage mobile, in what way, and how it will interact, engage and flow with the other media vehicles in the communication plan.

As we did nine years ago, our success will be driven by how well we educate and inform our clients on mobile, the opportunities it opens up, and how we can begin to shape our communication with the consumer through one-to-one engagement and experiences.