Will mobile marketing come out of the credit crunch smelling of roses?

Recession is looming, but the mobile business plans to encourage brands to boost mobile marketing spend.

Brands should be spending 5 percent of their marketing budget on mobile, according to AKQA head of mobile Dan Rosen. He said he’s working on initiatives within the Mobile Marketing Association aimed at promoting brand spending on the mobile channel.

The rallying cry came at this lively mobile marketing event in London last night (16 October 2008).

At the time, Mr Rosen was sidestepping a somewhat cheeky question from the floor, which asked how much a mobile campaign cost.

Fellow panellist Ogilvy Group head of mobile technologies Scott Seaborn was also reluctant to share details of his company’s charges with the assembled attendees, worried about what a Mr Sarbanes-Oxley (his boss presumably) might do to him.

OK, so presumably it’s safe to conclude that most companies are spending considerably less than 5 percent. Has anyone got any figures?
So bearing in mind that presently Digital (generally) is 10 percent of marketing spend (according to Mr Rosen) what is the probability of mobile marketing hitting 5 percent any time soon. Is anyone prepared to give us odds on that?

The panel was split on the impact of a recession on mobile marketing. Would spend on mobile lose out to more proven media?

The case for mobile advertising, particularly, isn’t helped by the fact that no one can come up with a decent estimate of what the market was worth, as pointed out BSkyB general Manager for mobile David Gibbs, unconvinced that a recession was good news for mobile.

Leading the optimists on the panel, Ogilvy’s Seaborn painted a rosy picture for mobile marketing, drawing on an excellent gardening analogy (that we expect to see frequently reiterated). At pruning time, he explained, you should cut back the old wood, to encourage the new growth.

The question provoked an equally sage comment from BBC controller, mobile, future media & technology, Matthew Postgate. Mobile marketing, he said, had bigger issues to deal with than the effect of the credit crunch.

mobiThinking looks forward to exploring those issues with Mr Postgate.

What is your opinion? Will mobile marketing come out of the credit crunch smelling of roses? Will MMA members back Mr Rosen’s goal of convincing marketing folk to give him and his kin 5 percent? Please comment below or email: editor@mobiThinking.com.

See: Dan Rosen taking mobiThinking through the Smirnoff campaign
See: BBC mobile
See: Sky mobile