Any business traveller on the highways, byways, airports and transport hubs heading to a conference centre in Austin, Texas last month would have discovered their mobile signal roadblocked by Dell.
The computer giant had bought up all the available geo-location advertising inventory for mobile content across all of the major US mobile operators to get its new corporate branding message across to delegates before they arrived and after they left. But this wasn’t a national mobile ad campaign. It was only for corporate types travelling in a tight corridor to Austin.
According to the worldwide boss of the latest mobile marketing agency to open in Australia, Michael Collins of Joule, this is just one part of a rapidly evolving mobile marketing sector. We can also expect retailers to be savaged by smartphone users with apps like those from Amazon which use recognition capabilities to offer a counter price for the product they have scanned while still in the store.
Joule is a joint venture between WPP – through its new global services unit tenthavenue – and Switch Digital. Conversations began six months ago between tenthavenue global chief executive Rupert Day and Switch’s chief executive Lee Stephens.
According to Day, it is far too early to speculate on a potential equity stake tenthavenue may take in Switch Digital – the reason for the joint venture in Joule Australia was speed to market. Stephens, Day said, gets mobile and can move faster than WPP could do in its own right.
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