*supercollider

“They were kind of stalking me. But then they stopped, and I was glad.”

One teen’s assessment of the NBA’s mobile marketing practice.

Although many industry experts have pointed out that the hype surrounding the iPhone totally outweighs it’s current impact in the market, the introduction of the new lower-cost, 3G version is a clear play to move beyond the niche and into the mainstream.

The implications of the mainstreaming of the iPhone for marketers is significant, an centers on a convergence of four developing trends.

A computer in everyone’s palm
From Wikipedia to learning Spanish, from Google maps to updating your Facebook profile, from receiving event tickets to acting as your portable soundsystem, the phone part of the phone is increasingly the least important part.

In the past, uptake of the mobile web has been limited by everything from slow speeds to ease of use. The bundled data plan and the simplicity of the iPhone is a fundamental game changer. These stats from an article on Mobile Phone Blog say it all:

• The CEO of Deutsche Telekom reported iPhone users as driving up average wireless data usage as up to 30 times higher than other phones.
• 60% of O2’s iPhone customers transfer more than 25MB of data a month, in comparison with only 1.8% of O2 customers on other phones
• AT&T reported twice the predicted data usage from iPhone customers

Currently in the U.S, 63% of Opera Mini’s mobile web traffic is spent on social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook. But social networks are just the obvious entry point. Once the iPhone SDK starts bearing real fruit, and the iPhone app store launches, the mobile web party will begin in earnest. Once Google’s Android lands later this year, it will go mental.

The coming flood of mobile applications
Whether you look at the 100,000 downloads of the iPhone development kit in the first four days of its release or John Doerr and Kleiner Perkins launching a $100 million “iFund” dedicated to products and services for the iPhone, it’s pretty clear there will be a lot of effort and enthusiasm being poured into creating great apps to engage consumers.

There is every opportunity for brands to seize the same opportunity.

Location-based services are set to explode
Where am I? What are the highest rated restaurants around here based? Where can I watch a movie afterwards? What’s playing at the cinema and how have the films been reviewed by my favourite reviewers? Cool, and I want to buy my ticket now as well.

Your phone knows where you are. Local reviewing services like Yelp increasingly know what you like, and also what’s good. Combine all those things together, and you have personally relevant, location-based services delivered to your mobile, making it the most indispensable of personal assistants.

Teens are more receptive to mobile marketing.
As much as it’s easy to make fun of the NBA’s spammy mobile marketing practices, the digital generation uses their phone in a very different way than their parents, and are much more receptive to brand interaction on their phone than you might think.

That recent LA Times article was filled with interesting stats and anecdotes about teens’ receptivity to marketing messages on mobile phones. Besides high-click through and low unsubscribe rates, teens are twice as likely than adults to trust and be receptive to advertising messages via their mobile. This from the generation that is supposed to be the most cynical of advertising than any before it.

But beyond advertising, which could simply be in the novelty stage and may well end up being a victim of the same banner blindness that exists on the web, the LA Times points out that teens are actively opting-in to receive fashion tips from brands like Seventeen and purchasing and distributing multimedia prom invites from Cosmo Girl. They are turning to the same familiar offline brands to provide both regular, snack-size info and custom entertainment designed to be forwarded to friends.

It’s early adopter behaviour, but it’s a clear example of the role brands can play.

The Year of the Mobile Web?
So is it finally time to push headlong into mobile marketing, whether via traditional advertising or creating content or applications?

As many marketers have learned from ill-considered and woeful attempts at marketing in Second Life or Facebook, just because something is hyped and shiny does not mean it’s the right platform for your brand, and doesn’t mean you don’t need a clear strategy based around who you want to engage with and for what purpose.

That said, the mobile web is no fad, and is certainly no Second Life. We’re talking about a device that is more common than people in many countries, and is carried around at all times. If the phone is to become one of the key information and entertainment hubs of the next generation, the opportunity for brands to be the ones providing content and services to a mass audience on an opt-in basis is a huge one.

It’s never advisable to rush blindly in, especially in an industry plagued by standardization issues and geographically wildly varying levels of user sophistication. However, it’s definitely time to start looking hard at your brand’s mobile strategy, and to start planning for a day in the near future when mobile is no longer an “experimental” budget line item and instead a key component of your consumers’ overall brand experience.

Image credit Gizmodo