With dismay I observe Ian Carrington, Googles mobile director, exclaim that if a companies website is not tailored for mobile handsets, they are literally begging to loose marketing share
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Who’s marketing share is my question?
Even if Carrington is partly right; that brands have to find if they need a workable presence on mobile, he is creating a kind of misguidance, as his comment ignores the nature of mobile…
If we look at mobile through the lens of marketing and the Internet; there are two kinds of marketing, and there are two kinds of internet:
- The first one is where marketing is all about sending people information, involving them in stories, narration, content, product sheets, the likes. This web fits perfectly with the traditional view of marketing – creating loyal consumers through content. And it avoids challenging the perception of how we create and keep loyal customers.
The second kind is where marketing becomes activities, services, applications and tools. The idea is that the natural way to create loyal customers is to offer them something indispensable – and this is most likely value adding services, and rarely more company centric content. This second kind is new, brought on by what happens as technology allows for brands to be accessible, personalized and mobile.
What has worked on mobile up til now, has not been the information dreary websites of last decades PC-browsers, but the snappy, snazzy, smart and effective tools and services of the modern activity-net mindset.
Google is tailored for the first kind of Internet and marketing; the searchable content web. Whilst they are lacking business models in the second one
. It is therefore more than natural for them to enforce the idea that the future of mobile is content and that all brands are publishers. But in the process they are hiding the nature of the mobile net; as platforms to help people do stuff, not read stuff.
Very interesting point of view and perspective which i think i would agree with if mobile is defined by smartphones “only”.
But if we now include tablets into the category, then it is probably no longer true; Tablets sit in the middle and have the ability to support both, content and services. This is also why they are game changing. Now the question is, will they kill laptops/netbooks or smartphones? But this is a different subject.
PS: Helge, your blog/work is great !
Hi Guilhem
I agree with you that tablets introduce a mobility that is also about content. But does it have to? Why do we have this over-enthusiasm for writing and reading stuff? Personally I write about activities because I find that part of the Internet a lot more interesting, at the same time as I think the content web is so well sought after by enough people that I could spend my energy exploring the less explored. (but, that still makes you right of course).
Things don’t die. We should stop thinking about the future as in front of us, that moving into it is finding / inventing new stuff and leaving old stuff behind. The future is outside of us, and exploring it means adding new opportunities to the world – more possibilities and more flexibility.
ps. thanks for the kind words.
best regards
Helge