Retail and mobile – The agency role
Agencies have an important role to play to help position mobile in the media mix, according to the panel at MediaTel’s Retail and Media event yesterday, in association with O2 Media.
Mobile has become crucial to improving the shopping experience, building brand loyalty and driving sales, and alongside that agencies can “definitely improve campaign planning”, Harriet Williams, head of digital development at Debenhams said.
Claire Valoti (pictured), head of display & mobile at Mindshare, explained that agencies have changed and become more open: “There has been a realisation that without working collaboratively, we won’t get ahead of consumers.”
Valoti said agencies are more involved in open source planning now and run workshops with clients and retailers to work out “the best mobile plan”. “Mobile is still a minefield,” she added, explaining that agencies can offer clients mobile knowledge and expertise.
Meanwhile, Shaun Gregory, managing director of O2 Media, believes the role of the agency will evolve around the future of data – data management and CRM. He said agencies have the ability to manage data, something which others would struggle with.
Waitrose head of e-commerce Nick White also spoke about the structural changes within retailers: “We need to focus on how we organise ourselves internally too… it’s about integration to hit an end target.” White said it is difficult to pin-point just one channel but retailers are keen to get results, which is something agencies can help with.
The m-commerce marketplace is young and upmarket – just like e-commerce 10 years ago.
The key factor that drove e-commerce to the masses was arguably consumer confidence in security of financial transactions online.
I might argue that for same to happen for m-commerce, we need both a significant improvement in responsible use of customer data as well a cultural change in the conservative attitude of the UK population to both data privacy and security.
The panel quite rightly argued that mobile has a myriad of potential applications across the marketing acquisition and retention field, but I don’t see any evidence or agreement to what the principle role of mobile is from a consumer perspective, and how that drives the thinking of how marketers approach the exciting and varied contact opportunities that the channel offers.