CMO’s Notebook: Of Mobile, External Brains, And Remote Controls

“Many people are still confused about how to use mobile to grow their sales and revenues,” said Jamie Turner, producer of the recent Mobile X Festival.

Did you know that 84% of businesses using mobile marketing report increases in new customers? Or that they expect spending on mobile advertising to soar by 160% over the next three years? Or that 70% of consumers have a Wi-Fi-capable device in their pockets?

Jamie Turner, producer of the recent Mobile X Festival, at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, helped to answer these questions and more. Turner is an internationally recognized speaker on marketing, mobile and social media, a regular CNN and HLN contributor, CEO of SIXTY Marketing, and author. He is also founder of the 60 Second Marketer, an online community of marketers, business owners, and experts from around the globe.

I spoke to Turner at the event.

CMO.com: As an expert authority in the mobile space, why does the Mobile X Festival matter?

Turner: Many people are still confused about how to use mobile to grow their sales and revenues. So we brought together a diverse mix of mobile ecosystem experts, including Fortune 500 brands like Coca-Cola, E&J Gallo, Kimberly-Clark and UPS, media like CNN and AOL, tech like Google and Microsoft, sports and entertainment with the Atlanta Hawks, and many others to show marketers how the best brands are using mobile to engage their consumers and grow their businesses.

CMO.com: What are some of the interesting comments you heard during the Mobile X Festival?

Turner: We had so many experts, it’s hard to choose. These four really resonated with me:

• “Mobile is a behavior, not a technology.” —Seema Vashi, product and solution specialist, and Justin Mann, brand team, Google
• “The era of the press release is dead. No one reads or trusts them, and they are used just to improve search results. ” —Doug Busk, global group director, digital communications and social media. Coca-Cola
• “Marketing must seamlessly integrate the digital and the physical experience. We are digital beings living in a physical world. … Our mobiles have become our external brains. ” —Michael Becker, co-founder and managing partner, mCordis
• “Google knows where you are every second of every day.” —Shelly Kramer, co-CEO, V3 Broadsuite (V3B), on the importance of local search and SEO

CMO.com: What are your top three key messages about mobile/mobility that CMOs and their ecosystems need to know?

Turner: If I have to pick three, here they are:

• If you don’t use mobile to connect your brand to your customers, don’t worry—your competitors will do it for you.
• A smartphone isn’t a phone—it’s a remote control for your life. The brands that understand that are the brands that will win in the 21st century.
• More people around the globe own a mobile phone than own a toothbrush. Given the pervasiveness of the mobile phone, it’s more important than ever for companies to use it as a bridge between their brands and their customers.