NEW YORK Trial and error. That's what the last few years have been about for industry players like Richard Ting, executive creative director of mobile and emerging media/applications at R/GA in New York. The key word in his title is "emerging," and what is clear about mobile marketing is that it has yet to arrive.

"Agencies and brands are still learning about what can be created in the mobile space," says Ting, whose agency recently created mobile efforts for Nike's Zoom and Air Force 25 shoes. The fragmented landscape with ever-changing carrier and handset restrictions has made designing for mobile "a difficult proposition," he explains, and "working with carriers is always a long and arduous process that often stifles the creative and launch of mobile programs."

Even though cell phones have an estimated 80 percent penetration in the United States, the mobile platform is still limited in its offerings and reach. Although media experts all agree "mobile is big," it is still far from becoming a mainstream medium that reaches the large audiences most advertisers covet. Nor has it garnered the creative accolades that typically validate and help grow nascent technologies.

"The technology available is not easily and readily accessible. There are so many carriers and restrictions with each," says Rei Inamoto, global creative director of AKQA, which has created mobile programs for Coca-Cola and Visa, among others. "The inconsistency has slowed down the adaptability in the U.S. and limited the type of content made."

Heavily reliant on interruptive communication techniques such as text messaging, many media experts contend that until mobile allows more opportunities to invite consumers into brand messaging, it will remain an experimental option for most brands and agencies rather than a standard piece of an integrated campaign. Even an agency like Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which prides itself on being at the forefront of communications, has only dabbled in mobile executions.

While the agency has created ringtones, wallpaper and run a TV spot on Sprint Mobile during the Super Bowl for Burger King, Jim Poh, the agency's director of content distribution, explains that at this point in the evolution of the medium mobile is still too restrictive and contrary to what the agency believes is the most effective way to reach consumers.

"Generally, the things that you can do in mobile right now are kind of limited and impractical to execute and they are also a little bit against one of our core philosophies of trying to engage consumers and attract them rather than trap them," says Poh. "With the current offerings being so hard to execute and hard to deliver, we haven't seen much that is of real value to the consumer. We haven't seen a lot of strategic opportunity."

Angela Kosniewski, an account director for Toyota's Scion brand at Attik, San Francisco, which has been recognized for its progressive media choices in reaching the brand's young target, says the agency finds the current technical limitations too restrictive for even a youth-oriented brand such as Scion.

"Because most phones have different capabilities, there is a disparate technological gap with the phones that are in market right now. With our target being the youth market, there is concern on our end: How would we deliver the best quality to our target?" she says, pointing to inconsistent video- and Web-streaming capabilities that would alter the quality of the experience from user to user, depending on what type of cell phone and service they use. "We'll shoot something in HD, and it comes out grainy."

The advent of Apple's iPhone, however, is changing everything. If the iPhone has the same kind of impact as the iPod, which catapulted portable digital music players into the mainstream and Apple to a leadership position in digital music distribution, the mobile game will change considerably. The device, which has an elegant Internet interface, has technological capabilities beyond the traditional mobile phone and will allow for more browser-based communications to reach consumers. In the first three months it was for sale, Apple sold 2.3 million iPhones worldwide, and its popularity is a harbinger of things to come.



"There is a big shift in the way that people are going to be consuming mobile media. The iPhone has changed the rules by putting a real live browser and enabling you to see the Web the way you see it on your computer," Poh says. "That gives rise to more sophisticated solutions: You can use URLs and invite people in, which is preferred anyway."

It isn't the only technological improvement that can have positive effects on the creativity of the mobile executions. "Data plans are becoming cheaper, devices are getting better and carrier networks are becoming faster," says R/GA's Ting. "Now it's up to the brands and agencies to create better experiences for users. The medium will never reach its full potential if marketers continue to rely on gimmicks, free ringtones, useless text alerts or mobile coupons. Consumers need more than that to stop and pay attention."

Fallon Worldwide, Minneapolis, recently used text messaging to invite pedestrians at New York's Rockefeller Plaza to "interact" with the talent from Bravo's new show Make Me a Super Model. By calling a number displayed on a digital screen in the window of the NBC Experience Store, people were able to browse through contestant information and make their own selection for top model.

"Mobile is very difficult to do well. It is such a personal device, and it's easily dismissed as spam," says Amy Sheil, Fallon's director of media, explaining the thinking behind creating an interactive wall rather than a text-messaging program. "But we try to do it in a way that benefits both the user and the idea itself."

The most effective and creative use of mobile right now, according to Michael Ball, mobile lead at IPG's Emerging Media Lab, Los Angeles, is when it becomes part of and plays off other media executions within a campaign, in effect creating a user experience that inspires people to interact with the advertising rather than simply tolerate it.

"What we are really seeing is that you get the most action and penetration when you are using mobile as a layer, using it to make your other media more accountable," says Ball.

He points to campaigns such as BBDO New York's BBC outdoor effort, which pictured American troops in Iraq and asked pedestrians to use their mobile phones to answer "liberator" or "invader," and Ogilvy & Mather's "Campaign for real beauty" for Dove, which featured an older woman on a billboard and asked if she was "wrinkled" or "wonderful." "It's leveraging the whole American Idol thing," Ball says.

The creativity in mobile is about interaction with the consumer, explains Lori H. Schwartz, director of emerging media at the IPG lab. "The creativity is mostly on the experiential side rather than the execution," she says. "It's about experience and engagement rather than how pretty the ad looks."

But that doesn't mean creatives working in that digital realm don't still aspire to aesthetic heights. P.J. Pereira, former creative director at AKQA, has judged several digital awards shows, including Cannes and One Show, and says the work in the category still feels like it is a force-fit or created simply because agencies and marketers feel the need to be there.

"There are interesting, efficient, smart things being done, but I'm still waiting for that single thing that will knock my socks off, that makes me feel I wish I had that idea," Pereira says. "So far, it's been 'Let's do something mobile,' instead of 'We have this cool idea and mobile is great for that.'"



Simply throwing online or broadcast ads onto a mobile device won't add much to the consumer experience and adding advertising pre-rolls doesn't necessarily help, even with mobile-specific video. Advertiser-sponsored content, in which viewers have to endure a brand message before accessing the clip, is still not a proven device.

"We're not sure how well stuff like that works," Pereira says. "We already know from online that in a lot of instances people want to view a video but drop out during the first few seconds of the pre-roll."

The fact that the cell phone is considered such a personal device makes the tone of the messaging that much more important and offers marketers unique opportunities to provide location-based services, such as restaurant finders and maps. David Bear, executive director of mobile for Atmosphere BBDO North America, says he is considering how GPS technology, such as the open-source widgets platform offered by Where.com, can best be leveraged by clients.

"It's extremely compelling and interesting, but I'm not 100 percent sure how brands can help distribute that," he says. Bear, whose agency has created mobile programs for FedEx, HBO, AT&T and Citibank, says Bluetooth and BlueCasting offer promising opportunities, but "I haven't seen brands jump on it yet because the adoption rate isn't proven yet."

Where the experimentation will lead and whether consumers will incorporate all the new tools into their daily lives is still unclear. But Bear says, if there is one thing that will drastically change the face of mobile advertising, it is speed. "The actual network speed is key," he says. "The infrastructure" is what will push mass adoption, then the "development and creativity will ramp up considerably."

For IPG's Ball, the biggest improvement would be breaking down barriers between carriers. "There are so many walls, and this is what is stopping the industry from progressing; you can only get it on this or that. If you really want the creative market to start to get better, you need to give the brands the reach," he says. "Where you are going to start to see meaningful mobile spend happen is when brands know that if they are going to invest X amount of dollars, no matter what carrier or handset, people will see it in its full glory. That's the real sticking point."