SCA digital boss: ‘mobile creative needs to improve’
Mobile panel at Mumbrella360 L:R Nielsen’s Stuart Pike, Facebook’s Helen Crossley, SCA’s Clive Dickens and Yahoo!7′s Paul Sigaloff.
The director of digital for Southern Cross Austereo has told a forum that the creative being used across the industry in mobile “is not as good as it could be”.
Clive Dickens last week told a panel on mobile technology and marketing at the Mumbrella360 conference that the mobile creative and retail experience was letting down everyone.
Speaking about the challenges facing him in his role at SCA in driving mobile take up and technology Dickens said: “The other thing we should be responsible for is improving the creativity of mobile advertising and the experience.”
“At the moment some of the creative that we’re all serving is not as good as it could be.”The result argued Dickens was that many in the industry were struggling to sell mobile as a premium environment, demonstrating its value to clients and their media agencies.
“We are suffering explaining to our stakeholders that this is a premium environment — we have it in our pockets, in our jackets — the relationship with our mobile is much deeper than with a desktop or laptop,” he said.
“But the value proposition and creative doesn’t back that up and I think we all have a responsibility to improve on behalf of our stakeholders that mobile creativity.
“It has really only just begun and it will be hand in hand with the retail experience.”
Fellow panel member Helen Crossley, Facebook Australia’s head of marketing science, said she didn’t agree. “I would challenge that a little bit,” said Crossley.
“So of the creative that we’ve been seeing from Coles and Woolies on Facebook lately is actually getting a lot better – it is top notch.”
“The fact that they understand that the consumer is on Facebook all day. They’re in the store and that’s the perfect time to hit them with a message about how you can make soup tonight because it’s cold.”
“We’ve seen some really great creative coming through from these guys.”
Dickens conceded that some retailers were doing it well but said some media companies needed to lift their game. “The big retailers have done a fantastic job but I think its some of us, the big media companies, who are not keeping up to date with how people are using mobile phones.”
The comments were made during a session hosted by the IAB Australia and Nielsen which gave the first insight into the size of the mobile and tablet audience in the Australian market revealing that there are more than 18m users on mobiles and 11m users on tablets.
Nic Christensen
