The trouble with mobile marketing

(should it exist, or will we soon get annoyed with it?)

Anyone who has ever worked with me will know this is something I've banged on about at length for years. Most mobile marketers have either disagreed with me or ignored me, which I've taken as a good sign.

One of the primary lessons learned over a decade of interacting with consumers over their mobile devices is what I used to call 'the unique way they interact with their 0-9 keypad'. These days it's as likely to be a QWERTY keyboard or a touchscreen, but the principle is the same. Context is king...

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Happy 10th Scanniversary

(okay, so it was acquired 7 years ago, but still...)

'Twas mid-December 1999. Myself and two of my best old friends were working at a digital marketing consultancy. We were working (and drinking) one evening with Robert Hamilton, who'd just had this fabulous idea - he'd tried to buy a book, but had no way (in the days before the mobile internet) to find out if it was cheaper, or in stock, at Amazon. What about this SMS thing? Snaffle It was born - a price comparison/stock checker using SMS that screen-scraped Amazon using a book's ISBN code...

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