As I look at offerings from most traditional advertising agencies, I’m usually disappointed as to how limited their mobile marketing services are. Although many would argue it’s better to get mobile campaign services from a company that specializes in such an industry, many would also argue that traditional “all-in-one” agencies should better integrate mobile marketing methods and technologies into their traditional marketing portfolio of services.
Marketing services such as competitor research and market intelligence could be enhanced with mobile marketing in several ways. Take for example NSI (The National Systems, Inc.) which is a nationwide advertising agency that offers traditional marketing services with some new age technologies thrown in. They offer things like central asset and digital media management for large auto-dealer networks and detailed competition research and reporting for clients, along with more traditional services such as printing and creative services.
While NSI can integrate SMS into campaigns, it doesn’t look like they’re using it to enhance any of their other services. Imagine having on-going research and analysis completed on your competitors by way of scouring newspapers and other marketing mediums, such as NSI provides, but in addition to that having the information sent back to the advertiser in real-time via SMS every time something about a competitor was found. This could be valuable information sent directly to the business owner, letting him know how to plan his next campaign accordingly.
Other new age technologies such as mobile-based image-recognition would be a great addition as well. Since most traditional advertising agencies are already offering creative design and print services as a cornerstone to their business, why not enhance those print advertisements with a service similar to SnapTell‘s Snap.Send.Get service which connects digital mobile content to any print advertisement by way of camera phone image-recognition. I realize the technology behind such innovation is pretty complex and may not be suitable or practical for most agencies, but licensing or partnering with a company would seem logical.
To me, if an agency thats been around for a long time, and holds a long client list such as NSI doesn’t move in this direction, they’re headed down the wrong path. On the other hand, maybe it’s better to focus on core marketing methodology that seems to be working fine, and leave the new age stuff to the new age startups.