Medium as Message Revisited

“The most creative mobile executions these days aggressively explore the wireless device itself – what the technology does, where it does it, and how marketing messages can be integrated into our most intimate communications habits,” wrote consultant and analyst Steve Smith.

Enter the iPhone. Tom Burgess, chief executive officer of Third Screen Media, a mobile marketing technology company, called the iPhone a “beachhead for converging mobile devices. It's a music player, video player and a phone all together. There's no doubt that it is a step in the right direction for a more robust marketing medium."

Cyriac Roeding, vice president of wireless at CBS Interactive, said the iPhone could “spark a surge in mobile marketing – provided that users embrace it the same way they turned to the iPod a few years ago.”

Those are the obvious advantages from a marketer’s perspective. It’s hard not to assume the iPhone could take mobile marketing opportunities to a new level through the integration of cellular, wireless, mobile web, video, audio and storage technologies.

That said, there are also challenges for both Apple and AT&T Wireless, upon whose cellular networks iPhones operate. As consultant Alan Chapell writes, “No discussion of mobile data would be complete without a word about the mobile carriers, such as T-mobile, Verizon, and Cingular…(T)he carriers currently have enough influence over the mobile space that pretty much any new mobile marketing technique or technology will have to meet with their approval in order to succeed…The carriers know all too well that customers tend to blame them for – well – just about anything that negatively impacts their mobile experience.”

Case in point, according to an Associated Press article regarding product registration delays during the iPhone’s initial roll out, iPhone customer Timothy Johnson, “said he was happy with the iPhone and credited Apple for acknowledging the problem. But he expressed concerned about the type of service he would get from AT&T in the future.”

The iPhone case exemplifies both the opportunities, as well as the challenges, inherent in technology-driven and technology-dependent mobile marketing. Mobile marketers must be aware of how their technologies and strategies will impact, or be impacted by, device developers and mobile carriers. Importantly, they must take note of how the developers and carriers react to the praise or criticism.