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MMA Forum New York speaker preview

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Brands & Campaigns

Mobile marketers from around the world will gather in New York next week at MMA Forum to discuss the latest in multi-channel engagement and connections with consumers that go beyond the point of sale. They’ll also hear from leaders in the field about real-world tools and campaigns that have effectively used mobile to reach target audiences and elevate brands. We caught up with two of the speakers at this year’s event to get a sneak peek of what they plan to share.

Mitchell Reichgut is CEO of advertising platform Jun Group. He has worked in the advertising industry for two decades on both the creative and agency sides and will be speaking on how marketers can find an audience for mobile video content.

Kathy Sheehan is executive vice president and general manager of GfK Consumer Trends, a forecasting and market research company. Her presentation at MMA Forum New York will focus on reaching millennials.

Here’s what they are most excited about at this year’s event.

M: This year’s MMA Forum has a great lineup, and I’m looking forward to hearing from brands like Citi, Coca-Cola, Energizer, Honda, and MasterCard.

K: Hearing from other industry leaders about what’s working and what is new in a rapidly changing and dynamic environment. I am also excited about meeting folks from a wide range of industries and areas.

Mitchell, why is it important to target and find the right audience for your campaign, rather than just use existing distribution channels?

M: How and where we see advertising is as important as the content itself. Three hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every 60 seconds, and the online environment is more fragmented than ever. To succeed, marketers need to get their stories in front of the right audiences at the right times. Mobile is one of the best ways to do that because videos play full screen, there are fewer distractions, and audiences can be targeted with first-party data, not just cookies.

How is the marketing landscape changing as consumers increasingly turn to mobile as their “first screen” for content?

M: People now spend more time looking at their smartphone screens than they do their television screens. Marketers are only beginning to think about the experience of consuming their content on mobile, and their audiences are already there. A study last year found that over a third of digital video is consumed on mobile devices. Mobile is no longer just another tactic—it’s an essential part of any media plan.

You’re presenting at MMA Forum with Cinelan, which works on created digital video content with top filmmakers. How does Jun Group help Cinelan get that content in front of the right audience?

M: Cinelan came to us with an amazing project. They had produced a series of 3-minute films about the economy with Paul Allen’s Vulcan Productions. The work was amazing, and our job was to get millions of people to engage with it on the project’s Web site. We promoted the films on mobile applications, and we targeted specific users with first-party data. The project was a huge success with over 2.3 million engagements and more than 56,000 people taking additional actions after viewing the videos.

Kathy, are millennials setting the trends when it comes to mobile?

K: Yes, I think a lot of the trends we see are being influenced by Millennials, but not all of them. I think that it is a lot more nuanced than that, however. It is too simplistic to say that any one group is the one who is driving or setting the trends today.

Should marketers think about targeting millennials differently than they do other demographics via mobile?

K: It really depends. As I noted above, today’s environment is a lot more nuanced, and in some applications you may want to target millennials (or any other group, for that matter) differently, and in other cases, you may not. I think the key thing, however, is to be true to your brand and have consistency across all platforms — both digital and “traditional.”

You mentioned that millennials are capturing marketers’ attention but also causing angst. Why so?

K: For two reasons. The first is the reason that I’ve already alluded to — that the marketplace is so fragmented and differentiated now there isn’t a “one size fits all” approach, and that inherently makes things more complex and challenging. The second is that many in the marketing community feel that they don’t know all that they need to know about this huge and diverse segment — and that what they don’t know may hurt them.

For more mobile marketing insights, check out the almost sold-out MMA Forum New York event.