You might say Mozes is on a rock-n-roll these days.

Within just the last few weeks, Wired ran a feature on how the Palo Alto, Calif-based Mozes powers Umphrey’s McGee’s interactive UMBowl, a concert series that enables fans to shape the concert – in real time – using their mobiles phones.

And just this last week, The Silicon Valley Business Journal ran a profile on the company, which focuses on mobile engagement at live events for brand clients such as Coca-Cola, Ford Motor Company and Rock The Vote, among many others.

In part three of tour May Mobile Marketing Roundtable, we get the inside scoop from founder Dorrian Porter (full disclosure: A longtime friend, client, and sponsor of this blog), on how brands are leveraging the power of mobile at the all-important "point of inspiration."

MOBILE ROUNDTABLE (PT 3): MOZES ROCKS THE MOBILE REVOLUTION

Click here to listen to: Mobile Roundtable (Pt 3): Dorrian Porter - Mozes Rocks The Mobile Revolution

(11:07)

ALSO LISTEN TO:

MOBILE ROUNDTABLE (PT 1): Julie Fajgenbaum - How AMEX Banks on Mobile Marketing

MOBILE MARKETING ROUNDTABLE (PT 2): Organic's Rachel Pasqua - Kimberly Clark, Specialized Bicycles Ramp Up Mobile Marketing

It's still the wild west when it comes to mobile ad tracking and ad serving. Although some agencies have started to test out various third party ad serving solutions, the delivery of many campaigns are still reported on by publisher, ad network, and rich media company ad servers. Many of these ad servers are proprietary ad servers with a range of capabilities.

There are also companies that are in the process of developing their own "mobile cookie" or proprietary tracking solutions. Some of these solutions require the implementation of third party tracking tags that are Javascript tags. Javascript tags are not yet widely accepted by mobile publishers and ad networks for various reasons from concerns over security to lack of ability to implement it in the ad server. It is much like the early days of online advertising (think circa 1999) when online ads were still primarily gif and jpgs, only pixel tracking was common, and publisher ad server reporting was the norm. We are in a very similar stage right now in mobile and we need to come together as an industry to be open to new methods so we can start to provide better measurement solutions for our clients.

Naturally as more Smartphones come into the market, we will see more rich media advertising in mobile which will help drive ad serving improvements just as we saw online. Until then, let's push for testing new tracking options in the market so we aren't stuck partying like it's 1999.

But after a teaser video from Google’s Project Glass made the rounds recently, giving a glimpse at life, with the company’s reality-augmenting glasses, it became clear that mobile is just the tip of the wireless iceberg.

The ship is sailing into the unchartered waters toward a post-mobile world where we’ll all be connected, all the time. The boundaries will blur between what is and isn't a device, and with everything mobile, labels like “wired” and “wireless” will become meaningless. Consumers will start looking to technologies and brands to simplify how we engage with the world and information around us.

So how can brands ensure they’re prepared for the changes taking shape before our very eyes? By paying close attention to these five trends that I’m betting will define our collective post-mobile future:

• Smart Everything: The reason Google glasses really capture the imagination is that they seem to make the stuff of sci-fi a reality. And they’re just one of the ways in which technology’s moving in on previously analog parts of our lives. For instance, our homes. Check out this futuristic mirror from Cybertecture that’s doing things George Jetson would recognize. Like this mirror, new screens -- “fifth screen,” anyone? – from watches, to kitchen appliances, to goggles, will put us at the center of a wall of intelligent data, that Adam Ferrier of Naked Communications  says, “represents a paradigm shift in advertising as much as it represents a change in the way we use computers on the move. It means ads everywhere, and different kinds of ads too…”

• Tech Gets Physical: We are witnessing advancements in biotech - and I don’t mean cloning or genetic modification, but the introduction of technology to our very bodies. Data comes from everywhere these days, including our cells. Companies like FitBit are finding new ways to record and leverage that data. For now, they seem to be focused on helping athletes (and wannabes) build better workouts, but it’s only a matter of time before brands begin to look more closely at how such data might be used to develop new customer relationships.

• User-Centrism: One of the most interesting trends we’ve seen in the world of media is the fragmentation of ownership – technology has empowered the masses, and they’re leveraging their power in new ways every week. This is nothing new, but it is something to keep an eye on. Because if brands want to remain relevant to their audiences, they’re going to have to engage in a media landscape where the traditional publishing model no longer exists. Pinterest, Flipboard, and other curation tools are where it’s at right now, enabling content to be remixed, repurposed, and shared by consumers, and not media owners.

• Multi-Multi-Platform Marketing: Prepare your brand to work with the marketing organization of the future by thinking broadly about consumer perceptions of your product, and communicating about them in a holistic way. Be aware of all of the new contexts in our lives, how and when we want to interact with brands, how are lives are changing, and the new possibilities to bring us value and not just marketing noise.

• New Horizons in Innovation: Until recently, most brands, products, marketing, and media were local, and barely traveled; today they’re frequent flyers. The question now is, can innovation in marketing make the leap across borders? When you want inspiration for your campaigns, be sure to look beyond your usual competitor set to find the most compelling and innovative initiatives in your sector, wherever they may be. Big brands are tapping local innovation more and more, testing new approaches and then repurposing them them elsewhere. Coca-Cola took the best approaches of gamification, Shazam, and the second-screen experience and ran with it in China. Tesco is testing out mobile, interactive shopping experiences in Seoul that the U.S. is not quite ready for, technologically and socially.

So what’s the bottom line? Media devices like smartphones and tablets have changed our lives permanently. And as we spend more time in the resulting new media environments, they’ll define how we spend more of our money, too. As brands and marketers explore the new opportunities presented by life in this new techno-data-sphere, we must remain mindful of how consumers are evolving. If we can do that, we’ll be well on our way to a post-mobile future that makes sense for consumers, marketers, and brands.

Let us know your personal experiences shopping with retail sites or apps - what improvements do you recommend?

Philly Sports Live used a Custom QR Code to drive sports fans to its website.

Philly Sports Live is an upstart website that reports on the beloved Phillies, Flyers, Sixers, and Eagles.  It also covers other teams in Philadelphia such as the Philadelphia Union and the college sports programs at Temple and Villanova.

But, despite outstanding journalism, finding an online audience in a city that boasts two sports talk radio stations, a very popular digital newspaper, and a bevy of prominent blog sites has not been an easy task.

So, Philly Sports Live took to the streets to find Philly sports fans.  And, there was no place better to find them than this weekend in South Philly with the Phillies hosting the hated Mets and the Flyers pummeling the cross-state rival Penguins in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

“We decided that the best way to become known was through guerilla marketing at Pattison and Broad,” said Frank Mazza, publisher of Philly Sports Live.  “We wanted to offer something hip, something cool, to Philly sports fans.  We wanted to offer them something that would enable them to get to our site immediately and quickly.”

That something was a silicone wrist band that enabled fans to immediately access the website while tailgating in the parking lots around the Wells Fargo Center and Citizen’s Bank Park.  Models hired by Philly Sports Live strolled through the parking lots and gave the wrist bands to the partying fans.

The wrist bands showed the Philly Sports Live logo plus a Custom QR Code that showed the most famous Philadelphia celebrity of all-time—Ben Franklin.  Franklin was also holding another favorite among Philadelphia sports fans—a beer.

The clever wrist bands were warmly received.  “We had people running up to us to get them,” said Mazza.  “After receiving them, nearly all of the people immediately scanned them with their smartphones and visited our website.  It was the Ben Franklin QR Code that really got their attention.”

Philly Sports Live is a sports website that has been reporting on Philadelphia sports for a little over a year.  It covers the Phillies, Sixers, Eagles, Flyers, Union, and local college, and high school sports.

Advanced Telecom Services is the mobile marketing company that designed the Ben Franklin Custom QR Code for Philly Sports Live.  In addition to Custom QR Codes, Advanced Telecom Services also provides text message marketing, mobile websites, and apps development for its advertising agency and media customers.

Get connected. Want to stay on top of the latest trends that are driving business for today's digital agencies? Attend the iMedia Agency Summit, May 20-23. Request your invitation today.

That got me to wonderin’ – how do some of the world’s most popular religions, in effect, ‘market’ themselves? What are some of the digital tools available online and does going the virtual route somewhat detract from physically being in a place of worship or complement someone’s spirituality?

So I spent a bit of time wandering in the digital desert and came across a number of interesting sites and apps.

Here’s a snapshot (alphabetized -- not listed in any particular order of preference):

Buddhism

Sumi Loundon Kim, the Buddhist chaplain at Duke University and minister for the Buddhist families of Durham, NC, summed up the dilemma of teaching Buddhism to a new generation that uses texting, Facebook, Twitter and other online social media.

“These other worlds exist only through the eyes and mind; there is no touch, no taste, no smell, and very little hearing. As such, virtual worlds present us Buddhist teachers with students who live not just one step removed from reality, but two,” said Kim.

Kim added that Buddhist teachers can’t afford to underestimate the impact of social media on young people today since they have become ‘neurologically adapted’ to this lifestyle.

“The next generation of dharma teachers must not shy away from understanding the force of technology,” she said.

And one of these entities is The Buddhist Channel. The site’s home page has a pithy slogan on its landing page – ‘Bringing Buddha Dharma Home.’ The Buddhist Channel offers a welter of information and tools – global news related to Buddhism, features on archaeology, arts & culture, healing, travel, various podcasts from Buddhist scholars, even e-cards and games.

Another site, Unfettered Mind was established in 2001 by a Buddhist teacher, Ken McLeod. It provides scores of hours of iTunes podcasts, Buddhist text translations, sutra sessions, and more.

In South Korea, where smartphones are more ubiquitous than in the U.S., there are numerous Buddhist apps ranging from a mobile version of Buddhist prayer beads to a location search program that uses GPS to find the nearest temple. Another app, ‘Hello Dharma School,’ features pop-up animations of the Buddha’s life and uses simple vocabulary to explain basic Buddhist philosophies.

“Modern day people are too busy and don’t have time to visit temples,” said Jung Ho, director of missionary research at the Jogye Order, the biggest Buddhist sect in the country. “With mobile apps, people can keep in touch with Buddhism – smartphones can serve as mobile temples.”

Christianity

Even the pope’s gone digital.  The Vatican is using technology to help Pope Benedict XVI reach out to his flock of more than one billion Catholics worldwide. The site has its own multimedia player called Vatican Player that aggregates content from Vatican media (managed by Vatican Radio). On the site you can access the pope’s encyclicals, homilies, read apostolic letters, download info on basilicas and papal chapels, etc.

But in one of his messages, the pope offered a caveat. New media and social networks offer a ‘great opportunity’ but he warned of the risks of having more virtual friends than real ones.

“It is important always to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives,” said the pope.

Another thriving Christian online site is GodTube.com, which is now drawing over two million monthly users. CEO Chris Wyatt recently said “we apply web technology to the Gospel in a way that appeals to young people – we call it Jesus 2.0.”

Chris Ford, a social media expert with the Southern Baptist Convention, said social media is a big plus for Christianity and has had an overall positive impact in three areas – evangelism, ministry outreach, and educational communications.

“It should be no surprise that, for spreading the Gospel and globally mobilizing people for missions, social media can have significant, positive implications,” said Ford.

Brandon Vogt, a Catholic writer/speaker who also blogs at ThinVeil.net, said that at its core, the church is ‘one giant social network.’ Church fellowship, noted Vogt, shouldn’t be exclusive and closed in on itself – it should always be outward-focused and mission-oriented.

“Fellowship in the past was constrained to times when people gathered at churches or in homes, but now conversations about Sunday sermons can linger throughout the week,” said Vogt.

Vogt added that social media also opens the doors of Christian fellowship, inviting millions of outsiders to join the community.

“Young secularists who would never darken the doors of a church find themselves dialoguing with Christian bloggers, and an atheist YouTube viewer stumbles across a religious debate and becomes intrigued by the idea of God…when used prudently, social media tightens the bonds among Christians and also connects them with millions outside the faith,” said Vogt.

Hinduism

Hinduism, the world’s third largest religion after Christianity and Islam, has about 950 million followers. It’s the dominant religion in India, Nepal and among the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Hindu Online purports to be the world’s largest portal on Hindu religion, culture, shastras, and more. There’s a vast array of information available on the site – scores of articles, sections devoted to religion, culture, community, a digital library featuring manuscripts (e.g., Veda, Upanishads, Ayurveda), even a Learn Online area where you can get up to speed on everything from Sanskrit to Vedic mathematics.

Two more interesting examples:

Kauai’s Hindu Monastery, located in Kapaa, HI, is a monastery-temple complex with 21 monks. Established in 1949, the monastery has a very popular Facebook page – at last count almost 4,200 had ‘Liked’ it. The Facebook page features photos and videos of the temple, and site visitors share their thoughts and experiences on the monastery’s Wall. Lastly, the site provides links to other Hindu organizations such as the Hindu Students Association, Hinduism Today Magazine and Hindu American Foundation.

Twitter is also being used more frequently for major religious holidays.

Diwali, India’s biggest and most important holiday of the year, is celebrated in October or November each year and is also known as the Festival of Light. Run a search that time of year and you’ll find that #HappyDiwali will be trending.

One popular Tweet last year came from Bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor:

“A very happy Diwali to all of our followers! Spend some quality time with family and friends and be safe!”

Popular Hindu leaders have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon to reach out to their followers. Devotees of Mata Amritanandamayi, a spiritual leader and guru who is sometimes referred to as ‘The Hugging Saint,’ regularly tweets (@amritapuri) in order to provide real-time updates of her activities.

Islam

It has been well documented how social media helped usher in last year’s ‘Arab Spring.’ But technology is also playing an important role in reaching out to Muslims worldwide on religious matters/issues.

For starters, there have been a suite of apps developed for smartphones that have become popular during Ramadan, the ninth month on the Islamic calendar. Ramadan generally lasts about 30 days; participating Muslims refrain from drinking, eating, smoking and sex during daylight hours. Other apps help find the nearest mosque or halal (food that’s permissible per Islamic law) restaurants in various cities.

Some examples:

iQuran, an Android app on Google Play, enables viewers to read the Holy Quran in Arabic alongside its translation. It provides verse-by-verse audio playbacks, repeat functions and unlimited bookmarks.

The Essentials of Ramadan, available on iTunes, provides in-depth info on the rules and laws of Ramadan.

Find Mecca, also on iTunes, uses GPS to locate the Qibla (the direction that should be faced when a Muslim prays; it’s fixed as the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca) anywhere worldwide using an iPhone or iPad. Users can see Mecca with the camera in augmented reality mode; the app also can set an automatic countdown to the next required prayer and adjusts to various time zones.

Nidhal Guessoum, reporting in The Huffington Post, said Twitter is now being used frequently to send Quranic verses and religious injunctions; YouTube and Facebook to disseminate sermons.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamanei, even issued a fatwa (a juristic ruling issued by an Islamic scholar) on using Facebook:

“In general if it requires engaging in immorality and evil acts such as spreading corruption, lies and false materials, or if there is concern that it is sinful, or it strengthens the enemies of Islam and Muslims, it is not permissible. Otherwise it’s fine.”

Judaism

There are about 13.4 million Jews worldwide, about 0.2% of the world’s population, with about half in Israel, half in the United States. The rest are scattered widely.

One rabbi in the U.S. has taken proactive steps to bridge this diaspora.

Rabbi Laura Baum founded OurJewishCommunity.org – catchphrase under the Welcome sign on the home page reads, ‘Bringing Judaism to People Where They Are.’

The site’s chief objective is ‘to provide the same services of a brick-and-mortar congregation, such as access to rabbis, sermons, educational materials, social networking, discussions, and more.’

OurJewishCommunity.org uses a variety of tools to generate live content – live stream, blogs, video casts on YouTube, audio podcasts on iTunes, a Facebook Fan Page (currently more than 5,200 fans from 18 countries) and a Twitter feed.

Baum recently presided over an online Passover Seder, which attracted more than 400 people – but no Orthodox Jews, who are not allowed to use electronic devices during the Seder or Sabbath (Friday night through Saturday sunset).

“Sitting in a room is a powerful way to have community; but the fact you can do Passover with people all over the world, that is not any less of a community,” said Baum.

There are also a number of interesting mobile apps being used by Jews around the world.

The Orthodox Union recently released a new mobile app that provides information on what food products are kosher for Passover.

Crowded Road, a software firm, rolled out iTorah-iPad Edition, which includes vowels for Hebrew text to make it easier to read.

Davka Corporation, which bills itself as ‘First in Judaic Software,’ offers the Tanach Bible, a Study Tool for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It includes the Hebrew text and English translation of the Torah and other important works, and can be downloaded on iTunes for $1.99.

Can social media glean modern day solutions to the challenges that first arose during biblical times and are still with us thousands of years later?

Jury’s still out. But these digital tools are having a significant impact on the social and religious lives of people of all faiths and denominations.

In the Toronto Star piece http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1157843--tech-s-great-expectations-why-consumers-are-often-neither-shaken-nor-stirred titled Tech’s great expectations: Why consumers are often neither shaken nor stirred, Michael Lewis (no, not the Michael Lewis from Moneyball fame) sought to call out mobile for what he considers small or no advances.

“With the wow factor conspicuously absent from the latest crop of smartphones and tablet PCs offered by vendors including Apple Inc., some experts are asking whether innovation has hit a wall in the post-Jobs era,” Lewis wrote. “The sense of stagnation was reinforced at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where dozens of smartphones were unveiled by vendors including HTC Corp. and Samsung Electronics in what one blogger called an outpouring of “product spam.”

Granted, the story appeared before Facebook paid $1 billion for pioneering Instagram so that it could be a bigger player in mobile. But where was Lewis when the third iPad was introduced, or when Nokia showed a 41-megapixel phone, or when Draw Something saw 50 million downloads in 50 days?

It would be too easy to suggest that Lewis has been dulled by the lack of innovation by Canadian company RIM.

The reporter attempted to back up his premise with interviews from industry analysts and academia.

According to Lewis, “Forrester Research senior analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said the market’s sense of what constitutes true innovation ‘has warped to the point where if Apple’s next product doesn’t make cars fly or enable mind control, we yawn and change the channel.’”

And then there were these comments from Sidneyeve Matrix, an assistant professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. (note - I follow Matrix on Twitter and find her to be insightful).

She was quoted by Lewis as saying, “There is no doubt people feel underwhelmed.” Lewis said that Matrix noted that, “the two most recent Apple product announcements under chief executive Tim Cook have been about incremental rather than revolutionary change. And the next iPhone ‘probably won’t move the needle that much either.’”

Lewis apparently didn’t talk to others. He should have.

Gartner predicts that tablet sales will double in 2012. Further, it said that iPad shipments will quadruple from 2011 to 2016. J.P. Morgan recently upped its first quarter estimate of iPhones sold to 31.1 million, three million more than first projected.

That doesn’t sound like stagnation to me.

I will admit, while being a little surprised that Apple does not have a mobile optimized site, I am not the least bit surprised when other websites don’t (some of our competitors in the Mobile Advertising market do not). In fact the opposite is true – I am pleasantly surprised when they do.

According to a recent report, only 20% of the FTSE100 corporate websites currently provide support for mobile devices. How can this be acceptable?

Mobiles and smartphones in particular, are quickly becoming our primary content consumption devices. Research shows that accessing the web through mobile devices has consistently doubled every year since 2009 and by 2014, will overtake desktop internet usage. Morgan Stanley predicts that in the next five years more people will connect to the Internet via mobile than on a PC.

So not only are the majority of companies not catering to the habits of their users and not keeping up with changing trends, they are also causing their business to under perform.

Research by Aberdeen Group shows that companies that provide mobile-optimized content outperform those that don’t by 80% in terms of year-over-year increase in web traffic and achieve a 55% greater year-over year increase in the number of repeat visitors. And different research predicts that companies with properly mobile-optimized sites, can increase sales by 12%.

Now days, most companies have adopted digital marketing into their overall marketing strategy – from sending out email newsletters to online search campaigns. However, the market has moved so quickly, that companies without mobile sites, are again behind the trend.

Between 15 – 25% (and in some industries up to 50%) of people read their emails on a mobile device. That means that if you have links to offers or news within those emails, your customers are being taken to sites that are not optimized for the device they are viewing them on.

And mobile search already accounts for over 12% of total search and more than 50% of all “local” searches are done from a mobile device. Just imagine the lost opportunity that this represents with so few companies able to fully utilize this traffic.

So why have companies been so slow at implementing mobile sites?

Fears of additional cost or the management of multiple sites are often quoted as reasons for not implementing mobile sites. However, mobile sites are not meant to be identical to an existing website. They are meant to be “slimmed down” versions that are easy to navigate on the smaller format while still be a great showcase for the business.

And the cost of implementing these sites can be small, especially relative to the lost opportunity of not having a mobile site. And for companies that don’t have the in-house resources, there are a multitude of companies and software solutions to turn existing sites into a mobile optimized site.

The reality is, with so many companies still struggling to implement effective web strategies, this is just another area of digital marketing where they are going to lag even further behind the market. For those that have begun or have already implemented their mobile strategies – the market will be their oyster.

I like that Magic Hat gave mobile engagement a try here. Their younger audience definitely might have a higher likelihood to know what a QR code is and have a smartphone to use it. However, not everyone would recognize it especially hidden in the label.  The fans of the brand that did engage seemed willing to give their glowing opinions of the beer.

Although there is some debate about whether QR codes are just a fad, I like the fact that companies and brands are experimenting with it and even having fun with it. It would be all too easy to put a website url on a beer bottle label.  Consumers would more likely have their phones within reach and scan the code than go to a computer to visit the site.

We need more creative applications of mobile interaction and I'm glad I happened to see this one!

Smartphones are the all purpose in-motion utility device. The voice/text/audio recording tool replacing watches, alarm clocks, instant cameras, to-do lists, address books, PDAs, gameboys, calendars, weather 800 numbers and soon -- wallets. Tablets are becoming multi-dimensional infotainment centers. And personal computers, which are more likely than either phones or tablets to be shared devices, are serious tools for serious matters and the repository, or gateway to the cloud repository, of our key files and critical data.

The division of labor seems to a function of technical capabilities, psychology, demographics and habits. People are used to doing certain things on the go, like texting, calling, checking e-mail, tweeting, etc. Shopping is a mixed bag. According to PriceGrabber, 1 percent of on online shoppers will buy exclusively using a mobile device and another 45 percent will combine offline, online and mobile to make a purchase.  And while the number of these tasks is expanding to include payments, ticketing or boarding passes and app use, we are, after all, creatures of habit where tradition and inertia plus ease of use drive many of our behaviors.

107 million Americans, 46% of US adults own a smartphone. The average person glances at their phone 150 times at or every 6.5 minutes. Fifteen percent download mobile apps, 10% research products using their phone and 4% bought something with an average value of $80. Forty-eight percent use their phone to get coupons and 44 percent check product reviews. Forty percent use their phones while watching TV and two-thirds listen to music on their phones. Payments are the next new thing for smart phone users.

The 54.8 million tablet users, 19 percent of US adults, account for 22 percent of Internet users and are generally concentrated among the better educated and higher earning segments, more than half of whom are millennials. Four times more tablet users access the Internet on their device than smart phone users and they spend 4.4 hours/week using their tablets accounting for 4 percent of online retail traffic. Seventy-two percent make weekly purchases averaging $123.00, about twice the time smartphone users spend shopping and twice the value of smart phone purchases.

Tablets are becoming the preferred device for consuming long form content that requires longer attention spans. More than half of tablet users use apps, watch videos, read newspapers or magazines, read books or play games on their devices. More than half have paid for access to music, books, movies or TV shows. iPad users, the majority of tablet owners, spend 35 percent of their time surfing the web, 22% on social media, 12 percent each on playing games or watching videos.

Desktops and laptops have perceptually merged in consumers’ minds. And while these computers introduced us to e-mail, web video, games, ecommerce and social media the portability, speed, and convenience of tablets are eclipsing the laptop. Yet consumers overwhelming see legacy devices as more secure and critical for storing information, It’s hard to imagine consumers filling out a mortgage, credit card or the common college application on a phone or a tablet. Similarly, even though tablet traffic to tax preparations sites is up 50 percent, most of us still do our taxes and our financial work on desktops or laptops.

Savvy marketers will keep an eye on these behaviors and will create content, build messaging and promotions using native functionality built-into the devices in tandem with variables like day of week, time of day, GPS location and other factors to leverage existing device usage and provide consumers with an experience that will feel natural, organic, useful and fun.

You know the saying: The times they are a-changing. And nowhere more than in our world of digital marketing. Whether or not you engage in the hype surrounding the shiny new technologies and platforms that constantly promise to “change everything,” you have to admit that these here are exciting times we live in. Get out your new iPad everyone and get ready to take some notes.

Now, I’m not a psychic. I don’t know what our world will look like in five years (though I did recently venture a guess in these very pages). But I do know that if you want to succeed as a marketer in our always-evolving world, you’d better be ready to be increasingly mobile, engaging, relevant, and aware of the contexts in which we all now operate.

To prepare for a “Minority Report”-style, hyper-connected future, here are five big ideas you can embrace now to stay ahead of the curve:

1. Geo-Power

Location features of social apps such as Foursquare, Ban.jo, Path, et al. are a potential goldmine of important data on consumer habits and preferences. Near-Field Communications (NFC) and wireless payments are here and just starting to show their potential. Privacy issues still need to be resolved, but there is a clear demand from consumers who want marketers to find ways to make their purchases and lives easier. And, if the rumors are true that the iPhone 5 will ship with NFC, expect this geo-power to go from leading edge to mainstream with the swipe of a finger.

2. The Video Land Grab

While online video and mobile are – unsurprisingly – attracting a lot of heat, the marketing spend they draw is still way out of line with the amount of attention they attract from consumers. Don’t just throw money at these new channels: Instead of placing pre-roll video ads and other “forced-view” options, look to user-initiated solutions that respect the user, their time, and their interests.

3. You Down with UGC?

I’m talking about the new UGC: User Generated Curation, powered by content-discovery apps like Pulse, Flipboard, Fancy, and Foodspotting. Publishers and merchants are providing the content, and consumers are cultivating feeds that suit their interests and contexts. The power to filter data and curate personalized information platforms has been put in the hands of the people. These are models for how brands will stay relevant to consumers. As these platforms evolve, they could provide the next great marketing platform. The massive attention consumers and marketers are devoting to Pinterest clearly demonstrates how personal curation and relevance can drive engagement.

4. Thinking Beyond the Tap

Tablets are obviously a magnificent canvas where marketers can paint engaging experiences for consumers. But what are you going to do with your users after you get them to tap? Don’t think you can count on rolling out the same old display strategy. It’s time to get creative and imagine the new possibilities inspired by this new platform. Media industry guru Ken Doctor points to innovative advertisers who take advantage of the unique iPad format: “What’s better for an insurance company like Liberty Mutual than threatening you with disaster (tornado, earthquake, flood) and then inviting you to simply tilt your iPad to watch the damage disappear?” Now that’s what I call mobile advertising.

5. United We Stand

Ditch the silos in your advertising strategy and focus on the most important thing – your customer. In this increasingly interconnected world, consumers don’t think in terms of silos, so why should you? The power of integration is evident in the dividends it pays for brands. Google found that consumers had 74% brand recall when the advertiser has an integrated strategy that carries across mobile, TV, and online. QR codes and “bridging” apps like Viggle that help deliver second-screen relevance can support marketers’ efforts to unleash multiplatform, integrated relevance.

So what are you waiting for? The future is here. Smart marketers will succeed in this world by engaging with the trends that have resonance and relevance for the emerging consumer of today.

I’m sure my hypothalamus is hardwired for chocolate – that old adage, “out of sight, out of mind” may work for some folks – not me. If there’s chocolate in the upper reaches of the pantry or it’s buried two-feet deep behind various foodstuffs in the fridge, my brain immediately sends out tracking signals – a cranial GPS (Godiva Positioning System), I reckon.

So not surprisingly, as a self-confessed ‘chocoholic’, I was thrilled a few years ago when I started reading reports about how dark chocolate – eaten in moderation (inhaled is more accurate for me) – may be good for the heart.

Some dark chocolate confections even contain various vitamins, nutrients and probiotics; research has also shown that flavonoids – antioxidants found in cocoa beans – may help lower blood pressure and LDL (think ‘Lousy’ – it’s the bad acronym) cholesterol, and also improve blood vessel function.

In fact, noted Joy Dubost, a nutritionist and spokesperson for the Washington, DC-based Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, “the higher the percentage of cocoa, the higher the flavanol content, the higher the antioxidant content and thus we believe the greater positive health benefit.”

All of the aforementioned now fully justifies my quarterly trips to Ghirardelli’s in San Francisco – I now order guilt-free the hot fudge sundaes with dark chocolate sauce.

This then got me wondering about innovative marketing campaigns various companies have rolled out to drum up sales for their dark chocolate products, and in some cases if interesting enough, plain old milk chocolate.

Cadbury

One campaign that Cadbury would probably like to recall/reboot was to promote Bliss, a chocolate product.

The august British company (established 1824 and now owned by Kraft Foods) ran an ad for the product with the heading, “Move over Naomi, there’s a new diva in town.”

Supermodel Naomi Campbell wasn’t thrilled about being compared to a chocolate bar and even her mum, Valerie Morris, chimed in, saying “I’m deeply upset by this racist advert. Do these people think they can insult black people and we just take it? This is the 21st century, not the 1950s. Shame on Cadbury.”

Cadbury, it should be noted, did do the right thing – the company pulled the ads and issued an apology to Campbell.

On the flip side, another campaign rolled out by Cadbury India fared much better. The objective was to publicize its premium dark chocolate brand, Bournville and further promote the catchphrase, “You don’t just buy a Bournville, you earn it.”

Cadbury launched a blog called The Dark Truth and introduced a virtual character – Old Hound. In one story, another virtual character, Mark, a friend of Old Hound, disappeared. While trying to find Mark, Old Hound got a clue that if he collected 100 stories about people receiving something after they have earned it, he would discover the whereabouts of his friend. The posts generated more than 2,000 daily readers.

Haagen-Dazs

A few years ago Haagen-Dazs rolled out its Dark Chocolate Orange flavor at 14 outlets in Singapore and Malaysia. A campaign slugged ‘Slow Melting in Progress’ was aimed at female professionals in their 20s and 30s who are “engrossed with their profession and family and tend to forget themselves in the process, neglecting to pamper themselves.”

That verbiage seems a bit askew but the radio/print/web campaign apparently worked as Dark Chocolate Orange became a popular flavor in that corner of Southeast Asia.

Cocoa Metro

Cocoa Metro, located in Auburndale, MA, markets various dark chocolate drinks. Their catchphrase on their home page immediately grabs your attention: 'Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.'

The sweet maker recently rolled a multimedia ad campaign. One image depicts how Cocoa Metro’s decadent chocolate can be consumed – via juice boxes, pop cans and flasks, for example. Another series of ads relies more on clever verbiage and fonts to capture your attention (having a refrigerated backyard bunker full of chocolate seems like a very sound idea).

Rom

While not a dark chocolate, this campaign merits a brief mention. Rom is a hugely popular Romanian chocolate bar, first introduced in 1964. It features the Romanian flag on the wrapper and probably everyone from Bucharest to Brasov to Baia Mare has gobbled one down.

To fuel international sales and branding, the company rolled out a week-long hoax – the American flag was used on the packaging and various YouTube videos explained that due to a poor economy and a frustrated youth culture, Rom was ditching its Romanian heritage. Literally tens of thousands of angry Romanians vented their outrage on Facebook, YouTube and countless blogs.

The campaign was a stunning success – it reached almost 70 percent of all Romanians. Rom’s Facebook page fan total increased by over 300 percent and it’s estimated the company generated about $500,000 worth of free media. McCann Erickson’s Bucharest office also garnered two Grand Prix Cannes Lions awards in the ‘Promo/Activation’ category (for advertising programs that bring on immediate responses/engagements), and the ‘Direct’ category for direct marketing.

There are scores of other examples but quite frankly, I’ve written enough – time for some chocolate.

If 2010 was the year of mobile, then 2011 was the year of the QR Code. The percent of print ads containing QR Codes showed growth from below 1% of all print ads in January 2011 to in excess of 6% of all advertising in December 2011.

While a variety of 2D barcodes were used in the print advertisements, the vast majority (87.8%) of those utilized in print were QR Codes. The Microsoft tag, a multi-colored tag using triangular shapes, was second most popular with 10.2%. The JagTag, DataMatrix Code, SnapTag, and EZ Code made up just over 1% of the use in print advertisements.

The QR Code is the most popular 2D barcode.

Businesses of all types are utilizing 2D barcode technology, although retailers lead with 21.9% of the overall use of bar codes. It would make sense that technology is the second most used category since those scanning bar codes are likely more tech savvy than the average person. Interestingly, automotive was just the seventh top category of use of 2D barcodes.

For 2D barcodes to continue growing, it is important that they offer relevant feedback that is of value to the scanners. General commerce and branding are important, but leading the consumer to a value-added features such as a video or mobile coupon is a valuable use of 2D barcode technology.

Unfortunately, some advertisers just don’t get it when it comes to using 2D barcodes. Over 40% of the QR Codes tracked led to brand home pages. Leading a consumer to a home page is usually not going to result in great customer satisfaction, especially if that home page is not optimized for mobile.

Too many companies are simply using a QR Code to lead consumers to a website that is not optimized for mobile.

The study of 2D barcodes was done by Competitrack which began studying the use of 2D barcodes in January 2011. Throughout the year, the company identified 7,300 print advertisements that featured 2D barcodes.

Over all of 2011, 4% of all print ads included a 2D barcode, although that number peaked later in the year at over 7% of the ads studied. Oppenheimer Funds was the leader in utilizing 2D barcodes with 85% of its print ads including 2D barcodes.

Bob Bentz is president of Advanced Telecom Services which has been providing Custom QR Codes, with the branding of the company incorporated into the code itself. Its apples to apples comparisons with Custom QR Codes vs. traditional black & white QR Codes shows a scan rate that is 2.3 times greater for Custom QR Codes. If you would like to reach Bentz, you can (how’d you guess?), scan his Custom QR Code below.

Scan the QR Code to be Linked In with Bob Bentz.

Surveys On the Go

It's advertising a mobile survey app. A couple of thoughts come to mind after seeing this:
1) I wonder how effective panelist recruitment is using an OOH ad like this? I'm sure average New Yorkers consider themselves "Opinionated" but would they actually stop and read this ad? And if they did, how effective can it be when the branding so terrible? There is a shot of the app with the "Surveys On the Go" logo and very small text at the bottom saying to search for the app. Why not add a QR code to this ad? (For the record, it was in an area where cell phone service was still accessible).

2) I wonder where else they are recruiting panelists/users. Are they specifically trying to recruit urban respondents? How representative would their users be for research purposes?

3) Has mobile research arrived? There are more and more survey apps popping up in app stores. Common online panels are asking their panelists to download apps and take surveys on their mobile devices. Are mobile survey apps the future for market research? Many companies are investigating how and when to use mobile for surveys. We are still learning and haven't quite figured it all out yet. But if companies are taking big strides like this to advertise their survey apps, maybe the future is closer than we think....

Impressive stats. However, what is missing is data on the return on investment for brand managers, some of whom took the plunge in the very early days in part because of a misguided belief that the mere creation of an app would be newsworthy.

“Companies were making decisions to develop an app and rushing to launch something just so they could point to it in the app store,” Joy Liuzzo, InsightExpress vice president and director, says in my soon-to-be-released book, Mobilized Marketing: Driving Sales, Engagement, and Loyalty Through Mobile Devices http://jeffhasen.com/pages/mobilized-marketing-book.

“The lack of strategy is shocking in hindsight—and even during the time—but it spoke to the still naïve understanding of mobile by most companies. They thought of it as an isolated channel, something fun and fluffy, and that consumers would be willing to engage with anything they put in front of them. I think the realization that the channel and consumer were more sophisticated than they realized was a hard wake-up call for brands and agencies. However, those lessons were necessary to force agencies and brands down a more integrated strategy path, one that included proper planning and multiple mobile channel executions and media.”

Among the lessons learned was the need to drive attention to an app. Many now do so through mobile advertising.

Certainly a number of brands have successfully employed apps. Many winning applications serve utilitarian functions, providing such content as recipes, nutritional information and flight status. Others, such as an app employed by Starbucks, expedite payment at the point of sale.

Savvy marketers are giving consumers a choice by providing multiple ways to engage on a wireless device. That strategy is wise because it is more inclusive than a program that banks on one mobile product being available on an individual handset, then found and used by a brand’s customers and prospects.

What are consumers finding most interesting when it comes to apps?

Draw Something Free (social drawing and guessing game), The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Camera Awesome (that replaces the iPhone’s camera) were the top moving free apps on Saturday. Facebook and Twitter apps are always customer favorites, as is Angry Birds, the top selling iPhone and iPad app in 2011.

The top paid Android apps as of Saturday were Draw Something, Where’s My Water (game to test skills with a cranky alligator) and Beautiful Widgets (to customize such things as time and weather).

For starters, what you don’t readily see is vitally important. UK-based, publicly-held Imagination Technologies creates and licenses multimedia IP cores for graphics, video, and display processing; licensees include many leading semiconductor and consumer electronics companies.

According to VP-Marketing Tony King-Smith, a key issue is improving texture compression in order to get the best quality game with the fastest download times.

“Increasingly in software downloads the total file size is dominated by texture data – indeed, up to 70% or more of a top game title may be textures,” says King-Smith. “This has had a massive impact on everything from app store download and update times through to device main memory usage.”

The most notable trend we’ll see this year is the shift to mobile games – from independent developers to traditional publishers, most companies are now directing their efforts around mobile strategies (smartphones, according to IndustryGamers, already comprise the majority of handheld gaming revenue).

Wanda Meloni, who heads up Encinitas, CA-based market research firm M2 Research, predicts the mobile games market will exceed $6 billion this year.

“With mobile comes more social games and more companies are starting to target core gamers,” said Meloni. “This in turn will lead to higher quality graphics in mobile and social games which we believe will start to play a defining factor with consumers.”

Ultimately, noted Meloni, as competition heats up in the mobile games space, more companies will be looking to differentiate around feature sets such as enhanced graphics quality, deeper game play, and engaging storytelling.

“We are still just at the beginning of the growth curve for mobile games,” said Meloni.

Games on the iOS and Android ecosystems will continue to grow in terms of development support, user base and revenue. And the industry is clearly developing different ways of playing and interacting with games and media.

“Smartphones and tablets are offering ways for smaller and indie developers to get noticed and sell their game to potentially millions without needing a huge budget or marketing campaign,” said Kristina Kozlova, a marketing manager at Altabel Group, a Vilnius, Lithuania-based software development/consulting company.

“We’ll also continue to see voice integration as well as motion controls make a big push in 2012,” said Kozlova.

Ted Pollak, a senior gaming analyst with Jon Peddie Research, a Tiburon, CA firm that provides consulting/market forecasting services, added that the handheld market may lose some casual consumers to smartphones and tablets, but the 3DS and PSVita control dynamics “blow away the competition in most cases, and playing handhelds doesn’t decimate your smartphone battery. Gamers get this – build them and they will buy them – tens of millions of them.”

A few more trends worth mentioning.

Denuo, a digital marketing shop, predicts that this year we’ll see a game come close to breaking the $1 billion sales mark in its first week.

“We’ll also see huge growth in the approachable games category as well. A social game will break the 250 million player mark thanks to being available on multiple platforms in addition to Facebook. Across all categories of games, our minds will be blown by the number of gamers these big titles are able to acquire.”

Denuo also thinks we’ll see more downloadable content releases to keep gamers engaged.

“There will be more collaborative development of game play and associated assets. Developers will work alongside consumers to produce game titles and create a vested sense of commitment with their players.”

Streaming games will make an impact in 2012 too. Last month at CES, it was announced that Gaikai is being built into new LG televisions and OnLive is being built into Google TV.

Steve Peterson reported in IndustryGamers that every big TV set manufacturer will include some degree of connectivity in most new sets.

“This means significant numbers of people will be exposed to a wider variety of gaming, with a variety of business models making it easy to try out games,” said Peterson. “More games getting to more people means good news for the gaming industry.”

I could prattle on as all of the aforementioned is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, but you get the gist. There will be some upheaval, of course, but the industry should continue to post healthy double-digit growth rates for the foreseeable future.

So think about applying this to your mobile marketing strategy.   Is how you engage with end users aligned to their daily routines – what they do day in and day out, how they actually behave – or solely based on ‘who’ they are?    We’re all familiar with traditional segmentation.   But what’s more helpful – knowing that I’m categorized as a “suburban sports enthusiast” or knowing that I make the same drive, around the same time each day and am 73% more likely to respond to a SMS offer in the morning rather than in the afternoon?

One might argue that marketing to ‘segments’ isn’t much better than mass marketing.  So, what is the alternative?  The alternative is having a ‘dynamic understanding of the user’.   What is that you ask?   Bear with me and let’s break it down:

dy·nam·ic/dīˈnamik/ (of a process or system) Characterized by constant change, activity, or progress

+

un·der·stand·ing/ˌəndərˈstandiNG/ the power to make experience intelligible by applying concepts and categories

+

us·er/ˈyo͞ozər/ one who consumes or employs a good or service to obtain a benefit or to solve a problem

=

Delivering an experience aligned to an individual’s needs which is driven by continuous analysis and application of learnings over time.

Taking a snapshot of a user delivers little value for a mobile marketer.   Sure, someone standing on the street corner in NYC may be interested in an offer from the local Thai restaurant.   But they could also hate Thai food, be visiting from the west coast, and have zero time in their schedule to swing by for your Pad Thai lunch special.

With mobile, it’s about being able to determine patterns and habits – and just as important – aligning how you engage with the user to that understanding.    Easier said than done, right?

It’s not an easy task but the good news is – it’s not an impossible task either.   Mobile marketers are beginning to use technologies that not only aggregate the massive amounts of ‘big data’ that mobile brings in, but also continuously analyze the data to determine a user’s behavior (aka: habits) and time series (aka: best time to engage the user).   With ongoing analysis that takes into account changes, patterns, and actions taken, marketers gain insight into a user’s lifecycle – versus capturing a mere snapshot in time – and are able to base customer engagement off of the predicted action of an individual user.   For the mobile channel, this is the golden ticket.   We’re bombarded by email and snail mail but with something as personal as our mobile device – which is with us constantly I might add – none of us are as forgiving to irrelevant, impersonal communications.   By determining the dynamic understanding of a user, marketers can move beyond one-off, hit or miss mobile campaigns to delivering ongoing experiences that are valuable and relevant for the user.

Let’s go back to the user on the street corner in NYC.  By leveraging analytics we can go beyond the fact that it’s 11:23 am on Tuesday morning and determine that this user works in a business park three blocks away, is more likely to go out for lunch on Mondays and Fridays, and has a higher probability of opening a SMS offer with a dollar discount versus a percentage discount.

Yes, it’s possible.  It just requires a shift from traditional segmentation to newer techniques that incorporate an ongoing and dynamic understanding of a user’s needs and the best contexts to meet those needs.  For those who are doing it, the results speak for themselves – dramatic increases in conversions and revenues and reduced cost of revenue.

Whether you’re a mobile operator, brand, retailer, or other mobile marketer, leveraging the data (ALL of it) to engage with your users when it matters most can make or break your mobile marketing success.

So ask yourself – are you delivering experiences that are aligned to your individual users’ needs and habits?   Are you engaging individuals in ways that drive the behaviors you’re trying to influence e.g., accepting an offer, driving them to your retail location, building awareness of your brand?

If not, now’s the time to rethink your strategy.

Camden Riversharks Opening Day 2012

We were able to create the mobile website for 85% less than it would have cost us to do an app.

Camden, New Jersey --

The Camden Riversharks are stepping up to the plate and going mobile in 2012.

Mobile marketing that is.

And, the Riversharks have come out swinging even before the season has started while just in the rookie year of its mobile marketing plans. Its custom QR Code, complete with the Riversharks logo injected in it, was a real hit. It was named by CNN and Money magazine as one of its 23 Coolest QR Codes Custom QR Code.

“It was a great honor to have our QR Code recognized by CNN,” said Kristin Segers, Marketing Manager for the Riversharks. “We’ve already had over 500 scans of the code and we haven’t even really done much advertising yet.”

When the baseball fan scans the custom QR Code branded qr code, it takes him to a mobile microsite. The microsite, which is developed for easy navigation on the small screen of the mobile phone, serves many functions, but it has the penultimate goal of being the closer for more Riversharks tickets. The mobile website gives the Riversharks schedule, lists team promotions, provides discount mobile coupons, and promotes the upcoming Atlantic League All Star game which will be played at Campbell’s Field—home of the Riversharks. It also allows consumers to do a Click-To-Call to score tickets from the box office, right from the convenience of the mobile phone. Fans won’t balk at having the microsite drop the Riversharks icon on the screen of the iPhone or Android smartphone user for 24/7 access of the fan.

“We had looked into doing an app for the team, but at the time it was cost prohibitive,” said Adam Lorber, General Manager of the Camden Riversharks baseball team. “We were able to create the mobile website for 85% less than what it would have cost us to do the app. And, there’s virtually no difference, except we don’t have the opportunity to get listed on the Apple App Store.”

Lorber added that there already have been calls to the box office that have been generated from the Click to Call on the mobile microsite and he is optimistic that the team’s mobile marketing efforts will result in greater ticket sales in 2012.

“We compete in a market with the immensely popular Philadelphia Phillies who have had over 200 consecutive sellouts and get nearly all of the media coverage,” added Lorber. “We need to reach our fans in as many ways as possible to remind them of our fireworks and other special promotions. The mobile marketing products enable us to do that and always be in touch with our fans.”

About Advanced Telecom Services

Advanced Telecom Services (Wayne, Pennsylvania) is the mobile marketing company that created the custom QR Code and mobile website mobile microsites for the Riversharks. In addition to these products, the company also provides text message marketing, mobile marketing , apps development, and mobile video to its clients. No surprise, but its employees are also big baseball fans. For more information, please visit the mobile marketing company website http://www.advancedtele.com.

About The Camden Riversharks

The Camden Riversharks are entering their 12th season in the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball. Since 2001, the Riversharks have hosted all of their home games at Campbell’s Field, located along the Camden Waterfront. The team provides a competitive baseball product, while maintaining an affordable family friendly atmosphere. For more information, please visit http://www.riversharks.com mobile marketing.

For the record, Rachel Pasqua, Organic's new executive director of mobile marketing, thinks the QR code is like cilantro: You either love it or hate it.

You'll hear more pronouncements like that, presumably, in the upcoming book Mobile Marketing in One Hour A Day (Wiley) that Pasqua is writing with eMarketer analyst Noah Elkin (listen here as Elkin interviews me about QR code best practices for a recent analyst report).

In part two of my interview with Pasqua, we begin a discussion about this month's Super Bowl advertising and mobile's varied role as an activation or response mechanism - starting with audio activation ala Shazam and yes, more about cilantro.

Q&A: RACHEL PASQUA, EXEC DIR, MOBILE MARKETING, ORGANIC (PT 2)

Click Here to Listen to: Q&A: Rachel Pasqua (Pt 2)

(3:32)

The data speaks for itself. Mobile web usage continues to increase dramatically; more people are buying smartphones and tablets, and taking them online. They’re changing the way we watch TV, experience advertising, and make purchase decisions, both online and in-store.

Thanks to this burgeoning mobile shift, scenarios that seemed futuristic not so long ago are becoming our here-and-now reality. Try this one on for size:

You are woken up by the alarm on your smartphone. As you brush your teeth (with your Bluetooth-connected toothbrush), perhaps you attend to a screen or two that’s integrated into your home – maybe via a smart mirror or smart window. Your screens present you with relevant, custom-curated news and information, tailored to your needs and interests based on the preferences you’ve opted to share with media companies. You grab a 10-Hour Energy – in the future, five hours doesn’t cut it – and you’re out the door on your way to work. All you carry is a smartphone and a tablet. When your cab drops you at your office, you wave your phone to pay. At your desk you place your tablet and smartphone in docks, via which they sync instantly with your office’s information systems. A laser virtual keyboard and Kinect interface allow you to input text and control your computing world with gestures.

Sound crazy? Well, pending a few processor upgrades and an uptick in mobile bandwidth, everything here is entirely plausible using technology that’s widely available right now. That same technology is about to dramatically alter how we shop – online, on Main Street, and at the mall.

Our mobile future is, if not already here, fast approaching. So how can smart marketers make the most of the mobile shift to capture new opportunities for consumer engagement?

Here are a few emerging technologies to keep an eye on:

• Near-Field Communications: This technology, which enables devices in close proximity to communicate, promises to have enormous impact on how we market to consumers. Right now it’s discussed mostly as a mobile-payment platform, which it will be, but it also has great potential to deliver hyper-relevancy and drive engagement. Chris Silva of Altimeter warns, however, that privacy issues will need to be top of mind where near-field communications (NFC) are concerned. And I have to agree with Silva on this point: “I don’t necessarily want a ‘Minority Report’ experience where I’m walking down the street and getting marketed to by name because I passed by a sensor.”

• Digital Bridges: QR codes and other offline triggers often get a bad rap, but along with apps like Viggle and Shazam, they’re invaluable as “bridging” technologies that connect the online and offline worlds via users’ mobile devices. What’s more, they deliver highly qualified ‘clicks’ to marketers – the QR-scanning customer has gone out of her way to engage with you. Now how will you return the favor?

• Device Fingerprinting: Still in its infancy, “device fingerprinting” will allow targeting in a way similar to what a cookie does online. This and other standards will emerge to allow consumers to decide what data they want to share with marketers in exchange for a new level of convenience and relevance. Google and others are looking at new frontiers to integrate data across devices and make mobile even more useful to consumers and brands.

• Showrooming: Brick-and-mortar retailers are likely to suffer the most from the new phenomenon of “showrooming,” where people use their phones to comparison shop online while in retail stores. During the holidays, 52% of shoppers used their phones to conduct research in stores, after which many of them chose to make their purchases online. It’s easy to see how this could escalate into a headache for businesses. Marketers can fight back by building apps or working with companies such as Milo that use offers and recommendations to incentivize store visits and purchases.

• Real-Time Dialogue: Customers aren’t waiting until they get home to review your shop, restaurant, or salon anymore – with geo-enabled apps like Foursquare and Yelp at their fingertips, they don’t have to. Next time you’re in a restaurant, look around. That’s right, look up from your own smartphone and notice how many of your fellow diners are engaged with their phones – looking up a Groupon offer, letting friends know where they are, checking reviews on crowd-sourced – or even (gasp) traditional – media sites. Mobile consumers are social, and they are going with the crowd. Tap into the ratings, feedback, and check-in data your customers so readily provide to open a two-way dialogue. It’ll add up to better consumer engagement, and better business performance.

There’s no question that our transformation to a mobile society is already underway. Broader adoption and better integration of mobile technologies will permanently alter the ways we interact with our customers and with each other. Marketers who understand and embrace this change will remain relevant long into the future.