A big brand and lots of money is not a sure thing

I enjoy reading Steve Smith’s postings as the Mobile Insider at Media Post. His posting from today is a great read on the question we get asked all too frequently as a start-up mobile marketing company. The question I speak of goes something like “who’s to say Google or someone else won’t grab the entire market share in mobile marketing.”

Candidly speaking, I don’t like this question since it flies in the face of what we are seeing today and what has happened over history.

If it were true that any large brand would easily stomp an up-and-comer then I give you GM in the car business and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS as two of the thousands of examples that I am sure exist.

Steve points out his own example by comparing the Android store and developers less-than-lukewarm feelings about it to the 800 lb. gorilla app store Apple has created. If I were to use the logic of bigger is better and will stomp you then I would have bet Android would be growing like Apple’s store but they aren’t.

Why not? The core premise I hold to and have shared with everyone I know when it comes to the differences of dealing with mobile phones is just because you’re a big brand doesn’t mean you can translate to another platform. Think about GM’s dismissal of small cars when the Japanese were the scrawny new guys to the US auto market and as for Windows Mobile-I nearly fell out of my chair when someone commented in a posting a few weeks back that they thought Windows Mobile was dead.

Brand and money are nice to have but I would caution against the hubristic tendency to think that’s all you need. As far as mobiles go, you need to know the mobile consumptive experience or MCE as I have talked about before in an earlier posting here. Mobile phones as marketing platforms and the mobile internet are very different from their PC-based counterparts.

The biggest thing a big brand and lots of money have to offer is the familiarity and reach of a well-know brand and the financial support to experiment on your approach to mobile marketing.

Other than that, you’ll have to spend some time thinking about your approach to mobilizing your message and your presence and I suggest giving Ruxter a try today so you can get used to the new role your brand and money will have to play.

Dale Knoop is the President of Ruxter and an industry-recognized pioneer of mobile data services. In 2005 Dale won an Emmy while serving as the GM for Sprint TV. In August 2009 he launched Ruxter which allows anyone to quickly and easily become part of the rapidly growing mobile internet with a fully optimized mobile website they can share with anyone. You can contact him here. Follow Ruxter on Twitter.