One of the promises held out by the mobile channel is location based marketing. The theory is that, as your mobile knows where you are, you can get information and special offers from retailers and other services in your area. So far, location based marketing has failed to get much traction, but that's slowly changing and there's certainly some interesting Apps now emerging for the iPhone that make this kind of thing pretty easy and intuitive to use.
Now the technology is there, it's more a question of getting advertisers to get their heads round it, which will take some time, I think.
Clues to the future of mobile can often be found in Japan, which is arguably the most sophisticated user base in the world when it comes to mobile. They are only clues though as it doesn't automatically follow that just because something is big in Japan, it's going to succeed here. Mobile-based novels, Bowing Contests and Love Hotels are just three cultural phenomena that haven't exported very well.
Infinita is a consultancy based in Japan and they regularly review what's happening over there in the mobile world. Their latest video (free registration required) shows how a "last minute" service might work on mobile. In this case, Otetsudai Networks is a casual labour market place. Employers in need to help that day can run ads on the mobile website, pay about £240 to generate 50 leads and because the prospective employee is in the area on their mobile, they can often start right away. So if one of your call centre staff calls in sick, you can have a replacement working within half an hour or so.
It's more than just a one-way process though. Employees can post availability and offer their services to posted jobs at higher than the advertised rate. Employees can also sign up for alerts on the day via email (email on mobile in Japan is huge).
A daily, temporary alert gets over the problem that today's valued information is in danger of becoming tomorrow's spam. In other words, I might want to earn some cash today, but tomorrow I'm otherwise engaged and don't want to receive annoying emails offering me temporary jobs, which I then have to turn off.
The service has been extended to restaurants who want a temporary boost in traffic and again this can function via email alerts that are activated on the day. I would guess it's only a matter of time before other "perishable" services are offered, such as theatre and movie tickets - and perhaps even those Love Hotels.
I'd say that it's only a matter of time before this kind of thing takes off here and the pioneering users may well be the Mom and Pop shops, as opposed to big brands, in the beginning. After all, it's very hard for a national or global company to think hyper local, requiring extensive re-education and re-structuring. As an example, if you're a chain of 200 cinemas, you can't make a central decision as to which ones have empty seats and are worth promoting that afternoon.
