Mobile Portland

The news that Walmart had acquired local iOS development agency Small Society surprised many people. Twitter was abuzz with questions like:

• Walmart has an office in Portland?
• Why did Walmart Labs decide to locate an office in Portland?
• What is Walmart Labs and what does it do?
• Why did Small Society decide to join Walmart Labs?

For those familiar with Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, these aren’t new questions. After many years working for companies like Mozilla and Palm and starting the popular Ajaxian blog, Ben and Dion finally struck out on their own and created a company called SetDirection.

The company operated in stealth mode making many curious what Ben and Dion where working on. But within a few months, Ben and Dion announced the SetDirection had been acquired by Walmart and that they were going to lead Walmart’s mobile efforts.

Despite the massive growth in usage of mobile devices, mobile marketing is still a small percentage of the total marketing budgets of most companies. eMarketer found that Americans spend 8.1% of their media time on mobile devices, but mobile only represents 0.5% of the total advertising spend.

So mobile marketing remains under the radar, but not for long:

• Google CEO Larry Page announced this month that mobile advertising revenue “has grown 2.5x in the last 12 months to a run rate of over $2.5 billion”.
• Banner Ads on Mobile Devices See Higher CTR Than On PCs
• 10% of Search Ad Clicks From Mobile
• Local Advertising Revenues In Mobile Will Grow To $2 Billion By 2014
• 82% Of Brands Plan To Boost Mobile Budgets Over Next 12 Months
• Gartner projects mobile advertising to be $20B worldwide by the end of 2015

We’ve assembled a diverse panel to take a closer look at mobile marketing to answer questions about what works, what doesn’t, and what people should be thinking about as they start to ramp up their mobile marketing campaigns.

About the Speakers

Jeff Lorton, Co-Founder, LynkSnap

Jeff Lorton is co founder and managing partner at LynkSnap Mobile Marketing Solutions. Both a visual artist and a mobile marketing disciple, Jeff has adapted his love of design, iconography and symbolism to the new medium. Along the way his firm LynkSnap has forged closet ties with the US mobile barcode leader Scanlife/Scanbuy and the Canadian scan to pay developer Mobio ID.

Today, LynkSnap specializes in creative mobile marketing concepts that create unique and interactive brand experiences that combine conventional lifestyle print, outdoor advertising and digital media with advanced QR code functionality or what Jeff simply calls QR 2.0.

Recent local clients include the Portland Timbers and the Oregon Wine Board.

George Kurtyka, Head of Entertainment Partnerships and Business Development, Nokia

George is a seasoned wireless, online & digital media professional with extensive experience in partner management and business development on 4 continents.

George is responsible for global, regional and local content partnerships and cross platform, integrated marketing programs. Head up all Partnership and Business Development activity for the Entertainment vertical globally.

 

Sean Roy, Founder Matua Media, co-Founder DialogHealth

Sean is the founder and principal of Matua Media, a successful consulting firm who helps businesses of all sizes leverage technology to achieve their organizational goals. He develops mobile strategies, innovative products, and launch plans for companies in a wide range of industries including healthcare, automotive, advertising and analytics.

Sean has more than 12 years of experience leading marketing technology products and has implemented solutions for both entrepreneurs (such as OneCommand and author Robert Shemin) as well as internationally recognizable brands like Vodafone, BP, Jaguar, Burger King, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, and Saatchi & Saactchi. He also led the development of the award-winning, cloud-based mobile marketing platform of Run the Red, a leading mobile marketing company in Australasia.

Sean has recently co-founded Dialog Health, a company who specializes in mobile solutions for the Healthcare industries.

As much as Sean loves to geek out and talk about Mobile…it’s all lost when someone starts talking about Rugby, Wine or the St. Louis Cardinals…and not necessarily in that order.

Daniel Timothy Wood, Digital Strategy Director, tenfour

Daniel T Wood (@dtwood) serves as Digital Strategy Director at tenfour with the fortunate charter to guide the concept and creation of mobile and social programs for Toshiba, Hawaiian Airlines, Parallels, Air New Zealand, Cisco, Tektronix, Intel, Dell, IBM, Draftfcb, DSI, Best Buy, and Staples.

He's spent an equal number of years in software start-ups as advertising agencies and enjoys seeing the lines merge and business models blur.

Daniel finds that coffee shops are his creative sanctum and dry erase markers - his weapon of choice.

Mobile Marketing Panel

Monday, October 24th, 6pm
Doors open at 5:30
Urban Airship / Cloud Four
334 NW 11th Ave.
Portland, OR 97209
RSVP | Map

Thanks to our Sponsors

Thanks to azad, Urban Airship and Cloud Four for helping sponsor Mobile Portland this month.

There won’t be a Mobile Portland meeting this month. We’ll resume in October and are planning on having a social event in the November / December timeframe to close out the year.

I’m sorry we’re missing this month. I dropped the ball. I’m been swamped this month and lost track of time. By the time I realized how close the meeting was, we were unable to line up speakers and put on an event of the caliber we’ve come to expect.

Thank you and see you next month!

Jason