Some advice to Agency and Brand Owners - The evolution of mobile marketing

You're going to need a platform, not just an cute application.
A longer term vision of what you want to achieve, a strategy that is integrated with CRM, sales objectives, meaningful marketing initiatives that drive value into your business.
Too often we see digital marketing agencies and brands come to us asking if we can make a cute game so their customers can play while there's a background message going on.
Often they will have developed this idea to where it reaches POS. Several of them will even have designed decals and have an idea of what to do in phase 2 after they have enjoyed rich success with their phase 1 app.
Problem is, most likely, unless the game idea is fantastically exciting, no one is going to play it twice (you'll get one timers, some people will try anything), but not many will GET it. this kind of play is usually the work of a ad agency, devoid of a genuine strategy, who is trying to "sell" their customer a newspaper campaign (and the app is just a by product).
Both the Agency and client would be much better served with a genuine mobile platform upon which to achieve their goals.
We recently spoke with a health care brand. their agency sold them a re-packaged beer brand campaign using augmented reality in a cute idea. The cute idea made the beer brand a lot of press. it was a cute idea. the health care brand bought it. It wasn't new, it wasn't relevant and it didn't get any press. But they did spend 250k on newspaper advertising and 50k on the "use once only game/app".
For 300k the health care brand could have built a long term customer engagement platform from which it would generate revenues, build customer loyalty, provide a platform of engagement from which to interact, learn and service its customers. What is more outrageous, is that the Ad agency would also make more money than it did from its creatives and media booking fee!
Digital pathways are fast emerging and the Cellcity platforms to reach out are in place for Agencies and Brands alike. But we are seeing a lot of roadkill along the way.