Brands On The Go

If you’re going to read only one, 87 page deck this summer, might I suggest Morgan Stanley’s most recent Internet Trends? You can download or read it here. Mary Meeker, Scott Devitt and Liang Wu have put together a terrific presentation on the state of the internet. Well, actually, it’s the state of the mobile internet because, as you’ll soon read in their deck, that’s the game.

Couple of specific things to call out:

The amazingly fast growth of the mobile web vs. other leading online innovations:

How Social Networking has now passed email on both total users and time spent:

(And looking ahead at Social Networking, it may not just be about Facebook… It could also be about this.)

But here’s the slide that I think we should really focus on… at the end of 2013 the mobile web will surpass the desktop internet:

The marketing industry has been calling every year, ‘The Year of Mobile’ since 2005… but it’s finally upon us. With the hardware, software and user developments of today one can finally start to make sense not only about the present, but also the future, which, of course, is the only way to really attach ROI in this space.

But “mobile strategy” sounds so technical, dry and non-actionable. So I sometimes like to think of it instead as “Brands on the Go”.

Brands on the Go: What value does a brand serve up when a customer loads its mobile presence while traveling in the backseat of a car? While walking down the sidewalk? When standing at the point of sale of a competitor? Detached from their desktop–which, mind you, is not going away–what’s the value? A very important distinction and something that will be need to be thought about for all brands from here forward.

Anyway, check out Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends when you get time. It’s chalked full of great stuff…