We’ve become used to bandying around facts and figures that relate to mobile usage. In fact, we’ve become so used to it that they have lost some of their impact. In this piece, Tom Farrell, VP marketing, EMEA at Swrve (pictured below) argues that we sometimes need to stop, think and remember that in the space of ten years this technology has gone from a prototype to the palms of somewhere approaching five billion hands.

The pace of that change matters, and it matters in particular to marketers. Why? Because when things change that quickly, it takes time for the consumer to catch up and new behaviors and attitudes to form. We are only really at the dawn of the smartphone age. Tomorrow is not going to look like “today, only more so”.

Apple’s TV announcement this past September only compounded that feeling. On the surface, the TV and smartphone experience may not appear closely related. But they both represent a trend in which the consumer becomes ‘in charge’ of the experience.

Perhaps in the world of TV we sense that change because the screen on the wall (to which it has migrated from the mahogany cabinet over the past 60 years or so) has transformed what was a ‘broadcast’ device to something that we control, and that we demand content from in our own time.

Marketers face great challenges in this ‘post broadcast’ world. How can brands place themselves at the heart of the consumer’s life, when the old reliable options – which mainly involved interrupting the things they enjoy doing – are no longer viable.

Well, we’ve seen one answer to that question. And not surprisingly, it consists of continuing to interrupt what the consumer enjoys doing. Unfortunately, that’s no longer a tenable approach on mobile (or indeed online). It creates resentment in consumers and is too easy to avoid these days anyway. Witness the rise of Adblock and the enthusiasm for that same technology shown by iOS9 users recently... although marketers don’t like to talk about that.

So what IS the answer? The truth is simpler than you might think: Relevance and helpfulness. Brands still want to speak to consumers. They still want to build relationships with them – because those relationships are at the heart of successful business. But in the post-broadcast world, and the mobile world in particular, they are going to start changing the way they go about doing it.

They could start by listening. Just as our collective experience with an individual informs what we say to them in real life, so marketing conversations need to build on the same type of data. And in the digital age, we are lucky enough to have it.

That listening process enables us to deliver truly relevant, helpful, personalised mobile experiences. Ones that treat each user as an individual, include content relevant specifically to them, and delivered at a time that is right for them. In the right language, with creative that works, and that most specifically speak to what we can consider to be a real need at the time.

What we think of as a ‘campaign’ in this context is in reality quite different to what has gone before. We are no longer creating ‘segments’ of users and sending the same message to all of them. Instead we are reading the complex signals both from users themselves and those relating to the environment they are in at the time to deliver relevance like never before.

I think it helps to consider the smartphone as something of a genie in a bottle – popping up to grant a wish! In the old days, if you’d bought ice cream from me before I’d try to sell it to you at every possible opportunity. But of course life’s not like that. The smartphone enables marketers to know you like ice cream, but also that it’s a sunny day and that you are in the park. And then send a message when you break a geo-fence 200 yards away from the nearest Ben & Jerry’s.

In that context, brands can take their place on the ‘personal digital assistant’ that is the modern smartphone in a way that helps the user, and helps them as an individual. And that is the source of smart mobile marketing, successful relationships with the consumer, and, ultimately, success on the mobile platform.