I have just been speaking to NMA about Saatchi acquiring Inside Mobile. Are we seeing a trend with the bigger agencies acquiring mobile companies? Is it a good or bad thing for the mobile marketing sector?
Generally it seems to be a positive move. From the mobile perspective, it will help the channel become an integrated part of brand strategy. It will also give more resources to the mobile sector to try more exciting and innovative campaigns. From the agency perspective, acquiring a mobile agency brings a ready-made set of expertise that is hard, or even impossible to train internally.
However is there too much of a cultural divide between the creative and mobile agencies to make an acquisition successful in the long term? Previous agency acquisitions have seen staff from the mobile agency leaving the company. Mobile is perhaps the most direct of all marketing channels. Maybe it doesn’t sit so well with the broad branding concepts of creative agencies?
Look out for the feature on Saatchi/Inside Mobile in the next issue of NMA.
Posted by Mark Brill 
