photo credit: Glen Bowman

I am sitting on the plane on the way from Cape Town to Lanseria. Just completed a grueling round of speaking engagements.

I was struck by a number of things.

Firstly. That many of our “trainee communications experts have no clue of digital. I find it extraordinary that I could actually find only 3 bloggers and one twitter member in a third year advertising and communications class (marketers, art directors, copywriters and designers.)

We really need to push awareness with them. You have to understand the space to be able to advise others.

Secondly. That there are two distinct approaches to online marketing. The technology approach approaches it from the point of view of teh available technologies and how to deploy them. The interruption marketing POV that sees it from the traditional marketing and advertising point of view. how to use the channel to push marketing messages.

Then the third group who are in the distinct majority. The communicators who really understand the effects of the technology on society and how that is changing how they interact and need to be interacted with.

Finally at the mobile marketing conference it struck me how both of these approaches affected how people thought about one of the most important windows on the internet namely Mobile, Its impossible to think that a mobile network like MXIT which carries 330 million IM messages a day can not be regarded as the most important channel to reach 16 – 25 year olds in South Africa. Mxit boasts 12 million members growing at a rate of 12 000 a day. Extraordinary.

What I learned is that the digital reality is slowly dawning though and for the mobile marketing workshop to be oversubscribed double is a good indication of that. Maybe most in the room were already converts but so what, they want to touch the space – they become missionaries.