HASEEB-UR-RAHMAN

BUSINESS UNIT HEAD, KIT KAT AND BISCUITS NESTLÉ UK

If you had spoken to me a year or two ago, I would have said mobile was a growing trend. But now, we’re already there. A lot of campaigns we are running have mobile at their centre.

In 2015, as part of our “#Mybreak” activity, we ran a campaign with Google where users could say to their phone “OK Google, Youtube my break” and get access to the top five videos of the day.

The work ran in 20 countries and received significant media coverage.

When we think of campaigns now, mobile is an integral part of them. In the past, we would be concerned with ensuring our websites were mobile-compliant; now, we are making sure the videos we produce look good on mobile, because generally Facebook and Youtube videos are no longer viewed on desktop.

Mobile is an important medium. We need to be cognisant of the fact that people approach it differently to TV. You have to catch their attention very fast. They are accessing social media through their mobile rather than on desktop. This is creating a greater sense of urgency. Viewers will skip past things that don’t speak to them much more quickly, which makes our jobs as marketers a whole lot harder.

The future depends on what functionality mobile technology will offer. As speed improves or a new functionality is added, we will be able to create different types of campaigns – using, for example, geo-targeting or chatbots.

Generally, younger consumers adopt new technologies faster than other demographics. But, as younger consumers mature, I see adoption levels increasing.