Thoughts of walking down the street and having advertisements popping out at us, knowing our name and preferences, recalls scenes from a movie that seems obligatory to mention when discussing mobile marketing: Minority Report. But instead of eyeballs, we’re talking iPhones, and sophisticated uses of the technologies we already carry in our pockets.

In a paper by Paul Berney, CMO of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), it is claimed the ubiquity and versatility of handheld devices is changing our behaviour. Now that it’s possible to simply reach for a device and find out information or make a purchase, the expectation has been promoted that we should be able to instantly interact with a brand or organisation on our own terms.

Location-based social networking has been around for a while, but Marketing Theory 101 (think adoption curve) tells us that mobile, location-aware services will become mainstream when business and government adopt it. And that’s what the trends point towards over the next five years.

New Ovum data is predicting the use of mobile broadband for big-screen devices –tablets and laptops – to increase five-fold over the next five years in the Asia-Pacific region. With smartphone use already the norm, workforces and consumers are becoming increasingly mobile and the MMA predicts that customer-control will be the overriding theme of mobile brand interactions, with the paper promoting Jonathon MacDonald’s ‘Three Ps’ of mobile marketing: Privacy, Permission, and Preference.

In a marketing landscape that is focused on finding ever more subtle ways to collect consumers’ personal information, MacDonald’s view is that allowing people to retain control of their own information is actually the only way forward, as without permission and privacy, organisations can never truly understand consumer preference.

The paper concludes that while mobile is an irreversible trend in marketing – for both business and pleasure – it must be useful and relevant to consumers if it is to be accepted by them and deliver value to organisations and their customers.