China Calling

THE NATION’S POST- DESKTOP MOBILE-TO- OFFLINE GAME PLAN LEAVES NO ROOM FOR M2O DENIERS. 

- Tom Kenney

The mobile device is the center of the universe, and it’s increasingly pushing media and marketing to change the way we talk about consumer journeys.

Evidence of this is happening in major marketplaces such as China. Case in point, when you go to China, and talk about online to offline, it’s quickly clear that hardly anybody there equates online with desktop anymore. In China, online means smartphones. Period. That’s the one device. The future of mobile, content, location, marketing, commerce and advertising is no longer online to offline. We’re living in a mobile-to-offline (M20) world.

Companies that don’t agree or don’t see it coming with clear eyes— organizations that hold on to the old belief that mobile is just one screen among multiple screens and not the only screen with any significance—will end up as roadkill. Count on it: M2O deniers will go away, and quickly.

Welcome to the M2O future 

China’s media and brand-marketing ecosystem is operating and innovating with M2O as its guiding frame of mind.

In China, for example, one of the BAT (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent) companies recently told us that it is going to shut down desktop sites and desktop development next year. The company will only focus on mobile development and innovation, starting in 2018.