Nick Jones

European Symposium finished yesterday and I have a few days free before heading out to Sydney for APAC Symposium. So this seems a good moment to reflect on  some of the mobile themes from Cannes.

I noticed a real difference in sentiment between Cannes and Orlando. In the USA there was a lot of buzz and activity around mobile. People had projects under way and a lot of discussion was about implementation as well as strategy. In Cannes the Europeans were less advanced than the Americans, more discussions were about strategy than implementation. Partly this reflects a fundamental difference in attitude between Europeans and Americans. Europeans tend towards interminable analysis before action, which can be frustrating if you’re a vendor trying to sell things to them. This isn’t altogether surprising, Europe includes nations such as France whose primary export for the past few hundred years has been philosophers, so we can hardly blame them for intellectualising. Americans lean towards action before analysis, sometimes followed by action in a different direction if the first action failed to deliver as expected. In the long term things probably even out, the Europeans make less mistakes, but the Americans get places faster. The Europeans in Cannes also seemed less positive and optimistic than the Americans in Orlando, but much of that could be explained by national attitudes; Europe after all includes traditionally miserable and undemonstrative nations such as we Brits. Overall, I think it could be 6 months or so before the Europeans catch up with American mobile optimism.

While I’m on the subject of undemonstrative Brits, Reuters reports a survey from T-Mobile showing the rise of the British metrotextual. Apparently 22 percent of British men are signing SMSs to male friends with a kiss (x). Some of my colleagues think this is positive indication that the Brits are getting in touch with their feminine side and maybe soon grown British men will actually embrace male friends in public as the French and Italians do. I think it’s a sign of serious degeneration of British moral fibre.