Sony content guru dares brands to get mobile

Faced with 15 diverse markets, from Korea to New Zealand, each with their own cultural flavours and levels of sophistication, Tan has the task of seeing what she can brew up in her digital content kitchen.

"We have such a variety of products we have to tailor-make," she explains. "There's no cookie-cutter approach. All our content is like flour, a basic ingredient. You can make it into cake or bread, basically anything you like. But of course the important thing is that the consumer enjoys it."

Tan's appointment, part of a global move by SPTI to boost its mobile content resources as client demand surges, reflects the entertainment giant's commitment to the emerging channel, particularly in high-growth markets like Asia-Pacific and Latin America.

After more than a decade in the digital entertainment sphere, most recently as head of new media for Universal Music Asia, Tan admits that it's been a steep learning curve shifting from an audio to a visual world. Her task is not made easier by SPTI's habit of continually rolling out a smorgasbord of content for all kinds of mobile users, from virgins to veterans.

From wallpaper and ringtones to full-length video streaming, Tan's team is geared towards developing made-for-mobile content. This content is served as a buffet or an a-la-carte-style menu in a way that leverages the company's more traditional television and movie offerings such as Spider-Man 3, as well as games and other entertainment-based content, including the Ratchet and Clank Going Mobile game, based on the popular Sony PlayStation franchise.

Tan explains that mobile phones have undergone a fundamental shift in their positioning. No longer a simple communications tool, the mobile is now an all-singing all-dancing multimedia entertainment platform.

Penetration has reached saturation point in developed markets like Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, with China and India showing staggering growth. Across the region the once-humble mobile is now a more popular way to access the internet than a PC.

As a result, the opportunities are endless says Tan. But then so are the obstacles to make mobile work for brands, she adds.

Broadly overseeing revenue generation, client partnerships and digital initiatives, Tan is quick to point out that a key function of her role is helping stakeholders understand where the future lies, although she admits this is at best an ambitious project; at worst, nigh impossible.

"I don't really know anything about what the future holds, as we really are pioneers in a new world," she says. "We are trying to discover new things and pass on that knowledge to the rest of the company. The challenge is communicating those messages."

"We go into each market and ask questions about where technology is going, what our telecommunications partner wants, what our media partner wants and, most importantly, what our consumer wants," she explains.
"We need it to be snappy, so people can consume it in a mobi-snack format on the screen. It's not about taking a movie and making it fit, but developing content with mobile in mind," she notes.

But Tan believes she's well placed to break new territory. After all she's done it before, she points out, at BMG Asia-Pacific, when DVDs were the latest must-have items.

"I was the first one to say 'hold on, we have to release DVDs (for live concerts, pop videos, artist profiles and so on)'," she remembers. "No-one really knew what I was talking about, and there were a lot of people who were very sceptical. But now, of course, it's a big business."

"Everything boils down to communication, and how I can communicate something that is relevant to you," she adds.

But while consumers are quickly adapting to mobile as a platform for entertainment, advertisers, she observes, have been slower to make the move.

The ad industry is yet to come up with an effective way of making money from mobile, and brands have been wary of wading in too deep. They have, she explains, left it up to content owners like SPTI to develop "sexy and compelling" content that pushes the mobile proposition.

Tan admits that most industry figures believe that handset technology and content format standards pose barriers to wider consumer adoption, but she's not among them.

"It's not the technology that poses obstacles," she concludes. "It's up to us to be creative business people, and think: 'What can we do to make mobile work?'"