You know we’re about to enter into the Mobile World Congress season when you get your first ‘Hello, I was wondering, would you be available for an interview in Barcelona…’ email. I’ve had four already this week and shortly, that will no doubt turn into an avalanche of outreach from the mobile world’s public relations professionals.
It gets even worse when you sign-up for the press pass from the GSMA. They obviously make your details available to those PR companies who’ve asked for them (and I’ve no problem with this — it’s part of the deal). By early February, the MWC emails are coming thick and fast. My issue is that I’d like to say yes to everything. But I’ve been doing MWC for quite a few years now and experience tells me that I can competently do about 5 briefings a day before I get overloaded. Far too overloaded.
With the camera, it’s slightly different. With briefings you have to pay attention, take notes and so on. But with the camera, I point it and ask questions — I don’t have to remember or take notes. I do like that. Then it’s all about the editing.
Of course it’s a rather complicated set of procedures when you’ve got the camera kit. First of all, transporting it there is expensive. Lugging it around the various MWC halls is a challenge — and then producing the videos is an absolute nightmare. That said, I had a super time and last year’s content was simply brilliant. Witness, for example, the video interviews I produced in conjunction with the respected Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian featuring some of Nokia’s board level executives discussing their on-going strategy for the coming year (and Anssi Vanjoki apologising for the N97 mistakes — that video went on to get millions of views).
So whilst we’ve still got a few months to go — and whilst everyone is now seriously examining their MWC strategy, it’s time to see who’d like to cut through the usual noise by sponsoring the MIR output during the period.
If you’d like to discuss the possibility of sponsoring some or all of our Mobile World Congress coverage, please do drop me a note. We’re entirely flexible, but we’ve also got some standard boiler-plate plans that will fit into all budgets.
We’ll be publishing both video and text features — and we’d typically offer you a prominently placed ‘thank you’ on each MWC post (with a link to your announcements and/or website) and we’d be sure to place your logos (or promotional videos) in front of each of our MWC videos. Plus as a sponsor, you’ll automatically qualify for a sit-down briefing or interview during the mad week of Barcelona.
Drop me a note and we’ll discuss from there. I’m ewan@mobileindustryreview.com or get me on Twitter via @ew4n.