On The Hot Seat with Jim Ryan

FierceWireless' editor Brian Dolan recently caught up with Jim Ryan, the former vice president of consumer data services at Cingular Wireless. Mobile marketing firm Mobile Campus recently appointed Ryan as its new CEO. Read on to hear the former carrier executive discuss mobile marketing, the difficulties of mobile advertising and why campus security offerings won't work via SMS.


FierceWireless: Given your background running Cingular Wireless' data services, why did you choose to join Mobile Campus?

Ryan: I saw some significant incremental opportunities evolving in the mobile marketplace around targeting marketing offers to relevant segments that a lot of people weren't focused on. And to take a quality shot at doing mobile marketing, which is a different side of the same coin, for it to be effective it needs to be highly-targeted. And, sure, people say that and know that but they aren't doing that. Mobile Campus is focused on serving university students, who are really needy and ripe for the wireless market. We're focused on innovative means to target them. The old online model of “give me some stuff and you'll give me some ads” is a model that's breaking and is fundamentally flawed.

FierceWireless: Mobile Campus is taking on a big task. According to your website you offer interactive communications, info, entertainment and transactional services on the mobile platform.

Ryan: We're actually in the distribution business—we're going to go out and build the distribution channels to go out and serve the relationships with universities and local merchants to complete that ecosystem. We will partner with best-of-breed solutions providers for each of those areas. We're really not a tech play as much as a distribution play for that model. We have not announced [our solutions provider partners] as of yet. But we will be shortly.

FierceWireless: What is Mobile Campus' relationship with carriers?

Ryan: Carriers are our partners—we connect through aggregation partners to the carriers. We are in dialog with them to see what we might do in a strategic way. The university student population is quite a fertile ground and we provide a good opportunity for carriers to really reach this market. It can be a challenge for carriers, which are mass market providers, but we can target that segment and serve that segment and offer a university student an AT&T mobility account plus a Mobile Campus account.

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