One of the tenants of Marketing for Good is that you should never do anything that actually annoys or irritates your target. Even if you achieve short term attention-getting disruption, the long-term consequences of creating ad “pollution” will be bad for your brand. A recent study by Forrester as reported by Promo Xtra notes that 79% of consumers find mobile ads annoying unless they are incredibly relevant.

To avoid the perception of mobile spam, marketers must work with the unique elements of the mobile channel itself and the relevance of their message, said Christine Spivey Overby, a principal analyst and co-author of the report. In contrast to other channels, mobile is highly integrated into people’s daily activities and physical environment. This means that marketers can embrace the real-work connections with relevant location-based services and campaigns that tie mobile and on-premise advertising.

This evoked the following response from me, “no duh!” I don’t know about you but every time I get an unwanted text message from my carrier, I consider changing carriers. On the other hand, if I was about to run out of gas and I suddenly received a message noting there was a station at the next exit, I’d probably swear eternal allegiance. Of course, that’s an unlikely scenario for extreme relevance but that’s how far you need to think when exploring mobile.