PMN and The CMO Council, through its FAME (Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience) industry thought leadership group are working together to raise awareness of the mobile user experience at the MEX conference, 2nd – 3rd May 2007, London.

FAME reaches out to a global community of marketing leaders – a group of executives who play a critical role in improving the way organisations understand and interact with their customers through the mobile channel. Among the companies represented in FAME’s membership are Adobe, Agilent, Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs, ARM, Boost Mobile, Casabyte, Cisco, ATT/Cingular Wireless, fastmobile, GE, GSM Association, Google, HP, Keynote, Kingston, LG Electronics, Microsoft, M.Mobile, Mobile Marketing Association, Motorola, Nextel, Nokia, Nortel, Novatel, Nuance, O2, Openwave, Palm, Qualcomm, Seven Networks, Symbian, T-Mobile, Telefonica, USA Today Vodafone, Volantis and Yahoo.

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior marketing and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council’s 3,000 members control more than $70 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures. Companies represented on the CMO Council have combined annual revenue of over $600 billion.

With user experience becoming a key strategic issue for everyone in the mobile telecoms industry, the collaboration will ensure debate at the MEX conference spans the breadth of issues which affect mobile customers: from marketing and customer service to technical and design issues.

FAME and PMN will work in partnership on marketing and research, tapping both organisation’s extensive analysis resources – including FAME’s recent global survey of mobile user behaviour, which covers 16,000 users and spans 37 countries.

The MEX conference challenges 100 of the industry’s leading thinkers to respond to a 10 point manifesto for enhancing the user experience. Their keynotes will inspire a series of breakout groups and panel discussions where everyone attending will play an active role in setting the agenda.

Speakers include Al Russell, Head of Mobile Internet and Content Services at Vodafone, talking about social networking and community services; Bill Schwebel, Senior Vice President of AOL Wireless, who explores the issue of tearing down the walled garden; Cliff Crosbie, Global Director of Retail Marketing at Nokia, discussing how the user experience extends from the shop floor to customer support; and Matthew Menz, Head of Interaction Design at Motorola, talking about how content discovery and search can be improved.

Marek Pawlowski, Editorial Director at PMN, said: “Understanding customers should be at the heart of mobile telecoms strategy. FAME’s community of marketing leaders will make an essential contribution to the debate at MEX and we look forward to welcoming them to the conference.�

�Our Global Mobile Mindset audit is among the most comprehensive deep dives ever taken into the mind of the consumer,� said Donovan Neale-May, executive director, FAME and the CMO Council. “Among other key findings is that across every region, users are complaining of function fatigue and feature frustration that begins at the point of purchase, which sends out an unamniguous call-to-action to wireless operators, device manufacturers and sales channels to get much more closely aligned and integrated in creating a simpler, more satisfying and predictable user experience.�

The PMN Mobile User Experience (MEX) conference is held on 2nd – 3rd May 2007 at Wallacespace in London. Delegate places are priced at GBP 1349 (+ VAT @ 17.5% where applicable). Visit www.pmn.co.uk/mex/ for more information and to register.