Last week, I attended Merkle’s impressive CRM Super Bowl (aka CRM Executive Summit) in SoBe.  Having worked with Merkle for just over a year now, I am always impressed with the strategies and tools they bring to the table for their clients.

2 common themes peppered throughout the conference were that this is the year that mobile and SaaS CRM platforms will take off.  Barry Judge, CMO of Best Buy, emphasized that the next 12 months would be the time that mobile hit.  I feel like I’ve heard that line for at least the past seven years.  With 2+ million iPads sold, the new iPhone 4, increased Android (Froyo) handsets and the upcoming release of Blackberry OS 6, it’s hard not to be wide-eyed at all the potential money making opportunities in mobile; however, there is still too much fragmentation amongst the market to scale at the level experts preach mobile hitting.  I don’t think 2010 will be the year mobile CRM climaxes…not even close.

SaaS CRM platforms are out in full force (I work for SaaS provider Dukky).   It really is amazing to see how the cloud has allowed companies to focus on niche CRM SaaS platforms.   Brands are starting to become more comfortable with having their valuable data run on the cloud enabling them to cash in on the speed and flexibility of running on the cloud.  Just look at the recent news about Enterprise 2.0 company Jive.

The next big thing will be technology that allows brands to channel all of this data into a few measurable and useful results.  It’s uncanny that we have all this individual user data, but brands are still marketing to them as mass demographics.  I don’t think the 30-second spot is dead (or the other traditional formats); but the decision makers are in denial about their business models.  Agencies and consultancies that focus on this change are going to be the Mad Men of the new generation.

Thoughts?