I hate wearing tuxedos. Yet, Sunday, January 16, I had my tuxedo, shoes, shirt, tie, my award tickets, and various other accessories laid out in my dressing room, ready for the evening's first major awards, the Golden Globes. I was five minutes into the huge line of limos that preceded me to the Beverly Hilton and I patted my heart. Sphincter arrest grasped my system. I was not evaluating palpations before the night's big event, but was ensuring one of my most valuable possessions was where it needed to be.
I started banging my chest! Oh my God! It's not there! My most valuable person, my wife,
asked, "What's wrong?" "Everything!" I responded. "I don't have my cell phone. I have to turn
around! It's my camera, my phone, my lifeline." She said, "just a minute" and she dialed my number from her phone. My seat began to vibrate. What a relief. I wouldn't have gone back for anything - except that. Wow, have things changed in the 20 years I've been attending awards shows!
I immediately tweeted my experience of being in the line up of cars using my mobile phone and I felt connected again. I didn't want to be at this event without sharing it with my family, capturing the event for my friends, and tweeting to my social tribes. I obviously had become habituated, if not addicted, to all of the benefits of that mobile phone. It was an instrument of fashion. I have a sleek new "G iPhone." I have all of my music on it. It woke me up that morning and I did a run listening to all of my favorite tunes. I even got a chance, while waiting to pick up my son in the morning, to watch some TV spots from my forthcoming movie, Soul Surfer, and yack to my producer, my notes. I fired off a few tweets and when my son came to my car with his Golden State Warriors uniform on, I proudly snapped his picture and forwarded it to his mom and to some of my team investors.
This instrument, a mobile phone, was kept close to my heart, viewed inches my eyes, and pressed next to my ear. Name something more intimate! It transmitted my aspirations, hopes and dreams. It fed back to me my wins and losses. It captured my most powerful moments.
This makes the mobile phone a very unique and powerful tool for advertisers and artists to reach into the hearts and minds and ultimately the wallets of its owners and users. It's not merely a transmitter of facts, information and data. But, because of the intimacy the instrument and its ability to deliver multifaceted experiences, it provides the emotional transportation that makes that information it delivers memorable and actionable. And look at the speed and depth of the market penetration of mobile phones. Who isn't a user?
This isn't the end of that process. Change will come faster bringing more intimacy. All of your medical information will be on your mobile phone including monitoring your physical health. The Benjamins are going to disappear from your wallet and appear on your phone making it look increasingly like an electronic MBNA card. So it's now an instrument of success and survival - two primal pulls and pushes of our lives. Name something in your life that interests you more than your success and your survival?
CEO Mandalay Entertainment and author, "Tell to Win."