“Imagine instead of printing out an email coupon you could simply present a coupon sent to your phone?” Or, “So you’re walking by a Starbucks and your phone goes off in your pocket with an offer for half off a latte.”

I’ve heard variations of those excited proclamations more than a few times over the years – usually from some otherwise well-intentioned marketer at the stunning realization that his phone really is a whole lot more than a device for talking. The allure is certainly understandable; mobile redemption and click-through rates do frequently beat their web-based brethren, and mobile’s comparatively low cost warrants a closer look, particularly in this down economy. But extending traditional digital marketing practices into mobile is not only fraught with peril, it’s also the surest way to spoil the bigger mobile opportunity.

Mobile is a game changer. Its transient physical properties make it so. It is the only digital screen that isn’t essentially a termination point. Mobile is NOT something you go to – unlike a TV, which is normally turned on to watch something, and then turned off. It is also unlike a desktop computer, which is stationary and still, ultimately task-oriented. Even a laptop is fundamentally different – when was the last time you honked at someone because they were on a laptop? Mobile devices are inherently personal, more wristwatch than computer. Failing to address the implied behavioral differences of mobile devices reduces the platform to a direct marketing receptacle, the next in a long line of screens offering results that don’t suck as badly as its predecessors. Does anyone else find it weird when a marketer brags about a single digit conversion rate, essentially ignoring the fact that 90%+ people DID NOT DO WHAT THE MARKETER WANTED THEM TO DO? Name me another profession where you’re allowed to be satisfied with such a crappy result.

Mobile devices should be conduits for physical activation. Where are the mobile marketing applications that get many people excited and engaged, not a few simply converted? They’re not here yet, because social marketers have yet to wrest the discussion away from direct marketers – who are too busy turning the platform into a media buy to realize that the advantage mobile has over traditional digital mediums is temporary and fleeting – and make it about conversation. A conversation where brands use mobile not to shout, but to listen. Not to blast the latest offer to, but as a way to get people excited.

Why don’t baseball games have ringtone waves sponsored by big brands? Why aren’t brands rewarding camera phone owners for snapping pictures of themselves using their products in novel ways? Why are banks focusing so heavily on extending web-based banking systems to mobile instead of thinking about the mobile device as a replacement for credit/debit cards (full disclosure: I hate carrying a wallet)?

Those questions can only be answered by people who’ve already had to think about a technology from the ground up: the social marketer.