As the tag team of baristas was making my coffee one morning, I noticed the girl with the milk jug take her phone from her apron pocket and begin scrolling through her Facebook feed while she waited for her partner to pull the shot. More proof if I needed it that our mobile devices are no longer a utility—they are a reflex.

The statistics about how people are accessing your ideas, content and marketing messages are hardly relevant anymore. The shift to mobile is no longer news, it’s a fact of life.

As marketers we spend a lot of of our time focusing on how and where we are going to reach people. But what’s more important to understand than how people behave, is what’s driving that behaviour and what the opportunity is for you to influence it. It’s not the adoption of the device or platform that’s important, it’s how access to the platform changes how people, feel, think and act that you need to focus on.

It isn’t just where you meet people that counts, it’s how you show up for them within the context of their lives that matters. Yes, you need to meet your customers where they are, but how are you going to make an impact on them when you do?

Image by Ed Yourdon.