OPINION: Mills on ... Orange.(Column)

One of things I've noticed about mobile phone companies is that they all advertise the same services and features at the same time Perhaps it's because, like retailers, they spend the whole time watching what the competition does. Or, perhaps they're all basically insecure and take comfort in herd-like behaviour.

Thus picture messaging was all the rage last summer and autumn. More recently, it was all about talking to other mobile phone users on different networks.

Now they all seem to be focused on the business market, at least judging by the blitz T-Mobile, O2 and Orange are subjecting us to.

The other thing to notice about mobile marketing is how it's come full circle. When they first started in the late 80s and early 90s, mobile phones targeted the business user. At the time, it made sense. They were expensive to buy, expensive to use and, in lifestyle terms, business constituted the market with the most potential. Better than that, mobile phones had a badge value: if you had one you it was a sign you were so important you had to be in touch at all times. Inevitably, you could charge a premium for them.

Today, of course, when nine-year-olds have mobile phones, they're a commodity item. So how do you get back to creating some premium revenue streams?

Start targeting the business community again, obviously. Mother and Orange's answer is 'Hard-Nosed Businessman', a super-competitive, ultra-crass, alpha-male type. In many ways, he's a typical Mother creation and illustrates a recurrent theme in the agency's modus operandi: take a cliched personality, exaggerate it to death, take the piss out of it and then attach a product label: the Johnny Vegas couch potato character for ITV Digital; Lilt's cheery, fat, Caribbean ladies; the Egg Brilliant Industries characters and the slobs who make up one of the gangs in the West Side Story pastiche for Batchelors Super Noodles.

As often as not it works, and at the very least it produces something recognisable and ...