As a marketing professional, there is nothing I hate more than receiving any form of communication (email, Web experience, social media, mobile, whatever) and not see an obvious place where I can either opt out of the communication or protect how much information is being captured. As a consumer, I probably hate it more.

According to Comscore, 40 per cent of Canadians own a smartphone. You would think that brands would be scrambling to establish their mobile presence. Surprisingly, this is not the case. That so few brands have a mobile presence provides a tremendous opportunity for leadership and to be one of the few brands who do mobile well. Here are a few crucial opportunities brands are missing out on by ignoring mobile.

Retail has been turned on its head. Consumers are actively using mobile devices in larger stores to access hundreds of e-commerce, forums and social sites that hold product information, reviews and competitive pricing. What to do to counter this? Well, we need to arm salespeople with mobile devices that give them that extra advantage and ignore the hard sell and just be really personable and informative using external and internal resources.

There is a major shift in business focus that is under way. Digital media has forced businesses to change. Dramatically. This is nothing new. What's interesting is that we're seeing two, distinct, breeds of business being born: product-focused businesses, and customer-focused businesses. Which one do you work for?

Recently, a very senior marketing professional who works at one of the world's largest corporations was recounting a story of how they saw a postal truck outside of their corporate head offices in Silicon Valley, and every single parcel that was being offloaded from this truck was from Amazon. He thought to himself: "This is the what retail looks like in 2012."

Why are Canadian businesses taking so long to adopt social media practices, while Canadians themselves are the most engaged online than anyone else on Earth? Because of the conservative nature of business, Canadians are less prone to learn, to adopt, and therefore less likely to challenge the powers-that-be.