By the time most of us struggle into the office in the morning, bleary-eyed and sipping coffee, Shaun Gregory has invariably been up for half a day. The newly appointed managing director of O2's media business climbs out of bed daily at 4.30am, pounding the treadmill at the gym - or jogging - soon afterwards. "I've always been a naturally early riser," he says with understatement, as he settles into a chair in the Soho offices of the telecoms giant's PR agency. "I like to run in the morning. It gets my brain in gear."
Gregory, 40, has certainly had plenty to occupy his thoughts on his morning run lately. In early January, he mysteriously quit his post as chief executive of Blyk, the pioneering free mobile network for 16 to 24-year-olds, "for personal reasons", supposedly without a job to go to. But this was no career break. A month-long period of silence was broken by the news he had jumped ship to O2.
There was, he insists, no mystery. "I resigned for personal reasons," he says. "People invariably encounter bigger and more exciting opportunities. This job came along and I'm really happy about my decision to take it."
But why leave after just 14 months at the helm? "Blyk is on a journey and, for the part of the journey I was steering the ship, we achieved the targets we set out to," he replies, choosing his words carefully. "We said we'd deliver 100,000 members within six months of launch, which we did. We launched on time in the UK - we delivered the world's first fully ad-funded mobile network and we delivered 200,000 members within a year."
Asked whether his former employers were surprised at his departure, he hesitates. "I'm sure they probably were," he says. "It's big news to take in. But they dealt with it professionally. They've reinstalled the co-founder and everything is as secure as it was in the business. Blyk also talked to me about the possibility of being a non-executive director. That would be something O2 would make a decision on at the right time. But it demonstrates the nature of the relationship when I left."
Exciting culture
It's not difficult to see what coaxed Gregory to O2 - with its 19.1 million mobile customer base (more than any other UK network), instantly recognisable brand and raft of media platforms. "The culture at O2 is really exciting," he says. "When you walk into the building, you can see people live and breathe the brand and the business."
His brief from his new employer is "to provide advertisers and brands in the UK with a one-stop shop for targeted, relevant and personalised media opportunities through mobile devices - and extend that into the arena of scale".
He explains: "By that, I mean when you add online, e-mail, in-store and experiential channels to your going-on-for 20 million customers, you have a lot of scale, a lot of ways to reach consumers. And the one thing people in mobile have lost sight of in the past five years is that advertising is built on scale opportunities - big numbers. Brands want to reach people quickly. O2 now has the opportunity to do that."
But while mobile, according to Gregory, is poised to enter a brave new era, he is decidedly less upbeat about another sector - namely, newspapers. A former director of new media at the Telegraph group, at a key moment in the brand's uneasy transition to multi-platform, the O2 man says the recession will cut a swathe through national and regional titles.
"Every newspaper will shed staff and cut costs, those are givens," he adds. "But even then I predict a third of newspapers will go out of business in the UK."
His prediction is about over-supply, not quality. "You won't find a more congested newspaper market anywhere in the world. These are tough times and there are just too many titles out there."
Yet mobile is still very much the Cinderella of advertising platforms - the add-on extra of a campaign. What convinces Gregory mobile will become, in his words, "the leading media platform in the future"? He responds by picking up his own surprisingly old-fashioned Nokia phone - his new iPhone has yet to arrive - and launches into a sales mantra he could almost certainly deliver in his sleep.
Personalised and targeted
"There are more of these devices in the UK than people," he says, warning he can talk for two hours on the subject.
"It's probably the most personalised, relevant and targeted thing you have, because it's with you all the time, you're always looking at it. People have talked about mobile for years, but in the past 12 months there have been more brand experiments with mobile than ever before."
Despite the recession - and Gregory concedes "every single brand and media company will be affected" - he claims that, within three years, "most, if not all brands" will advertise regularly via mobile.
"You will also see much more consumer acceptance of mobile as an advertising channel," he says, adding that many consumers will use their mobiles for daily retail transactions by then too.
Mobile companies have been slow to behave like media owners. Early-riser Gregory intends to use his experience across many media channels to put O2 at the vanguard of mobile advertising's expansion.
CV
2009: Managing director of media, 02
2007: Chief executive, Blyk
2006: Director of new media, Telegraph Media Group
2004: MD, Emap National Brands
2000: Strategy and development director, Emap Performance
1997: MD, Emap Digital, Hallam and Magic
1994: Sales director, Emap Radio City, Aire and Hallam
1991: Group sales head, Metro Group
1988: Sales executive, United Provincial Newspapers
Lives: Sussex with wife and two daughters
Hobbies: Running, country walks, chess and playing daddy
Car: A 10-year-old Renault Clio
Desert island media: The Daily Telegraph, BBC iPlayer, iPod and, of course, my mobile
GREGORY ON ...
Professional restlessness I've been at five organisations in 21 years. My references for joining O2 came from all the employers I'd worked for previously. For me, that says it's always important to leave a company in good health. You could call the chief executive of The Telegraph today and he would tell you what I'm like to work with, what I do and how I do it.
Getting up early The joys of being an early riser are that you get online, on a train, all revved up from the gym and ready to go by the time other people haven't even thought about breakfast. But the mid-afternoon slump is a killer.
Mobile as an ad platform It drives me nuts when people ask if this year is "The year of the mobile". We're on a journey with mobile and we're right at the beginning of that journey. It will take time to develop. It's a complex advertising platform, but, once perfected, it will be the leading media platform for the future.
Local newspapers There are probably five local newspapers where I live in Sussex. But I only need one.