KEY INITIATIVES ANNOUNCED TO HELP SPUR MOBILE MARKETING

India, 15 December 2015 – The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), the leading global trade association for the mobile industry, announced today the appointment of the first MMA India Board of Directors, which includes 12 industry stalwarts, across the marketing, technology and advertising spectrum. The newly appointed board in their first board meeting set up an ambitious agenda to enable marketers to better understand and adapt to the evolving mobile environment in India with regards to advertising and commerce.

Appointed by the MMA for their leadership and visionary approach to the mobile medium, the MMA India Board is led by Chairman D Shivakumar, Chairman & CEO, PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. Ltd.

The other board members include:

• Ajit Mohan, President, Novi Digital Entertainment Pvt. Ltd
• Amarjit Singh Batra, CEO, OLX South Asia
• Amrit Thomas, Chief Marketing Officer, United Spirits Limited
• CVL Srinivas, CEO South Asia, GroupM
• Kirthiga Reddy, MD, Facebook India
• Prasun Basu, MD South Asia, Millward Brown
• Priya Nair, Executive Director – Home Care, Hindustan Unilever Limited
• Rohit Dadwal, MD, Mobile Marketing Association Asia Pacific Ltd
• Senthil Kumar, Chief Creative Officer, J. Walter Thompson
• Shireesh Joshi, Head – Strategic Marketing, Godrej Group
• Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder & CEO, One97 Communications & Paytm

Speaking on the appointment of the new board, Chairman D Shivakumar commented, “The Indian market is brimming with great opportunities for Mobile media and marketing. The MMA India Board of Directors brings together some of the best practitioners and  minds in marketing, advertising and media, and our collective experience and expertise will hopefully propel the market to quickly adopt mobile marketing as a mainstream medium.” He further added, “Our board members have identified key areas where our immediate focus in needed. These initiatives will facilitate sharing insights, create industry benchmarks and guidelines that will help marketers leverage mobile as core to their business and marketing strategies.”

“Mobile continues to push India marketers to re-think the way they approach marketing and use data and technology to engage with consumers. The conversation has shifted towards how we can build capabilities and further help the ecosystem to leverage mobile,” said Rohit Dadwal, Managing Director for MMA APAC. “I’m confident that under the guidance of the new Board, our members will be able to leverage the MMA’s resources and network to accelerate mobile marketing in India. The Board of Directors will be instrumental in shaping the future of the industry and developing the MMA and its initiatives. I look forward to working with them to drive the growth of our industry.”

Recent studies from the MMA, Mary Meeker and others suggest that there will be a dramatic shift in media spending in the near future and it is imperative for the marketing community to reboot their marketing mix with mobile as a key driver for future business strategies especially when Mobile is poised to be the third largest mass medium in India after TV and Print.

The MMA board members have commenced work on key initiatives that are focused on Research, Measurement and Education to help marketers understand consumer behavior and usage of data and non-data mobile users and capabilities across Voice, Text and Data. Studies will help evaluate and analyze traffic sources, path to purchase, creative campaign evaluation, mobile content, and mobile commerce. These initiatives will help in demystifying mobile marketing by cultivating inspiration, building capabilities for success and demonstrating impact thus supporting the growth of mobile as an indispensable part of the marketing mix.

About the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA)

The MMA is the world’s leading global non-profit trade mobile marketing association comprised of more than 800 member companies, from nearly fifty countries around the world. Our members hail from every faction of the mobile marketing ecosystem including brand marketers, agencies, mobile technology platforms, media companies, operators and others. The MMA’s mission is to accelerate the transformation and innovation of marketing through mobile, driving business growth with closer and stronger consumer engagement. Anchoring the MMA’s mission are four core pillars; to cultivate inspiration by driving the innovation for the Chief Marketing Officer; to build the mobile marketing capabilities for the marketing organizations through fostering know how and confidence; to champion the effectiveness and impact of mobile through research providing tangible ROI measurement; and advocacy. Additionally MMA industry-wide committees work collaboratively to develop and advocate global best practices and lead standards development.

Mobile Marketing is broadly defined as including advertising, apps, messaging, mCommerce and CRM on all mobile devices including smart phones and tablets. Members include, American Express, AdChina, Colgate – Palmolive, Dunkin’ Brands, Facebook, Google, Group M, Hewlett Packard, Hilton Worldwide, Kellogg Co., L’Oréal, MasterCard, McDonalds, Microsoft, Mondelez International, Inc., PepsiCo, Pandora Media, Procter & Gamble, R/GA, The Coca-Cola Company, The Weather Company, Unilever, Visa, Vodafone, Walmart, xAd, Zenith Optimedia and many more.

The MMA’s global headquarters are located in New York with regional operations in Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA), Latin American (LATAM) and Asia Pacific (APAC). For more information about the MMA please visit: www.mmaglobal.com

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Alive, the augmented reality initiative from TimesMobile Ltd. bags Gold at the prestigious Smarties India 2013 awards by Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and pushed the boundaries of mobile marketing to engage with readers like no other media channel. Alive was honored under the Best Product Innovation category for the campaign –‘Giving Print a new lease of life’. TimesMobile Ltd. is a subsidiary of the Times Internet, the Digital and Mobile initaitive of Times Group, the largest publication house of India.

The MMA is the leading global trade association for the mobile marketing industry for which 76 campaigns had made it to the final shortlist of the total entries across 20 categories. The awards recognize best-in-class mobile marketing. The jury of over 35 senior brand marketers and advertising executives selected their favourite campaigns and products.

TimesMobile launched ‘Alive’ App in association with The Times of India in Dec’12. Since its launch, Alive has changed the way print content is being consumed by mobile users. Within 9 months of launch, it has shown remarkable success, with about 5 Million scans every month, and about 700,000 app downloads. Alive, today is the only AR (Augmented Reality) app in the world that users can access from any of the 5 phone OS platforms – Android, iOS, Symbian, Windows, and Blackberry. It can also be downloaded from www.alivear.com

On a daily basis about 20 stories are being augmented in TOI newspaper, which can be scanned through ALIVE for audio / video content etc. Users can, not only see the augmented story, but can share the same on various social networks, through facebook, twitter, email etc. In addition to TOI, ‘Alive’ App today works with Print Magazines like Filmfare, Femina, Grazia, Hello and GoodHomes etc.

The concept of Augmented Content has also caught the imagination of many brands and they have used ‘Alive’ app to augment their print advertising campaigns. More than 100 popular brands from FMCG, Real estate, Fashion and lifestyle, Insurance and Automobiles like Vodafone, Google+, LG, Volvo, Cosmic Group, Blackberry’s etc have used the ‘Alive’ app in recent months for their campaigns.

Speaking on the occasion, Ajay Vaishnavi, Director, TimesMobile Ltd said, “We are happy to Bag Gold for Alive app in Smarties APAC 2013. Augmented reality is currently at an infancy stage in India and is underutilized as a mobile marketing technique. ‘Alive’  has been able to open up this market and bring together host of opportunities for brands and advertisers. We foresee many innovations being offered in coming months that will allow brands and advertisers to offer enhanced exploration of content, location based deals / offers, mcommerce, walkthroughs etc. Alive will help consumers to see more innovative content and campaign delivery in the future to  leverage the mobile channel in driving loyalty. We are happy to receive accolades by MMA who are embracing this innovative emerging technology.”

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