MUMBAI: In this ever changing and developing world, which is led by technological advancements, brands need to constantly re-examine their strategies and explore the full extent of the tools at their disposal. In a scenario like this, the key to the mobile marketing industry’s success is for brands to take a focused and consumer-centric approach.
What’s more, according to a research called “State of the industry - mobile marketing in India” conducted by WARC in conjunction with Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), around 75 per cent of Indian marketers are looking to raise their mobile marketing spends to 25 per cent from this year from 10 per cent or less from the previous years. What’s more, the number might even hit 50 per cent in the next five years.
According to WARC Asia Pacific MD Edward Pank, the study indicated that Hindustan Unilever was the most innovative mobile brand in the country followed closely by Flipkart, Samsung, Amazon and Paytm while Telecom and Retail ead the way in terms of innovation and location based marketing.
The annual MMA Forum India 2015, which was held in Gurgaon recently, was themed ‘Acquiring, Reaching and Engaging the Right Consumers through Mobile.’ The forum saw speakers from brands, agencies and technology companies, dissecting successful and innovative brand campaigns over the previous year to highlight the importance and effectiveness of mobile within the marketing mix.
“Capability-building and innovation are key to the success of the mobile marketing industry. In light of the rapid evolution of technology, it’s important for brands to take a focused and consumer-centric approach to mobile,” said MMA Asia Pacific managing director Rohit Dadwal.
The MMA Forum India 2015 kicked off with a keynote session by Unilever regional vice president - media Rahul Weld, who discussed Unilever’s innovative approach to marketing and its success in reaching out to the targeted customer through effective strategies.
Talking about the importance of “seizing the moment” when reaching out to the consumer, Google India industry director - e-commerce, retail, online classifieds and technology Nitin Bawankule said, “The most effective way to reach out to the consumer is to target them in time of their need. Every consumer looks for solutions on their mobile devices and strategic advertising are key to catching the consumer at this moment.”
Media specialist and writer Vanita Kohli-Khandekar and Vserv co-founder & CEO Dippak Khurana brought to light the various aspects of mobile commerce, advertising and data that can help shrink the intent-purchase gap.
Talking about the need to share data to leverage its power to reach, engage and acquire the consumer, Khurana said that publishers with significant “consumer attention” will try to move to commerce and that while consumers in India have regularly demonstrated their appetite to pay through mobile, marketers have been shy of sharing data that could help them buy through mobile platforms, significantly limiting their success.
Madhouse Inc founder & CEO Joshua Maa discussed the similarities and the difference between different Asian markets with a focus on India and China during his session - “No two markets are the same yet they are not different.” He covered aspects and opportunities where India could learn from China and vice versa.
Group M CEO CVL Srinivas moderated a panel discussion with Pepsico India vice president - beverages category Vipul Prakash, ZEEL chief business officer Sunil Buch and OLX India CEO Amarjit Singh Batra, where they shared insights on becoming “mobile capable” and how media owners, brands and agencies can come together to build mobile insight and capability to achieve the desired level of maturity.
Yahoo Asia Pacific senior director marketing Nitin Mathur unveiled the various aspects of Flurry, the mobile-analytics company acquired by Yahoo, and discussed its potential to influence the consumer by tracking their behaviour on apps and building personalised and relevant communication thereby highlighting the need for more such tools in the space.
Opera Mediaworks Asia managing director Vikas Gulati illustrated the effectiveness of mobile devices in connecting brands and consumers by discussing the success of AskMeBazaar.com’s campaign with Askme India group CMO Manav Sethi and Findit Malaysia that was executed by Opera MediaWorks. Gulati discussed at length, the power that mobile empowers brands with, to control consumer behaviour as they are most intimate and used media device.
As part of the MMA forum 2015, Madhouse – South Asia COO Milind Pathak introduced the winners of Madlabs, a platform introduced by Madhouse to showcase the innovative mobile communications and solutions in the startup ecosystem and espoused the effective use of mobile to reach out the targeted consumer.
The MMA Forum was followed by the MMA’s mobile excellence awards program - SMARTIES India 2015 where the winners from 15 categories and five Industry awards were announced.
Over 330 delegates and 34 industry leaders representing the mobile marketing ecosystem in the country came together for the day-long event to discuss and deliberate over the future of the industry.
