MMA Forum India 2015: Mobile Unanimously Declared the Most Personal Device to Reach Out to Target Consumers by Industry Leaders and Marketers

Business Wire IndiaThe annual Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Forum India 2015 concluded yesterday at the Leela Ambience Hotel & Residences in Gurgaon. 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. Themed Acquiring, Reaching and Engaging the Right Consumers through mobile, the forum saw a stellar line up of speakers from brands, agencies and technology companies, dissecting the many 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 Rohit Dadwal, Managing Director, and Mobile Marketing Association Asia Pacific. “We hope that the event today has inspired the movers and shakers of the India mobile marketing industry to re-examine their mobile strategies, explore the full extent of the tools at their disposal and really test the boundaries of consumer engagement on mobile.”
 
The MMA Forum India 2015 kicked off with a keynote session with Rahul Welde, Regional Vice President – Media of Unilever and Rohit Dadwal who discussed Unilever’s innovative approach to marketing and the former’s 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 Nitin Bawankule, Industry Director, Ecommerce, Local Classifieds and Technology Google India 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 is key to catching the consumer at this moment.”
 
In a very stimulating and enlightening Fireside chat of the day with Media Specialist and Writer Vanita Kohli-Khandekar, Dippak Khurana, Co-Founder & CEO Vserv 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, Dippak stated 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.
 
Joshua Maa, Founder & CEO Madhouse Inc. 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.
 
CVL Srinivas, CEO, GroupM moderated a panel discussion with Vipul Prakash, Vice President – Beverages Category, Pepsico India, Sunil Buch, Chief Business Officer, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited and Amarjit Singh Batra, CEO, OLX India where they shared their insights on becoming “mobile capable”. The group shared their experiences on how media owners, brands and agencies can come together to build mobile insight and capability to achieve the desired level of maturity.
 
Nitin Mathur, Senior Director Marketing, Yahoo Asia Pacific unveiled the various aspects of Flurry, one of the most successful 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.
 
Vikas Gulati, Managing Director, Asia, Opera Mediaworks illustrated the effectiveness of mobile devices in connecting brands and consumers by discussing the success of AskMeBazaar.com’s  campaign with Manav Sethi, Group CMO ASKME India & Findit Malaysia that was executed by Opera MediaWorks. Vikas 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, Milind Pathak, COO, Madhouse – South Asia, 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 winners discussed their strategies, inspiration and the solutions created to effectively create awareness amongst their targeted base.
 
Sharing key figures from their research “State of the industry - mobile marketing in India” conducted in conjunction with MMA, Edward Pank MD WARC Asia Pacific, discussed the way forward of marketers and brands alike. Sharing positive numbers on the industry, Edward said that the study indicated that around 75% of Indian marketers are looking to raise their mobile marketing spends to 25% from this year from 10% or less from the previous years and the number might even hit 50% in the next 5 years. 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 lead the way in terms of innovation and location based marketing.
 
The MMA Forum was followed by the MMA’s mobile excellence awards program, SMARTIES India 2015 where the winners from 15 categories and 5 Industry Awards were announced over a Gala dinner.
The MMA Forum India 2015 was sponsored by Vserv, MADhouse, InMobi, Nimbuzz, Opera Mediaworks, Pokkt, Hotstar, Yahoo!, Unites Spirits Limited and Pocket Math.

For more information, please visit: http://www.mmaglobal.com/forumindia2015/
 

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