The winning teams from Mindshare Asia Pacific (left) and Unilever (right) celebrating their victories as Agency Network of the Year in Mobile and Marketer of the Year in Mobile respectively.
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) announced this evening winners of its 2016 SMARTIES™ Asia Pacific (APAC) Awards, held at the Pan Pacific Singapore. Concluding the SMARTIES series for the year, the annual Gala saw a full line-up of 58 award recipients in mobile strategy as well as industry-focused categories, celebrating outstanding achievements and effectiveness across the vast mobile marketing ecosystem. Unilever Asia was crowned the prestigious ‘Marketer of the Year in Mobile’, while Mindshare Asia Pacific was recognised as ‘Agency Network of the Year in Mobile’ for campaigns such as 6 Pack Band for Brooke Bond Red Label Tea in India and Lay’s Smilestagram for PepsiCo’s Lay’s in Thailand, amongst others.
Furthermore, Mindshare Thailand’s Knorr Auntie Reply, produced for Unilever’s Knorr was presented with two Gold awards in the Lead Generation and Product/Services Launch categories. Digital Arts Network’s MasterPass™ by MasterCard® also took home two Gold awards in the Promotion and Relationship Building / CRM categories. Both campaigns also recognised as ‘Best in Show’. Other regional brands recognised include Castrol India, Canon Singapore, Disney – Pixar, Hindustan Unilever’s Active Wheel, L’Oréal, Nike and Singapore Airlines.
“It is really exciting to see that marketers are truly starting to leverage mobile’s interactive capabilities to deliver real business resultsfor brands in the region. Our industry has reached a tipping point where great strides in innovation are being taken, and technology has the ability to transform the power and impact of mobile campaign. The quality of the winning campaigns highlight the growing significance of mobile in the APAC region, and carves a promising future for the mobile marketing industry, here,” shared Rohit Dadwal, Managing Director, Mobile Marketing Association, Asia Pacific.
In an ongoing partnership with Knowledge Partner, Kantar Millward Brown, the research-based consultancy presented industry trends and characteristics of the winning campaigns.
“This year’s winners stood out for being closer to the pulse of their target audience. This allowed them to create campaigns that truly spoke to their consumers, and in turn, delivered impact. Winners identified consumer needs and then focused on addressing them. They projected themselves as ‘enablers’ and ‘solutions’ to consumers’ everyday pain points in an engaging and compelling manner, understanding local nuances and tailoring campaigns in response.” said Rajeev Aggarwal, Group Account Director & Regional Account Leads, at Kantar Millward Brown, Singapore. “Finally, they challenged the perception that winning mobile campaigns are made for markets with high-tech devices and fast internet speeds, with many using inventive offline ways of reaching consumers despite connection limitations.”
A report ‘2016 Global Mobile Trends Report’ released jointly by the MMA and Kantar Millward Brown analysed MMA’s Global SMARTIES and Cannes Mobile Lions finalists to delineate shared characteristics and identify key trends, as follows:
Strive to increase brand relevance amongst consumers
Drive emotional connections and solve problems
Choose immersive, visually-compelling ad formats
Create apps that are their own engagement ecosystem
Set mobile as a cornerstone, build with other channels
Drive change and social impact
The analysis also identified key areas of growth around the world, including in Asia Pacific:
Leverage chatbots and virtual screen demos as ways to drive trial
Gain a better understanding of what it means to drive engagement
implement targeting that’s more evenly balanced with creative quality
Accelerate adoption of augmented and virtual reality
The report also highlights that while these emerging trends provide ample opportunities for marketers, their execution and integration with creative strategy warrant further improvement. The coveted SMARTIES™ APAC Awards was evaluated by a Jury comprising senior brand marketers and advertising agency professionals, who deliberated over the submissions across four criteria – strategy, execution, creativity and results.
The Jury comprised:
Arthur Policarpio, Chief Executive Officer, Mobext Philippines
Fergus O’Hare, Head of Asia Pacific, Facebook Creative Shop
Graham Kelly, Regional Executive Creative Director, Bates CHI & Partners
Gregory Armshaw, Digital Product Strategist/Advisor, Topme
John Sinke, Assistant Vice President, Digital Marketing and eCommerce, Resorts World Sentosa
Matthew Briant, Digital Marketing Director, The Walt Disney Company (Southeast Asia) Pte Limited
Myrna Poon, Senior Vice President (Brand & Digital), DBS Bank
Praveen Sharma, Regional Director, Mobile Sales & Solutions, Google Asia Pacific
Rohit Dadwal, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, MMA
Tripti Lochan, Chief Executive Officer, VML Southeast Asia & India
Pre-screeners were conducted by 85 senior marketers from around the region.
This year, the Awards also featured eight new award categories – Social Impact / Not for Profit; Cross Screen Advertising; Programmatic; Mobile Native; Tablet Campaign; Mobile Social; Mobile Video; Mobile Audio.