MMA SA

With the awards season in full swing, the MMA SA SMARTIES announces the creme de le crème of mobile. The SMARTIES Awards – the world’s only global mobile marketing awards programme that honours innovation, creativity and most importantly measures the impact and success mobile has on business – has confirmed its shortlist of winners for 2018. The event, which is to be held on 1 November at the Maslow in Sandton, will recognise the incredible work carried out by some of the industry’s leading marketers, tech enablers, media owners, brands and agencies.

MMA SA Chair and head judge and Chief Marketing Officer at Tyme Luisa Mazinter said the standard of entry has been impressive. “There are so many ways nowadays for brands to reach their customers through mobile. Agencies are beginning to experiment and innovate in ways we’ve never seen before and that’s what makes judging the SMARTIES so unique and inspiring. Narrowing down to our shortlist was challenging this year as the quality of entrants was very high. It was particularly exciting to see some of the smaller agencies coming through the ranks and delivering exceptional work for big brands. It was also great to see some of the larger more traditional agencies embracing the power of mobile.”

Lana Strydom, digital, social and content marketing at Vodacom and one of the judges, said: “We saw some great examples on how bots are now being integrated into the customer journey. Bots allow for meaningful, repeat engagement if used effectively in the media mix, it was extremely encouraging to see both innovative and surprising use of different media types – particularly mobile channels used a new way.

“The SMARTIES encompasses everything that is mobile and seeing the use of new technologies to enhance the efficiency or interactive capability of media, is extremely exciting.”

MMA’s country director, Sarah Utermark added that the judging day is always so highly anticipated, and brings together some of the industry’s leading experts to debate at length the merits of each submission. “The impact that mobile has on business in the digital space continues to grow each year and that’s why our ethos on measurement and results, coupled with innovation and technology, remains the focal point and is indicative of what our SMARTIES awards is all about”.

The Shortlist winners in each category are:

The awards evening will be held at the Maslow Hotel in Sandton on Nov 1^st 2018.

Apps Flyer, BBM and Vicinity Media are the event sponsors while strategic partners include MTN and Standard Bank. With thanks to Shazam