New Delhi : Mobile media leader, Affle, today announced that it has won the Mobile Marketing Association’s(MMA) Global & Asia Pacific Mobile Marketing Awards, for the best use of mobile media for branding purposes. These awards were won for Affle’s advertising for Maruti Suzuki, India’s largest car maker, for a path breaking campaign which helped Maruti leverage sponsorship of top sporting events on airtel’s mobile platform. To win this award, Affle documented a two-month campaign using multiple mobile media platforms like Affle’s SMS2.0, Mobile Internet, Voice Portals & SMS advertising.

The campaign was a result of Affle, airtel and Maruti Suzuki’s study of changing consumer behaviour, which showed a significant increase in the consumption of sports related content on the mobile phone. Taking this key factor into consideration a campaign to increase Maruti Suzuki’s association with sports and to build greater affinity with its target audience on their medium of choice was created. The uniqueness, scale and results for this campaign ensured that it became the first Indian entry to win this award for the global category at the MMA.

“We are very pleased to receive this global recognition from the MMA for our work with Maruti Suzuki,” said Anuj Kumar, Executive Director (South Asia), Affle. “We have always believed that mobile is the new mass media, and if strategized & executed well, mobile campaigns can deliver significantly better results than other mass media. For this particular campaign we integrated the brand experience across multiple mobile touch points and ensured that the campaign reached to millions of users delivering unprecedented engagement levels. With over 1.2 Mn engagements, a 7% CTR (Click Through Rate), and over 33% increase in Top of Mind awareness, this campaign today stands as a great global case study on how mobile can be used effectively for brand building in a very scalable way”

“We are tremendously proud to have won this prestigious marketing award and delighted to have played a leadership role in the evangelising the use of mobile media in India,” said Sunila Dhar, Asst. General Manager, Maruti Suzuki. “Sports has been an important genre of advertising and of great relevance to our TG. Combining sports with the digital medium has given us these stupendous results. We really value our partnership with Affle as they have always brought to us the most cutting edge mobile communication products and solutions which have helped us connect better with our target group. This particular campaign has been a great success for us as it helped build affinity & engagement with our target audience and was instrumental in helping us significantly up our Awareness & Top of Mind scores though a clutter breaking communication. We also received over 30,000 test drive requests as a result which was a clear bonus from this branding activity.“

“It is now a well known fact that when it comes to innovation in mobile, the entire world is looking to the Asia Pacific region on how to do it right,” said Rohit Dadwal, Managing Director, Mobile Marketing Association Asia Pacific Limited. “With a market and consumer environment that is conducive to tremendous growth in this field, the APAC region will continue to fascinate the world with its dazzling applications of mobile technology. Innovation in the region is being spearheaded by such technologically advanced markets such as Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea etc. In addition, there are several developing nations that have growing populations and low PC penetration rates making mobile their primary choice for web access and related services.”

“I am pleased to once again see such enthusiasm from our members in Asia Pacific to showcase their work at this global forum and I congratulate all the winners from the region. By facilitating such recognition for our regional leaders we hope to add further value to their business and contribute to their future success,” Mr Dadwal added.