SA brands and agencies top the rankings in MMA's global business impact index

6 Mar 2019

The Mobile Marketing Association's annual Business Impact Index (BII) have announced its winners and South African brands and agencies have consistently outperformed international peers across its 'Africa', 'EMEA' and 'Global' categories, in many cases ranking in 1st and 2nd place.

Last year's Gold Award winners at MMA SA Smarties Awards.

Media agencies Mindshare and MediaShop for instance ranked 1st and 2nd respectively in the ‘Africa’ Index, while in the ‘Global’ Index Digitas Liquorice ranked 2nd and Gorilla 4th in the digital agency category.

“Local campaigns performed extremely well across categories this year. This goes to show the high calibre of mobile-first work that we produce as a country,” says Sarah Utermark, country director of the Mobile Marketing Association South Africa.

Digitas Liquorice was also ranked as #1 Digital Agency in the EMEA region. Digitas Liquorice founder and CEO, Miles Murphy expressed his delight about the business index: “We’re super thrilled to be announced the #1 Digital Agency in the EMEA region and #2 Globally for the second year running. This achievement stands by the real impact and ground-breaking work we deliver to our clients every day.”

Exceptional value for the businesses

To be eligible for inclusion in the BII, brands, agencies, media agencies and tech enablers’ campaigns need to have won, or have been a finalist in, the previous years’ Smarties Awards, the only awards that honours work for its business impact. These campaigns are then analysed by a proprietary methodology developed in collaboration with Warc – the global authority on advertising and media effectiveness— to determine business impact.

“The BII presents an opportunity for a country’s top mobile marketers to compete with peers at an international level. Being recognised as a leader in these global Indexes is a significant achievement for South African brands and agencies as it means that their work has delivered exceptional value for the businesses they represent and is considered among the best in the world,” comments Luisa Mazinter, MMA SA chair.

Also ranking highly on these global indexes are:

‘Africa’ Index: Enabling Technology

No.1: adVRtas
No.2: Future Tech Media

‘Africa’ Index: Brands

No.1 Shield
No. 2 KFC

‘EMEA’ Index: Digital Agencies Regional

No. 1: Digitas Liquorice
No. 2: Gorilla
No 3: Yonder Media
No 4: Just Palm

“Now that the 2019 Smarties Awards are open for submissions, we encourage all entrants to spend sufficient time on highlighting the financial impact that their campaigns had on the businesses that they represent. In doing so, they might win a Smarties and then also be entered into the 2019 BII to stand a chance of being recognised as among the best mobile marketing work in the world,” concludes Utermark.

To view the complete Index and rankings across categories by region click here. The campaigns created by the companies named on the Business Impact Index are also available in the MMA Smarties Case Study Hub.