Rewarding the big MOMAS: The judges' favourites from the Mobile on Marketing Awards

The Marketing on Mobile Awards (MOMAs) took place at the Emirates Stadium last week, recognising and rewarding excellence in mobile strategies, websites and apps across the marketing spectrum. Here some of the inaugural judging panel select their favourite work from the judging session.

Grand PrixMobile Travel TechnologiesClient: easyJetEntry: easyJet MobileSean Patterson, co-founder, We Are Ignition: For me, the easyJet app stood out as a deserving winner. I instinctively find myself scrutinising the user experience of any service or product that I come across, yet there was surprisingly little to fault the easyJet app on. My grandmother would be able to use it without problem, the UI is clean and straightforward and it just feels snappy and well-crafted – hallmarks of a quality app.I also love the fact that the app focuses on core functionality while deferring secondary content to the mobile site. Far too many brands don’t know where to draw the line and Ithink easyJet got the balance right. The icing on the cake has to be the mobile check-in and boarding passes – a feature which I believe was added just a few days after the judging, but it’s great to see the brand is evolving the app to better serve its customers.Alasdair Scott, former creative director, The Bright Place: The easyJet app is impressive on multiple levels. It’s a wonderfully crafted pieceof software with a well-considered UI/UX and little touches – like animations and transitions – which are both entertaining and subtle enough to enhance the experience without eventually becoming annoying. The app’s functionality is spot on – it does exactly what easyJet passengers need, in a well-ordered fashion, without any ‘feature creep’. Users can book flights, select seats, track flights and optionally enter their traveller details (such as passport info) which saves time during booking. Naturally the app adds reminders to calendars and (for multiple bookings) will email flight details to all passengers. Currently available for selected airports, the latest version of the app also provides mobile boarding passes and includes support for Apple’s PassBook. It looks stunning on Retina displays – and it’s great to see that the design team put a lot of care and attention into the typography. It’s an all-round beauty of an app and a deserved winner of a MOMA Award.Chairman’s AwardMediaComClient: Co-operative InsuranceTitle: The Co-operative – Driving education and awareness through mobilePeter Gandy, chief commercial officer, Rockpool Digital: I awarded my Chairman’s Award to MediaCom for the Co-operative. This was an innovative idea, designed to engage young drivers through a fully functioning ‘try before you buy’ mobile app, allowing users to understand the new telematics based product and see how it would affect their insurance premiums. If mobile is to realise its full potential, then we as an industry must stop focusing on the technology and instead, put the customer experience at the heart of everything we do. Of all of the entries we reviewed, I felt that this solution did this best. Rather than just tell the audience about the new product, it used the immediacy of mobile to enable people to interact with it and learn about the benefits, resulting in impressive awareness and take up. Using mobile in an experiential way like this makes a product come to life and provides a new angle on advertising. There’s huge potential for mobile advertising, but the current use of cut down display ads lacks imagination. The Co-op found a way to capture its customers’ attention, providing value based interaction and empowering the user, rather than just pushing sales messages at them. This was a powerful example of using mobile to engage an audience and underlines the brand’s confidence in the product.Professional services mobile strategy/campaignIMImobileClient: British GasTitle: British Gas Appointment Reminder ServiceDaniel Joseph, director, The App Business: British Gas, the brand that brought you app-powered billing and heating control, rewarded for an SMS and voicemail campaign… in 2013? The only value of mobile technology is the value it brings to its audience and the business, and that is why we rewarded British Gas. Whilst the mobile industry might buzz loudest when the conversation turns to ‘wearables’, British Gas demonstrated that technology is only ever the means to an end – and all that matters in the end is the customer experience and return on investment. In 2012, British Gas set out to solve one of its biggest bugbears: “When is that engineer going to arrive?”. This unanswered question created untold customer frustration, wasted call time and led to customer ‘no shows’. So, what was the answer? An automated, simple, scalable SMS and voicemail message that put customers at ease with the precise timing information they required and the ability to move appointment times. The return on investment was staggering. A lot of very small actions, with a very light piece of technology, adding up to a big difference for British Gas costs and customer satisfaction. So, in case you did, don’t think short messaging is all out of innovation. The format is innovating fast. (What’s App’s disruption of Facebook tells you that). And brands that figure out how to solve their customers’ problems with short, rapid-text based mobile comms, whether in app, in browser or native messaging app, will make a real difference.Best use of 3D/augmented realitySomoClient: AudiTitle: An Audi A3 on your drivewayRussell Buckley, board advisor, LoopMe Media: Somo’s ‘An Audi in your Driveway’ campaign was really nicely executed, bravely experimental with augmented reality and genuinely allowed potential buyers to enjoy a fantasy moment of feeling what owning the aspirational car was really like. I chose this one for the future potential of AR, as much as this specifi c campaign. AR will signifi cantly impact not just marketing, but humanity itself, even if that sounds far-fetched. When it hits its peak, AR will provide us with an extra sense to add to those we already have, which means brands must start to engage, test and learn today. Obviously, AR via mobile today is a fairly clunky affair, albeit enabling some magical experiences, such as this one. But we’re actually using the technology at the equivalent stage when driving a car meant employing a man to walk in front of you carrying a fl ag. As we enter the wearable era of computing, accessing AR will be completely seamless with our day-to-day lives. Imagine a surgeon being guided precisely through an operation, being able to look at a house and see its history and market value or having a Wikipedia-style information on every tree, fl ower and rock you see. And then start dreaming how you’d like to use it. So well done Somo and Audi on seeing the potential and doing something to make it happen.Mobile/tablet B2B appSparkolClient: Rosie WalkerTitle: VideoScribe B2B appIlicco Elia, head of mobile, LBiThe Sparkol entry is one of my favourites this year. It brought the concept of communicating via stop motion video to life in a cost effective simple to use package. It uses the iPad’s unique features to create an app that is as engaging as it is simple to use and never lost sight of its key audiences by supporting different pricing models to suit various budgets and the ensured that users could learn how to create a “scribe” in no time at all. The results were excellent. Sparkol users have created many thousands of hours of videos, all with the aim of bringing dull concepts to life and enabling those watching the scribes to relate to and hence understand the concepts through the use of music, audio, voice-overs, photography and animation. They used the medium to its full potential and many teachers have found it invaluable as a teaching aid to enable students to understand complex topics. I look forward to seeing how the app will evolve in the months and years to come. The full list of winners of the fi rst ever MOMAs, with categories covering the breadth of mobile marketing, is available at momas.co.uk.