Beauty and personal care brands celebrated for mobile marketing innovation

The Mobile Marketing Association’s 2016 Smarties awards singled out top campaigns from every industry, and companies including L’Oréal, Unilever, and Coty were among the winners.

The MMA is a globally active non-profit organization working to inspire, educate, and advocate for the mobile marketing industry. According to the group’s site, “Mobile Marketing is broadly defined as including advertising, apps, messaging, mCommerce and CRM on all mobile devices including smart phones and tablets.”

Corporate members represent an array of industries, including personal care. Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser, and Unilever are just some of the companies on the MMA roster.

Mobile is social

Unilever’s Dove brand won silver in the Global – Mobile App category for its Love Your Curls Emojis. The category honors marketing initiatives comprising “any mobile app that was created as part of an integrated mobile marketing strategy to either provide information, entertainment, productivity or utility as part of the customer experience,” as the MMA winners gallery explains. The same Dove app won gold in the Cross Media / Cross Mobile Integration category.

The curly hair emojis are part of Dove’s social-impact marketing (like the Dove Real Beauty campaign). And the app won for its impressive impact in the digital, social, beauty space. Dove launched the app in November 2015. It generated over 4m impressions then, and over 1 billion impressions to date. It’s the most searched for app in the Apple app store and was trending on Twitter within hours of launch, according to the video item about the app on the MMA site.  

Mobile is for sharing and selling

The ManiMatch app from Coty’s Sally Hanson business won bronze in the Global – Mobile App category.

ManiMatch is a digital makeover tool for nail polish. Consumers scan their hand into the app and virtually try on Sally Hanson nail colors. The app also makes color recommendations based on each users hand scan.

Of course users can click to buy the polishes they like and can share pictures of their virtual manicures on social media.

Mobile can travel

Digital and travel are a ready match. Consequently, location-based tech and travel retail were a winning combination for L’Oréal.

In the Latin American region the company won gold in the Programmatic category and silver in the same region’s Location-Based category for its Ralph Lauren Polo Red Fragrances travel retail campaign. To create the mobile initiative, L’Oréal teamed up with ad tech company S4M and Havas Miami, according to a company press release about the Smarties.

The mobile campaign focused on travelers flying from Brazil to the US. By targeting the same traveler in both countries and offering them a unique way to discover the brand and find the duty free points of sale, the brand saw a higher user acceptance of geolocation and an increase in conversions over the course of the campaign, explains the release.

L’Oréal was also honored in the Latin America Lead Generation category for Solar Expertise.