MUMBAI: Alive, the augmented reality initiative from TimesMobile Ltd. bags Gold at the prestigious Smarties India 2013 awards by Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and pushed the boundaries of mobile marketing to engage with readers like no other media channel. Alive was honored under the Best Product Innovation category for the campaign –‘Giving Print a new lease of life’. TimesMobile Ltd. is a subsidiary of the Times Internet, the Digital and Mobile initaitive of Times Group, the largest publication house of India.
The MMA is the leading global trade association for the mobile marketing industry for which 76 campaigns had made it to the final shortlist of the total entries across 20 categories. The awards recognize best-in-class mobile marketing. The jury of over 35 senior brand marketers and advertising executives selected their favourite campaigns and products.
TimesMobile launched ‘Alive’ App in association with The Times of India in Dec’12. Since its launch, Alive has changed the way print content is being consumed by mobile users. Within 9 months of launch, it has shown remarkable success, with about 5 Million scans every month, and about 700,000 app downloads. Alive, today is the only AR (Augmented Reality) app in the world that users can access from any of the 5 phone OS platforms – Android, iOS, Symbian, Windows, and Blackberry. It can also be downloaded from www.alivear.com
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On a daily basis about 20 stories are being augmented in TOI newspaper, which can be scanned through ALIVE for audio / video content etc. Users can, not only see the augmented story, but can share the same on various social networks, through facebook, twitter, email etc. In addition to TOI, ‘Alive’ App today works with Print Magazines like Filmfare, Femina, Grazia, Hello and GoodHomes etc.
The concept of Augmented Content has also caught the imagination of many brands and they have used ‘Alive’ app to augment their print advertising campaigns. More than 100 popular brands from FMCG, Real estate, Fashion and lifestyle, Insurance and Automobiles like Vodafone, Google+, LG, Volvo, Cosmic Group, Blackberry’s etc have used the ‘Alive’ app in recent months for their campaigns.
Speaking on the occasion, TimesMobile ltd director Ajay Vaishnavi said, “We are happy to Bag Gold for Alive app in Smarties APAC 2013. Augmented reality is currently at an infancy stage in India and is underutilized as a mobile marketing technique. ‘Alive’ has been able to open up this market and bring together host of opportunities for brands and advertisers. We foresee many innovations being offered in coming months that will allow brands and advertisers to offer enhanced exploration of content, location based deals/offers, m commerce, walkthroughs etc. Alive will help consumers to see more innovative content and campaign delivery in the future to leverage the mobile channel in driving loyalty. We are happy to receive accolades by MMA who are embracing this innovative emerging technology.”
