On Thursday evening the South African Direct Marketing Association (DMA) held their annual Assegai Awards dinner at Gallagher Estate in Johannesburg, South Africa.

This is the direct marketing industry’s premier awards event and was a black tie gala dinner attended by what looked like almost the entire industry (looked like almost 1000 pax).

Of course it is always great to be recognized by your peers but is especially satisfying to receive recognition from an industry which you have been part of for less than a year!

I had always known that in AdMe we were creating something quite special, certainly in South Africa but even when compared to similar platforms globally (of which there are very few) the AdMe project is highly innovative, right from the member recruitment strategy through to the actual user experience architecture and the advertiser propositions.

So whilst we knew we had a great product, as direct marketing (DM) industry “outsiders” we certainly did not expect to win the Gold award in both categories we entered (Best Digital Media – Mobile and Best Technology Solutions & Innovations – Database).

In an ironic twist the first award we received was sponsored by MTN (South Africa’s second largest mobile phone network and Vodacom’s main competitor in South Africa) and the award was therefore handed to me by the MTN representative….that could not have been very pleasant for him but he seemed like a great guy and was pretty gracious under the circumstances (guy in the picture below wearing the jeans)

And if we were surprised and delighted to win our two Gold awards imagine our delight when we were also announced as the winner of the “grand prix” award called the “Inkosi” Assegai, which is selected from all the Gold winners.

In a way I felt a little guilty that we should have denied the DM industry a winner in the more traditional DM space (which I know most DM practitioners remain very passionate about) but on the other hand it also felt like the bestowing of the Inkosi award on a mobile direct play marked another shift away from tradional DM and toward the digital direct marketing realm but this time to a digital medium (mobile) with real scale.

While I had the opportunity to present a range of exciting case studies and applications for mobile as an extremely powerful DM medium at the DMA Conference the day before the Assegai Awards, I am hoping that the winning of the Inkosi really shines a light on mobile as an un-paralleled DM medium particularly in Africa.

A big congratulations to my team and our great partners SIlverstone CIS and MMS – well done!