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Educating and motivating brands and advertising agencies for the adoption of new media and specifically mobile has for the last two years been a particular priority for me.

I try to contribute to industry education both via my involvement with the MMA as well as in my capacity as head of Vodacom’s mobile media unit and this normally takes the form of presentations at conferences, participation in panel discussions, presentations and workshops at media and full service agencies and now and then guest lecturer stints at colleges and universities.

A more interesting recent experiential educational push however was the Vodacom backed “MAD” challenge, which ran over a number of months and had fairly large scale participation by staff at South African ad agencies.

Ultimately there is nothing quite like actually consuming a medium with a view to understanding it.

The MAD challenge has just wrapped up and yesterday I presented the two top prizes to the winner and runner-up, both of whom happen to work at OMD in Johannesburg – these guys will soon be on their way to Mauritius and Zanzibar!

OMD also won the top agency prize (R50K worth Vodacom media).

Check out the detail as well as some interesting thoughts from Josh Dovey, OMD CEO – here.

For more background to the MAD campaign including a background video, go here.