Mama Group appoints New Visions for mobile networking

by Ben Bold, Brand Republic 31-Mar-08, 16:00

LONDON - Mama Group, the owner of the Mean Fiddler and live music venues including The Forum, Hammersmith Apollo and The Jazz Cafe, has appointed mobile marketing specialist New Visions Mobile to develop its social networking strategy.

The agency, which was behind the development and launch last year of KylieKonnect, a Kylie Minogue-endorsed social networking site, has been tasked with building Wap sites for Mama Group-owned venues as well as collecting, managing and using mobile data to create marketing campaigns to boost ticket sales.

New Visions said that it would be creating a number of social networking applications for Mama brands, including the website for music magazine The Fly, music festival Lovebox (in which Mama owns a 25% stake) and venue websites. Activity will enable clubbers and music fans to join online and WAP communities by region, musical genre and venue.

In particularly, the agency will use its social networking mobile and web platform OurTribe to encourage Mama customers to create their own communities within Mama-hosted websites, enabling them to interact with one another using their PCs and WAP-enabled phones.

Adrian Coultas Pitman, Mama's managing director of digital media, said that the company looked at a number of agencies, but decided on New Vision on the basis of the range of services it could provide.

He said: "The social networking element is key to us. Our consumers can interact with each other inside and outside our clubs, on the web and on mobile. The focus of our media and digital strategy is about how we create a longer event experience through ticketing, community and our marketing technologies."

Julia McNally, New Visions director, said: "When we launched the social network platform our first roll out was with Kylie Konnect. It's been a huge success with fans who want to have a direct relationship with the artist via their mobile and PC and thousands of fans have signed up and are actively communicating with each other.

"The Mama Group's venues play host to so many leading artists and bands and they'll be able to interact with their customers in a unique way that allows them to quickly gain insights into what those customers really want."