CEO of MMA Latam, Fabiano Lobo talks about expectations for what will be the biggest edition of the event
This Tuesday (11th) and Wednesday (12th), at the Ibirapuera Park Biennial, in So Paulo, one of the main editions of the MMA Impact, a meeting whose main objective will be to show the impact of innovation in business. There will be, in total, 60 sessions and more than 100 speakers.
This year, MMA Impact Brasil will have a simultaneous format with more than 60 sessions divided into 4 stages with presentations on the marketing universe, including D&I, ESG, Growth, Artificial Intelligence, Games/e-sports, cases and content creators .
Among the names that will be at MMA Impact are Rohit Bhargava, professor, author and one of the world’s leading speakers on innovation and technology; by Igor Cavalari, Thiago Marques, from Podpah; Alexandre Carreteiro, from Pepsico; Patricia Borges, from Diageo; Renata Gomide, from O Boticrio see the complete list of speakers.
“Marketing has transformed, it has become smarter, more data-driven, and the whole issue of artificial intelligence, whether regenerative or not, will accelerate this transformation process and generate opportunities for advertisers and brands to connect even more with their customers”, said Fabiano Lobo, CEO of MMA Latam.
The edition of MMA Latam 2023 will be a robust edition, with robust numbers. What explains the growth of the event?
In fact, we have been building this event in a robust way for a long time. In the last ten years, we have been building our audience, building our ecosystem and building this robustness in the amount of knowledge that we share, in the number of people who are there to network and in the number of stories that we have been telling . For this 2023 edition, the idea was to create in the same space an environment where our associates and our ecosystem could come together. So we created this new multi-stage format, along with all the exposition part, the activations part, and all that exactly to test. This connection between our associates and the industry itself. We felt that there was space in the market to hold an event like this. There was no event with this proposal yet, so as a leading associative entity, we understood that it was our responsibility to create this environment.
What can the public expect from MMA Impact 2023? What will be new in this edition?
There are more than 60 sessions and more than 100 speakers. So the bottom line is that people can expect shared knowledge of a very high quality. We have big names, marketing leaders, big names in the world of technology, big names in the world of retail media, big names in the world of trends, innovation, artificial intelligence, that is, we built a simply sensational curatorship, the best of the last few years without a doubt, and obviously we always have that touch of innovation and connection between people. So, you can expect a lot of connection, a lot of knowledge in a friendly, comfortable and conducive environment.
ChatGPT and AI are the most talked about topics when talking about technology today. But, in your opinion and taking into account your experience in this market, what are the three points that everyone should pay attention to?
, we have come a long way in the last ten years. We saw mobile become essential in the companies’ strategy, when companies still thought that mobile was just another channel. We go through this transformation. Marketing has transformed, it has become smarter, more data-based, and the whole issue related to artificial intelligence, whether regenerative or not, will accelerate this transformation process and generate opportunities for advertisers and brands to connect even more with consumers. your customers. Always focusing on the long term because the brand that wins is the brand that understands people. If you understand people, you’ve won, you manage to create a long-term relationship and that person becomes your consumer, your consumer, your ambassador, your ambassador and that’s at the end of the day what I believe will happen. More than innovation and technology, MMA Impact is also an event about content, this is a trail that cannot be missed.
Through which prisms will MMA Impact approach innovation?
We look at innovation in a very strategic way, but at the same time simplifying our day to day. At Impact, we seek to tell stories about business impact and how this impact helps brands get closer to their consumers. In the second semester, we have the MMA Innovate, which is an event where we encourage discussions about innovation in marketing, looking at today and also tomorrow. The difference between the two is in the innovation impact timeline and how this innovation has transformed and generated some kind of learning experience for brands and companies.
Still on innovation, how is it currently related to diversity and technology, two important pillars for the market?
Diversity, technology and innovation are three super strategic pillars within everything we do in MMA. Be it at events, in our podcasts, or in our playbooks. That is, any type of stage or conversation that we can generate, in all formats. Obviously the diversity in technology is a rich path and one that will never – thankfully – have a return. it is where we find the necessary plurality for any development of any innovation in any area. Therefore, we bring conversations about how this diversity impacts artificial intelligence, for example. Conversations led by names that work in different pillars and sectors of society, within brands or outside them, and who are at the cutting edge of knowledge about the urgency of plurality and the inclusion of different experiences and points of view in building brands and relationships with consumers. There are men, women, black and black leaders, trans people, all together and mixed together sharing their visions of innovation, because this is how we believe we will be able to impact the market.
In 2013, when you took over MMA Latam, it was still Mobile Marketing Association. Today, mobile no longer exists after the association’s concept change. When and why did you decide to reposition yourself?
In fact, from the moment we understood that mobile was not a channel. He was a layer that played all channels. That’s when we started this transformation because we believed, our thesis was that mobile would really swallow marketing. Mobile was going to become a ubiquitous part of our lives. If you stop to think about it today, exactly today, April 4, 1973, 50 years ago, Martin Cooper made the first commercial call using a cell phone. In fifty years, you can see how the cell phone has transformed, and obviously, it wasn’t until 2008, with the arrival of smartphones through the iPhone and other manufacturers, that we really managed to understand that it wasn’t just a phone, it wasn’t a means of communication, that was a ubiquitous way for us to be connected, for us to share our lives, share our thoughts, share our knowledge. At the end of the day, we look back from 2013 to now and see how much Mobile has become the air we breathe. We are connected all day long! Today, via cell phone. Tomorrow, cell phones will probably be some other gadget and we will have this ubiquitous connection expanding more and more, with greater speeds, with greater stability of our networks and with greater processing as well. Mobile didn’t swallow everything for nothing, and it was also no wonder that we repositioned MMA to simply be “MMA”, where the strong M of Marketing is that the industry is impacted by our work.
What is your assessment of these ten years at the head of MMA Latam? What were the achievements, the advances of the sector in this period?
I consider it a very positive balance. Memberships tend to be overlooked by big industry leaders. Our purpose as a challenger was to make the associative entity become a community, and this community gain relevance, and this relevance, gain more and more importance within the world of marketing, the world of conversation related to technology and innovation. From then on, curating everything we do and sharing everything within the community makes a simple associative entity have a real business impact. far beyond what we had imagined in our wildest dreams. So, without a doubt, I believe that this was a great achievement for all of us, all of us who are part of MMA, which travels in an environment of convergence, integration and democracy. We are always open to partnerships with other local associations. We are global, but we have that local spark always challenging the status quo.
After MMA Impact, what will be the association’s next events?
We have four events in each of the countries where MMA is present in Latin America. We have two smaller members-only events, one event for approximately 150 people, which we start in the first semester. In the second half, three major events. MMA Impact is where we tell stories of business impact. In October we have the MMA Innovate where we talk a little more about how innovation is impacting the tomorrow of marketing, which could be three years from now, five years from now, ten years from now. We keep an eye on trends and how those trends are emerging and developing. And then we have the Smarties Awards, which is a platform for celebration, not just an award. A platform to celebrate successful cases of the year with a focus on effective creativity and business impact. This was the first prize in the world that, in addition to the trophy, gives participants and winners an NFT that gives access to a micro community within MMA with exclusive benefits. We announced the winners in October, with the delivery of trophies. Together with the winners, throughout the year we revisit all the knowledge behind each case.
