The EMEA Mobile Marketing Association Board has unanimously elected a new Vice Chairman. Errr……that would be me - and I’m very flattered and excited to be more involved in the MMA in this way.

Just in case you don’t know much about the MMA, if you’re involved in mobile marketing or advertising, it’s definitely something you should strongly consider joining. It’s a global not-for-profit organisation which is steadily clearing some of the obstacles to market development, establishing mobile media guidelines and best practices and generally evangelising the mobile channel for use by brands and content providers.

One of the big achievements so far is to establish guidelines for mobile advertising, which have been endorsed by many other trade bodies and adopted by many leading players already. I think it’s pretty inevitable that they will become the de facto standards for the new industry going forward, which is an amazing achievement considering all the parties who needed to involved and consulted. Marcus Münkler of Vodafone and Dave Barker of Nokia (nee Enpocket) did a great job herding the cats on that project.

One of the MMA’s new initiatives will be establishing guidelines on the controversial area of Proximity Marketing (eg Bluetooth campaigns), which desperately needs some debate, clarification and guidelines if it’s ever to really get established in some form or another. If you’re involved in this, you might want to contribute to the debate before the policy is decided - most clients will want to ensure that their marketing activity conforms to best practice before commissioning campaigns.

So check out membership today at the site, or drop Stacey Stayer a line at the MMA and tell her I sent you. stacey.sayer AT mmaglobal DOT com. Once you’re a member, you can join the Proximity Committee and start influencing policy for the industry, or join any other Committee that takes your fancy for that matter.