Unilever?s ability to consistently churn out viral videos, quickly move on emerging opportunities and enthusiastically look beyond the banner ad proves that it grasps how to effectively connect with mobile users in a way that few others do, which is why it is the 2015 Mobile Marketer of the Year.

The Mobile Marketer of the Year award is the most prestigious honor for smart, strategic and creative mobile marketing. Team Obama won the honor in 2008, Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. in 2009,Starbucks Coffee Co. in 2010 and 2012, Macy?s in 2011, Mondelez International in 2013 and Coca-Cola in 2014. 

Coca-Cola is the first runner?s-up for the 2015 Mobile Marketer of the Year and Clorox is the second runner?s-up. 

Dove is one of Unilever?s biggest success stories on mobile, with the consumer packaged goods giant leveraging multiple social media platforms to support a brand image that resonates with women of all ages, encouraging even the most jaded to tap the ?share? button. Unilever?s mobile mastery extends across a number of brands, including Axe, Magnum, Tresemme, Wall?s and others. 

As mobile consumption of content reaches a critical level, Unilever clearly knows how to engage smartphone users with entertaining content that connects on an emotional level. 

The marketers? string of viral videos this year included one in advance of Father?s Day depicting men first learning their partners are pregnant while simultaneously promoting the Dove Men+Care line.

While numerous marketers jumped on the emoji bandwagon this year, Unilever puts its own spin on the trend when its research showed a need for greater diversity among female emoji characters. Dove?s emojis cater to women of all skin tones and hair colors, ranging from dark to light-skinned, alongside emojis with dark, light brown, blonde and red hair. 

Earlier in 2015, Dove teamed up with Twitter to encourage women to speak positively about themselves, following research finding that women are 50 percent more likely to make negative comments about themselves around the Oscars than the rest of the year.

As Unilever?s strategy for its Axe men?s personal care brand veers away from bawdy television ads, the company is also adeptly leveraging mobile to engage young men in a more organic manner. 

This year, Unilever leveraged an in-store partnership with Walmart to attract Axe?s audience with relevant music downloads on mobile as a reward for purchasing products. 

The brand partnered with Duke University basketball player Justise Winslow on social media to tap into the excitement surrounding the National Basketball Association draft. 

Unilever also moved quickly to take advantage of emerging opportunities, such as jumping at a partnership with publishing brand Refinery29 for its Snapchat Discovery channel launch to target millennials for the Tresemmé, Dove and Axe brands. 

Reflecting how Unilever grasps the need for cross-channel experiences, a Unilever iBeacon program in Sweden blended an outdoor sampling truck with a mobile coupon. In another example, Tresemmé teamed with Cosmopolitan.com to offer styling tips while using mobile ads to drive users to its YouTube channel to watch hair tutorial videos.

Unilever?s ice cream brand Magnum saw significant success in driving local traffic to a store in Ecuador through a mobile banner campaign that leveraged location and interactivity to enable users to invent their own ice cream bars and pick them up. 

This is not Coca-Cola?s first time earning a Mobile Marketing Award, as the brand was an early convert to the power of mobile. In 2015, Coca-Cola built on this strong heritage with several unique campaigns. 

Coke Zero?s ?drinkable? campaign found success by enabling mobile users to interact with television ads as a bottle poured the beverage first on the bigger screen before migrating to the screen in consumers? hands and then transforming into a coupon. A later iteration also included key engagements via the Shazam app. 

Coca-Cola also had one of the more unique beacon-driven efforts, leveraging the technology in movie theaters in Norway to both target and then retargeting smartphone-equipped moviegoers a week later with a free ticket to return to the movie theater. 

The beverage marketer brought back its Share a Coke campaign this year, adding on interesting new mobile elements, such as a Times Square billboard enabling passersby to Tweet their first name and see trivia related to their name show up on the screen and receive a photo when it appeared. The Share a Coke program also leveraged mcommerce this year, pointing to the growing convergence between content and commerce on mobile. 

The emoji trend was not overlooked by Coca-Cola, which became the first brand to use a paid emoji on Twitter.

Other key mobile moments for Coca-Cola in 2015 included sponsoring a weekly digital sports program on IGN and being the first marketer to team up with the Android Pay loyalty platform.

An important mobile marketing concept to emerge in 2015 was the idea of mobile moments, with The Clorox Company a clear leader in grabbing at the opportunity to reach consumers when they are inside a store and at other key mobile moments when they are most likely to be receptive to brand messaging.

In its first foray into proximity marketing, the company?s Hidden Valley and Soy Vay brand tapped in-store beacons to engage consumers with quick tips ? or hacks ? for dinnertime.  

With 50 percent to 60 percent of Clorox?s media already on mobile, the company made Google its preferred demand-side platform to respond to consumers in a faster, more personalized way when they are in the pre-purchase, point-of-purchase and post-purchase stages of buying. 

Clorox is also leveraging social media in creative ways. For example, a predictive cold-and-flu conversation tracker analyzes millions of tweets to uncover commonly discussed topics, flu activity trends and tips related to combating winter illnesses.

Recognizing that mobile advertising is about so much more than a banner ad, PepsiCo let its imagination run free in 2015, going as far as to turn a Doritos chip into an ad. Even a smartphone itself became a branding vehicle via the Pepsi P1 Phone in China. 

PepsiCo?s Doritos brand paved the way for mobile-only campaigns in an effort that delivered 3D videos to consumers when they used their phones to scan a Jacked 3D Jalapeno Pepper Jack chip. 

The consumer packaged goods company also did some heavy lifting with Google to help better understand how best to deliver mobile video ads. Leveraging a Mountain Dew spot that had been running on TV and YouTube TrueView, the two companies explored different configurations to determine what makes an ad unskippable on mobile. 

PepsiCo did not abandon the banner ad, but looked for new ways to make it interesting on mobile. The company?s Quaker Oats brand ran an expandable banner ad leveraging hot spots to highlight noteworthy ingredients that appeared in the mobile news feed on the Huffington Post. 

New York Times? efforts to connect with readers on mobile made a successful landing in 2015 after years of struggling to find the right strategy. Using a combination of key partnerships and emerging technology, the publisher caught the attention of mobile users and advertisers. 

Late in the year, the publisher?s new virtual reality application had more downloads in its first days of availability than any other app from the publisher at launch, pointing to the technology's significant potential for publishers. 

The publisher also kept readers interested with new offerings, such as an Apple Watch app delivering one-sentence stories and an overhaul of its Android app that features more swiping. 

New York Times also started working with Google to better optimize mobile Web content and launched an advertising solution that leverages user data to serve targeted content at relevant times and places throughout the day.

Key social media partnerships with Facebook and Instagram are helping the New York Times better connect with mobile users where they are increasingly spending their time. 

Mindshare, which was recently confirmed as Unilever?s media agency partner in Europe, North America, South East Asia, South Asia and Africa, is leveraging mobile programmatic buying to support a number of leading brands? strategies, from Diesel?s work with Shazam and Tinder and the first geo-targeted customer filter program on Snapchat for Lionsgate?s The Hunger Games? Mockingjay Part II. 

Mindshare?s Life+ unit for wearable devices and connected technology is behind innovative campaigns from Degree Women and American Family Insurance. 

The agency also helped Hellman?s and Conde Nast?s Epicurious deliver in-store meal ideas via beacons. 

The agency?s reach across the mobile ecosystem and work with leading brands makes it the Mobile Agency of the Year.

Forrester Research has its finger on the pulse of mobile marketing like few other researchers do. The company consistently brings out insightful original research that pulls back the curtain on many facets of mobile marketing and puts forth best practices which are quickly adopted by leading marketers. The cadence of research reflects its significant commitment to mobile. 

McDonald?s significantly pushed forward mobile marketing?s ability to deliver personalized, contextually relevant experiences as one of the first major brands to adopt Snapchat?s geofiltering stickers. McDonald?s is encouraging visitors to snap photos of their food or themselves and decorate the images with an illustrated overlay. 

The move spurred consumers to send more photos from the chain's restaurants and create sponsored content that appeared non-promotional to recipients. The ongoing program has been updated and continues to attract engagement, pointing to how partnering with popular apps can deliver targeted, organic experiences. 

Target partnered with the application Shazam this year to make its print and TV ads shoppable, leveraging the latter?s new push into visual recognition technology. The campaign was highly visible in Vogue?s September issue and across TV during the fall and holiday shopping season. 

While results have not been released yet, the campaign?s heavy rotation and the central role of the mobile call to action is an important step forward for mobile-driven multichannel advertising because it enables viewers to move relatively seamlessly from seeing an item of interest in an ad to pointing a phone at it and buying it. 

Snapchat went from zero to hero as a mobile marketing partner in 2015. An impressive list of big brands jumped onboard to take advantage of Snapchat?s strong connection to younger consumers this year and were thanked with a steady stream of new marketing opportunities throughout the year, such as interest-based targeting, geofilters, live stories and facial recognition lenses. 

From the Discover media portal to a number of deals with sports organizations, programmers and agencies, Snapchat was quickly embraced by the broader marketing community as well. 

Snapchat?s quick ascent is even impacting how creative is developed, with more marketers embracing vertical video, the dominant format on the platform. 

With Procter & Gamble, the largest advertiser in the U.S., making some big moves in 2015, the company?s global brand officer has been very visible as he explains the thinking behind a shift in strategy that puts a bigger emphasis on mobile and social while reducing agency fees. From interviews with high-profile news organizations to headlining major industry events, Mr. Pritchard is vocal about how significant digital growth is changing advertising, from the need for authenticity to figuring out how to express an idea across a multitude of media. 

With P&G announcing a move of much of its media spending to Omnicom from Starcom MediaVest late in the year ? the first such shift in almost 20 years ? the company is ramping up its move to digital-first brand building, with Mr. Pritchard an important champion both within the company and for the marketing community at large.