A deep dive into MMA Global’s evolution from a legacy association into the Marketing + Media Alliance – a CMO-led, evidence-driven, cross-ecosystem force reshaping how modern marketing creates value. This feature unpacks the motivations, decisions and design logic behind the rebrand, with exclusive insights from the India leadership.

 

Every rebranding has a catalytic moment, but MMA Global’s transformation didn’t begin in a boardroom or a branding workshop. It began with a question that surfaced quietly, across continents, from CMOs who were part of MMA’s growing community:

“Does the MMA name still represent what the organisation is doing for marketing today?”

It was a question asked with increasing frequency – across New York, Brazil, Singapore, Mumbai, and beyond. A question rooted not in nostalgia, but in accuracy. The world had shifted. Marketing had shifted. And MMA Global had shifted the fastest of all.

The organisation’s evolution was unmistakable: from its mobile-marketing origins to a foremost global CMO body solving modern marketing’s hardest unanswered questions. Yet its name still carried the weight of a past frontier.
This was a group who we evolved with and set the rebrand in motion.

 

 

A Global Organisation Outgrowing Its Old Container

Over the last decade, MMA Global’s work has expanded upstream. Multi-year, multi-million-dollar Think Tanks like MOSTT (Marketing Organisation Strategy), MATT (Measurement & Attribution), ALTT (AI Leadership), and DATT (Data & Customer Experience) were reshaping the discipline with evidence instead of opinion.

But externally, the world still perceived MMA as a traditional association. Internally, members were experiencing something far more ambitious – a collaborative, research-driven, CMO-powered ecosystem.

“The conversations in every region were consistent,” says Moneka Khurana, Country Head & Board Member, MMA Global India.

“CMOs were turning to MMA to solve questions no one else was addressing. The identity had to catch up to the impact.”

Inside View – When an Association Behaves Like an Alliance

Behind the scenes, one insight kept resurfacing: the modern marketing landscape cannot be shaped by marketers alone. It requires media, technology, platforms, agencies, consultancies and researchers – working as a unified decision-making system.

This became the philosophical turning point. MMA was no longer functioning like an association convening participants; it was functioning like an alliance integrating contributors.

Stakeholder interviews across regions revealed three recurring truths:

• Marketers were consistently at the centre of strategic conversations.
• Media was no longer an add-on, but a growth accelerant.
• The organisation’s real influence came from cross-industry collaboration.

These truths shaped the new narrative that now anchors the brand:

Marketers at the center.
Media in the mix.
Alliance at work.As Khurana notes,  “These weren’t crafted lines. They were observed behaviours. They reflected the way MMA had already begun to operate globally.”

The New Identity 

To translate this ethos visually, MMA partnered with Lafayette American. The brief wasn’t about aesthetics; it was about encoding the organisation’s forward motion into its visual language.

The new identity leans – quite literally – into the future.

• The forward slashes in the logo signal momentum. 
• The confident black represents strategic rigour.
• The aspirational gold reflects mastery-in-progress – a nod to the organisation’s relentless pursuit of validated frameworks.

The design evolution feels subtle but intentional: familiar yet sharper, faster, more directional.

“Toby and the Lafayette team didn’t design a logo; they designed a stance,” Khurana says.

“The identity expresses what the Alliance stands for – evidence, velocity, and impact.”

The Unfinished Chapter – A Brand Built for What Comes Next

The new identity marks neither a beginning nor an ending – but a continuation. A signal that the organisation is preparing for a more complex, more demanding era of marketing.

Globally and in India, the next chapter includes accelerating AI leadership, reimagining media’s strategic role, strengthening the link between marketing and enterprise value, and expanding the collaborative CMO network shaping the future.

The Alliance is built for what’s next – and its story remains deliberately unfinished.

As Khurana puts it, 

“A rebrand doesn’t define an organisation. It reveals it. The MMA we see today is simply the MMA the industry has seen us evolve to and become.”