Taking Blippar to 100m users: Omaid Hiwaizi appointed President of Global Marketing

Omaid Hiwaizi, the UK Chief Strategy Oofficer at Geometry Global, has been appointed Blippar's first President of Global Marketing, intending to take the app to 100 million users.

Hiwaizi will be responsible for expanding and transforming the marketing efforts of the world's leading image-recognition and augmented reality app, and grow consumer adoption. He will initially focus on the UK and USA, where Blippar currently has the largest installed bases.

Consequently Hiwaizi is calling a digital media agency pitch, with an ultimate goal of achieving 100 million users. This will be their first formal media agency relationship with a significant initial media budget. Hiwaizi is running the pitch with the UK and USA local leadership.

Hiwaizi, who studied Maths at Cambridge University, began his career as a creative, designing i-D magazine. In 1995, he co-founded direct marketing agency Hubbard Hiwaizi McCann, as Creative Director.

As the founder of two agencies and the force behind the transformation of several planning departments across brands worldwide, Hiwaizi brings a diverse mix of marketing expertise to Blippar. Before joining Geometry Global, part of the world’s largest activation network, he worked as Planning Director at both SapientNitro and Chemistry, and was a Founder and Planning Partner at Crayon.

Omaid Hiwaizi in Blippar's London Bridge office

Hiwaizi said: 'My appointment comes off the back of recent Series C investment, which has enabled Blippar to change the game in image-recognition from just recognising brands to objects in the world (eventually all objects), and provide information and inspiration to fulfill people's curiosity, in the moment.

'This means that there's a requirement to significantly increase commitment to consumer marketing. Previously Blippar focused on tech and brand/agency marketing - leaving consumer marketing to the brands.'

Ambarish Mitra, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Blippar, said: 'As Blippar continues the evolution of its innovative technology platform and breaks into the emerging category of visual discovery, we are excited to expand to our world-class team. Omaid will continue on our rapid growth track globally and help us move forward in realizing our vision to make the world blippable.'

Hiwazi's appointment is one of three senior hires just made by Blippar, and he joins Ariff Quli, who has joined as Chief Commercial Officer, North America, and Xuejun Wang, who has joined as Vice President of Infrastructure.

Quli previously worked at Vibrant Media as President of North America at Vibrant Media. He will be responsible for expanding the company’s efforts in North America and determining key performance indicators to measure its long-term growth and success. He will play a key role in driving Blippar’s new visual discovery capabilities to business, while also maintaining momentum for the company’s existing image recognition and augmented reality offerings.

Wang, meanwhile, will focus on scaling Blippar’s new visual discovery capability and overall technology operations. He has experience at some of the world’s most successful technology companies, including Yahoo and Alibaba.

Read more:

Blippar seeks media shop as it steps up marketing drive Campaign

Omaid Hiwaizi nets Blippar global job Decision Marketing

Blippar names Omaid Hiwaizi President of Global Marketing The Drum

Creative technology will drive the next era of marketing Marketing Magazine

How agencies can unlock the power of creative technology The Guardian