Advertising + Marketing MY - Mar 2016

advertising + marketing malaysia

MARCH

2016

MARCH 2016 Panasonic’s Cheng Chee Chung on why marketing is the brains behind any brand

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ED’S LETTER

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A CORPORATE AFFAIR

Rezwana Manjur, Deputy Editor rezwanam@marketing-interactive.com Editorial – International Matt Eaton, Editor (Hong Kong) matte@marketing-interactive.com Production and Design Shahrom Kamarulzaman, Regional Art Director shahrom@lighthousemedia.com.sg Fauzie Rasid, Senior Designer fauzier@lighthousemedia.com.sg Advertising Sales - Malaysia Joven Barceñas, Sales Director jovenb@marketing-interactive.com Bernadine Reyla, Project Manager bernadiner@marketing-interactive.com Ong Yi Xuan, Advertising Sales Coordinator yixuano@marketing-interactive.com Advertising Sales - International Sara Wan, Senior Sales Manager (Hong Kong) saraw@marketing-interactive.com Johnathan Tiang, Sales Manager (Singapore) johnathant@marketing-interactive.com Events Yeo Wei Qi, Regional Head of Events Services weiqi@marketing-interactive.com Circulation Executive Deborah Quek, Circulations Executive deborahq@marketing-interactive.com Finance Evelyn Wong, Regional Finance Director evelynw@lighthousemedia.com.sg Management Søren Beaulieu, Publisher sorenb@marketing-interactive.com Tony Kelly, Editorial Director tk@marketing-interactive.com Justin Randles, Group Managing Director jr@marketing-interactive.com

Nigel Hollis, chief global analyst at Millward Brown, takes it a step further saying that often, either tears or smiles are associated with good ads. The fact is, every ad stirs an emotion. So even though our responses may not be intensely positive or intensely negative, they still are emotional.

Emotions are what drive us to change.

Last month, we saw and felt plenty of them.

We shared the frustrations of local fans when celebrity sweetheart Rebecca Lim duped the public on social media into thinking she was retiring – just for a marketing stunt.

This then raised the question of how far marketers can push the envelope when it comes to tugging at our heartstrings.

We also saw the local creative community outraged due to the demands of a government agency which forced the client to amend the demands; and forced other government agencies to reevaluate their procurement procedures.

Emotions have the ability to bring about real change and as much as numbers and data have their part to play, EQ shouldn’t take a back seat.

And in this edition, we discuss just that.

Happy reading!

Photography: Stefanus Elliot Lee – www.elliotly.com; Makeup & Hair: Michmakeover using Make Up For Ever & hair using Sebastian Professional – www.michmakeover.com

Editorial Rayana Pandey, Editor rayanap@marketing-interactive.com

In the final season of my favourite TV show Mad Men, Roger Sterling, founding partner of Sterling Cooper & Partners, sells his agency to the big boys at McCann.

During the episode, the semi-drunk and jaded Sterling says: “This business doesn’t have feelings. You get bought. You get sold.

You get fired. An account moves, you move.”

Ironic, when it’s evident that it’s an emotional Sterling saying so. But we know what he is pointing to – the “corporatisation of advertising – a change that will brutally put business first, emotions second.

Ironic again, as that’s what brands are trying to achieve today with their customers – an emotional connection.

That’s where marketing differs from any other function in the boardroom. While keeping its business hat on, it is expected to form a long-lasting connection with consumers, understand what their wants and their customer journeys are, and in turn, add value to their lives.

And building that bond can’t simply be an external goal. It is as much internal as outward-focused.

You need to love and be emotionally invested in your job. The long hours are tough, clients can be tougher, campaigns can be complicated and budgets, well let’s not go there.

Without passion, great camaraderie and a solid team, chances of survival are close to zero.

Emotions are what the industry has been trying to get right all along. Think back on any great (or not-so-great) piece of work – what you will recall is not the marketer or the agency behind it, but the emotion it stirred up.

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Permission may be requested through the Singapore office. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in Advertising + Marketing Malaysia are not necessarily the views of the publisher. Singapore: Lighthouse Independent Media Pte Ltd 100C Pasir Panjang Road, #05-01 See Hoy Chan Hub Singapore 118519 Tel: +65 6423 0329 Fax: +65 6423 0117 Hong Kong: Lighthouse Independent Media Ltd Unit A, 7/F, Wah Kit Commercial Building 302 Des Voeux Road Central, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong Tel: +852 2861 1882 Fax: +852 2861 1336 To subscribe to A+M Malaysia magazine, go to: www.marketing-interactive.com ...............................................................................................................

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Rezwana Manjur Deputy editor

M A R C H 201 6 | a dvert i s i ng + m a r ke t i ng 1

Malaysia’s digital marketing industry has expe erienced non-stop e p growth for more than a decade, but is it sustainable? Are marketers and agencies in Malay ysia adopting a y and pursuing digital strategies that will continue to grow grow theiiirr brands brands, and incr increase their ma arketing ROI? a Attend Digital Mar ark arke ar keti ke ting ng g Mal alay ay ysi sia, a, w a, wh h here he we wiilll look k att th the h challenges facing p practitioners, the opportunitie es presen resen res entt, and d wh wha hat needs to o be done e to o fu further furt rthe rt herr pu he ush s th he industry’s h boundaries da aries of crea a ativity a t a and effectiveness. eness.

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CONTENTS

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4

A MONTH IN NEWS A round up of a month of news from Malaysia and the region.

11

WHY HAS THE APAC MARKET MISSED OUT ON PROGRAMMATIC TV? With NBCUniversal not launching programmatic TV in APAC, does that mean the market here is not ready for it? Rezwana Manjur finds out.

16 WHAT KIND OF A CMO ARE YOU? CMOs – are you a torchbearer or a market follower? Rezwana Manjur writes.

19 A FRESH START: FROM FMCG GIANTS TO A START-UP No big budget traditional 30-second ads, no extended consumer research timelines and no multiple agency teams to help out. What do you do then? Rayana Pandey finds out.

20 PROFILE: CHENG CHEE CHUNG, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF PANASONIC MALAYSIA Why is marketing so critical to business decisionmaking? Cheng Chee Chung, managing director of Panasonic Malaysia, explains in this edition.

In a conversation with Rezwana Manjur, Cheng Chee Chung highlights why marketing is the brains of any organisation.

24 THE CASE STUDY FEATURE Take a look at some of the campaigns in Malaysia that have caught the audience’s eyes in the past few months.

34 REINVENTING THE WORLD OF RETAIL Can the retail industry pull out of the gloom and doom successfully? Rezwana Manjur explores.

48 MOB-EX AWARDS 2016 Read all about Audi and Publicis’ big wins at the Mob-Ex Awards 2016.

SCAN TO SUBSCRIBE!

16 11 What you’ll learn in this issue: >> Challenges of programmatic TV. >> What is holding both retailers and e-tailers back? >> What marketers need to know about tech start-ups.

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NEWS

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WANT MORE BREAKING NEWS? SCAN THE CODE TO FIND OUT WHAT’S GOING ON IN THE INDUSTRY.

Red Hat appoints new manager Open source solutions company Red Hat appointed Hon-Loong Kok as the country manager of Malaysia. He will lead the team to drive sustainable growth and establish stronger relationships with Malaysian enterprise customers and partners. He brings more than two decades of experience from the ICT sector and was previously in a key management role at Jardine OneSolution.

Money for love According to MasterCard, consumers in Asia Pacific planned to spend about US$100 on Valentine’s Day gifts this year.

Hong Kong led this list with planned expenditure of US$243, while Malaysia was behind with US$176. Spending this Valentine’s Day was up 23% from 2013 to 2015, with Asia Pacific men looking to spend 40% more than women on gifts. The MasterCard study found that Malaysian men wanted hugs and kisses and women wanted a weekend getaway.

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Lenovo’s new marketing lead Lenovo named Kenneth Low the new marketing lead for Southeast Asia. He will be tasked with driving the company’s brand growth across the PC, mobile and enterprise businesses in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. His responsibilities also include driving social media and digital engagement, demand generation campaigns, PR and retail. Low was previously marketing manager of Lenovo Malaysia for three years. Before that he did marketing and PR at HP, and held roles at NagaDDB, Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia and Momentum McCann Malaysia.

Diving into eSports Leading international media rights company MP & Silva was named the global marketing rights partner of SEA’s largest internet and mobile platform company Garena.

Both companies will work closely to secure brand partnerships and maximise commercial opportunities in Asia Pacific for electronic sports (eSports). The partnership is significant because it is MP & Silva’s first venture into the eSports scene, which has become increasingly lucrative.

Astro secures EPL Malaysia’s leading integrated consumer media entertainment group Astro secured broadcast rights for the Premier League (EPL) in the country for the next three seasons from 2016-17 to 2018-19. This strengthens Astro’s position as the home of sports and the unrivalled choice for sports fans in Malaysia.

Viacom joins up with Snapchat Viacom and Snapchat are teaming up to engage the Millennial and post-Millennial audiences by bringing two high profile channels to Snapchat Discover – a Comedy Central International channel and a MTV channel in the US. The agreement also grants Viacom the right to sell Snapchat’s US-owned and operated advertising inventory.

Snapchat has also expanded access to produce live stories covering more of Viacom’s tentpole events. Viacom is the only television company to have this arrangement with Snapchat.

INTI rocks with Aussie band INTI International University & Colleges was the official sponsor for Australian pop rock band 5 Seconds of Summer (5SOS) for its Kuala Lumpur concert. Four different contests were created by the university, where exclusive VIP tickets could be won. Parents were also asked to create hour-long MCQ tests based on various school subjects such as English, history, biology and basic economy. The INTI promotion aimed to engage with the youth and include their parents in the process.

Love is simple For those who believe love is complicated, IKEA showed them that love was simple through the IKEA love manual, which contained adorable illustrations that consumers could refer to “troubleshoot” their relationship woes. The Valentine’s Day campaign this year was run in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand with the help of BBH Asia Pacific.

Singular currency for TV A singular currency for TV ratings will soon be established in Malaysia, according to an announcement from the Media Specialists Association. Currently, ratings for free-to-air (FTA) TV and Astro are measured by two systems: Nielsen’s People Meter, and Astro’s exclusive reports via research firm Kantar Media.

Agencies and advertisers have long faced the hassle of having to evaluate the combined effect of buying FTA and Astro, and are looking forward to the single currency delivery.

Oliver courts new business The Oliver Group won the retainer for Courts’ retail business in Singapore and Malaysia, effective from 16 March and 1 April 2016 respectively. Oliver is tasked with developing a long-term consumer value proposition for Courts that continues to reinforce the positioning through all integrated and tactical executions. Oliver’s list of global and regional clients include Google, Starbucks, 3M and BMW.

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8/3/2016 5:19:12 PM

The ultimate Customer Experience conference returns 18–19 May With digital, big data and social more central to the marketing function, strategies that stay focused on growing loyalty and engagement are more crucial than ever before. At the heart of this challenge is the customer and our desire to enable deeper relationships with them beyond the transactional. This forms the focus of this year’s programme: ‘Engage & Collaborate.’

Join us for a jam-packed two days filled with engaging panel discussions, compelling case studies and topical presentations straight from industry experts.

Early-bird Rates by 19 April Client-side marketer: SG$ 1,290 Solutions provider: SG$ 1,990 www.marketing-interactive.com/ customer-experience/sg Contacts: Registration and agenda requests Emilia Natasha +65 6423 0329, emilian@marketing-interactive.com Sponsorship and advertising Johnathan Tiang +65 6423 0329, johnathant@marketing-interactive.com

Featured speakers:

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Vice President, Digital Channels HSBC

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Assistant Vice President, Digital Marketing OCBC Bank

Director, Head of APAC Strategy AIMIA

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NEWS

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Expansion into APAC Xaxis Media Group’s native advertising solution provider Plista launched partner offices in KL, Beijing and Shanghai to increase the company’s global presence to 10 markets in the APAC region.

The three new offices shows Plista’s commitment to bring quality and top-performing datadriven native advertising to the APAC region. The company will soon launch in Singapore with recruitment for the office still underway.

Nippon goes digital Nippon Paint Malaysia appointed Mindshare as its digital agency, a month after the agency took over the media planning and buying assignments for Nippon Paint. The appointment takes effect immediately. It will see Mindshare managing the complete paid-owned-earned media and digital brand assets for the company. Social media, the revamp and maintenance of multiple brand websites, digital creative developments, SEO and UX audits are also part of the work scope. The incumbent was Tribal Worldwide.

New appointments Watsons Malaysia appointed a new chief operating officer Caryn Loh, who succeeds Kulvinder Birring who was transferred to Watsons China for a senior leadership role. Loh joined the company in 2004 and previously led the trading team for 11 years with her retail and commercial experience. Her new role sees her continuing to develop the business, while overseeing all departments, including marketing.

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Healthier meal options Quakers worked with Mindshare, its media agency, to launch a campaign to show consumers how oats can be used to create healthier meal options, targeting multi-taskers who surfed their phones while watching TV. A cooking show and online ads were created to prove the healthy oats concept followed by a website, in which TV viewers were linked online through Xaxis Sync.

The digital-TV sync experience helped site traffic numbers. The successful campaign saw sales for Quaker Oatmeal increase by 7% year-on-year.

Going 100% digital Allianz Malaysia unveiled three newly leased electric cars in its bid to go 100% digital, which comes with the company’s goal to create its own digital ecosystem, focusing on reducing carbon emissions and the utilisation of environmentally friendly tools. It is one of the first insurance companies to work with cohesive mobility solutions (COMOS), an alternative mode of transportation as a convenient and fast solution to the current public transport infrastructure in Malaysia.

Coway appoints Leo Burnett Coway Malaysia appointed Leo Burnett Group Malaysia as its advertising and communications agency. The agency will deliver advertising, social, digital and public relations solutions. The collaboration started with a CNY campaign that built brand awareness via TV commercials, radio spots and event sponsorships. Digital campaigns were also carried out.

New responsibilities GlaxoSmithKline appointed Ramil Burden as vice-president and general manager for GSK Malaysia and Brunei. The appointment took immediate effect as Burden replaces Erum Shakir Rahim, who has moved on within GSK as general manager of Bangladesh. Burden will now oversee the company’s operations and portfolios across therapeutic areas, and is responsible for the global healthcare company’s operations in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Papua New Guinea.

Fresh makeover Following its growth in size, number of clients and its capabilities, Pos Ad Group is rebranding to shopper360 while aiming to be Malaysia’s shopper marketing expert. The group has five shopper-focused agencies (Pos Ad Media, Jump Retail, Paragon Premiums, Shopwave and Tristar Synergy) specialising in media, merchandising, premiums, promoter services and mobile solutions. Aside from new branding, shopper360 also refreshed the logos and visual identities of the five agencies.

Feast for the eyes Gaviscon Malaysia invited Malaysians to share their photos of their Chinese New Year feasts to win ang pows worth a total of RM10,000. The campaign received more than 1,435 entries before the Chinese New Year began. Running until the end of February, other campaign hashtags, such as #CNYHochiak, garnered more than 2,000 entries.

Reinventing sports marketing Dentsu Sports Asia (DSA), a subsidiary of Dentsu Inc, appointed Stuart Ramalingam as vice-president and head of DSA Malaysia. Based in Kuala Lumpur, he is tasked to “reinvent the sports marketing landscape” in his new role as leader of the growing sports marketing team in DSA Malaysia.

He previously introduced an athlete management department, which connects Malaysian and regional athletes to brands of various industries.

JWT names general manager JWT Kuala Lumpur named Raymond Khor as its general manager – a newly created role.

He brings with him more than 15 years of advertising and marketing experience, with stints at Ogilvy & Mather, Grey and Mindshare. He will lead key client accounts and oversee training and development of the account management teams. JWT also named Christopher Koh and Dedric Cheong as the digital business director and finance director respectively. Both join JWT with a wealth of experience in their fields.

Attractive interest rates Public Bank launched a new campaign to encourage the use of its new e-fixed deposit account, PB eFD. Customers who open the PB eFD account with a minimum placement of RM1,000 during the campaign period get to enjoy higher promotional interest rates.

The campaign runs until the end of March and is open to those aged 18 and above.

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NEWS

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New partnership for JWT J. Walter Thompson Company (JWT) inked a strategic partnership with Mio Global – a wearable technology company.

The Mio partnership is overseen by the agency’s innovation group.

The unique alliance with Mio gives JWT the ability to communicate directly, connect and innovate with one of the technology sensor brands. Mio recently unveiled PAI, a groundbreaking algorithm which finally makes sense of heart rate data for the ordinary consumer.

Brash new strategy With the rapid rise of financial technology (FinTech), the Bank of East Asia (BEA) opened its first BEA innovation centre in Hong Kong to underscore its digitised banking services with the help of branding agency Brash. BEA has partnered with Brash to create a brand experience strategy that resonates its ambitions of creating a digital omni-channel retail banking experience in the region.

New technology approach Group M’s Maxus Worldwide launched Maxus Technology Consulting, a new division which advises businesses on the most effective use of technology in their marketing programmes.

The consultancy will utilise a rigorous proprietary framework and methodology, based upon established management consultancy approaches. The approach will consider a client’s existing marketing technology framework, along with its specific business objectives, to identify the most effective future-facing marketing technology strategies.

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Yahoo cuts workforce Search giant Yahoo is cutting 15% of its workforce as it looks to reduce operating expenses by more than US$400 million by the end of 2016. To that end, Yahoo plans to also exit five offices in Dubai, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Madrid and Milan. It’s expected that most of these changes will take place in Q1, but by the end of 2016, the company anticipates having about 9,000 less employees and fewer than 1,000 contractors.

New identity MullenLowe Group unveiled plans for its new global corporate identity. This followed the formation of the network from the merger of IPG agencies Mullen in the US with global creative network Lowe and Partners.

The new brand identity aims to position MullenLowe Group as a global creative boutique, with a challenger approach delivered through a “hyper bundled operating model”. The MullenLowe Group network consists of four main brands: MullenLowe, MullenLowe Profero, MullenLowe Mediahub and MullenLowe Open.

Pharma win Pfizer moved a portion of its media buying business to IPG Mediabrands in Hong Kong, including some pharmaceutical brands previously held by Mindshare. Among the bigger names from its stable of pharmaceutical products are Viagra and Metamucil, however, cardiovascular products Lipitor, Norvasc, along with Harmonet, were also part of the deal. Maxus already holds the bulk of Pfizer’s over-the-counter consumer products, including Centrum.

Sony hands out business Sony concluded its global media agency business with a chunk of its business now sitting with UM and MediaCom. Marketing understands that in APAC the duties for Sony Pictures are split between OMD and UM. Incumbents UM will also be handling duties in the Singapore market which is its APAC hub.

Meanwhile, globally, MediaCom handles the business for electronics, Playstation and mobile.

Stylish partner Hugo Boss, the German premium fashion brand, appointed SapientNitro, part of the Publicis.

Sapient platform, as its new digital lead agency. Together, both partners aim to enhance the omni-channel experience for consumers and redefine how content and commerce can be merged across channels.

At the core of the partnership, SapientNitro will run the brand’s digital platforms, including the primary website hugoboss.com.

Merger completed ComScore announced that it completed a merger with Rentrak and the two were now one as the “new comScore”. The company said it would use a massive data scale to establish “new currencies” for understanding consumers’ multi-screen behaviour, and provide a more precise understanding of brand and consumer behaviour. “This merger brings together two great entrepreneurial companies that invented their respective fields and their respective trusted currencies,” said Serge Matta, CEO of comScore.

Cutting ties German sportswear company adidas AG is said to have cut sponsorship ties with the International Association of Athletics Federations following the scandal currently plaguing the sport. This means that the sporting giant may end its sponsorship deal nearly four years early, according to the BBC. Adidas’ 11-year deal with the organisation made it the biggest sponsor of the athletics’ governing body.

Data partnership Dentsu Aegis Network China formed a strategic partnership with UnionPay Smart, a China UnionPay company specialising in big data applications. Combining the existing big data analytics of UnionPay Smart, with advertising and user browsing behavioural insights from Dentsu Aegis Network, the two parties will codevelop and operate a precision brand marketing platform for advertising to provide data-driven marketing solutions for brands.

Dragonair rebrands Cathay Pacific rebranded its wholly owned subsidiary Dragonair as Cathay Dragon to strengthen connectivity with Mainland China. The two brands remain as separate airlines, operating under their own licences, but will now be much more aligned. The rebranding, said Cathay, aims to capitalise on the parent company’s international brand recognition and leverage on Dragon’s connectivity into Mainland China – one of the world’s fastest growing business and leisure travel markets.

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8/3/2016 5:18:52 PM

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Contact Joven Barcenas, jovenb@marketing-interactive.com, +65 6423 0329 for further information on agenda and registration.

NEWS ANALYSIS

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WITH A NEW CDO, CAN NIKE TAKE DIGITAL TO A NEW LEVEL? Does a brand such as Nike, already lauded for being tech-savvy, really need a chief digital officer? Rezwana Manjur explores.

On the move: Can a new digital lead at Nike take the brand to new heights, especially in the area of data?

Nike is accelerating its digital strategy and has hired Adam Sussman to take on the responsibility.

Sussman, who is the brand’s first chief digital officer, will lead the team responsible for the development of industry leading digital products and services across Nike.com, Nike+ and its digital platforms.

His team will drive Nike’s consumer engagement, and more importantly, he will be an essential player in helping Nike attain its goal of reaching US$50 billion in revenue by the end of FY20.

Nike, undoubtedly, has been lauded as one of the leading brands that marketers and agencies look up to. This is not just because of the brand’s immense creativity in products and promotions, but also its ability to embrace the world of digital. So this then begs the question: for a brand already so digitally savvy, does it really need yet another digital officer?

Tuomas Peltoniemi, president of TBWA’s Digital Arts Network (DAN), is of the view that sometimes large organisations find it hard to connect the dots in order to capitalise on digital opportunities. While for Nike, integrating digital across the various silos of marketing and products is not much of a problem, it makes sense for the brand to put someone in place to connect the dots.

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He adds: “In the future there will be more digital natives in all executive positions. For Nike it’s more about staying at the top rather than catching up.”

What’s interesting, he says, is this role sits under the brand team since Nike is generally used to innovating in the products space. But clearly competition in the sporting world is heating up.

“A role such as this is to drive innovation for the brand rather than product, especially as emerging brands such as Under Armour catch up,” he says.

A second go at wearables?

Under Armour, as Peltoniemi rightly points out, has over the years made huge strides in areas such as Wearables, and according to an article in Fortune, the brand has spent almost US$700 million on technology acquisitions to lead in this space. Wearables, unfortunately, is an avenue Nike exited from in 2014 just before they became big.

Neeraj Gulati, managing director of Ingenuity at IPG Mediabrands Malaysia, says that today almost all industries, and especially the productfocused industries, are moving towards creating a customised experience for consumers and technology makes it happen at scale.

“Nike was the leader in the wearable space

with the Fuel band. But, somehow, after that one initiative, it became apparent that they never had a proper roadmap or couldn’t focus enough to execute it,” he says.

Nonetheless, at the heart of the brand today is a data lab and this data helps create an experience which drives loyalty and purchase.

“I believe Nike will soon be launching more into wearables and will be opening access to the data they have. With a new CDO on the team, the company can potentially focus strongly on creating an ecosystem built around the athlete’s data which goes way beyond the Nike we know today,” he adds.

His views may become a reality given Trevor Edwards, president of Nike Brand, has pointed out that 2016 is going to be a big year for the brand. He added Sussman’s wealth of experience in digital, consumer technology and strategy leadership makes him the “perfect person to tackle tomorrow’s challenges today”.

Sussman’s background is a diversified one cutting across multiple positions in the interactive gaming and entertainment industries such as EA Mobile and Disney Interactive.

“Sussman is just as passionate about solving a problem for one athlete as he is introducing that innovation to a global community. 2016 promises to be a big year for the world of Nike digital, and this is just the beginning,” Edwards said.

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8/3/2016 5:22:22 PM

NEWS ANALYSIS

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WHY HAS THE APAC MARKET MISSED OUT ON PROGRAMMATIC TV? With NBCUniversal not launching programmatic TV in APAC, does that mean the market here is not ready for it? Rezwana Manjur finds out.

Missing out: Programmatic TV won’t be coming to a screen near you anytime soon.

Recently NBCUniversal said it was expanding its programmatic media product by launching NBCUx for linear TV. Advertisers can use data and automation to build media plans that include premium linear TV inventory across NBCUniversal’s entire portfolio of cable and broadcast entertainment networks.

Currently, only a select group of advertisers and their agency partners in the US are able to utilise this new offering. NBCUniversal told A+M it had no plans to extend the service into the region, but did not clarify further.

NBCUniversal simply said: “While, as a company, we prioritise harnessing internal expertise and innovations across all areas of the business we have no announcements to make in Asia at this time.”

However, with Asia Pacific quickly embracing programmatic capabilities, we asked

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several agency leads if the road NBCUniversal was treading on was the right one.

Grace Liau, GM of VivaKi APAC, said the choice to not launch in APAC was not surprising.

While it certainly makes sense in North America, where NBCUniversal’s audience would be able to go for a more premium strategy, advertisers and marketers in this region still have some catching up to do.

“We still need to do more on highlighting the value of digital data and getting them to be comfortable with the investment that’s needed,” she said. “The fact is this market is still mired in print and TV, with major local media houses still having a long way to go before they’re at a competitive level of maturity in comparison with North America.”

Liau added that another major issue in the region is scale which NBCUniversal would likely

look to in the US, where upfront buying is the norm and great shifts have been seen to extend to TV buying.

This cannot be immediately replicated in Asia Pacific or Singapore where programmatic adoption is still in its infancy.

The decision by NBCUniversal highlights the uncertainty of what level of scale the company would have in this region. Ideally, major local players would need to take a cue from the more mature markets and emerge from the comparative programmatic “stone age” before companies such as NBCUniversal see viability for such a service here.

However, sitting on the other side of the fence is Sanchit Sanga, chief digital officer of Mindshare Asia Pacific, who is surprised it is not launching in the market given the opportunities that exist in the market.

“Considering Singapore is the regional hub for some of the most sophisticated marketers around the world, there is no reason programmatic TV would not take off here with aplomb,” he said. “This region is crying for TV companies to become programmatically savvy and connect their inventory into automated pipes powered by data.”

He added the marketing fraternity was ready and willing to invest behind multi-screen targeted campaigns to reduce the deficiency of TV around targeting.

Specifically, Singapore as a market, he explained, has reached a point of maturation and this can be seen by both cable TV operators Singtel and StarHub launching versions of their programmatic TV offerings last year. Now both companies are working with a different set of data and technology partners to build on this service layer.

“Data is liquid and accurate across Singapore, all the key technology partners have a base here to power these services, no reason to wait,” he said. Sanga added infrastructure wise the region was ready in most markets, and now it was simply the case of TV and broadcast companies accepting the reality and moving fast to embrace it.

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NEWS ANALYSIS

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ARE WE TOO SEXY FOR OURSELVES? Ad land appears to be split on the “We Are #WomenNotObjects” spot. Noreen Ismail finds out why.

Sex versus sexism: The #WomenNotObjects ad has created plenty of opinions on the objectification of women in ads.

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NEWS ANALYSIS

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A New York-based ad executive called Madonna Badger created and released a two and a half minute video to take issue with the way women are portrayed in ads. The spot “We Are #WomenNotObjects” has been making the rounds on the internet for several weeks since its launch on 11 January.

The ad is on a mission to spark online conversations about the objectification of women in ads. Women, who are posed alongside the sales of various products and paraphernalia, have been subjugated and reduced to mere objects, the viral video claims.

“Honestly, as a female, sometimes I think we really push this whole feminist stance too far. So there’s tits and ass, what’s wrong with looking at a nice rack? It sure beats looking at a hairy ass or a flabby paunch right?”

Fiona Bartholomeusz – managing director of Formul8

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The video features a montage of ads – which have been historically designed to promote and sell products – that have portrayed women either baring their skin and assets or posing suggestively next to marketing messages targeted to get the viewer to buy a product.

In marketing speak, these ads are normally used to “shorten the conversion cycle”.

For a video aimed at addressing the sexist nature of ads that are shown to the masses, it was uploaded as an “age-restricted” post.

Jolene Tan, programmes and communications senior manager at gender advocacy group AWARE Singapore, says that advertisers should remember that women make up a large segment of the consumer market. An ad that treats women as objects of ridicule rather than people, alienates this consumer segment.

“Women have been pushing back against sexual objectification in marketing for a long time. Just last year, an AWARE member succeeded in having a sexist ad taken down at Orchard Road. And for some years now, our annual tongue-in-cheek Alamak! Awards have highlighted many instances of sexist and objectifying ads.”

Tan gives the campaign her nod of approval.

“It’s always good to have more voices against sexism and objectification.”

Valerie Cheng, previously COO of JWT, adds: “Most of what’s mentioned in the video is true, but sadly I don’t think this campaign will do enough to change things immediately.

“Works like these stems from many factors such as the mindset of the creator and we know it takes a lot to change one’s mind and attitude.”

On the other side of the fence is managing director of indie ad agency Formul8, Fiona Bartholomeusz.

“Honestly, as a female, sometimes I think we really push this whole feminist stance too far. So there’s tits and ass, what’s wrong with looking at a nice rack? It sure beats looking at a hairy ass or a flabby paunch right?”

She points out the double standards that persist when discussing the objectification of women and men.

“How many Calvin Klein ads have we seen with washboard abs or Armani underwear ads with Beckham’s junk in full view and it is fine to ogle that?

“Sex sells and unfortunately the female body is just that much more attractive to look at than a man’s.”

The ad medley includes well-known brands such as Burger King, Marc Jacobs and DirecTV, among others. Tom Ford campaigns, which are

famous for their risqué art direction, have also come under fire in the video. The designer’s propensity to sexualise his work in these campaigns, Bartholomeusz argues, adds to his brand’s allure.

“We are all, in reality, sexual beings; acknowledgement and expression of that is hard to stomach for some. Some puritanical types will baulk no doubt, but that’s why we have advertising censorship groups that protect the innocence of the masses.

“Some ads I do agree, however, are tasteless and just out to shock, (blow job sandwiches for one), but as we all know, today’s ad is tomorrow’s fish and chips wrapper.

“Understand that reality never sells. In theory we all want to be proponents of ‘the truth’ – but can we handle it? Ads sell because they feed into our ambitions/hopes for a better life/body/finances/relationship, etc … it’s time we come to terms with that.”

When asked if sexism topics should be explored in advertising, Cheng says the space is suitable as long as there is an audience for the conversation to take place.

“If more people openly detest such ads, clients and agencies will stop because it is not working. Clients and agencies with a good moral fibre will also naturally never resort to demeaning women or anyone, even men, for commercial reasons,” Cheng says.

“Unless your client is the Playboy Magazine, there are more creative avenues you can explore. Don’t be lazy. More women in the agency can help to do a sense-check on sensitivity because sometimes, it’s not just the image, it can be the message or even the core of the idea.”

Cheng says brands should be more conscious of their audience.

“Unless your campaign is confined within the male toilet (still someone might Instagram it), it is likely to travel even beyond this country.”

Meanwhile, AWARE’s Tan shares some basic tips for advertisers to avoid alienating women: 1. Don’t reduce women to faceless and disembodied body parts.

2. Don’t use images of women simply as decorative elements, especially heavily sexualised images that have nothing to do with the product or service being sold.

3. Represent more diverse women in your advertising – are your models only white or Chinese? What about a range of body types, not just thin women? Going beyond narrow forms of representation can help you really stand out and speak to a broader market.

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RAKUTEN SHUTS DOWN: THE END OF E-COMMERCE AS WE KNOW IT? There is a fallacy that e-commerce is a cheaper way to reach more customers, but in truth e-commerce is surprisingly expensive to run. Rezwana Manjur writes.

Not all doom and gloom: Despite Rakuten’s recent decision, many think the future of e-commerce in Southeast Asia continues to look bright.

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Indonesia. But in a conversation with A+M, a spokesperson from Rakuten explained this was in line with its “2020 vision and global strategy

for its transformation of e-commerce”. “In Southeast Asia, as the market itself changes and adapts, we are looking towards C2C and

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“The large players have moved quickly in terms of acquisition and advertising. Serious players need to work on getting scale quickly and focus needs to be razor sharp executions on all fronts from merchandising, acquisition, marketing to data.”

Rajeev Bala, co-founder and CEO of Predator Digital Holdings

mobile business models for e-commerce and other businesses,” read an added statement given to A+M.

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While e-commerce continues to grow in the region, today consumers are flooded with options as to which online marketplace service to use. Most of these players offer similar deals with very little areas of difference from competitors. So is this just a natural consolidation of e-commerce as we know it?

Linda Locke, previously a marketing consultant at Club21, certainly deems it to be.

She says today that too many e-commerce retailers think “build it and they will come” when they should be saying “make it special and they will come”.

There is a fallacy that e-commerce is a cheaper way to reach more customers, but in truth e-commerce is surprisingly expensive to run.

She added that going forward, more players will look to exceptional customer service and an omni-channel presence, as well as omnimedia, to remain top-of-mind and to be seen as exciting.

“A unique and differentiated product is still a must have and is far too underestimated. There also needs to be clever tie-ups to stimulate traffic and desire,” Locke said.

Added Prantik Mazumdar, managing partner of Happy Marketer: “It is alarming and unfortunate that Rakuten is shutting its B2B2C e-commerce operations in the region.”

However, in the long-term, this might be a good move. This is an early indication that a market correction is in the reckoning.

Moreover, there is talk in the market and media about the over valuations of companies in the tech and e-commerce space.

Given the availability of “easy money”, many companies are now pushed to focus purely on exponential customer acquisition growth at the cost of profitability – which is not sustainable.

As the Federal Reserve increases its rates, growth slows down in China, and tech companies such as LinkedIn see their stock prices slashed, there will be more uncertainty among investors.

They might soon be pulling back from subsequent rounds of investments, forcing many more ventures without profitable business models to scale down.

This is a cyclical nature of the market and it was bound to happen sooner or later. Rakuten won’t be the last e-commerce player to shut or scale down operations in the region.

Moving into the next phase Neeraj Gulati, managing director of Ingenuity at IPG Mediabrands Malaysia, said this was just the evolution of the digital business model.

The e-commerce model evolved around taking an offline product and selling it online, thereby making discovery and transactions easier and faster.

“Somehow it became synonymous with discounting for the customers and a race for transaction numbers (valuation) for the companies,” he said.

Like Mazumdar, he added these are signs of the next revolution in the commerce space where shopping will take a more contextual face. In the near future, data from chat apps such as Viber and WhatsApp will blend seamlessly into services and products for sales.

“The new face of e-commerce is not just taking offline products and selling them online, but using the data from the online space and customising the products and services for the user and making it relevant to that moment. It will become ‘data-commerce’,” he said.

Rajeev Bala, co-founder and CEO of Predator Digital Holdings, added that smaller players would quickly see themselves squeezed out. He explained Rakuten had been a fringe player to date.

Quoting statistics from analytics site SimilarWeb, he added Rakuten’s Indonesia site barely managed 300,000 visits in August 2015, compared with 48 million for Lazada Indonesia – spelling out a crushing difference between the two.

Nonetheless, the future of e-commerce as an industry in Southeast Asia continues to look bright, with significant room for growth.

Moreover, the rapid adoption of mobile will also catapult the trend.

“The large players have moved quickly in terms of acquisition and advertising. Serious players need to work on getting scale quickly and focus needs to be razor sharp executions on all fronts from merchandising, acquisition, marketing to data,” Bala said.

“Going forward, there will be a few niche players, but this is a game where scale is probably the only differentiation factor over time.”

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WHAT KIND OF A CMO ARE YOU? CMOs – are you a torchbearer or a market follower? Rezwana Manjur writes.

Which direction are you heading in? Are you a torchbearer or a market follower?

Two-thirds of global chief marketing officers (CMOs) say the single greatest business challenge they currently face is industry convergence.

In the face of this challenge, where disruptive technologies are breaking down barriers to entry that once existed between distinct industries, two kinds of CMOs have emerged – the “torchbearers” and the “market followers”.

The differences between the two groups are distinct.

The torchbearers, as IBM’s Redefining Markets study claims, are those who come from enterprises with strong financial track records and equally strong reputations.

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successful financially and have lower market profiles. Comparing the two groups reveals pronounced variations in the way torchbearer CMOs and market follower CMOs behave.

Creative disruption Torchbearer CMOs are actively embracing “creative destruction” and enriching the arc of engagement with customers. Much like the market follower CMO, they too are striving to make their organisations more digitally literate.

The only difference is they are far better prepared to manage the data explosion and an increasingly complex marketing mandate.

The torchbearer CMOs feel they have made far greater progress when it comes to managing the data explosion – 47% versus 27% of market followers.

Strategic choices There are also significant differences in the strategies pursued by torchbearer CMOS and market follower CMOs. Torchbearer CMOs are more likely to be reviewing the way they go to market. Two-thirds of them are also exploring new revenue models, such as licensing and subscriptions, compared with just 50% of all market follower CMOs. Torchbearer CMOs are also more likely to be experimenting with – or already using – more collaborative business models, such as open and platform variants.

They realise that participating in an ecosystem enables all the members to extend their reach and range, and produce more value collectively than they can individually.

Moreover, whether they’re developing new

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Data doyens: Torchbearer CMOs are much more confident of their ability to deal with the data explosion

Figure 5 Lead role: Torchbearer CMOs are much more determined to reach the market first

Versatile virtuosos: Torchbearer CMOs are more confident about coping with an increasingly complex marketing mandate

54%

79% 46%

39%

36%

72% more

18%

47% 27%

69% 49%

74%

41%

more

Focus on reaching the market first Torchbearer CMOs

2013 Market Follower CMOs

more

2015

All CMOs

2013

All CMOs

Torchbearer CMOs

Figure 9

Class act: Torchbearer CMOs are focusing more heavily on collaborative business models

Joint enterprise: Torchbearer CMOs are better at listening to customers and applying their input to co-create new offerings

77% 62%

60% 42%

43%

more

more

61% 51%

66% 50%

20%

32%

more

Open Torchbearer CMOs

Torchbearer CMOs Market Follower CMOs

Market Follower CMOs

24%

2015

more

Platform Market Follower CMOs

Use of customer feedback to explore new trends

Focus on customer collaboration and co-creation

Source: IBM Redefining Markets Study Insights from the Global C-suite Study – the CMO perspective.

business models or new offerings, Torchbearer CMOs are far more focused on reaching the market first.

Torchbearer CMOs know there are compelling reasons to make the effort.

“First movers have always enjoyed certain advantages, such as the buzz they generate and the ability to charge premium prices,” said the study.

Customer love Torchbearer CMOs are also more focused on mapping out the customer journey – 82%, compared with 65% of market follower CMOs. As the emphasis on the total integrated customer relationship continues to intensify, CMOs are responding accordingly.

Nearly two-thirds of our respondents regard developing deeper, richer customer experiences as their top marketing priority.

Today the CMO is the custodian of the customer experience, and hence, expect to interact with customers on an even more individual and digital basis than they did just three years ago.

Torchbearer CMOs are working harder to

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understand the customer’s journey through the enterprise.

Mapping the entire path, as well as the technologies, people and processes involved, enables marketers to pinpoint any weaknesses and rectify them. Torchbearer CMOs are better at using customer feedback to explore new trends and collaborating with customers to cocreate new products and services.

While it is evident that today plotting the customer journey is now harder because of the non-linear nature, Torchbearer CMOs’ focus on delivering holistic, multi-faceted customer journeys is also reflected in their enthusiasm for physical and digital opportunities to engage customers.

Evolution from market follower to torchbearer So how do you go from a market follower to a torchbearer? Well, first and foremost, all CMOs need to prepare for a future in which disruption is pervasive.

This is a future in which technological advances are increasingly blurring the distinctions between different industries.

CMOs need to infuse digital DNA into the team and grow the digital expertise that’s essential to create differentiated experiences for their customers.

They need to rethink processes and view the organisation through the lens of the customer experience.

CMOs need to also form ecosystems and devote more energy and resources to developing unique products, services and experiences that truly better the lives of customers – and simultaneously make sure they are first to market.

They also need to challenge people in every function to demolish internal organisational silos and provide a consistent and authentic face to the customer.

“Set up digital ‘boot camps’ to train your existing staff, and fill critical skill gaps with a mix of new hires and talent from partners in your ecosystem. And don’t forget to tap customers as a great source of expertise. Incorporate customer feedback and invite customers to participate as co-creators and innovators,” said the study.

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SHOULD PAID CONTENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA BE LABELLED MORE CLEARLY? If advertorials are marked clearly on traditional mediums, why isn’t the same courtesy extended to social media platforms? Rezwana Manjur asks.

Shades of grey: Social media needs to be more transparent when it comes to advertising.

Singaporean actress Rebecca Lim apologised over social media about two weeks after her NTUC Income retiring stunt had left the public upset.

On Facebook she wrote: “Recently, I’ve been reminded that being an artiste comes with great responsibilities. I know I have upset many of you, including those dearest to me. Please accept my humblest apologies. I’ve taken to heart many lessons, and hope that you will be patient with me as I continue to learn and grow.”

A quick check by A+M showed that fans have since been generally supportive.

While on more traditional mediums such as print and TV, the lines between content and advertisements are more defined, the world of social media still has shades of grey.

We asked industry folks if the local market has reached a point of maturity where content or marketing stunts on social media by brands should be clearly marked as “social advertorials”.

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Happy Marketer, is of the view that they should.

He said it was quite unfortunate that a brand of NTUC Income’s stature had to resort to “sly tactics to garner attention on social media”.

“Brands and their celebrity influencers need to be more responsible on social media as the audience on these channels are sharp and vocal. Every silly gimmick will be scrutinised and criticised,” he said.

“Yes, it would definitely impact the subtlety and ‘realism’ of the message, but that’s a cost of responsible/transparent influencer engagement.”

He added that when engaging celebrities to advertise, it would be advisable for brands to mark those pieces of content as a sponsored message or advertorial for the sake of transparency and social responsibility.

In more mature markets, brands such as Johnson & Johnson and P&G already have internal policies which demand that every celebrity endorsed message on social media is clearly distinguished with an explicit disclosure.

“Even with disclosures, brands can achieve their marketing goals as long as the celebrity has the right kind of reach and if the idea is creatively executed,” he said.

Ryan Lim, founder of QED Consulting agreed with Mazumdar saying in markets such as UK content marketing is now clearly marked as paid. This practice has unfortunately not yet been adopted in our local markets.

Consumers need to be given the choice to decide if they wish to connect with a piece of content. Marketing stunts, as they are, do not play very well with consumers today as they simply leave them feeling duped.

Just because a piece of content is marked advertorial or paid, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be creative. It just pushes the agencies to work harder and think of more engaging content.

Last year after the Singtel-Gushcloud saga, where news broke that Singtel had mandated its agency to bad mouth competitors on social media, The Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore called for public input for its consultation on the draft, “Digital and Social Media Advertising Guidelines”.

According to the guidelines, marketers are required to make sponsored messages distinguishable from personal opinions and editorial content in their posts and disclose any commercial relationships.

In addition, the guidelines require marketers to develop community guidelines, be transparent about fees and the purchase process, and ensure that digital marketing communications addressed to children are suitable for them.

The guidelines also state that regardless of content, paid advertising should be clearly distinguished and the disclosure for paid native advertising should be marked clearly and prominently.

The guidelines draw reference from similar advertising codes of conduct that are already established in countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom, as well as some of those set by social media channels.

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A FRESH START: FROM FMCG GIANTS TO A START-UP No big budget traditional 30-second ads, no extended consumer research timelines and no multiple agency teams to help out. What do you do then? Rayana Pandey finds out.

I sat down for a chat with a marketer who has made, what some would say, was a big switch a couple of years ago from wellestablished FMCG giants to a small and nimble tech start-up. In the very near future though, this kind of switch will become the norm.

Anuj Jain is a marketer with decades of experience working with P&G, GSK, BIC and other FMCG giants. He quit his cushy job a few years ago to venture into the start-up world.

He has been leading business development and partnerships in Asia for Mobikon where he was responsible for scaling operations in virgin markets.

About six months ago, he took on the role of CMO for this growing start-up – a SaaS tech venture backed by Jungle Ventures and other investors in the region.

In this role, he is driving growth globally with a focus on the overall strategy, building thought leadership in the domain, inbound marketing and brand engagement.

The start-up has seen a rapid growth in the past two years growing to seven countries with its platform, helping 2400-plus restaurants and more than doubling customer acquisition and engagement with four million diner profiles to date. For a marketer with his experience, what is it like to work in a start-up, other than obviously being very different?

There are no big budget traditional 30-second ads, extended consumer research timelines, multiple agency teams to help out or large internal teams to support initiatives.

Other than that, what is, quite literally, in your face is the pace and dynamism of startups, centred on innovation, quick A/B testing and smart growth hacks.

Getting things done and failing fast helps with “speed to market” and “staying alive” – the key pillars of a competitive advantage.

What is the thrill in it? The feeling of establishing a zero awareness brand firmly in new markets, seeing a new set of customers adopting your evolving proposition and eventually seeing the growth of organic business is amazingly satisfying.

“I love the fact that as marketers we bring solutions to uninitiated customers, educate them and help enhance their experience with our ideas and efforts. One can see the impact

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Rebuilding your career: Start-ups can be a completely new and exciting way of doing marketing.

of one’s thoughts and actions in a short time in a measurable way,” he says.

But there are plenty of challenges. A start-up by definition is an entity which has yet not found its repeatable and scalable model. Hence, dealing with uncertainty, multiple variables and resource constraints create a certain type of chaos that puts demands on managing an everchanging business landscape.

The quest, he explains, is always to find the right mix of elements in your strategy, marketing plan and business execution to manage expectations of stakeholders and customers, while keeping an eye on the ever-mushrooming competition, and also making meaning out of it.

“I say sometimes much to my wife’s displeasure that I only have a three to six-month visibility, but a 10-year vision.”

But the training he has had working in FMCGs has played a critical role in making this successful switch. Working with P&G instilled a discipline, work ethic and habit of backing everything with facts and data. With GSK, he received the exposure to work across markets where he worked with large teams to restructure operations and do feasibility studies to launch brands. “I used to request retailers to allow me to sit in their shops to observe

shopper behaviour. That was exciting as well as enriching,” he said.

At BIC, he learnt about scaling business in North Asia and SEA markets and global best practices from the ground up. He led market strategies, new product development with localised designs, innovative campaigns, consumer research, merger and acquisition studies and many inventive shopper marketing initiatives.

“I have learnt many new lessons by walking this path in the start-up ecosystem and large traditional companies could gain a lot by bridging the gap with the new world,” he says, adding the new approach of lean start-ups and agile management could be applied to any project by any company for far better results.

For marketers, it is a great opportunity to cross over and deep dive into the design thinking discipline, get more focused on UI and UX modalities, and for many B2B2C companies, turning to inbound marketing principles; it could change the whole paradigm, he says.

He has also helped 120-plus early stage start-ups with his old-world experience and new-world learnings through leading an inventive start-up boot camp over weekends with the Lithan Hall Academy in Singapore.

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PROFILE

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… says Cheng Chee Chung, managing director of Panasonic Malaysia, in a conversation with Rezwana Manjur.

anasonic has been in Malaysia since 1976, providing the local community with a wide range of products and services. Over the past 40 years, the brand has worked hard to garner trust among Malaysians.

Leading the Panasonic Malaysia operations as managing director is Cheng Chee Chung.

Cheng has been in the role for a year, but has grown and evolved over a period of 26 years with the company. He has held numerous hats over the years – first starting with HR and slowly moving into other positions such as sales and marketing. Today he leads a marketing team of over 30.

He says being a managing director of a sales-driven company such as Panasonic requires him to constantly have his marketing hat on.

Marketing was also the last role he held for about five years before taking on the managing director duties.

“I always believe marketing is the brain and command centre of the company. The sales folks are the soldiers. For a soldier to win the war, you need to have a strong command centre and brain. You need that before you can send your army into the battlefield,” he says.

And that’s exactly what the marketing landscape has become – a battlefield. Challenges are many as consumers are spoilt for choices,

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pricing is variable so they can get a cheaper deal easily, and the market is heavily saturated.

Like for many other brands, 2015 was a difficult year for Panasonic because of the implementation of the GST and the rising cost of living.

“My biggest challenge as the MD of Panasonic Malaysia is to achieve sales growth in these uncertain times where demand is shrinking and many competitors are going after the same goal – market share,” he says.

As such, he believes in working hand-in-hand with the marketing department.

“Marketing for us runs the company,” he says. Cheng also makes certain the marketing department has a direct engagement with him on a daily basis.

Decisions and directions are made together to ensure the best approach to the market is adapted. His personal conviction has always been in going back to basics and reaching out to all employees, senior or junior, and adopting an open door policy.

What he advises his marketing team to constantly do is make market visits and to meet customers to grasp the actual market situation and make important decisions based on market data such as market demand, customers’ behaviour and competitor movements.

“My philosophy on marketing is really quite simple. I believe in M A R C H 2 0 1 6 | a d ve r t i s i ng + m a r ke t i ng 2 1

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PROFILE

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promoting the real value of a product to the consumers. From advertising to shop displays to engaging the right channel partners, we must ensure that our consumers are well-informed on the benefits and advantages of our products and solutions,” he says.

And to effectively communicate this message to the consumer, brands must have a solid agency partner. Agency partners are there to help brands execute clear messages creatively.

This synergy between clients and agencies needs to be there to avoid misinterpretation, and therefore, misrepresentation of products.

A good agency partner in the eyes of Cheng is one who understands all aspects of the client’s marketing operations from the products to the services and to the channel in which they are distributed. On the other hand, the client must also maintain an open mind towards the numerous strategies that will be presented.

“It is very important to establish clear and simple communication platforms in any company. The time we have at work is very limited and precious. Therefore, effective communication must happen,” he says.

A role model for the local talent pool Cheng is, to date, only the second Malaysian MD to be at the helm of Panasonic Malaysia. Does that help him to better understand the local talent pool and business, we ask.

While there are advantages of being a local MD in a market such as Malaysia, Cheng says he doesn’t believe it is a key factor that determines success. What is more important is for an MD to have good leadership acumen, and be one who knows his market or business well – regardless 22 advertising + m arketing | M A R C H 2 0 1 6

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of nationality. Most importantly the MD’s vision and mission must be wellaccepted by staff and the business partners.

“Having a Malaysian MD is indeed a good motivation to other local talents in the company. It is a strong indication for other capable, local people to have aspirations to take up such leadership positions, even as a MD in a multinational company like Panasonic – contrary to the belief that the MD of a Japanese company, must be Japanese,” he says.

Cheng is also a big believer in keeping his staff constantly motivated.

But he admits that is a challenge because today’s Gen Ys are wired differently. They are no longer interested in staying in a company for decades and are constantly looking for the next big thing.

“The Gen Ys are well-informed and have confidence, but they want high-speed progress. They are always on the search for immediate success,” he says.

However, what is really crucial for success is experience and knowledge which can only come over time and hours spent in a certain organisation, he believes.

At Panasonic he ensures his team practises, the motto “make people before product” which is part of the overall business philosophy, believing that every employee is an asset.

What has kept him in the company for this many years is a positive mindset and a sense of accomplishment when overcoming challenges.

Setbacks, he says, need to be reframed and seen as potential for success for the next fiscal year.

“A rolling stone never gathers moss,” he says.

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Lighthouse Events, the events management division of Lighthouse Independent Media, has been bringing Lighthouse’s conferences, awards shows and internal meetings to life since 2006 - over 40 events annually in multiple formats through numerous markets across Asia. Staffed by a team of experienced and dedicated event professionals, Lighthouse Events is commited to understanding and delivering its clients’ strategic objectives. Lighthouse Events has the expertise and experience to conceptualise and manage any customised event, making sure its clients’goals are met on every occasion.

Call us if you need a partner for:• Venue Sourcing • Destination Management • Event Conceptualization • Supplier Management

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Contact us with your event brief today.

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CASE STUDY

24 advertising + m arketing | M A R C H 2 0 1 6

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CASE STUDY

NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE SUCCESS. AND IN MARKETING, THERE IS PERHAPS JUST ONE MEASURE OF SUCCESS – HOW DOES YOUR CAMPAIGN HELP YOUR BRAND’S BUSINESS. TAKE A LOOK AT SOME OF THE CAMPAIGNS IN MALAYSIA THAT HAVE CAUGHT THE AUDIENCE’S EYES IN THE PAST FEW MONTHS AND WHAT THEY DID FOR THEIR BRANDS IN A+M’S ANNUAL SPECIAL FEATURE ON SUCCESSFUL CASE STUDIES FROM THE INDUSTRY.

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M A R C H 2 0 1 6 | a d ve r t i s i ng + m a r ke t i ng 2 5

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C A SE ST UDY | LOVE 11 2015

CAMPAIGN LOVE 11 2015 CLIENT 11STREET MALAYSIA AGENCY A&D EVENTS

26 advertising + m arketing | M A R C H 2 0 1 6

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BACKGROUND

STRATEGY

11street is a trustworthy and convenient online marketplace that offers a great variety of products at competitive prices. It has a diverse selection of product categories which cover fashion, electronics, groceries, health & beauty, kids & baby, leisure & sports, home & living and books & services including deal offerings like e-vouchers.

Established in Korea in 2008, 11street is now one of the top global e-commerce marketplaces with 400,000 sellers serving more than 30 million consumers worldwide with an annual gross merchandise value of US$6 billion. 11street also has a presence in Turkey and Indonesia, known as n11 and Elevenia, respectively.

To make 11 November special, A&D Events packaged the LOVE 11 event into a celebration – a popular date known as a day where people show affection to their loved ones through the gesture of exchanging Pepero in Korea, while in Malaysia we emphasised on the engagement between 11street with consumers in a fun-filled environment.

A&D Events conceptualised an urban street event décor to enhance the core values of 11street which are celebration, joy and rewards.

The combination of wood and the signature red colour of 11street was used to exude a chic urban look. Various image icons with LED lights were placed as the backdrop to showcase 11street product categories.

OBJECTIVE Inspired by the practice in Korea where people exchange Peperos and gifts to express their affection to one another, 11street wants to brand November 11 as the LOVE 11 Day, a day to reward its customers and followers.

The event also served as a brand activation campaign to raise awareness among the general public and showcase its emotion driven brand proposition of “Find what you love”. At the same time, an 11street experience is to be recreated in physical form through event booths to highlight latest promotions of 11street and hence increase sales.

DIGITAL MARKETING CHANNELS 11street is about reaching customers with its marketing campaigns through digital channels such as web, mobile and social media. In today’s world, with 80% of people using the internet and smartphones, and with this increasing percentage of mobile and internet users, digital marketing becomes a primary tool for 11street to reach young and modern customers.

1. GROUND RECRUITMENT STRATEGY •

Online marketplaces such as 11street need to optimize their marketing strategies

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in order to attract new members to sign up and shop online with them. Strategy like exclusive promotion with e-vouchers has managed to help recruit customer effectively.

A&D Events hired 10 outstanding male and female representatives to promote 11street’s brand towards the public. The representatives promoted the benefits of signing up to the 11street website and encouraged more people to join this online platform. On the event day, coupons were used to incentivise new members to sign up and this became a successful brand awareness and member recruitment activity. Thus, the growth of 11street members increased by hundreds of customers during the event.

2. VIRAL MARKETING •

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• •

11street decided to have a Korean artist as a gimmick at the event. 11street invited one of Korea’s famous celebrities, HAHA, to be a special guest at the LOVE 11 event.

It created a sensation in the town through viral marketing, especially to Korean fans.

11street also organised a fun contest to attract the local consumer. This contest allowed the audience to participate by a simple step of “liking” 11street’s Facebook page, posting and sharing their creative photos on Facebook and last, but not least, having the chance to meet their idols. In this way, the news of the LOVE 11 event spread rapidly throughout the community to get maximum exposure.

11street also created an event teaser video with some key messages.

In the short 15 seconds, we emphasised 11street’s tag line “Malaysia’s most exciting e-mall” to be the main message and to promote the appearance of HAHA to attract the public. The final teaser video displayed during the road show reminded the public about the 'giveaway' message of the event.

•

3. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING •

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A customised photo corner with HAHA’s image to attract people walking into the event. The public had the chance to snap unlimited pictures at the interactive GIF photo booth. The photo machine was designed to create a GIF slide show, by snapping four continuous photos each time. People could download it and upload the video to their social media instantly.

The video was designed and infused with signature red elements to remind the public about the event and the brand.

In social media, “likes” represented the awareness of the 11street brand to the

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public. As monitored, this activity brought up roughly 1000 likes for 11street within a few hours of the event.

On the other hand, hashtags are every where these days. A few unique brand hashtags were created for this event such as #LOVE11, #11street and @11streetmy.

We encouraged the public repeat these signature event hashtags in different social media channels. The public got to remember the brand name within a short time and promoted 11street towards a bigger exposure when posting on social media.

Meanwhile, A&D Events innovated a lucky draw into a digitalised way where everyone got to participate on the event day. We created a “Snap n Win” photo contest while attracting the public to get to know about the variety of products of 11street. The audience snapped photos of

•

products from any of the 11street vendor booths and posted them on Instagram and Facebook with a customised hashtag #11snapnwin. While other social media users indirectly got to know about the contest when exposed to the photos with the customised hashtag.

Furthermore, “hash tagged” social posts displayed on the LED screen instantly turned into an interactive advertising spot for 11street. The live slide shows created curiosity for the public and made them aware of the contest. There were a total of 313 uploaded posts on social media within a few hours, especially on Instagram and Facebook, where the uploaded posts reached up to 69,436 social media users.

The total of roughly 5000 likes on social media proved the success of 11street’s ground activation and online marketing strategy.

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C A SE ST UDY | DUNIA CERIA

BACKGROUND

CAMPAIGN DUNIA CERIA CLIENT ASTRO CERIA AGENCY COMPASS INTERACTIVE

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Astro Ceria is Malaysia’s first-ever television channel dedicated to children. Broadcasting popular international children’s shows such as Ultraman, Transformers and Dragon Ball Z, as well as Astro-owned and produced programmes such as Elly & Epit, Popstar, Strawberi dan Karipap and more, the channel caters to its primary target audience of young Malay children four to nine years old.

Every time an Astro Ceria production is launched, resources are used to create digital content and drive traffic to the show through online platforms. Each show will have its own game and content hosted on a microsite or sub-domain to create awareness, engagement and interaction for the programme. This digital support existed solely in isolated silos that were mostly separated from the Astro Ceria hub – the brand’s website.

Effective as a short-term method to create buzz around a new show, the digital content would, however, have close to no traffic once the show’s run had ended on TV, thus becoming dormant and unused. Similarly, the main website – Astro Ceria channel hub – depends heavily on resources that drive traffic during school holidays and show launches, which in turn, sees traffic drop during the downtime.

Apart from outside linear interactions with television shows and print ads, there were no

social platforms to continuously interact with children due to their age being too young to sign up with any social media network. This made it nearly impossible to interact with the young audience for their feedback or to communicate and engage them with the latest Ceria updates.

OBJECTIVE The goal was to create a thriving Ceria community that would act as an effective communication ecosystem that generates consistently high traffic. This platform should also be able to provide Astro Ceria channel updates directly to children by making them continuously return to engage with the digital content.

Driving and increasing traffic to the Ceria hub even during “downtime” periods also came into play.

STRATEGY With these requirements as the basis, a virtual community with all the Astro Ceria shows, Astro stars and games for the children to play with any time, all the time, was created. This online hub’s name – Dunia Ceria.

To communicate with children, Astro Ceria found it more relatable and relevant to opt for the approach of having localised content that heavily featured local elements in terms of design with a storyline that resonated more strongly with the audience.

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This creates a two-way conversation between the children and the shows through its digital content.

Another key factor in making Dunia Ceria a functioning and thriving virtual community was to ensure it acted as a “kids-only” space. Due to the fact that kids enjoy having their own “adultfree” getaway, the world was tailored to give children free rein over it through role-playing as being grown-ups with jobs and responsibilities.

Being at an age where children are more sociable, the ability to “meet” and socialise with other children appealed to them as well.

The genuine popularity of the Astro Ceria shows and Astro stars became the main point of attraction that drew children further into this virtual world. Apart from their star power, they also proved to be influencers for children within the age group. As an audience, children

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are more keen to do or play something when suggested by these popular characters.

Due to children’s short attention spans, Dunia Ceria offered collectibles and prizes that proved to be a great boost in creating, increasing and retaining participation and engagement rates for all of the digital contents and activations. The key was to create a simplistic gaming element which offered visually appealing incentives.

hangout, meet and chat with one another – allowing them to socially connect with existing and new friends. Due to their sociable nature, the world also features cute emoticons that makes having conversations more fun and colourful. Apart from that, the Friendlist feature allows users to stay in touch.

As a communication ecosystem, the Dunia Ceria community became the basis and core to a platform that integrated all Ceria digital content and campaigns. This integration allows Astro Ceria to communicate news and updates to the children in the form of Dunia Ceria social events, areas and games. It also transformed all communications from being solely linear to two-way conversations as children are able to now digitally give feedback and engage with the Ceria content.

While the entire virtual world is available for desktops, it was, however, created for optimised tablet and mobile experiences. This was to allow children to socialise with their friends anytime, anywhere, while engaging and interacting with Dunia Ceria.

On top of that, the world features campaign games and communications based on local festivals as well as Ceria show launches.

The aim was to create realistic expectations in Dunia Ceria by celebrating real-life festivities such as the New Year, Hari Raya, and Chinese New Year. Shows such as Projek Ceria, ChiChi & ChaCha and Popstar get their own special areas and games in the world, allowing children to interact with their favourite characters.

Dunia Ceria was created as a safe and fun environment for children to play and socialise.

Features such as profession games lets children role-play as adults in four types of professions: farmers, hunters, fishermen and miners.

With every game played and each interaction done, Dunia Ceria gives them experience points to level up their characters, and through the completion of the games, to unlock more challenges.

Children are also able to personalise their account with the gems, money and collectibles they have earned. They are able to show off their individuality in how they dress their avatars or even decorate their virtual homes. On special occasions, limited edition items, which they can redeem in Dunia Ceria using unique codes, were advertised on TV.

EXECUTION

RESULTS

Dunia Ceria was created as Malaysia’s first ever free virtual community for children in the form of a massive multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG) that was made available on the website as well as becoming an Android and iOS app.

In this virtual world, children are able to

Since its inception, Dunia Ceria has seen more than 1.2 million game plays with about 2.4 million chats exchanged. The Dunia Ceria app has received over 323,000 downloads. To date, there are about 232,800 registrants engaging with Astro Ceria content in this kid-centric virtual world.

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9/3/2016 5:15:46 PM

C A SE ST UDY | KUCING HAPPY

BACKGROUND

CAMPAIGN KUCING HAPPY CLIENT BSN MALAYSIA AGENCY FISHERMEN INTEGRATED

3 0 advertising + m arketing | M A R C H 2 0 1 6

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Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSN) was launched in 1974 and has built a relationship with Malaysians from all walks of life. The relationship was particularly strong among those growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, who would often open their first-ever bank accounts with BSN. While its importance to the rural communities increased over the decades, by 2014, BSN was largely seen as an “oldfashioned” bank, and had lost relevancy among the youths and its urban customers – market segments who were more progressive and expected their banks to have a modern and vibrant image.

This image affected all its product marketing activities for savings, credit cards and loans. So on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, BSN knew an image transformation was necessary to reignite lost relationships and to build new connections with the youths and young adults.

OBJECTIVE The primary objective was to use BSN’s 40th anniversary celebration to create relevance to the internet-savvy youths and young adults with a social media campaign. This would be measured by engagement (shares, views, comments and likes), engagement versus competitor banks, video views, number of hashtags and conversations, organic reach

as well as buzz in the media. The secondary objective was to use this campaign as an opening strategy to build likeability, which would help boost other marketing activities for the bank’s savings, credit card and loans segments.

STRATEGY To engage with the target audience, Fishermen needed to create content that would be relevant, uplifting and provide two-way engagement via social media platforms.

Given the conversations on the Malaysian social media landscape were often filled with negativity, it was proposed that BSN position itself as a brand that would make people smile, laugh and feel upbeat.

The idea was to spread happiness on social media through a newly “hired” BSN spokesperson – Kucing Happy, a talking cat – as the star of episodic video content.

And why a talking cat named Kucing Happy? It seemed the obvious choice, given how prevalent cat photos were being shared by our target audience.

EXECUTION From March to April 2015, BSN asked fans through Twitter and Facebook postings to make a wish on how the bank’s new spokesperson could make them happy. Kucing Happy would

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emphasised the identity of BSN as the bank for Malaysians, by Malaysians.

RESULTS

then appear in videos posted on Facebook and YouTube every Monday over six weeks to make those wishes come true with his own interpretation of what would make fans happy.

In between the launch of these videos,

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Kucing Happy also engaged with fans on Twitter and Facebook by providing “quippy” replies.

The primary language of communication was colloquial Malay – a language that reached across the rural and urban divide, and

Kucing Happy achieved its objective of getting the target audience to talk about BSN in a positive manner on social media platforms.

During the campaign period, the #KucingHappy videos garnered 1,525,731 views across Facebook and YouTube, more than 60,000 people hash tagged #KucingHappy, while Facebook engagement increased from 114,171 unique users in the month prior to the campaign to 1,049,289 unique users during the campaign.

Aside from garnering more social media engagement, the campaign also generated RM432,000 in free media publicity from The Star Online, Malay Mail Online, Says.my, Time Out KL, Malaysian Digest, LowYat.net and other news outlets and blogs.

The campaign also achieved its secondary objectives in helping the bank’s other marketing efforts. In recognition of this success, the Kucing Happy campaign won several awards that year. At the Marketing Excellence Awards 2015 it won gold in Excellence in Content Marketing, and silvers in Excellence in Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing.

At the Kancil Awards, it won the Best of Show – the coveted Golden Kancil, the inaugural Kancil for Good award, and helped BSN win Advertiser of The Year.

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C A SE ST UDY | “HUAWEI BEST WEI”

CASE STUDY

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

CAMPAIGN “HUAWEI BEST WEI’’ CLIENT HUAWEI AGENCY VIZEUM MALAYSIA PLATFORM TV3 & TV9

3 2 advertising + m arketing | M A R C H 2 0 1 6

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Malaysia is an important market for Huawei and the company is committed to providing more – beyond innovation and technology to meet the diverse lifestyle needs of consumers.

To further entrench its brand in the minds of consumers, the brand knew it had to differentiate itself from the competition. And content was the surest way to achieve it.

“Huawei is a brand not just for one market segment, but for individuals from each and every segment. With our content partner, Media Prima Television Networks, we found that a localisation strategy was truly an effective way to leave a mark and build a strong association with the Malay audience,” said Danny Chin, marketing director of consumer business group for Huawei Technologies Malaysia.

As part of this strategy, it partnered with Media Prima Television Networks with the aim to change the way Huawei is seen today – an evolution from a global Chinese company to a brand that Malaysians can truly identify with.

STRATEGY With this, it set out to localise the brand and engage with the Malay market to inject a local personality for the brand.

It tied up with Malaysia’s largest media platform, Media Prima Television Networks, in a comprehensive brand partnership.

Through this collaboration, Huawei kicked off a unique brand campaign – “Huawei Best Wei’’ – playing on a commonly used local expression. Conceptualised by Media Prima Television Networks, the campaign integrated a broad array of creative content, local talents, media platforms and touch-points to strengthen Huawei’s local association and engagement with the target audiences.

“Global brands are investing in localisation to maximise revenues across markets. A successful strategy largely depends on how well companies understand the local audiences, and subsequently, how relatable is the adaptation and integration. It was a clever move on Huawei’s part as the collaboration immediately allowed them to tap on Media Prima Television Networks’ years of Malay market leadership and insights for effective localisation,” said Nini Yusof, group general manager of the client service group for Media Prima Television Networks.

EXECUTION From sponsorship, creative capsules to story driven television commercials, Media Prima Television Networks developed a series of original content with high quality treatments to ensure the outcome was consistent with Huawei’s image as a global brand.

Riding on the group’s extensive reach

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across both traditional and digital media, the content had the potential to reach more than five million television viewers and up to four million online users.

Huawei took its first exposure by supporting the drama categories during the Anugerah Skrin 2015 on TV3 recently.

Commanding more than five million viewers, Anugerah Skrin 2015 reigned as the mostwatched award show with the highest talk-ability in Malaysia. This not only provided Huawei with the needed exposure, but also set the pace for the brand’s upcoming engagements.

Recently, Media Prima Television Networks and Huawei released a heartwarming commercial for Huawei’s “Mate S” smartphone, featuring top trending Malay celebrities Siti Saleha and Syarul Ridzwan. The storylinedriven commercial was inspired by drama, love and anticipation over the newly launched device.

Adding another layer of high-impact reach and visibility, a series of quirky branded capsules titled “Huawei Best Wei’’ were seen populating TV3, TV9 and social media channels, cutting across high-rating slots and interesting programming line-ups to entertain devoted viewers.

The branded capsules borrowed familiar instances and expressions of Malaysians which allowed the entire narrative to be distinctive in its approach. To engage the young Millennials, a music video with a catchy jingle featuring popular rock band Bunkface stirred the audiences’ imagination and raised a new form of brand interaction.

“Not only are we excited to see how the collaboration will contribute to the broader aspects of Huawei’s business in Malaysia, but we are also hoping that it will set the benchmark for companies looking to achieve a similar goal. ‘Malaysianising’ brands can no longer be generic. We have the insights, resources and platforms to make it easier and tailored,” Nini Yusof said.

RESULTS Overall, the campaign reached a whopping 5.2 million viewers on TV, 3.8 million users on Facebook, one million impressions on Twitter and it trended No.1 in Malaysia and worldwide.

The campaign also saw 260,000 posts with #ASK2015 on Instagram.

The heartwarming brand ad featuring Siti Saleha and Syarul Ridzwan saw more than 17,000 views on Facebook.

The music video with a catchy jingle featuring Malaysia popular rock band Bunkface has garnered more than 941,000 views on YouTube and saw more than 46,000 views on Facebook.

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The creative TV capsules titled “Huawei Best Wei” achieved 170,000 views on Facebook.

The dynamic integration with Anugerah Skrin 2015 (ASK 2015) on TV3 not only brought Huawei to greater heights by exposing the brand to a wide spectrum of television viewers, but also set the tempo of the brand’s upcoming collaborations and integrations. On top of this, the experiential components of the campaign

saw 200 lucky invitees meet Siti Saleha, Syarul Ridzwan and Bunkface.

The brand, while sponsoring ASK 2015, also gave away smartphones as a prize to the winners.

But it didn’t end there. Placed backstage was a Huawei thank you cam where winners walked in and captured their victory moments on a Huawei monogram backdrop.

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9/3/2016 5:18:45 PM

MARKETING FEATURE: RETAIL MARKETING

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MARKETING FEATURE: RETAIL MARKETING

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T. M U OO S O L G D S FIN I TH R F O NJU T A OU A M LL AN U Y P EZW R ST ? R U LY D L IN L SFU I TA ES E R CC E U TH M S N O CA DO D AN

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MARKETING FEATURE: RETAIL MARKETING

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would be used as a collaborative platform to connect retail, cultural, learning and business opportunities, and play a big part in the rejuvenation of the Civic District.

As for Orchard Central, Mavis Seow, chief operating officer of the retail business group at Far East Organization, owners of the mall, told A+M the space would be reconfigured to include new escalators and walkways to “optimise accessibility and improve the shopping experience” There is no doubt, the shopping experience today is no longer what it used to be, even just five years ago. All this, coupled with the boom of e-commerce, has led to retailers facing cut throat competition.

The problem of declining footfalls is now a global phenomenon, explains Amy Kean, the regional strategy lead at Mindshare APAC. These days putting the customer first means something totally different than just a few years ago.

Where once it was about specialist skills, efficiency, remembering a customer’s regular purchase or even knowing their name, now the market is led by competitive value and offering that “wow” factor that so many shoppers are starting to demand.

There have also been a number of recent disruptors in the market seeking to redefine what the term shopping means. Today, shoppers are placing a greater focus on the experience and added value rather than the straightforward transaction that many outlets offer. Hence, modern retail needs to be all about the experience.

More and more, effective use of space is becoming vital to the entire customer experience.

Experiencing the space Today shopping is no longer about simple transactions but rather a holistic experience.

Increasingly, this is becoming dependent on the

“The region has one of the most active commerce populations in the world, and online we have a wealth of insight about paths to purchase and baskets, as well as the social layer of brand love insight that social media offers. But it’s within the bricks and mortar stores where the real ignorance lies.”

Amy Kean – regional strategy lead at Mindshare APAC

19.4%

Walk into a mall on a Saturday afternoon and chances are, that darling outfit you’ve been eyeing has been snatched and there is a queue a mile long for the fitting room. Or you’re fighting for just a sliver of a second to step in and have a conversation with the tech expert on the latest wearable. He, on the other hand, remains distracted by five other customers just like yourself, all waiting to talk to him.

Now come back to the same mall again on a Wednesday afternoon. It is a different story.

The mall is now a ghost town.

This is no breaking news – we all know the retail marketing arena is and has over the years been facing a challenging time. Rentals remain sky high and the competition is stiff with a dense number of brands in a single area.

While malls may seem packed on weekends, is it enough to cover for the vast emptiness of weekdays?

In neighbouring country Singapore, deemed as a shopper’s paradise for tourists globally, several iconic malls such as Funan DigitaLife Mall and Orchard Central found themselves in a need to revamp, presumably, in a bid to win back consumers.

CapitaLand Mall Trust Management Limited’s (CMTML) Funan DigitaLife, known to be an iconic mall for gadgets and all things digital, situated in one of Singapore’s busiest districts, said it would be morphing into an “experiential creative hub”. Without explaining further, CMTML claimed the retail space

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FY2014 retail revenue growth

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Results reflect Top 250 companies headquartered in each region/country ¹ Sales-weighted, currency-adjusted composites ² Compound annual growth rate ³ Results for Other Asia Pacific include China/Hong Kong Source: Deloitte's Global Powers of Retailing 2016 - Navigating the new digital divide

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MARKETING FEATURE: RETAIL MARKETING

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Source: www.visitpact.com

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space and the correct usage of it. Maximising the mall space is vital. “Modern retail needs to reflect the early conceptual showrooms introduced by IKEA and Apple, but on a smaller scale,” Kean says.

She explains the concept of showrooming is starting to take off, but it’s still very early days.

The PACT space at Orchard Central in Singapore is one such disrupter, with the store claiming to be responsible for changing the local landscape by challenging and reinventing traditional notions of retail in Singapore.

The PACT defines itself as a “destination emporium” and a network of spaces and crossover interests rolled into one retail and F&B experience.

“Every single one of its retailers focuses first on customer experience and this model is set to increase in Singapore over the next 24 months,” Kean says.

Soon, she says, we will be seeing fashion retailers with blow-dry bars, furniture stores with artisan coffee shops and even toy stores with tech-powered augmented reality games and shows.

“In an over-saturated market and an online ecosystem that thrives on value, it’s getting harder and harder for retailers to stand out and get regular custom – providing your customer with an extra personalised experience could be the difference between flash in the pan and long-term loyalty,” she says.

Chris Martell, managing director of Geometry Global, says the role of a store has now evolved to a point where it needs to keep up with shopper expectations and behaviour.

And while one recipe may work for one retail area, it is important to note that all retail outlets should not have the same treatment.

Even if it’s the same brand, there should be points of differentiation to ensure customers are visiting the other outlets as well.

Giving the example of Orchard Central, Martell explains the mall space has the opportunity of improvement, seeing how architecturally, its corridors, sight lines and ceiling heights are more constricted than other malls.

“More open, fluid spaces attract the strolling shopper,” he says, adding that Orchard Central stores also tend to be more transactional with ample opportunities to improve on all fronts, including size, visual merchandising and staff and customer interaction.

“These less-than-satisfactory traits push shoppers to seek out more engaging, experiential spaces,” Martell says. As for Funan DigitaLife, he is of the view that even though Funan is an old mall, the shoppers visiting Funan are usually there to “deal hunt”.

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MARKETING FEATURE: RETAIL MARKETING

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Retail revenue growth analysis by region/country

Top 250 Africa/Middle East

25.3%

31.9%

12.5%

87.5%

Asia Pacific

32.1%

34.0%

1

Other Asia Pacific

30.4%

28.6% 36.6%

33.0%

46.7%

13.3%

40.0%

France 12.5%

43.7%

43.8% 50.0%

UK Latin America

36.0% 35.7%

35.7%

Europe

32.1%

36.0%

28.0%

China/Hong Kong

33.9%

28.6%

39.3%

Japan

Germany

42.8%

31.3%

11.1%

55.6%

North America

18.4%

US

19.0%

0%

33.3% 51.7%

29.9%

20% FY2014 % companies with negative annual growth

49.4%

31.6% 40%

18.7%

60%

80%

FY2014 % companies with positive, but lower annual growth

100%

FY2014 % companies with faster annual growth

Source: Deloitte's Global Powers of Retailing 2016 - Navigating the new digital divide

of online purchasing. Once lower prices can be found online, why bother walking around a mall at all?” he questions.

In fact, location and store space is so important to retailers these days that last year, clothing retailer BritishIndia sued mall Suria KLCC for the former’s forced relocation by the mall’s management.

In an article on The Malaysian Insider, it was reported that BTC Clothier’s CEO, Rhoda Yap Jin Lyn, said to the High Court the mall’s management offered the store a bad spot on level 2 or 3 which she said is “detrimental to its brand positioning.”

Mahesh Neelakantan, founder and CEO of specialist shopper marketing agency in Malaysia called Newton – The Activation Company (TAC) said that location for any retailer is a key factor that can fast-track growth and business of a fashion retailer.

He acknowledged that a disruption or mislocation of a longstanding store such as BTC can undo all the past equity and effort invested by the brand.

He added, “If the brand indeed has to relocate, then a strong transition and migration strategy is key to ensuring that there is minimal impact on business. Perhaps a store may have to over-invest to protect its current business and market share.”

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“In an over-saturated market and an online ecosystem that thrives on value, it’s getting harder and harder for retailers to stand out and get regular custom – providing your customer with an extra personalised experience could be the difference between flash in the pan and long-term loyalty.”

Amy Kean – regional strategy lead at Mindshare APAC

possesses, the single biggest challenge retail marketers in the region today is a lack of data and understanding about their regular offline customers. Not enough is known about these consumers, their purchase habits, instore journeys and what drives them to buy one brand over another in a store.

“The region has one of the most active commerce populations in the world, and online we have a wealth of insight about paths to purchase and baskets, as well as the social layer of brand love insight that social media offers. But it’s within the bricks and mortar stores where the real ignorance lies,” Kean says.

This is why recent innovations in retail have included the introduction of beacon technology.

This technology allows shop owners to interact with and learn about their offline shoppers, via their smartphones.

In theory, beacons allow retailers to track what customers are doing in their store, who

they are, and what products they are likely to buy based on previous behaviours. The technology also allows retailers to send personalised push messages to each customer, prompting them to buy a product or informing them of a special offer.

However, despite sounding like the holy grail, there are currently a few restrictions to beacon technology.

For example, customers must have the retail brand’s app downloaded and the bluetooth switched on and these restrictions can mean that retailers are only dealing with a fraction of consumers walking through their stores.

Mindshare, via its own shopper data business arm Shop+, has to date experimented a huge amount with this technology – most notably with Nestlé and FairPrice, using iBeacons in-store, alongside the FairPrice app, to learn about the regular in-store journeys that customers were taking.

This has helped in mapping out shopping

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MARKETING FEATURE: RETAIL MARKETING

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Product sector profiles, FY2014

Level of globalization by product sector, FY2014 250

Number of companies

Top 250

Average retail revenue (US$M)

250

Share of top 250 companies

Share of top 250 revenue

% of retail revenue Average # from foreign of countries operations

% singlecountry operators

250

US$17,913

100.0%

100.0%

23.4%

10.4

34.0%

48

US$9,082

19.2%

9.7%

31.6%

25.9

14.6%

126

US$23,712

50.4%

66.7%

22.2%

5.3

41.3%

Hardlines and leisure goods

54

US$12,998

21.6%

15.7%

24.5%

8.1

33.3%

Diversified

22

US$16,033

8.8%

7.9%

22.2%

11.4

36.4%

Apparel and accessories Fast-moving consumer goods

FY2009-2014 composite compound annual growth rate in retail revenue

4.9%

Composite net profit margin

US$4.48

2.8%

trillion US$17.91 billion average size of Top 250 (retail revenue)

aggregate retail revenue of Top 250 Top 250 retailers with foreign operations minimum retail revenue required to be among Top 250

66.0%

US$3.65 billion

composite year-over-year retail revenue growth

4.3%

average number of countries in which Top 250 companies have retail operations

4.3% composite return on assets

23.4%

10.4

percent of Top 250 retail revenue from foreign operations

Source: Deloitte's Global Powers of Retailing 2016 - Navigating the new digital divide

habits of consumers and serving relevant push notification messages to them via their phone, explains Kean.

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“Given the relatively small amount of people that meet the requirements of having the app and Bluetooth turned on, it’s not necessarily the

advertising itself that has the most value, instead it is the learnings you can get from essentially watching your customers every day and being able to start predicting their behaviours,” Kean says.

Once offline retailers begin to understand this, then the future of the landscape in Singapore will be a lot more informed, and relevant to the shopper.

Regardless of its struggles, traditional retail is here to stay, says Neelakantan.

“It may need to reinvent itself to integrate digital and data-driven marketing to improve delivery, efficiency and customer experience, but there will be clear spaces for both online and offline retail to exist,” he says.

Going forward, pop-up retail is an area that will become more mainstream with brands using it as part of their mix, he predicts.

Echoing Kean’s views, he adds that areas such as beacon usage, mobile first and mobile wallet and integrating digital technology to aid conversion and purchase, will no longer be a “nice to have”, but vital for any retail marketer.

Other recent challenges facing retail is the perception of online being cheaper than traditional retail.

In some categories, especially luxury, fashion and consumer durables, people are browsing through brick and mortar stores for the “touch-and-feel” experience and human interaction, only to head online to get the cheaper deal.

“This temporary trend is largely owing to large online stores armed with VC money – buying market share at the expense of the traditional store. If the industry sees retail more as a brand rather than a channel – then the future is very bright,” he says.

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MARKETING FEATURE: AGENCY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP

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A DEMANDING BRIEF BY A GOVERNMENT BODY HAD THE INDUSTRY UP IN ARMS AND BROUGHT TO THE SURFACE AN AGE-OLD QUESTION ON WHETHER CLIENTS AND AGENCIES CAN EVER REALLY BE EQUALS

BY REZWANA MANJUR

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MARKETING FEATURE: AGENCY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP

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The emergence of a brief by a local Singaporean school demanding “unlimited changes” was a rude awakening to both the creative community, as well as government agencies. It brought back the age-old argument of clients simply treating agency partners like commoditised vendors.

In mid-February this year, making its rounds on social media and among the design community was a Facebook post by Kelley Cheng, founder and creative director of design consultancy, The Press Room, showing three separate images of a brief by a government

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body. The images showed the government body asking for an unlimited number of changes on a piece of work.

The post ignited the fury of local creatives and attracted media attention from several mainstream publications. Shortly after the incident, the Ministry of Finance put out a statement saying it had looked into the matter and agreed it was unfair to expect suppliers to agree to unlimited changes.

“MOF will issue a circular to remind all government agencies of standing procurement principles, which includes ensuring that all

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MARKETING FEATURE: AGENCY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP

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procurement specifications are reasonable and fair,” read the statement.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education agreed that the number of iterations should be reasonable and cannot be unlimited. It added this specification of “unlimited changes” has been removed from the school’s Invitationto-Quote. The DesignSingapore Council was then roped in with MOF to advise government agencies on the guidelines of best practices for government procurement of design services.

Simply an honest brief?

While the brief had the design community riled for its demanding nature, it is worth considering this could simply have been a very honest brief.

It is not surprising for anyone in the advertising arena to find demanding clients who insist on extensive work from their agency partners. Often agencies are burning the midnight oil trying to accommodate last-minute tweaks by the client. What probably stood out this time was the “unlimited changes” had been written into the brief.

Fiona Bartholomeusz, managing director of Formul8, agrees this demand is not an uncommon one – and not exclusive to government agencies, but rather cuts across industries.

“I once had a client demand 96 rounds of change. What is different is this particular brief

states it in writing,” she says, adding that while you can have a contract stating the number of changes allowed, clients can always argue the changes are minor or label you as a difficult agency if you argue not to make the changes free of cost.

“There will always be an idiot agency that will bend over backwards to please such a client.”

She explained that some clients see ad agencies as simple vendors selling commoditised services and that agencies should take some of the blame for allowing clients to think they can take advantage of their agency partners.

“Clients don’t treat other professional services partners in this manner. Why do ad agencies then allow themselves to be treated this way?” she questions.

Patrick Low, founder of Goodfellas, adds: “You can’t put such stipulations in black and white.”

While he agrees that such demands are common from clients, it is risky for an agency to work with such a client – especially if the agency hasn’t got any prior relationship with the client.

“It opens up a can of worms. If the entire industry can come together and avoid going for such a pitch, then we can protect ourselves. If you pitch for an account like this, you have to do so with your eyes open,” Low says.

Paul Davies, managing partner of Roth Observatory International, however, defended government bodies saying that in his experience, they generally have been on the lookout for fair and reasonable commercial conditions and working relationships.

Nonetheless, he agrees this particular brief was neither fair nor reasonable. It would not make for a productive partnership over time.

“My understanding of the government strategy to recruitment is that they look to hire people who are or will become specialists in their respective government department area first,” he says.

The downside of this approach is that in some areas (such as marketing), the government bodies can lack the expertise needed – especially when undertaking a particular task or activity for the first or maybe even the second time.

“What some government bodies have done to counteract this lack of expertise is to use consultants such as ourselves to complement them and provide that expertise and ongoing development,” Davies says.

He adds, nonetheless, with regard to government tenders, agencies participating can often state their exceptions, issues or conditions.

“Without exception I have found that the government body will be open to discussion

“I once had a client demand 96 rounds of change.

What is different is this particular brief states it in writing.”

Fiona Bartholomeusz – managing director of Formul8

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MARKETING FEATURE: AGENCY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP

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“When it comes to such briefs, the best thing would be to forget pitching for it. If you participate, you are encouraging such behaviour.”

Bernard Chan – CEO of 4As Singapore

and creating fair and reasonable circumstances for both parties,” he says.

Stifling creativity?

The situation also put the spotlight on local industry body 4As Singapore. Several industry players questioned: What is 4As doing about it?

Addressing its stance on this, Bernard Chan, CEO of 4As, says the 4As mission remains to preserve the value of creativity.

However, good creatives have their fair share of technical requirements – one of which is putting out a good brief.

“The pressure should be on clients to create good briefs because it is a competitive market.

Without a good brief, you will not get good work making you lose out to your competitors,” Chan says. He adds that clients need to fast realise the value of the creative process.

Chan adds that 4As, through its shows, the Crowbar Awards, Singapore Media Awards and NexGen, tries to promote good briefs and pitch ethics. “When it comes to such briefs, the best thing would be to forget pitching for it. If you participate, you are encouraging such behaviour,” he adds.

The situation also elicited a response from Singapore’s trades union congress, NTUC’s online creative community U Creative. The organisation initiated the first step by organising a learning session on producing good briefs to get a conversation rolling.

On its Facebook page, NTUC’s U Creative said: “We believe most such cases arise from a lack of understanding and proper training on what constitutes a fair creative services procurement brief.

“An effective and fair brief should be mindful of both the client expectations and the creative effort to meet such expectations. As part of the creative and media community, U Creative acknowledges that this is a gap that needs to be addressed.”

Vivek Kumar, director, U Creative and U Future Leaders, NTUC, also told A+M that today many creative professionals face challenges of vague requirements and terms, and this is “an ill-informed practice” that seems to be pervasive in both the public and private sectors.

NTUC also encouraged the creative community to recommend clients and other

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industry partners to attend this and other such sessions.

Goh Shu Fen, president of the Institute of Advertising Singapore, which is one of U Creative’s partners, says the reality of the situation is that most clients have been

getting away with free iterations – government included. This is because the service level agreement signed by agencies does not stipulate parameters to that level, and agencies do not push hard enough to set boundaries.

Goh added building in unlimited iterations is “really a cop out” as it almost always destroys creativity and passion for the work, and produces unnoticed mediocre campaigns.

“The bigger issue is not about reasonableness, it’s about effectiveness. How will demanding unlimited changes create better ideas and deliver more impact?” she says.

SEVEN SIGNS OF A BAD BRIEF 1. No indication of budget It is troubling when there is no budget range provided. This usually signals that the prospect will be deciding the outcome on commoditised price more than on creative quality.

2. The ever evolving brief Multiple changes of the brief over a long period is another problem. This could mean the client is unsure of what he or she wants. Often the worst briefs change the rules of the game as the process progresses. The “bait and switch” method is also toxic to the prospect company’s reputation.

3. The “up to the agency” brief The worst things you could say to an agency? “Up to you”, “Agency to recommend”, and of course, “I am not sure what we want, but I will know it when I see it”. As a marketer you have to have a clear vision of what you want your brand to represent. While the agency is there to help those dreams come true or fine-tune your vision, by no means should the agency decide your vision for you.

4. The beauty parade Spamming out a brief to a dozen or more agencies is another bad sign and is disconcerting for a pitching agency. However, this is not uncommon. The local larger government tenders as well as the major brand assignments have been known to have as many as a dozen or more agencies.

5. The “top secret” brief A big frustration is when clients get too secretive with their company’s strategies, not wanting to give away confidential information. While this is understandable, don’t take this too far in a brief. If the agency does not have a client objective or some guidance either on the deliverables or budget, chances are the work presented will also be mediocre.

6. The internal client war If it isn’t difficult enough trying to understand what the client wants, it is worse when they don’t know what they want because of internal conflict. When dissonance between internal stakeholders comes, those are more ingredients for a brief, as often the brief is unclear and muddled with the agency trying to cope with the politics of it all.

7. The bloody boring brief Another ingredient for a bad brief is when the client only wants to play it safe, asking for repetitive work – resulting in a completely uninspiring brief. Sure the agency will do it, but you can expect zero enthusiasm and even less creativity. At the end of it, good agencies respond to good briefs.

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MARKETING FEATURE: ZERO-BASED BUDGETING

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MARKETING FEATURE: ZERO-BASED BUDGETING

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SOON AFTER UNILEVER SAID IT WOULD ADOPT THIS APPROACH, DISCUSSIONS AROUND ZERO-BASED BUDGETING HAVE BEEN APLENTY. RAYANA PANDEY LOOKS AT THE PROS AND CONS OF THIS APPROACH.

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MARKETING FEATURE: ZERO-BASED BUDGETING

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In January this year, Unilever CEO Paul Polman announced the company would roll out zero-based budgeting globally – a move it had tested in Thailand last year, which cut down the spending by two percentage points as a share of sales.

Polman was reported as saying: “We are further strengthening our innovation funnel while shortening innovation cycle times, stepping up our digital capabilities and rolling out a global zero-based budgeting programme.”

It would be a mistake to see this purely as a cost-cutting or budget reduction move.

Yes it assures a certain level of efficiency, but it is really just another approach to budgeting.

A bigger reality is that a whopping majority of companies do not follow it; a handful of those who do include Kraft Heinz, Mondelēz and P&G. There are views for and against zero-based budgeting. In this article we take a look at what it actually means for marketing and what the industry thinks about it.

Zero-based budgeting and traditional budgeting are almost the polar opposite approaches. The former requires the building (and justification) of the annual budget from the bottom up – starting with no predetermined budget amount – while the latter assumes the budget from the previous year is a given and the final budget is justified on the variances (up or down) from the prior year’s budget and is usually based on an extrapolation of its revenue/sales projections.

In zero-based budgeting, first you forget about the total spend and where that spend was allocated last year – hence, the zero.

Second, the marketing team does its research, constructs its marketing plan and concludes it with a budget in which it asks for a certain amount of investment and promises a specific return for that investment.

Senior management reviews the plan and either grants the amount or pushes back and asks the team to make changes.

According to Paul Davies, managing partner of Asia Pacific for Roth Observatory International, the zero-based budgeting approach is a better way to budget as long as the organisation has the time to undertake it, can support the effort required and/or generate or have access to the research/data needed.

However, a mix of both may work well for some companies, that is, they undertake a zerobased budget every few years and in between use a more traditional approach. Davies, collates a list of pros and cons of zero-based budgeting: Pros • Efficient allocation of resources as it’s 46 advertising + m arketing | M A R C H 2 0 1 6

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“They [agencies] will also have less visibility on the scope of work (and thus resourcing needs) and it can make fee negotiations very tight. If the new plans mean a restructuring of their teams/resource level this can be very difficult to conclude.”

Paul Davies – managing partner of Asia Pacific for Roth Observatory International

• • •

• • • • • •

based on needs, requirements and benefits rather than history.

Drives managers to find cost-effective or innovative ways to improve operations.

Detects inflated budgets.

Increases staff motivation by providing greater initiative and responsibility in decision-making.

Increases communication, collaboration and co-ordination within the organisation.

Identifies and eliminates wasteful and obsolete operations.

Identifies opportunities for outsourcing.

Forces cost centres to identify their mission and their relationship to overall goals.

Facilitates a more effective delegation of authority.

Zero-based budgeting helps in identifying areas of wasteful expenditure, and if desired, can also be used for suggesting alternative courses of action.

Cons • More time consuming than incremental budgeting.

• Justifying every line item can be problematic for departments with intangible outputs.

• Requires specific training due to increased complexity versus incremental budgeting.

• In a large organisation, the amount of information backing up the budgeting process may be overwhelming.

We asked what some of the brands in Singapore are doing. Local bank OCBC operates on a hybrid model. The marketing team at OCBC

supports the business on many fronts and one of the most important is the day-to-day marketing operations for its branches, ATMs and service communications.

Budgeting for these day-to-day activities is very much based on expected volume in relation to its customer base and the activities that drive them to the various touch-points. For these, budgeting is more efficient from historical baselines.

Zero-based budgeting is used for strategic initiatives and major campaigns which start from the strategic intent of the campaign, the target customers and the design of the campaign activities.

“There needs to be a robust process to allow flexibility in the redeployment of budgets if certain activities show good returns to expenses. This could be a potential shortfall of zero-based budgeting, but it frees up planning from budget boundaries and could lead to great ideation and campaigns. This can be overcome if a portion of the budget is flexible and redeployment is a priority,” says Goh Theng Kiat, chief marketing officer at OCBC Bank.

However, a possible pitfall could be the suboptimal execution of successful campaigns if they are under budgeted.

If the marketing team encounters rigid budgeting perimeters and slow movement of marketing funds to continue supporting a successful campaign, the campaign could be under-funded, resulting in its effectiveness not being fully maximised.

“Marketing teams using a zero-based

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MARKETING FEATURE: ZERO-BASED BUDGETING

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WHY ZERO-BASED BUDGETING IS MAKING A COMEBACK An August 2015 white paper by McKinsey for private equity firms states the number of companies publicly referring to zero-based budgeting has exploded over the past few years, including such disparate companies as Alcoa, Boston Scientific, Jarden Corporation, and Quiksilver (exhibit).

It’s not only big companies that have taken to ZBB; businesses of all sizes are taking the leap. For example, B&G Foods – a US-based multi-brand company with $850 million in annual sales and less than $100 million in sales, general and administrative expenses – has recently adopted ZBB. It’s becoming clear that ZBB can be effective across industries, in companies big and small, and under both public and private ownership, it said.

McKinsey traced the origins of this form of budgeting to an article published in 1970 by Peter A. Pyhrr in the Harvard Business Review and it soon gained a following. However, over the past half century, the tool became dogged by misperceptions and faded into obscurity.

Forty six years after its creation, ZBB is making a comeback, McKinsey states, adding that private equity firms and others are finding it a useful framework to reset a company’s default mode of operating and drive sustainable cost efficiency.

“This time around, ZBB seems likely to stick: the new incarnation is more likely to become a widespread norm than to fade into the ether. For ZBB 2.0, this may be just the beginning,” McKinsey said.

ZERO-BASE BUDGETING IS BACK Number of companies mentioning zero-base budgeting on quarterly earnings calls 90

62

14

2013 1

2014

2015

Projected based on year-to-date mentions.

Source: Seeking Alpha; McKinsey analysis

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budgeting approach need to put in place flexible planning processes to nimbly redeploy resources and have a good understanding of business priorities to allocate resources to optimise their marketing budgets,” he says.

“Zero-based budgeting could also lead to short-term thinking for quick results, while compromising longer term strategic investments.”

In Rod Strother’s experience, back in the days he was at Lenovo, his team was asked one year to work with “no restrictions” on the budget. At the end of the day, it spent a lot of time putting it all together, and were ultimately given a number to work with. Strother is now VP of digital transformation at StarHub. “Might sound like a waste of time, but it puts us in a great position to say what was low/medium/high impact versus the business objectives and therefore, we knew what should be included in the budget. We also used it when we were faced with budget cuts during the year,” he says.

But the onus is on marketers to plan together and then sell the plan.

“If they’re simply going to the agency and asking them to do the ZBB then they’re fairly ineffective as a marketer – which tells the leadership something about their people,” he says.

“There is a caveat to this though. You do need some parameters – previous spend for instance – otherwise you’ve got absolutely no limitations on what you propose. But as long as you can justify what your ROI is going to be from the investment then perhaps parameters is not something that applies.”

Implications for marketing agencies A number of agencies have used and perhaps are still using this approach for their own budgeting. From the perspective of clients using it, the challenge to an agency is that it creates more uncertainty as they are not (or only partially) involved in the budgeting process and so any changes can be a complete surprise.

“They will also have less visibility on the scope of work (and thus resourcing needs) and it can make fee negotiations very tight.

If the new plans mean a restructuring of their teams/resource level this can be very difficult to conclude,” Davies says.

Conversely, if the client involves the agency in the process, they may think the first proposal for the budget/scope they develop is what they are going to get – so they try and resource and start thinking about activity at that level.

“Agencies generally don’t seem to grasp the concept of an iterative budget process,” he adds.

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Held at the Pan Pacific Singapore, the fourth annual Mob-Ex Awards saw Audi Singapore overcome tough competition to win the coveted overall brand title. On the agency front, Publicis came out on top as At a Singapore gala dinner at Singapore’s Mandarin Orchard Hotel, the Best in Show – Agency/Solution Provider for 2016 DBS Bank whizzed its way to bag the top honour wowing an audience of more than Of 300.

Here’s a look at the Mob-Ex Awards as the Mob-Ex Best Show – Brand at what went on during the awards night.

2015.

On the agency front, Codigo wowed

the more than 300-strong audience grabbing the Best of Show – Agency honour. Here’s a recap Florence Yap, engagement lead (digital customer, marketing and sales practice), Accenture Consulting of the awards night.

JUDGING PANEL

Eric Chang, head of brand and digital, AIA Malaysia

Rudy Hamdani, head of digital and channel management, ANZ Bank Indonesia Daniel Chong, senior deputy director, digital and social media, Central Provident Fund Board Stephanie Myers, vice-president, digital channels, HSBC Vivek Malhotra, vice-president of marketing, Idea Cellular Richa Goswami, regional head of digital, Johnson & Johnson Juliana Chu, director of digital, Asia Pacific, Kimberly-Clark Joey Alarilla, director and regional digital officer, Manulife Asia Aizuddin Danian Izham Cheong, head of group digital media management, Maybank Mark Wheeler, director of digital – Australia and New Zealand, McDonald’s Corporation Anthony Green, director of digital development, Minor Hotel Group Roy Heong, vice-president, e-business, OCBC Bank Malaysia Amit Tiwari, director country head, media and digital, Philips India Pawarana Ann Suwanjindar, senior vice-president – digital marketing, Siam Commercial Bank Lee Yen Ming, head of digital marketing, Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia Harry Lowes, general manager, digital marketing, Telstra Vittoria O’Connor, APAC loyalty and digital director, The Body Shop Adeline-Ausy Setiawan, managing director, Unilever Enterprise Indonesia Divya Ramaswamy, vice-president of digital marketing, Wego

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AUDI AND PUBLICIS SCORE THE TOP PRIZES AT MOB-EX 2016

Audi Singapore was awarded the overall brand title at the fourth annual Mob-Ex Awards at the Pan Pacific Singapore. With a total prize pool of four gold, two silver and two bronze across categories that included Best Campaign – Original Content, Best Campaign – Mobile for an Event, and Best Campaign – Innovation, Audi trumped the competition in front of a crowd of more than 300, with the runner-up Scoot Airlines taking home two gold and three silver awards.

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Last year’s champion DBS Bank and runner-up Australia and New Zealand Banking Group followed closely both earning 13 points according to the awards’ exponential-weighted points system, meaning four points were allocated for gold, two points for silver and one point for bronze.

Audi’s “A Drive Back in Time” campaign impressed the jury and clinched it the overall prize with its combination of nostalgia and modern technology. To recognise Singapore’s

50th anniversary the brand offered an immersive virtual reality experience through a mobile app called the “SG50 Time Machine” which allowed users to experience what Singapore’s streets looked like in 1965, with a main event taking place between 17 and 25 October 2015.

Publicis Singapore, the agency for both Audi and Scoot’s campaigns, came out on top as the Best in Show – Agency/Solution Provider for 2016 with a trophy haul of six gold, five silver and two bronze. A very close competition saw MRM//McCann Singapore, with its wins for The Hershey Company and National Gallery Singapore, and Ruder Finn Asia who scored for Grab and the HappyFresh campaigns, tied in second place.

The Mob-Ex Awards proudly celebrates excellence and innovation in mobile marketing across South Asia, Southeast Asia and ANZ. A panel of digital experts from leading brands such as HSBC, Johnson & Johnson, KimberlyClark, McDonald’s and Unilever determined this year’s winners from a pool of 300-plus entries.

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BEST IN SHOW – BRAND Audi Singapore

WHAT THE WINNER HAD TO SAY:

“The project was born from an innovative idea that both represented the Audi brand as well as Singapore. It was definitely an audacious project which required a lot of work, and success was not guaranteed. We are so proud of being here today. It is a great recognition to bold thinking and all the efforts the team and our partners have put in.”

– Anna Bory, GM, marketing, Audi Singapore

BEST IN SHOW – AGENCY/SOLUTION PROVIDER Publicis Singapore

WHAT THE WINNER HAD TO SAY:

“An agency is nothing without its client partners. We are recognised here today because we have clients who are like family. There aren’t a lot of brave clients in Singapore and we’re fortunate to be working with some of them. Also a big thanks to the team at Publicis for leading the change together with our clients.”

– Lou Dela Pena, CEO, Publicis Singapore

BEST TEAM – IN-HOUSE

BEST TEAM – SOLUTION PROVIDER

Client: Australia and New Zealand Banking Group

Agency: Digital Arts Network

Client: Eaton

Agency: Airwave APAC

Client: Ramsay Sime Darby Health Care

Agency: Publicis Nurun Singapore

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BEST APP – COMMUNITY SERVICE Client: SP Services

Client: Celcom Agency: M&C Saatchi

Client: Health Promotion Board

BEST APP – CREATIVITY Client: OCBC Bank Brand: OCBC OneTouch™ Agencies: Isobar, Carat, iProspect, McCann

Client: National Gallery Singapore Agency: MRM//McCann Singapore

Client: Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board Agency: Wild Advertising & Marketing

BEST APP – GOVERNMENT Client: Health Promotion Board

Client: Sport Singapore

Client: Telekom Malaysia Brand: TM SME Agency: Lowe Malaysia

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BEST APP – CONSUMER BRAND Client: DBS Bank

Client: Grab Agency: Ruder Finn Asia

Client: OCBC Bank Brand: OCBC OneTouch™ Agencies: Isobar, Carat, iProspect, McCann

BEST APP – GAMES Client: DBS Bank Agency: 3radical

Client: DBS Bank

Client: MEASAT Broadcast Network System Brand: Astro Ceria Agency: Compass Interactive

BEST APP – MEDIA OWNER Client: PropertyGuru

Client: MEASAT Broadcast Network System Brand: Astro Ceria Agency: Compass Interactive

Client: The Business Times

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BEST APP – UTILITY Client: Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board Agency: Wild Advertising & Marketing

Client: OCBC Bank Brand: OCBC OneTouch™ Agencies: Isobar, Carat, iProspect, McCann

Client: Health Promotion Board

BEST CAMPAIGN – CRM LOYALTY AND ENGAGEMENT Client: ZALORA South East Asia

BEST CAMPAIGN – BRAND AWARENESS Client: Grab Agency: APD

Client: Scoot Airlines Brand: Scoot Agency: Publicis Singapore

Client: NTUC Income Agency: Germs Singapore

BEST CAMPAIGN – DIRECT RESPONSE Client: MasterCard Agency: Digital Arts Network

Client: HappyFresh Agency: Ruder Finn Asia

Client: Scoot Airlines Brand: Scoot Agency: Publicis Singapore

Client: Max’s Group Inc. Brand: Krispy Kreme Philippines Agency: Mobext Philippines

Client: DBS Bank Agency: 3radical

BEST CAMPAIGN – IN-APP ADVERTISING Client: Monetary Authority of Singapore Brand: MoneySENSE Agency: Addiction Advertising

Client: Australia and New Zealand Banking Group

Client: Procter & Gamble Singapore Brand: SK-ll Agencies: Millennial Media, Mediacom Singapore

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BEST CAMPAIGN – INCENTIVES AND REWARDS Client: L’Oréal Malaysia Brand: Kiehl’s Agency: Compass Interactive

Client: Scoot Airlines Brand: Scoot Agency: Publicis Singapore

Client: Thai Health Promotion Foundation Agency: Lunch Communications

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BEST CAMPAIGN – INFORMATIVE USE OF MOBILE Client: Audi Singapore Brand: Audi Agency: Publicis Singapore

Client: Eaton Brand: Eaton PowerSource

Client: Hewlett-Packard (HP) Agency: PMG ASIA PACIFIC

BEST CAMPAIGN – INTEGRATION OF MOBILE Client: The Coca Cola Company Brand: Coca Cola Agency: Mediacom Singapore

BEST CAMPAIGN – INNOVATION Client: Audi Singapore Brand: Audi Agency: Publicis Singapore

Client: The Hershey Company Brand: Hershey Agency: MRM//McCann Singapore

Client: Google Agency: Jack Morton Worldwide

BEST CAMPAIGN – LOCATION-BASED MARKETING Client: Australia and New Zealand Banking Group

Client: Audi Singapore Brand: Audi Agency: Publicis Singapore

Client: Mount Faber Leisure Group Agencies: PHD Singapore, Airwave

Client: Syngenta Asia Pacific Agency: Edenred Singapore

Client: Standard Chartered Bank Brand: Standard Chartered Marathon Agencies: OMD Singapore, Airwave

BEST CAMPAIGN – MOBILE FOR AN EVENT Client: Audi Singapore Brand: Audi Agency: Publicis Singapore

BEST CAMPAIGN – MOBILE LAUNCH/RE-LAUNCH Client: Grab Agency: Ruder Finn Asia

Client: Unilever Singapore Brand: Sunsilk Agencies: InMobi, Mindshare Singapore

Client: HappyFresh Agency: Ruder Finn Asia

Client: Hewlett-Packard (HP) Brand: Hewlett-Packard (HP) Enterprise Services Agencies: PHD Singapore, Airwave

Client: AskmeBazaar Agency: Opera Mediaworks

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BEST CAMPAIGN – ORIGINAL CONTENT Client: NTUC Income Agency: Germs Singapore

Client: Pond’s Indonesia Agencies: Opera Mediaworks, Mindshare Indonesia

Client: Audi Singapore Brand: Audi Agency: Publicis Singapore

BEST CAMPAIGN – SEARCH Client: Sport Singapore

BEST CAMPAIGN – RESEARCH AND INSIGHTS Client: Google Agency: Jack Morton Worldwide

Client: Australia and New Zealand Banking Group

Client: DBS Bank Agencies: MLA, Aegis Media Digital Asia Pacific, HAVAS, CNBC

BEST CAMPAIGN – SOCIAL PLATFORM Client: Scoot Airlines Brand: Scoot Agency: Publicis Singapore

Client: Transitions® Optical Agency: iProspect Singapore

Client: Mondelēz Brand: Oreo Agency: FCB/Kuala Lumpur

Client: KDU University College Brand: KDU University College & KDU College Agency: Maxus Communications Malaysia

Client: The Hershey Company Brand: Hershey Agency: MRM//McCann Singapore

BEST CAMPAIGN – TABLETS Client: National Gallery Singapore Agency: MRM//McCann Singapore

Client: Celcom Agency: M&C Saatchi (M)

Client: Singapore Tourism Board Agency: KRDS Singapore

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BEST CAMPAIGN – USE OF MULTIPLE MOBILE CHANNELS Client: Audi Singapore Brand: Audi Agency: Publicis Singapore

Client: Australia and New Zealand Banking Group

Client: Health Promotion Board Brand: HealthHub Agencies: DDB Group Singapore, MEC Singapore

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BEST CAMPAIGN – USER EXPERIENCE Client: ComfortDelGro Agency: Codigo

BEST CAMPAIGN – VIDEO/RICH MEDIA Client: DBS Bank Agencies: MLA, Aegis Media Digital Asia Pacific, HAVAS, CNBC

Client: Singapore Tourism Board Agency: KRDS Singapore

Client: Audi Singapore Brand: Audi Agency: Publicis Singapore

Client: Audi Singapore Brand: Audi Agency: Publicis Singapore

Client: Unilever Malaysia Brand: Vaseline Agency: Immerse Group

BEST CAMPAIGN – VIRAL MARKETING Client: Scoot Airlines Brand: Scoot Agency: Publicis Singapore

BEST SOLUTION – MCOMMERCE Client: HappyFresh Agency: Ruder Finn Asia

Client: The Hershey Company Brand: Hershey Agency: MRM//McCann Singapore

Client: McDonald’s APMEA

Client: Unilever Indonesia Brand: AXE Agency: OgilvyOne Indonesia

Client: Standard Chartered Bank

BEST SOLUTION – MOBILE ADVERTISING Client: Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board Agency: Wild Advertising & Marketing

Client: The Hershey Company Brand: Hershey Agency: MRM//McCann Singapore

Client: Australia and New Zealand Banking Group

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BEST SOLUTION – MOBILE SITE Client: Unilever Malaysia Brand: Vaseline Agency: Immerse Group

Client: Big Apps Idea Brand: MOREREWARDZ.COM

Client: The Hershey Company Brand: Hershey Agency: MRM//McCann Singapore

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LAST WORD

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WHY OUR LINKEDIN PROFILES LACK BUZZ LinkedIn reveals buzzwords marketers are most guilty of overusing when describing themselves.

A list to avoid: How many of the top 10 buzzwords on LinkedIn are you guilty of using?

In this industry we love using buzzwords to describe campaigns or the next big initiative – think #bigdata #innovation #omnichannel.

But have you thought about the words you as marketers use to describe yourselves?

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, has done a quick analysis of the top most overused buzzwords in LinkedIn profiles of marketers in the Asia Pacific. LinkedIn analysed the profile summaries of marketers in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore to compile the list.

The list reveals “creative”, “passionate” and “strategic” as the most overused buzzwords among marketers in the region, while other offenders included “successful”, “motivated” and “innovative”.

The top 10 buzzwords in the LinkedIn profiles of Asia Pacific-based marketers for 2016 are: 1. Creative 2. Passionate 3. Strategic 4. Successful 5. Motivated 6. Driven 7. Leadership 8. Innovative 9. Track record 10. Dynamic Roger Pua, Linkedin’s senior director of corporate communications for Asia Pacific, said: “Actions speak louder than words. Instead of building their LinkedIn profiles with overused buzzwords, we encourage our members to think about how they can stand out from the crowd and differentiate themselves, such as substantiating their work and achievements with concrete examples such as awards, presentations, research papers, and so forth.”

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Remember too, that a picture says a thousand words, so let’s put an end to tired and overused buzzwords.

LinkedIn is also encouraging professionals to think about the terms and phrases they use in their profile summary and take the time to rejuvenate their LinkedIn profile.

Here are some tips from the team for those looking to create their perfect profile: 1. Stand out from the crowd: Your summary is the first thing people look at after your profile picture. You may know you’re capable of demonstrating “leadership” with a “great track record”, but too many buzzwords make it hard for your profile to stand out. Use examples of your experience, focus on how you’ve demonstrated leadership with specific examples and highlight those great results with real numbers.

2. A picture is worth a thousand words: Instead of saying you’re “creative”, why not show people by including presentations, design work and projects you take pride in? Remember, you’ve only got five to 10 seconds to impress.

3. Share views and news: So you have “extensive experience and great communication skills”? Tell the world by publishing a post on LinkedIn. By offering your opinions on industry matters, you’re positioning yourself as a thought leader and sharing your knowledge.

4. Get to know people like you: If you want to show you are “motivated” about succeeding in your industry, join a group. Share your thoughts on news or articles to show you care about the sector and widen your network. Members who are active in groups get 15 times more profile views than members who don’t take part.

5. Recommend a friend: If you think someone’s “exceptional”, why not say it? Spend time writing meaningful recommendations using specific examples. Not only does this show you really know them, it also means they are more likely to return the favour. A couple of glowing recommendations are worth a hundred buzzwords.

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16 June

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Pre-early bird rate (until 15 April) Client-side: SGD1,290 Solutions Providers: SGD1,990 For more information, contact: Nirah Aziz, project manager +65 6423 0329 niraha@marketing-interactive.com

Exhibitor

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ENTRY DEADLINE

AOTY 8 MARCH 2016

MARKIES 22 MARCH 2016

For entries and more information, call Carlo Reston at +65 6423 0329, ext: 258 or email carlor@marketing-interactive.com For sponsorship opportunities, call Joven Barcenas at +65 6423 0329, ext: 252 or email jovenb@marketing-interactive.com

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