Advertising + Marketing MY - Sep 2014

advertising + marketing malaysia

BER M E SEPT

2014

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ED’S LETTER ................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Elizabeth Low, Deputy Editor elizabethl@marketing-interactive.com Rezwana Manjur, Senior Journalist rezwanam@marketing-interactive.com Editorial – International Matt Eaton, Editor (Hong Kong) matte@marketing-interactive.com Oliver Bayani, Editor (Philippines) oliverb@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 Che Winstrom, Sales Manager chew@marketing-interactive.com Johnathan Tiang, Senior Account Manager johnathant@marketing-interactive.com Trina Choy, Senior Account Manager trinac@marketing-interactive.com Joey Lau, Account Manager joeyl@marketing-interactive.com Joven Barcenas, Senior Project Manager jovenb@marketing-interactive.com Events Yeo Wei Qi, Head, Events Services weiqi@marketing-interactive.com Database & Circulations June Tan, Senior Database Operations Executive junet@lighthousemedia.com.sg 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

A conversation about the future of marketing is always interesting. It throws up new ideas, lends a fresh perspective and reaffirms certain age-old truths. And it is exactly what I experienced putting this special edition together where some of the local industry’s experts share what they think the future of marketing is.

It is fascinating to see the tectonic shift in consumer behaviour and how technology has reshaped our lives and, at the same time, it is somewhat disappointing to see some brands, by and large, not being able to keep up.

Of course, there are leaders – there will always be, but a vast majority of the brands are still laggards. Sceptical about digital, they are only just beginning to dip their toes into the medium so as an industry we have a long, long way to go.

Measurability still remains a concern. While digital promised that, its ever-changing nature has made understanding and choosing the right metrics very difficult. A direct correlation between marketing and the bottom line of a company still remains a distant dream, at least for a majority of the brands.

Digital is not just another way to market a brand; it has fundamentally changed the way businesses operate. Therefore, it requires more than just hiring a few digitally savvy people in the marketing team.

It is about re-engineering the entire approach to brand building. The task can be daunting, and thus the tendency to get flustered, only natural. What often happens as a result is that brands tend to forget the basics.

You will, in this edition, see how marketers describe their vision of the future of marketing – each very different from the other, yet a common thread runs through them all. The need to be mindful of the basics, to be consumer-centric and treating digital just as you would treat any other medium and tying it all into an overall cohesive brand strategy.

I don’t want to give it all away here. Flip the pages and enjoy the edition!

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

THE FUTURE OF MARKETING: WHAT WILL CHANGE AND WHAT WILL NOT

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Permission may be requested through the Singapore offi ce. 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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Rayana Pandey Editor

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 4 | a d ve r t i s i ng + m a r ke t i ng 1

29/9/2014 12:52:17 PM

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CONTENTS

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PAGE 10 OPINION HOW TO EMBRACE THE NEW MARKETING ERA

PAGE 14 NEWS ANALYSIS TODAY’S CMOS ARE SO FOCUSED ON LEVERAGING DIGITAL CHANNELS THEY ARE MISSING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF THE BROADER DIGITAL PLAYING FIELD. REZWANA MANJUR REPORTS.

PAGE 16 PROFILE HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH A TALENT SHORTAGE? AD VETERAN AND BMW’S GLOBAL BRAND DIRECTOR STEVEN ALTHAUS DISCUSSES HIS SOLUTION AND THE ROLE OF AGENCIES WITH ELIZABETH LOW.

PAGE 62 A+M INSIGHTS IN THE LATEST A+M INSIGHTS SPONSORED BY YAHOO, WE FIND OUT THE COMMON MISTAKES MARKETERS ARE MAKING WHEN IT COMES TO DIGITAL MARKETING.

PAGE 55 “TODAY, EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR BUSINESS BECOMES PART OF YOUR BRAND. ARE YOU A GOOD EMPLOYER? ARE YOU A SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE COMPANY? DO YOUR EMPLOYEES SHARE YOUR VALUES? DO YOU PAY YOUR VENDORS ON TIME? DO YOU HAVE A NICE OFFICE SPACE?” – THOMAS WONG, AIA

PAGE 32 “AGILITY IS GOING TO BE KEY AND BRANDS THAT RECOGNISE THIS WILL SUCCEED.” – RAHUL ASTHANA, KIMBERLY-CLARK ASIA PACIFIC W W W .MA R KET ING - INT ERAC TIVE . COM

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PAGE 33 “CREATE A MOUNTAIN OF AMAZING OPINIONS ABOUT YOUR BRAND THAT DRIVES WOM AND EVENTUALLY PURCHASE FOR YOUR BRAND.” – ASEEM PURI, UNILEVER

PAGE 52 “MOBILE HAS CHANGED THE LANDSCAPE FOR MALAYSIAN RETAILERS, OFFERING THE OPPORTUNITY TO REACH A WIDER AUDIENCE WITH GREATER CONVENIENCE, CONNECTION AND FLEXIBILITY THAN EVER BEFORE.” – RAFIQ RAZALI, GROUPON MALAYSIA

PAGE 60

PAGE 64 LAST WORD

TIME FOR CMOS AND CIOS TO BECOME FRIENDS.

WHAT NOT TO DO WHEN CLIENTS STEAL YOUR IDEAS S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 4 | a d ve r t i s i ng + m a r ke t i ng 3

24/9/2014 10:41:53 AM

NEWS

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

Letters for the future AIA launched a new campaign, “Letters for the Future”, to invite parents to write their messages of love and hopes – to later be shared with their children. The campaign was motivated by the insight parents often tend to focus on the present, and sometimes find it difficult to say the things that matter most to them. Through the campaign, AIA hopes to get parents to reflect on their most important thoughts, hopes or advice they would like to share with their children and then write them down, virtually at first.

Hamid steps down Malaysian MRT Corp chief executive Datuk Azhar Abdul Hamid resigned from the role following a deadly site accident.

He told Malay Mail Online: “As the head of MRT Corp, I am taking personal responsibility for the incident and this is the correct thing to do. I have informed the chairman of MRT Corp, Tan Sri Dr Ali Hamsa, of my decision.”

Meanwhile, Malaysian netizens lauded Hamid’s move to step down.

Optimedia Malaysia wins big Inbisco and IPC International Group appointed Optimedia Malaysia as their social media agency without a pitch. IPC International Group is in the mobile and e-commerce business and Inbisco produces coffee, chocolate and biscuits for the Malaysian consumer. Optimedia Malaysia’s remit for both brands will cover social media consultancy, content creation, social activation and event coverage.

Bolt app comes to Malaysia Instagram launched its latest standalone one-to-one visual messaging app Bolt in Malaysia and Australia. The two markets are a tthe fourth and fifth countries to see tthe launch after the initial roll out iin Singapore, New Zealand and South Africa. Users can sign up S ffor Bolt using their mobile phone number, which will then sync n with the contacts/address book w tto find friends who are also using Bolt. Users can select up to 20 B contacts, or “favourites”, and send c tthem a message with a single tap.

A creative offer Y&R Malaysia appointed Joshua Tay as creative director. Before this role, he was associative creative director for two years.

He first started his advertising career after graduating from the Malaysian Institute of Art and has been in the industry for about 18 years. As an integral part of Y&R Malaysia’s team, he has contributed much to the agency’s numerous recent new business wins, including Sunway Iskandar, Sun Life Insurance and others.

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A new CEO Allianz Malaysia Berhad (AMB) appointed Zakri Mohd Khir as CEO. He will take over the role as CEO of AMB – the holding company for Life and P & C insurance business. He is also the first Malaysian to be appointed the country manager and CEO of AMB to lead Allianz in Malaysia.

He joined Allianz Malaysia in 2000 as the head of industrial business.

Before his new appointment, he was the CEO of Allianz General Insurance Company (Malaysia) Berhad, the general insurance subsidiary of AMB. He has more than 26 years of experience in the insurance industry.

A new lead Integrated communications consultancy Text100 appointed Vijayaratnam Tharumartnam as managing consultant for Text100 Malaysia. Effective 1 September 2014, he will lead the agency’s operations in Malaysia while delivering strategic client consultancy and managing a strong team of 30 consultants with a focus on driving overall growth strategy. His appointment will bolster Text100’s strategic consulting capabilities and see its Malaysia operations broaden its reach across business sectors, the company said.

Cycling on OCBC Bank plans to refresh its OCBC Cycle event in Singapore and Malaysia and is on the hunt for a new event organiser. The bank is calling for tenders from interested event organisers.

The previous event organiser for the OCBC Cycle Singapore and OCBC Cycle Malaysia was Spectrum Worldwide. OCBC said the contract had ended with Spectrum and declined to comment further.

Lowe hires new director Lowe Malaysia appointed Shukri Jai as its new client services director. He will be responsible for developing and maintaining stakeholder partnerships across the agency. He joins Lowe from NagaDDB, where he was the business unit head. Across his 14year career in the industry, he has held integral roles for both agency and client-side and brings a solid understanding of stakeholder needs from both perspectives.

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24/9/2014 12:26:35 PM

NEWS

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A long-term affair Y&R Singapore has been retained as M1’s creative agency of record, extending the agencyclient partnership until 2016.

Originally appointed in 2008, Y&R Singapore’s creative work for M1 includes campaigns such as “Welcome to the World of M1”, and “M1. For Every One”.

“We look forward to more bold and imaginative ideas from Y&R as we navigate the future of communications together,” said P Subramaniam, chief marketing officer at M1.

Ramping up PropertyGuru has stepped up its communications and marketing efforts by appointing UM Singapore for its media planning duties and Vocanic as its social media agency. UM Singapore oversees media planning and buying for the portal’s advertising activities, in addition to the event marketing activity assistance it has provided PropertyGuru for the past nine months. It also recently appointed H+K Strategies as its PR agency.

A smart move Smaato, a mobile real-time bidding (RTB) ad exchange (SMX) and supply side platform (SSP), is collaborating with BlackBerry.

Smaato SDKs provide BlackBerry developers with a simple way to include demographic data such as gender, age or keywords describing the content the user sees. This is aimed at increasing demand for advertisers by improving precision and targeting capabilities, and leads to a higher advertising bid.

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Adapting to change Mindshare entered into an exclusive partnership with big data outfit Crayon Data to power its planning, insights and consultancy offering. The partnership aims to allow for greater adaptive solutions for marketers, to identify different consumer profiles and segments, and to target and track profiles across a complex range of media channels, including social media and video. Mindshare said this partnership continued its focus on developing leadership in adaptive marketing.

Foxy new look FOX International Channels (FIC) appointed local agency The Alchemy Partnership (pictured) to lead the campaign for the launch of the new FOX Sports Network.

This followed a pitch against other multinational agency networks earlier in the year. The job scope covers the launch campaign which includes TV, print, activation and digital for regional markets.

The markets include Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam.

Pernod appoints GOVT Pernod Ricard Malaysia appointed Singaporean agency GOVT to handle its creative account.

The agency is working across all of Pernod Ricard Malaysia’s portfolios, and with brands such as Martell, Chivas Regal, Glenlivet, Aberlour, Absolut Vodka and G.H. Mumm Champagnes. Going forward, the agency will also be working on creative and brand strategies, conceptualisation and ideation before implementing goto-market strategies.

Game on Deloitte has come on board as the official professional services partner for the 28th SEA Games with the Singapore Southeast Asian Games Organising Committee (SINGSOC). Pledging more than SG$5 million in cash and value-in-kind services such as advisory, assurance and consulting services, Deloitte is now the third “Tier One” sponsor for the games.

Deloitte will also provide SINGSOC with talent and manpower as part of the deal.

Adding more bite Next Fifteen Communications Group reorganised its operations to bring together Text100 and Bite in the Asia Pacific region. The newly combined Asia business, operating under the Text100 brand, is about a 300-strong integrated communications agency with an expanded presence in Mainland China, India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia.

The move also sees Bite’s Asia Pacific president and founder of Upstream Asia David Ketchum exit the agency.

Kicking goals Tiger Beer launched the Tiger Street Football campaign with the help of iris Singapore. In its fourth year, the campaign launches with an online film featuring acclaimed former international football star, Deco. “If football is so beautiful, why do we keep it caged?” says Deco in the TVC, which shows a stadium torn down as a dramatic symbolic display of what Tiger Street Football is all about.

Kallang appoints agency Kallang Wave Mall appointed Y&R Singapore as the creative agency for the shopping and leisure complex at the new Singapore Sports Hub. The mall is run by SMRT Alpha, a joint venture by subsidiaries of SMRT and NTUC FairPrice. SMRT Alpha was appointed by the Singapore Sports Hub to manage the retail space. Y&R Singapore will conceptualise the mall’s branding and communications ahead of its official opening.

Lighting up After becoming the title sponsor of the Singapore Grand Prix, Singapore Airlines is launching its first branded event for the sponsorship. It first announced it was taking over the title sponsorship for the Singapore Grand Prix in April, with a series of print ads in local papers. It also announced its branded event called the Singapore Airlines “Light Up The Night” Carnival which was held on 16 August.

Standing out Singapore’s well-linked innovation ecosystem, strong innovation infrastructure and investments in human capital have helped the city earn a solid reputation as being an innovative economy. According to the Global Innovation Index (GII), co-published by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organisation, Singapore topped the regional rankings to emerge as the leading innovative economy in Asia and achieved seventh place among the 143 economies surveyed worldwide.

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24/9/2014 12:27:00 PM

NEWS

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New look for Valore Valore, parent company of the Challenger brand, launched a new look in its stores. Retail and brand consultant agency FITCH was appointed to create a new seamless retail experience for the brand. Taking cues from the fast-paced nature of the fashion industry, Valore’s new positioning allows consumers to shop for their tech accessories by colour or “life moment” both in the physical store and online.

A big win Singapore Sports Council (SSC) appointed UM Singapore as its media agency. UM is required to plan, strategise and execute media strategies. It is also required to propose appropriate advertising media, co-ordinate and place media bookings for Sport Singapore’s programmes, initiatives and campaigns, inclusive of the 28th SEA Games.

Vying for the account were Dentsu Singapore, OMD, PHD, ZenithOptimedia and Square Innovations.

More gain for Singapore Changi Airport Group (CAG) launched a Growth and Assistance Incentive (GAIN) programme to strengthen the airport’s “hub status” and anchor Singapore as a major air gateway to and from the region. It is committing a total of SG$100 million through various initiatives, and to stimulate traffic demand, CAG will invest in destination marketing campaigns to promote Singapore in major source markets such as Australia, China, India, Indonesia and Russia.

Saying sorry Singapore’s national carrier Singapore Airlines apologised for a post it published on its Facebook page which read: “Customers may wish to note that Singapore Airlines flights are not using Ukraine airspace.” It suffered a backlash from the public over the post – being accused of insensitivity in relation to the MH17 tragedy. In a statement to Marketing, an SIA spokesperson clarified that the post was in response to many requests from its customers who had asked for information about flight routes for their upcoming flights with the carrier.

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New bonds Design agency JKR Global redesigned the packaging for Australian underwear brand Bonds. The new design is said to take Bonds back to its roots, building on the foundations of a very strong and recognisable logo. The overhaul, conducted for Pacific Brands Underwear R Group in Australia, was led by JKR Singapore. The redesign covers all Bonds products including Wondersuit, an iconic product for the brand.

To the future ADSKOM, a Singapore-based programmatic advertising startup, raised SG$1.06 million in seedround funding from investors Digital Garage, East Ventures, Beenos Plaza and Skystar Capital.

ADSKOM provides programmatic advertising platforms to help adbuyers reach their audience more efficiently, and to help publishers increase revenues. With close to 40 people, Adskom is led by Daniel Armanto (pictured right), CTO of the company and CEO Italo Gani (pictured left).

No more grey areas Grey Group Singapore launched its own in-house production facility called GreyWorks Singapore. This new arm aims to bring the agency together as a one-stop shop for all post-production work which provides convenience to brand owners by centralising advertising implementations and by reducing the time taken to create a campaign. Under GreyWorks’ centralised model, all stages of the post-production work are done under one roof.

A symbiotic relationship JWT Singapore will join the Gigya NEXUS Partner Ecosystem, a network of over 50 independent software vendors and agencies that provide Gigya customers with full suite of consumer identity and data management products.

The non-exclusive partnership will extend out to JWT’s Asia markets.

Gigya will provide JWT access to any new features and application updates as well as training for the JWT Singapore digital team.

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24/9/2014 10:37:46 AM

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NEWS

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Coffee or tea?

The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf will make its entry into the Japanese market by the end of this year.

The brand signed an exclusive area development agreement with developer L.A. Style to introduce its beverages into the market. L.A. Style is a joint venture partnership between HOTLAND, an actively growing operator in the Japanese fast-casual restaurant segment, and AEON MALL, a Japanese shopping mall developer.

Havas’ new business Havas Media Group India won the integrated digital duties for Businessworld (BW) in a multiagency pitch. BW has spotted key trends in the economy and business for three decades, including the rise of the IT sector in the 1990s and more recently the social media, healthcare and e-tail booms. The magazine now embarks on a new journey to create an international standard digital platform.

Doing the math Digital media buying platform MediaMath opened a new office in Sydney, Australia. In addition, a number of the staff from advertising technology company Kinected will join the MediaMath team in Australia to enhance its presence in the country and broaden product offerings to clients and partners. Kinected has worked in partnership with MediaMath for the past two and a half years in Australia.

You can depend on us In its latest campaign for its incontinence underwear Depend, Kimberly-Clark is asking folks to “drop their pants”. Through the campaign “Underwareness”, the brand hopes to reduce the social stigma of bladder leakage. Created

by Ogilvy & Mather, the campaign aims to reach out to people under the age of 50. The brand also teamed up with the band Capital Cities for its launch party.

LinkedIn buys Bizo LinkedIn is buying B2B ad tech firm Bizo for US$175 million.

The transaction, which sees a combination of 10% stock and 90% cash, is expected to be closed in Q3 2014. Deep Nishar, LinkedIn’s SVP of product and user experience, said: “Our ability to integrate Bizo’s B2B solutions with our content marketing products will enable us to become the most effective platform for B2B marketers to engage professionals.”

PepsiCo launches campaign Suntory PepsiCo Vietnam Beverage launched a campaign for the Japanese brand C.C. Lemon in Vietnam. The campaign was created by BBDO Vietnam.

The new 60-second commercial focuses on the “lively” and healthy feeling the drinker enjoys with C.C. Lemon. This is illustrated through the TVC adopting a musical genre. Through the campaign the brand hopes to evoke an uplifting physical and emotional effect on consumers.

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Dads know best General Mills is putting dads on the map with its new campaign promoting peanut butter Cheerios.

The campaign shows modern day fathers #HowToDad and do it right. It explains the various perks and jobs that only a dad can understand and the diverse roles fathers play in the eyes of their children. The campaign was created by Tribal Worldwide in Toronto.

Streamlining operations As part of a massive streamlining exercise, Procter & Gamble will be dropping a majority of its brands to focus on its top earners. The largest consumer products firm today, Procter & Gamble will sell, discontinue, merge or eliminate up to 100 brands in the next two years as part of a cost-cutting exercise – and to focus on its top 70 to 80 brands.

Off the table The deal between Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox and Time Warner is off the table.

21st Century Fox announced it was pulling the plug on the US$80 billion bid on Time Warner.

Murdoch, chairman and CEO, said despite the proposal having “significant strategic merit and compelling financial rationale” the Time Warner management and its board “refused to engage” with his company.

Bolting ahead Instagram looks set to take on SnapChat as it launches its newest app Bolt, a tool that allows you to instantly send pictures and videos to friends. A one-to-one visual messaging tool, Bolt allows users to shoot and send photos to friends with a single tap. The app is being launched in Singapore, South Africa and New Zealand.

HOW MUCH DOES THAT COST? ST? T?

THE PLEASURE WAS S ALL MAGNUM’S Last year Magnum launched its Magnum Pink and Black campaign to push demand for its new flavours and attract the 20 to 30-year-old target audience.

The campaign, created by The Alchemy Partnership, ran in-store in supermarkets, hypermarkets and convenience service outlets throughout Singapore; as well as on outdoor bus and bus shelter posters, and in various social media advertisements.

Mindshare Singapore handled the media buying for the campaign.

As part of the campaign, Magnum also created a sleek paper folder which was a special ad in The Straits Times. The newspaper folder aimed to communicate the unique proposition of each ice-cream in a unique manner that grabbed the reader’s attention. At the back of the

folder, Magnum also extended the brand’s invitation to pleasure seekers to visit the fi rst Magnum Pleasure Store launch in Singapore located at Clarke Quay.

For this creative buy by Magnum, the brand did a zonal buy with SPH which meant the campaign would run only in certain areas of the country. The media cost for a zonal buy is about SG$50,000.

This amount did not include production costs of the envelope.

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24/9/2014 12:25:55 PM

NEWS

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More partnerships eBay appointed MediaCom and Goodby Silverstein & Partners as its media and creative agencies respectively. The agencies are supporting its global media and creative business. eBay said as its brand evolves, it is constantly looking for new ways to inspire and engage its buyers and sellers around the world.

Goodby Silverstein & Partners and Mediacom will help eBay explore how to continue telling the eBay story.

Into the future The Futures Company expanded to Shanghai, a move that followed its launch of a Singapore office in 2013. Kunal Sinha (pictured), Ogilvy & Mather’s former chief knowledge officer for China and cultural insights director for Asia Pacific, is leading The Futures Company in China. Sinha is also taking up the role of chairman for Asia Pacific, working closely with Singapore-based Stephane Alpern, the managing director for Asia Pacific.

Making TV cool again Panasonic launched a new crowdsourced ad campaign for its ultra-high definition VIERA 4K TV product. To make TV cool for the younger generation, it created original videos co-created

by YouTube video creators.

The campaign aims to promote Panasonic’s VIERA 4K TV, an ultra-high definition set, “as the perfect screen to enjoy watching online videos such as YouTube videos”, said the company in a press statement.

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Guinness appoints agencies Guinness appointed BBDO and Iris Worldwide to handle its global digital duties. BBDO is leading strategic insight, content creation and digital activation for the brand globally. The current global appointment also adds to BBDO’s existing creative responsibilities in Africa, Western Europe and North America. Iris Worldwide will lead integrated marketing through to the point of purchase – focusing on delivering experiential, shopper marketing and trade advocacy programmes.

A new look To coincide with a PR storm that unravelled around tainted meat used by McDonald’s from food supplier Husi Shanghai, the chain is embarking on an 18-month rebranding plan to reshape its basic offerings, including business value, service, marketing and menu. “To reignite momentum over the next 18 months, we’re focused on fortifying the foundational elements of our business by concentrating our efforts on compelling value, marketing and operations excellence to become a more relevant and trusted brand,” said McDonald’s president and CEO Don Thompson

New partnership M&C Saatchi Worldwide partnered up with Delhi-based independent creative agency February to see the launch of a new Indian agency: M&C Saatchi February. February’s founders Gopal Krishnan and Nirmal Pulickal will be taking over the leadership of the combined operation. They will be supported

by Anjali Nayar (pictured centre), the current CEO of M&C Saatchi Delhi, who has been appointed president of the new venture.

AUDIT WATCH

WEEKENDER COMPLETES FIRST AUDIT The mass circulation leisure and entertainment weekly newspaper, Weekender, has completed its fi rst audit since it launched in 2012.

Founded by Frank Young, its editorial director and CEO, and David Phey, chief operating officer, both of whom have held various roles in the advertising industry, the newspaper saw its fi rst audit for the period of October 2012 to June 2013.

It officially has an audited circulation of 206,949, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations Singapore.

Speaking to Marketing, Phey said the company believed it was very important for the media to be credible and measurable. “There are a number of other checks: readership, profiling, but the most important one is circulation auditing,” said Phey, who previously held the position of business group director at Dentsu.

Another OOH venture Dentsu Aegis Network acquired OOH company Milestone Brandcom in India.

The acquisition of Milestone Brandcom comes following the acquisition of Posterscope – Dentsu Aegis Network’s global outdoor media agency. Founded in October 2009, Milestone Brandcom will continue to be led by founder and managing director Nabendu Bhattacharyya after the acquisition. He will report to Ashish Bhasin, chairman and CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network, South Asia.

Go Communications expands to Indonesia Independent PR network Go Communications has formed a partnership with SKPR Asia in Indonesia. The GO Group partnership offices in Asia now include Indonesia, China, Japan, Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, India and Sri Lanka. SKPR Asia has clients in real estate, banking, FMCG, consumer and retail industries.

“When we can provide that authenticity to advertisers and media agencies, we can build trust. Otherwise they will always be in doubt. Some of the largest and most credible publishers do circulation audits as well.”

The Weekender continues to target a mass audience, and has recently seen advertisers such as TungLok, EU Holidays, Canon, Topseller, Econ Minimart as well as the three telcos advertising in it.

The publication is distributed at 32 MRT stations and 200 7-11 outlets island-wide.

The newspaper was launched in August 2012.

Globe turns on direct carrier billing for Google Play Google Play is now supporting carrier billing with Globe Telecom as another option to pay for apps, in-app items, books, movie rentals and everything offered by the internet giant’s store. Globe Telecom is the first network in the Philippines to support the feature, allowing its subscribers to shop from Google Play and pay for the download using their prepaid load or monthly postpaid bill. The service has been rolling out since 20 August and is scheduled to be completed. It will be exclusively available to Globe Postpaid, Prepaid and TM customers. To date, Globe has yet to appear on Google’s official list of carriers that support direct billing.

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24/9/2014 12:26:05 PM

NEWS ANALYSIS

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EMBRACING THE MODERN MARKETING ERA Learn the “digital body language” of potential customers, don’t scare them off.

Touch and go: Marketers need to truly understand and embrace digital.

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As the baby boomer generation, which was responsible for the setting up of many organisations today retires, the marketing strategies they brought to businesses are also starting to disappear. However, it’s happening at the right time as new and potential consumers want to approach the sales process the way they’ve become accustomed to in the modern digital era.

Customers today have vast digital content and online information at their fingertips that they can self-navigate in a form that’s convenient to them – whether through mobile and social media or with information-rich websites. They already know exactly what they need and when to take action to get what they want. Against this backdrop, customers are entering into more “invasive” sales conversations with organisations at a much later stage than they have in the past.

This is while being in more control of the pace and content of the organisations’ sales cycles.

This trend overturns the traditional sales and marketing processes, and puts marketers previously unused to these new means of delivery into catch-up mode. They are trying to learn new ways to deliver their message while maintaining a clear line of sight to their customers.

To better engage with customers, organisations must learn to use their websites more effectively and find out how to take advantage of the “digital body language” of potential customers – that is the information amassed as they progress through the phases of the buying process, seeking, receiving, using and responding to information – so marketers know when and how to approach them without scaring them off. “Modern marketing” can help marketers keep up with these emerging needs.

Applying the five tenets of modern marketing In a survey conducted by BtoB Research Services and Crain Communications, the definition of “modern marketing” was revealed as “... the forces shaping a new set of capabilities that marketers must use to succeed in today’s new digital setting”.

The findings identified the five core tenets of modern marketing: targeting, engagement, analytics, conversion and marketing technology.

With the understanding based on digital body language, engagements based on each buyer’s own timing and reality, converting only when buyers are ready to engage sales, and learning in context of real-time metrics, today’s marketers can leverage the new “modern marketing” approach to drive substantial top and bottomline improvements for their businesses.

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1. Targeting Targeting means developing a clear picture of your potential customers by knowing who are involved in the buying process, their exact roles and responsibilities. It involves creating proper strategies for data collection and management, and using dynamic profiling to properly align your targets with changing market and business needs. This can all help gather the information that goes far beyond traditional demographics.

2. Engagement Modern customers want more value from their interactions, including information delivery that can help fuel the decision-making process.

Engagement is about reaching the right people at the right time, but today it’s more than that. It’s about reaching them in the right way and delivering the proper content via the right medium, and using an appropriate mix of activities, including public relations, websites, social media, blogging, events and demand generation.

3. Conversion In the modern era, purchasing decisions are often made before a sales person even gets involved. Converting a potential customer into an actual customer, or a potential brokerdealer into a new recruit, depends on the marketing efforts in place, on improving the customer experience as they learn about your organisation and offerings, and to enhance the flow of information between sales and marketing. This means devising quality inquiryto-customer strategies and collaborating with sales to deliver high-quality leads.

marketing functions, include workflow and marketing automation, social monitoring and business intelligence (BI). The right marketing automation technology can make it easier to navigate through each step of the conversion cycle, keep up with compliance needs, and integrate the other four tenets of “modern marketing” completely.

The five tenets of “modern marketing” were created based on today’s marketing environment where customers are self-educated with a clearer idea of what they want out of the sales and marketing process. Marketers who are stuck doing things the way they’ve always done them can find their old campaigns and processes don’t work the same as they always have, and that new tools and more efficient strategies are needed instead.

From the five tenets, modern marketing’s best practices can be established and thus set the tone for new marketing efforts while maximising the website, social media and marketing technology. Marketers can move away from manual processes to improve the marketing department’s output, and measure the output to ensure future success, all with the ultimate aim of enhancing the relationships with potential customers, to increase revenue growth while shortening the sales cycle, and to report stronger marketing return-on-investment to management.

4. Analytics Data analytics and reporting have as much a place in “modern marketing” as events and campaigns. In fact, measuring the results of the marketing process is one of the most important differentiators in “modern marketing”. Understand your returns on the marketing investment and measure them as the marketing’s contribution to revenue as a whole to help solidify the role of marketing in the big commercial picture; so that you know which actions are successful and which are not.

5. Marketing technology The final piece of the puzzle for “modern marketing” is the right marketing technology.

Solutions that integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation (SFA) platforms to provide multiple

The writer is Nik Feizal Hanafi, country manager, Applications, Oracle Malaysia.

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FACEBOOK INITIATES NEW POLICY FOR GENUINE FANS Facebook is getting rid of “Like-Gate”, and here’s what you need to know. Jennifer Chan reports.

Facebook is looking for true brand love: Does your brand have it?

The number of “likes” is often a benchmark for a brand’s successful Facebook strategy, but the number of genuine likes or what Facebook calls “quality connections” is often under question.

Often called “Like-Gate”, forcing users to like their pages to gain access to apps and games, is a widely employed strategy by brands to inflate their popularity.

Now Facebook is trying to make sure when users “like” a page, they truly like it.

The social media giant has announced a new policy on a developer blog to knock down the “Like-Gate” to ensure “quality connections”, effective 5 November.

It reads: “You must not incentivise people to use social plug-ins or to like a page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a page. It remains acceptable to incentivise people to login to your app, check in at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s page.

“To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this

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update will benefit people and advertisers alike.”

In a nutshell, brands are no longer able to force a user to “like” their page to enter contests or to receive incentives.

Rudi Leung, general manager of Social@ Ogilvy, regards the new policy as a “positive change” for not only brands, but also agencies.

“As Facebook users are moving away from desktop to mobile, the Like-Gate tactic will be obsoleted sooner or later anyway.

“A lot of brand pages have been relying on the Like-Gate tactic to acquire new fans. From now on, they need to give a stronger reason to make someone liking their page.”

Apparently, Facebook is now looking for true love, and so should brands, Leung stressed.

“As a brand, you should also give true love back to your customers rather than just wanting to acquire a huge volume of them without building a genuine relationship.

“A lot of marketers are still living in the reach/ broadcast mindset from the past. When it comes to social media, all they care is how many people they can reach and how far they can amplify their marketing message.

“From now on, they should stop just

counting the numbers of customers that they can reach. Instead, they should start considering to reach the customers that count.”

Mark Chan, managing partner of CMRS, considers the policy a reasonable one because it allows a “grace period” for app developers and marketers to adjust their Facebook strategies.

“It affects most of the local marketers I believe, as they tend to do fan acquisition through giveaways or incentives,” Chan said.

“Now they have to look into how to connect with the fans, who are ideally the brand lovers and advocates, customers or potential customers, by portraying the brand story through the right content.”

He said it had been observed that many brand pages were able to acquire fans, but were not engaging and responding to fans and, more importantly, not doing advocacy for their pages or the brands.

“I believe only genuine fans are useful to brands. Hence, the new rules will restrict those who are chasing after sheer ‘like’ numbers, but not the quality of fans.”

With this golden gate for “likes” demolished, where should brands look ahead?

“Social media is all about building relationships,” said Leung, “so consider your fans on Facebook an extension of your CRM practice. Pampering them consistently rather than feeding them like zombies with random incentives.

“Don’t invest in Facebook media only during a campaign period. Consider an always-on Facebook media strategy for fan acquisition.

Have a long-term strategy rather than a tactical one.”

Ben Woo, project director of Pixo Punch, agreed on the value of maintaining quality content, but stressed the importance to beef up investment in the social space.

“Given the organic reach for wall contents is dropping occasionally, the only way out would be allocating a larger budget on social ads placement, and increasing ad spending to maintain the reach and attract new fans,” Woo said.

“Marketers should also redefine the KPI for maintaining the page, they should no longer cherish only the number of fans, but more on the engagement of each piece of content.”

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CAN PR AGENCIES BE AS CREATIVE AS AD AGENCIES? “Conceptual thinkers are not the purview of ad agencies.” Golin Harris’ ambition to take from the creative agency model. Elizabeth Low reports. about how this helped the agency produce videos for clients.

With all its efforts, has the PR agency picked up a traditional ad brief?

Yes, said Hughes, revealing it had signed on a Singapore-based client, and had been tasked to do all aspects of the account, from logo creation to advertising duties and public relations. But he declined to reveal the company.

Blurring the lines: Can PR agencies be as creative?

It’s a year since Interpublic’s GolinHarris introduced an internal revamp to its G4 model.

Now it has recently appointed Caroline Dettman as its global chief creative and community officer to oversee the network’s creative work.

Last year, GolinHarris revamped its internal operations according to what it calls the G4 model, classifying its operations into four groups: strategists, connectors, creatives and catalysts.

According to its explanation, strategists take care of insights, connectors over media relations, catalysts can be seen as “brand stewards” and, of course, creatives over creative work.

In an interview with A+M, Dettman and international president Jonathan Hughes talk about why PR agencies can be as creative as ad agencies.

On mimicking ad agencies When asked if the agency was mimicking the ad agency model, both did not deny it.

“As an industry, PR still isn’t thought of as being able to think big cut-through ideas. People still think of a traditional ad agency for that. PR agencies need to be able to show they have that capability. If you really want to engage in proper integrated marketing you need to be able to

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handle all aspects of that and not live in a narrow silo,” Hughes said.

“We have good account people who are good at media relations. We need to focus on bringing in good creatives. Ad agencies created the job of a planner and we need to bring those people in.”

They are competition, said Dettman, referring to ad agencies.

“If you look at the biggest campaigns today – I’ll tell you that they are all very much ‘PR’ ideas,” she said.

“Coming from Cannes and seeing the campaigns, when agencies promote the success of it, they always talk about the earned media aspect.

“So, you see the PR agencies trying to move into the ad space and the ad agencies into the PR space. They have been amazing at the creative packaging, we have been the better storytellers.”

Even in its hiring, it looks like the agency is moving the way of the ad shops. When asked where he was solving talent crunch issues (something that plagues any agency), Hughes said that of late, one area was in hiring graduates trained in areas such as videography – talking

Can PR guys be as creative as the ad guys?

Dettman said her team consisted of creatives from ad agencies, as well as those from PR agencies. I ask her if there is a difference in thinking from either. (Dettman herself is a classic PR executive, having worked in various roles at PR agencies throughout her career.)

“Conceptual thinkers are not the purview of ad agencies. (Ad agencies) are great at content creation and making things look beautiful. But conceptual thinkers are a very small group of people and everyone is gunning to find them.

You can find them in either profession.

“I’ve worked with creative directors who grew up in the ad world and the ones who worked in the PR world and it depends on the person. Not all the creative directors who grow up in traditional advertising are conceptual thinkers and not all can get past the tactical. It doesn’t matter what background you’re from, you have to be a good idea person.”

What’s the biggest challenge for the PR industry now, I ask.

Dettman’s answer and solution appears to lie once again in ad agency thinking.

“It’s being able to have creative bravery – getting our account leaders to have the creativity that ad agencies have.

“There has been a misguided thought where account servicing executives become yes men instead of a counsel to the client. We have to make sure that everyone, not just creatives, are pushing that perspective through.”

Once again, in justifying the PR industry’s creativity, Hughes mentions the campaign done

by PR firm Red Consultancy in Australia which won several awards: The Most Powerful Arm. (The campaign is a petition to raise funds for a charity, Save our Sons, for the condition of Duchenne muscular dystrophy.)

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FIVE THINGS SUCCESSFUL CMOS SHOULD DO CMOs reveal their biggest digital concerns. Rezwana Manjur reports.

Accenture recently released a survey titled CMOs: Time for digital transformation.

According to the survey, today’s CMOs are so focused on leveraging digital channels they are missing the full potential of the broader digital playing field.

With the increasing pace of technology and device innovation, the survey states that one in four CMOs cite a lack of critical technology or

tools as the chief barrier to digital integration.

CMOs know a plethora of digital technologies to leverage. Their challenge, however, is to rally around the right ones for their business.

Also, despite 77% of marketers saying it is essential or very important to deliver an effective customer experience for their company, only 62% think they’re doing a good job. While the customer experience is the No.1 recipient of

investments among high-growth companies (at 69%), only one-third of high-growth companies report their online and offline analytic capabilities are completely integrated across all functions.

Rise of the CDO With the influx of digital comes the birth of roles such as the chief digital officer (CDO). CDOs have recently emerged to fill the gap left in marketing

Areas of fundamental change for marketing over the next five years (%) 42

Analytics skills will be a core competence of marketing Digital budgets will account for over 75% of the marketing budget

37

Mobile will account for over 50% of the marketing budget

35

Marketing will become more of an on-demand information provision function

34

Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service will be merged into a single function

34

We will not know what a marketing campaign will look like in advance: campaigns will unfold in real time, depending on the individual needs and intents of each customer across every device and channel

32

Earned media will be more important and receive more support than paid and owned media

27

Marketing and IT will be merged into a single function

26

CMOs will be the most important relationship for CEOs, surpassing the CFO and other C-suite executives

21

We will be known as a digital company

21

Source: Accenture, Time for digital transformation

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Barriers to performance improvement 2014 - Digital Orientation; for companies with increased sales, little or no sales growth and decreased sales

Our organization lacks critical technology or tools

2014

Our people lack the required skills

2014

We are not sufficiently integrated with other business functions

2014

We do not have sufficient senior leadership commitment

2014

We have inefficient business practices

2014

18

We lack the funding

2014

19

High performers

Stayed the same

25

25

13

34

13 19

22

15

13

9

8

20

18

21

18

17

Low performers

Customer experience ranks very highly on the CMO agenda but performance is lagging importance

By Sales Growth (%)

How important is delivering an effective customer experience to your company?

Increased (>5%)

31

Stayed the same (0-5%)

58 45

Decreased (<0%)

How successful is your company in delivering effective customer experiences?

31

89

32 29

48

77

23

49 28

60

14

71 63

13 41

By Business Type (%) Business-to-Business (B2B)

39

Business-to-Business-to-Consumer (B2B2C)

39

43

Business-to-Consumer (B2C)

37

46

Importance:

Important

Essential Performance:

Very successful

29

44

68

12 56

48

82 83

45

20 17

68 62

Extremely successful

Source: Accenture, Time for digital transformation

and is a title the marketing industry will hear more and more as digital capabilities take hold.

According to the survey, CDOs are deeply committed to a digital vision. They act as a catalyst for digital transformation, and are individuals the CMO should work closely with to enable a cross-functional focus on customer experience. CDOs are concerned with every digital touch-point – where data is going and how it is used.

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Therefore, according to Accenture, here’s what a successful CMO should do: • Lead and transform the marketing role as a digital perspective transforms the enterprise.

• Embrace the full omni-channel customer experience.

• Integrate channels with real-time analytics and then act on the insights.

• Invest in agile technologies and cloud-based services.

•

Reorient the marketing operating model and integrate new talent to harness digital innovation.

Meanwhile, here are some other fundamental areas of change you can expect if you are in the CMO role (or eyeing it).

The survey results are based on the responses of 581 marketers across 11 countries and 10 industries.

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PROFILE

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PROFILE

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PROFILE “Talent crunch? It’s not a problem.”

It is our first meeting, but the conversation with BMW’s global director of brand management and marketing services Steven Althaus shifts quickly.

The outspoken marketer starts off by quizzing me on the current issues we’ve been seeing in Asia’s agency landscape. It was timely, given I had just come from meetings with several agency leads who had been bemoaning their talent issues. How agencies are finding their footing for their business models is another.

The German national’s early days in advertising was for leading ad agency Springer & Jacoby before heading client-side to German finance and insurance firm Allianz. He then moved to lead Publicis’ German and Austrian operations before making a high profile move to his current role at BMW in January 2013. At Publicis, under his reign as CEO and chairman, the agency was streamlined together with the management board.

It seems his penchant for pushing change has continued in his role at BMW. First, in his outlook on hiring. Continuing on the issue of talent shortage, he says: “There’s no such thing as a talent crunch if you are looking beyond the obvious. If you are always looking for the same kind of talent – like a square peg in a square hole, looking to recreate the marketer from the 80s and 90s then yes, you would have that.”

Every company will have a number of topics it needs to have a voice or an opinion on. Then the company needs to find the right people to have a seat at the table of that discussion, he adds.

“CMOs are simply looking for the best people – we are searching for great ideas, and these can come from anywhere. I can only ask everyone to go beyond the traditional silo of thinking.”

The same goes for his approach with agency partners. One other trend in recent years is the blurring of agency roles – for example, PR or media buying agencies looking to be more like ad agencies and vice versa. To Althaus, this is good progress. A convergence of ideas, just the way industries are going, is a good thing.

“In the automotive industry we are influenced by trends from consumer electronics. What holds true for individuals also holds true for industries. There are a great number of individuals, no matter what age they are, who are looking for this ‘cross fertilisation’ of industries. I find this approach more robust,” he says.

It comes back to agencies or people that can help the company to express BMW’s stand, which he sums up as mobility, urbanisation and sustainability.

“This goes way beyond a briefing that a company expresses. We really need a journey partner, someone that comes proactively to us.

Which is why we need more than just agency labels. We will speak to someone who understands the business needs of a client and takes the client forward.”

EXPERIENCING BMW BMW currently has a marketing council at the global level, and partners with several key agencies for larger communication projects. New Yorkbased kbs+, Germany-based Serviceplan and Interone under Omnicom are its key agencies. But the brand largely works on a localised approach.

Its new campaign, BMW Stories, alludes to this approach. It uses crowd-sourcing, inviting consumers to tell their BMW stories locally.

“These are ideas of the people, not an ad agency,” is the way Althaus describes the campaign in another interview.

The other focus for Althaus in BMW’s marketing is experiential. He talks about BMW World, its showcase of its cars. In Singapore, this was held at the Marina Bay Sands Expo where the company also flew in its global executives for the event.

“BMW World has been about driving the cars, touching the brand

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and meeting the people. I’m a very strong believer in a very simple brand management approach and keeping the brand aspirational. Do things that people aspire to; keep the brand experiential and cut out the crap in the middle,” he says.

DO ASIA’S AGENCIES HAVE LOW SELF-ESTEEM? At some point in the interview, after discussing the industry’s pain points, Althaus finally asks me a fairly polarising question: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like Asia’s agencies have low self-esteem. Do you think so?”

It’s a large question, and there are arguments for both sides. There are several individuals and hot shops in the local agency scene that are carving out a name for themselves, but there are several other incidences which hint otherwise. I recall interviews such Scoot’s Campbell Wilson wishing for more outspoken agency partners. How about the debate on whether Asian agencies are creative enough?

While he doesn’t answer the question himself, he thinks the industry shouldn’t be pessimistic: “Asia’s employment rate is incredible. Look at other markets, such as Italy (Italy has an unemployment rate of 43.7% for those under 25 years, as of June 2014). Now that’s a whole generation of youths lost.”

The marketing industry needs a strong push from Asia, adds Althaus.

He believes it’s a moment of opportunity for the communications industry.

Digital transformation is affecting everyone, so what does this mean to the way companies market themselves, he asks.

“Agencies need to help companies understand how people are using, for instance, Facebook? How are they buying, who do they trust?”

“The communications industry is uniquely equipped to understand and spoon-feed back to corporations what digital and digital communications mean. Most corporations are looking to change their communications models in the face of digitisation. Communications agencies can help to foster this change.

“So there are two ways you can deal with this. You can either wait for those companies to come up with a brief and execute it. But if you are close to companies and have a relationship you are actually able to come up with a phenomena of next generation thinking for the organisations and help them to understand how the business is going to be shaped and positioned.

“That’s why it’s a great time to be alive.”

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OUT NOW.

Published by Lighthouse Independent Media Pte Ltd, 100C Pasir Panjang Rd, #05-01 See Hoy Chan Hub Singapore 118519 Tel: +65 6423 0329 Fax: +65 6423 0117

www.lighthouse-media.com

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CASE STUDY

>>

RAMADHAN & RAYA CAMPAIGN BY MEDIA PRIMA

AEON BROADENS REACH FOR A WHOLESOME RAMADAN EXPERIENCE THROUGH MEDIA PRIMA INTEGRATED PLATFORMS

BACKGROUND Consumers today are looking for an all-rounded entertaining experience when shopping during the month of Ramadan. The weeks surrounding the month offers retailers an opportunity to connect and engage with Malaysian consumers.

With the retail industry continuing to look promising year after year, brands are ever ready to take advantage of the lucrative celebration to engage shoppers.

One of Malaysia’s largest retailers AEON tapped on Media Prima’s universe of integrated platforms to lead a joyful Hari Raya celebration, bringing Malaysians innovative Ramadan and Raya content line-up, on-ground offerings and special programming.

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celebrated festival in Malaysia, amplified by the network’s largest Ramadan and Raya campaign dubbed ‘Seindah Ramadan’ and ‘Anugerah Syawal’, AEON effectively elevated its nationwide engagement with Malaysian shoppers and ultimately attracted a rewarding spike in store traffic and sales.

Breaking the conventional attitude towards Ramadan and Raya campaigns, ‘Seindah Ramadan’ and ‘Anugerah Syawal’ captured the meaningful essence of the festival by propagating the importance in sharing the appreciation of our loved ones and people around. Through the campaign, Media Prima offered not only a slew of interesting programmes for TV3 and TV9 viewers, but also created a broad array of multiplatform creative content that brands can readily capitalise on to heighten the celebration.

For AEON, it was all about bringing a new sense of delight, satisfaction, hope and wonder to their customers. ‘Seindah Ramadan’ and

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‘Anugerah Syawal’ provided a compelling proposition and thus became a natural platform for AEON to be associated with.

EXECUTION AEON’s involvement in Media Prima’s Ramadan and Raya campaign was evident throughout four engagement formats, including brand advertisement, on-ground events, customised content and promotions spanning across three different phases.

A full spectrum of branded content partnership was executed across Media Prima’s flagship channels with the largest base of mass Malay audience, TV3 and TV9, in parallel with the ‘Seindah Ramadan’ and ‘Anugerah Syawal’ campaign.

The linchpin to the overall campaign was the ‘Kongsi Kisah AEON Anda’ contest, a crowdsourcing effort that drove viewers to Media Prima’s online platform, Tonton.com.my to submit heart-warming stories while shopping at AEON with a chance to win shopping rewards.

The initial phase set the right tone prior to the ‘Seindah Ramadan’ and ‘Anugerah Syawal’ campaign kick-off, where AEON in association with TV3 and TV9 delivered a customized television advertisement to extend and sustain the emotional journey. The production employed a creative storytelling of a boy narrating his excitement seeing family members helping each other in preparation of Syawal while he held on the responsibility of watching after his

grandmother and keeping her away from all the chores.

This was closely in line with the campaign attitude, exercising the importance of togetherness and the joy of Ramadan and Raya as family members get together. It added another layer of sustained awareness and visibility for AEON, especially as the brand advertisement was seen populating TV3, ntv7, 8TV and TV9 across high-rating slots that were packed with interesting programming line-up to entertain devoted viewers.

Beyond television, AEON also extended its audience engagement through Media Prima’s exciting on-ground events. Known for its reputation for holding some Malaysia’s largest events, Media Prima introduced the ‘Skuad Seindah Ramadan’, a mobile truck designed in a form of a ‘Rumah Melayu’ for a chance for Malaysians to rediscover the essence of Ramadan, that was seen travelling through Klang Valley and certain states in Peninsular Malaysia.

By bettering AEON’s consumer experience, Media Prima also took the effort to reconnect and celebrate the joy of Ramadan through another on-ground event known as ‘Bazar Seindah Ramadan’.

Among the artists who were part of ‘Bazar Seindah Ramadan’ at AEON Bandaraya Melaka were Azlee Khairi (from Love You Mr. Arrogant), Siti Saleha (lead actress from Ramadan Jangan Pergi), Zul Ariffin (from Rindu Awak 200%), Anzalna (from Aku Isterinya), Fiza Sabjahan (host for WHI), Daniel (winner of Idola Kecil Ultra),

Yasin (Scenario) and many more.

The star-studded celebration did not only bring Malaysians together, but allowed AEON to be associated as a key enabler while fostering positive relationship with the audience.

Media Prima also launched a website, www. ramadanraya.com.my, served as a one-stop centre for people to access all Ramadan and Raya resources, from TV shows to event details.

Malaysians were also encouraged to download an electronic greeting card and share on social networking sites with #SeindahRamadan and #AnugerahSyawal to get exclusive gifts from the Ramadan squads.

RESULTS According to Nielsen Audience Management, both TV3 and TV9 owned 99 out of the top 100 raya programmes across all TV platforms totaling 10 million viewers.

The ‘Kongsi Kisah AEON Anda’ which was promoted across Media Prima platforms garnered a massive interest and nationwide participation which helped AEON promote its 30th Anniversary celebration.

The on ground event ‘Skuad Seindah Ramadan’, broke new records as the squad covered over 30 famous Ramadan bazaars situated in town and mosques in Malacca and Perak, and successfully engaged more than 25,000 fans.

Over 100,000 visitors jumped at the opportunity to participate in activities that enabled them to engage with various ambassadors involved at Bazaar Seindah Ramadan. #SeindahRamadan and #AnugerahSyawal outperformed its competitors on social media platforms as well, with a total of over 158 million reach on twitter, proving the success of AEON’s and Media Prima’s 360 integrated approach.

The constant stream of visibility across Media Prima’s top channels also contributed to the heightened awareness and top-of-mind recall of AEON as a leading go-to retailer for all their Ramadan and Raya needs.

SUMMING UP The campaign not only underlined Media Prima’s goal of forming new associations with AEON, but allowed Malaysians an opportunity to be actively involved in celebrating the month of Ramadan and Raya with one of their favourite retailers.

The collaboration has proven to be effective in reaching out to AEON’s target audience leveraging on Media Prima’s network and also as in line with part of AEON’s 30th Anniversary objective that is bringing the brand closer and interacting with to the consumer on ground.

Indeed, it was truly an auspicious celebration for both AEON and Media Prima.

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CASE STUDY

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LET'S CYCLE

8TV TACKLES HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT ISSUES WITH V-SOY

BACKGROUND Media Prima Berhad’s hottest media channel, 8TV has a stalwart tradition of establishing creative partnerships to bring top quality programmes with unique local content to its audiences. Leveraging on its “We’re Different” tagline, 8TV resonates with the urban youth and it is with this target demographic in mind that the concept of the ‘Let’s Cycle’ series was born.

‘Let’s Cycle’ is Malaysia’s first TV cycling reality programme with a twist – its end goal is to promote healthy living and go green initiatives with the collective efforts of the local communities. Led by two active and energetic 22 advertising + m arketing | S E P T E M B E R 201 4

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TV hosts, the programme ran for 13 weeks from June 1 – August 24, 2014 and capitalized on anchor partner, V-Soy to reinforce the importance of recycling.

OBJECTIVES At each step of the production, the programme was carefully designed, keeping the following purposes in mind: • Provide compelling and innovative content to fulfill the voracious demands and appetite of its audiences • Establish the synergy between healthy lifestyle and environment care via creative

• •

partnerships with like-minded brands Strengthen the vision of the nation to build a more environment-conscious population Leverage Media Prima’s position as Malaysia’s largest integrated media group via its on-air, online and on-ground mediums, to create buzz and establish 8TV’s association with strong brands and partnerships

STRATEGY To further jazz up the ‘Let’s Cycle’ programme, 8TV forged a creative partnership with V-Soy, Malaysia’s well-loved soya bean milk to champion the need to live healthy and go green.

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Inspired by a shared philosophy in caring for the environment, it is only natural for both parties – as Malaysia’s strong and trusted brands – to step out with a theme revolving a touch point close to everybody’s hearts and minds – the environment. The initiative came in conjunction with 8TV’s 10th anniversary, where the channel aimed to give back to the society by touring around Malaysia, while extending recycling education and gestures that touch people’s heart.

Hosted by popular hosts, Baki Zainal and Rickman Chia, ‘Let’s Cycle’ featured the team on a cycling tour across Malaysia. Throughout the nationwide tour which culminated back at Sri Pentas Petaling Jaya, they implemented gogreen activities with the local communities at the main pit stops, including Penang, Kuantan, Pahang and Malacca The cycling team relied on V-Soy to keep them healthy and rejuvenated throughout this exciting furlough, as they initiated and implemented go-green activities, critical to enlighten awareness on the need to sustain the planet.

Some of the green initiatives deployed through the series were the collection of empty glass bottles, keeping water containers free of mosquitoes, participating in car-free day, tutorial about water collection, clearing litter at the beach, encouraging green ideas at schools, promoting usage of second-hand and recycled items, and, planting of flora in conjunction with Earth Day. More importantly, key to the campaign is in promoting the wider use of bicycles in daily commuting. In driving Malaysians to indulge in a more health conscious routine, V-Soy, celebrated as a healthy drink in over 25 countries around the world, was made available to people wherever 8TV’s ‘Let’s Cycle’ team made a pit stop and wherever the team initiates an activity.

EXECUTION The programme was marketed through an end-to-end integrated campaign that ran over a course of 22 weeks (from 1st April to 24th August) comprising a variety of activities that cut through Media Prima’s multiple platforms (paid, owned, earned and social).

To connect V-Soy with their audiences in more personal and authentic ways, Media Prima authorised a slew of branded initiatives from branded jersey, to product placement that created top-of-mind recall among audiences looking to initiate a healthy change as they witness a journey.

A creative capsule was aired on the last episode of Let’s Cycle to underline the brand’s powerful approach and strategy in promoting healthy living among Malaysians, which

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accelerated the brand’s social responsibility.

In maximising V-Soy’s healthy vision, 8TV decided to go above and beyond in creating ample buzz a day prior to the event day via various on-air promos and in-house programmes that built health awareness and benefits of V-Soy’s cause-led initiatives. Post-coverage via Media Prima’s in-house programmes brought a magnified perspective to the audiences on V-Soy’s efforts.

Driving on-ground activities were pivotal in reinforcing the message and driving engagement among environment and health conscious individuals. A series of themes were executed across different states to ensure each activity carried out brought awareness to the respective communities.

‘Let’s Cycle’ reached out to Malaysians across 5 states; Selangor, Malacca, Johor, Pahang and Penang. Media Prima worked hand-in-hand with V-Soy to engage with viewers at local and grassroots levels.

Among the activities included were the recruitment of green warriors and volunteers at colleges and schools tasked to perform gogreen exercise, Do-it-Yourself Workshop using recycled items, exchanges between exclusive premiums and recycled items, and a pledge board in support to ‘go green’. The initiative yielded some of the most imaginative outputs such as assembly of V-Soy bottle caps to make a ‘Let’s Cycle’ logo, using V-Soy’s carton boxes to make a flag-off arch and Tetra packs made into mosquito killers.

The concept of wellness resonated well with the social media community, as netizens were moved and consistently sent supportive messages over apps such as LINE, Facebook and Instragram. Audiences were able to refer to

a one-stop website housed on 8TV’s platform: http://apps.8tv.com.my/letscycle thus providing a detailed view onto V-Soy’s branded initiatives.

RESULTS Compelled by the strong desire to promote healthy living, the significant branding via product placements and brands advertisement of V-Soy brought about strong key messages that built a new stream of followers. The entire ‘Let’s cycle’ campaign, which had all elements of an integrated campaign (on-ground activation, onair promotion and online awareness), produced impactful results that optimised each and every value received from this partnership.

Inspiring and poignant, the audiences were drawn towards the initiative from the very beginning of the programme journey where V-Soy and 8TV strengthened its offerings and provided endless opportunities to blend in with audiences and the community’s health focus.

Social media were abuzz with constant posts about health awareness, thus solidifying 8TV’s and V-Soy brand union.

Widespread quality coverage ranging from interviews to in-depth articles were featured on Tier-One English, Bahasa Melayu and Chinese newspapers that resulted in greater reach and heightened brand visibility for both 8TV and V-Soy. More than just brand awareness, this allowed V-Soy to clearly articulate their passion towards healthy living and a good cause to create a deeper emotional connection with a wider audience enabled by Media Prima platforms.

The value provided to brands like V-Soy had an impact beyond the communications side and helped drove brand loyalty.

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24/9/2014 12:35:12 PM

CASE STUDY

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TERIMA KASIH, SAYANG

BUILDING A STORY: TV3 PARTNERS WITH INNERSHINE TO RECOGNIZE WOMAN’S ROLE IN SOCIETY

BACKGROUND Creative partnerships and top quality content are two key offerings that Media Prima’s flagship channel, TV3 has strived to provide to all its Malaysian viewers.

Media Prima found that the audiences do not respond well to advertising messages relegated to breaks between TV shows. Therefore, there was a strong need to cut through the clutter with well-produced information. This was evident through TV3’s collaboration with leading health and beauty drink, InnerShine.

OBJECTIVES Riding on the promise to build brand association and fulfilling viewers’ demands with new and exciting original content, TV3 wanted to harness its creative resources and push boundaries by telling a great story.

The objective of this initiative was to amplify Malaysian audiences’ interest through special and impactful programmes like Terima Kasih Sayang.

InnerShine saw an immediate opportunity to extend its brand value by assuming the role to fulfill audience aspirations and demands. With Media Prima’s position as the largest integrated media group in Malaysia, it was only natural for InnerShine to partner with the network.

The programme, Terima Kasih Sayang created exceptional buzz, firmly establishing the channel’s association with new brands like InnerShine, as a clear differentiator in the market which is focused on giving audiences new experiences and moments to live on to.

STRATEGY Media Prima recognized that with all of the clutter surrounding us in this digital age, getting Malaysians to pay attention to brand sponsored 24 advertising + m arketing | S E P T E M B E R 201 4

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content is trickier.

The task was to create compelling content and to use storytelling as a vehicle to send a message on how the presence of women has influenced and enriched society through care and dedication to their husbands, families and career.

A woman is an important part of the society; she is a mother, a daughter, a CEO, a wife and a friend. She is expected to play all the roles with precision, from the most mundane daily routines to the important milestones that make them who they are.

Recognising this belief, in conjunction with International Women’s Day on 8 March 2014, TV3 collaborated with leading beauty drink InnerShine to bring an 8-episode, 30-minute programme - Terima Kasih, Sayang - to remind Malaysians to cherish and appreciate the special women in our lives.

For an added twist, each featured personality were required to step into the shoes of the woman who matters most to them, be it wife, mother or sister and assume their role for a day. Three episodes of Terima Kasih, Sayang featured celebrity sisters, Sharifah Aleya and Sharifah Amani; actor Hisyam Hamid and his wife; and Fizo Omar and his dynamic entrepreneurial spouse.

RESULTS Terima Kasih, Sayang reached out to over 550,000 Malaysians via online and TV outreach, thus forming a strong brand union between InnerShine and TV3.

Leveraging on the meaningful cause to showcase appreciation to the loved ones, nationwide viewers were given a chance to be part of the initiative while winning exclusive InnerShine merchandise by answering eight weekly questions. The contest drove a significant spike in viewership, which not only helped

amplify conversations and hype surrounding the initiative, but also formed a closer engagement between Innershine and audiences.

InnerShine was seen in a new light, as viewers drew inspiration from the line-up of episodes and began sharing positive experiences through the contest.

The partnership format with InnerShine offered a non-traditional approach to channel emotional appeal among viewers’. Programmes like Terima Kasih, Sayang was effective in building lasting customer loyalty, especially from among audience who were genuinely excited and attributed to the cause of spreading awareness on the rise of women’s role in society today.

With TV3’s ability to push an effective and creative form of collaboration, InnerShine was able to successfully engage the right type of audience who do not respond to advertising messages, but had a high preference towards powerful, yet meaningful messages. Terima Kasih, Sayang achieved the best television viewership of half a million, which was a testament to Media Prima’s strength in developing content that truly connects with their audiences.

Together with multiple award-winning and number one Malaysian video portal, Tonton (www.tonton.com.my), viewers were inspired to catch up on the latest episodes online which allowed brands like InnerShine to tap onto Media Prima’s largely active online user base. Malaysians had easy accessibility to the programmes and were able to share the videos with their friends and families on social media platforms, ultimately creating a stronger impression of InnerShine’s brand values.

Branded TV programs like Terima Kasih, Sayang with InnerShine proved to be an opportunity to provide better returns and audience experience, while promoting a brand in the right context that effectively resonates with audiences.

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24/9/2014 3:05:55 PM

MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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TIME TO CREATE ALL-IN-ONE SOLUTIONS Advertising + Marketing looks at what’s wrong with present-day creativity.

The Futurist is meant to be a platform for marketers to imagine what tomorrow looks like, but still many are yet to embrace widespread change.

Less than a decade ago, creative marketing was only about making the product or service known to the public: it was a time when running a few print ads and buying a segment on television was enough to put your brand onto the dinner table.

game for children, Cha-Ching, that educates the importance of money via activities, singalong videos and cartoons available on second and third screens.

“Customer loyalty is not just a one-time thing, like a loyalty programme or what not,” he said.

“The modern approach to look at it is, how it benefits everything that we’re doing. If we’re

(gaming, media placement, experience campaigns, etc) – is conceived as a continuous dialogue: there is no such thing as a standalone creative campaign.

So until marketers ditch tradition and convenience and truly tackle this melting pot, the future in true creativity still has a long way to go.

“SUSTAINABILITY MARKETING SHOULD SEEP ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE COMPANY, PUTTING PURPOSE INTO THE DNA: IT’S ABOUT LOOKING AT HOW THE PURPOSE WILL FIT INTO THE INNOVATION, MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS.” But as we sink our feet into grandiose theories such as customer loyalty, engagement, interaction, 360-seamless campaigns, experience marketing, big data, small data, CSR, CRM, real-time-bidding, and – the theme of our issue – gaming, we sometimes forget they’re all part of the same creative pool.

In other words, creativity in marketing hasn’t branched out to include the above mentioned items; it has grown as a whole and will only function optimally with all these prerequisites working together, especially when brand value is the fundamental differentiator between you and your competitors.

When asked to define his customer loyalty, for example, Sean Rach, regional director of brand and corporate affairs at Prudential, said it was the result of branding, top-of-mind, product development and education, which, ironically, is built atop its three-year-old financial literacy

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looking to build our brand loyalty, why someone chooses us, why they stay with us may be on many different dimensions. So we have to make sure we’re strong on every front.”

When asked what CSR was, on the other hand, Mitch Markson, Ogilvy & Mather’s global consumer marketing and chief creative officer, defined it as something that just “makes sense for the brand to do” and should be a “collaborative effort of the entire company, from product development down to front-line sales”.

“Sustainability marketing should seep all the way down to the architecture of the company, putting purpose into the DNA: it’s about looking at how the purpose will fit into the innovation, marketing and communications.”

As such, everything – whether CSR, product, customer loyalty (you name it) – is all part of the creativity pie; everything – no matter what platform upon which it is published

Sean Rach is regional director of brand and corporate affairs at Prudential.

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24/9/2014 10:55:52 AM

MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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THE NEW CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER The new CMO has to become more collaborative than ever before with the CIO. Here’s why.

Gartner’s prediction that the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO by 2017 is a much-debated one. A more widely accepted prediction is that we are currently in the age of the customer. Social media and other digital channels are driving the increasing marketing

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expenditure on IT. According to Gartner, digital marketing budgets are projected to increase from 28.5% in 2013 to 58% in 2014.

In this age, CMOs are expected to take the lead role in deploying and leveraging technologies to deliver greater customer

insights, improve marketing effectiveness and offer new competitive advantages. However, there are many challenges the CMO has to face, which include striking a balance with the CIO – traditionally the last word on all things ITrelated – and embracing big data and the issues

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MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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that come along with it, such as compliance and security. Most crucial of all is knowing how to leverage big data and analytics to achieve business outcomes.

Big data – the next competitive advantage The past decade has seen an explosion of data generation, with online/mobile sources being a significant contributor. These sources comprise data such as e-commerce transactions, search logs and social networks. By 2015, the average user is expected to have five connected devices and their purchase experiences are expanding well beyond retail stores.

An example of utilising big data for marketing purposes can be seen in Heineken and Walmart’s project with Shopperception, a start-up service that analyses the shopper’s behaviour in front of the shelf, generating metrics and real-time events to drive more conversions.

The objective of the project was to learn where each bottle, six-pack or can of Heineken beer was exactly purchased in the store. Along with the vast amount of data that Heineken already uses to forecast sales in different regions worldwide, this helped the company better understand its customers and as a result offer exactly the product they are looking for at a certain moment in time and place.

According to a survey of more than 500 executives across Asia Pacific by The Economist Intelligence Unit, almost half of the respondents believe that data analytics can improve revenue by 25% or more; while more than 70% believe data analytics can deliver gains in productivity, profitability and innovation.

Despite this belief, more than half of the respondents (58%) indicated their companies had little to no progress in the use of big data.

The worst offender is surprisingly Singapore with 74.5% of respondents, who hail from one of Asia’s most advanced economies, indicating so.

The biggest hindrances to the adoption of big data include a lack of suitable software (42%), lack of skills (40%) and lack of communication between departments (36%).

What is immediately evident from the hindrances stated above is that to address them, the necessary software and skills need to be acquired. These are areas that traditionally fall within the CIO’s domain, and this is where the CMO and CIO need to achieve an understanding in order to successfully leverage big data to achieve competitive advantages and business outcomes.

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Balancing the CMO-CIO dynamic According to an Accenture study, there is still a deep disconnect between CMOs and CIOs. While both generally agree they need to be closely aligned, CMOs and CIOs often have completely different priorities.

The study found CMOs tend to be more aligned with the chief sales officer, while CIOs are typically more aligned with the CFO. CMOs rank access to customer insight and intelligence as their number one priority, while CIOs rank it number 10 on their list. CIOs rank advancing platforms to aid in marketing measurement and campaign optimisation as number one, while CMOs rank it number eight.

Nevertheless, there are two things CMOs and CIOs agree on: the need to implement solutions that improve marketing effectiveness, while overcoming solution complexity and integration obstacles. This can be used as the base for the CMO and CIO to further build understanding and co-operation.

In today’s digital age, neither can afford to work independently. A company’s digital marketing capabilities represent a platform for customer engagement, market differentiation, business growth and profitability; bridging the gap between these two roles is critical for success.

Furthermore, as the need to engage with customers across multiple devices, online and digital mediums allows companies greater reach, CMOs need to be even more aware of potential threats to their brand. A security breach can significantly damage a company’s reputation with potential repercussions on consumer confidence. Also, CMOs need to expand their thinking to comply with local privacy and personal data protection laws.

These are areas where CMOs have to work closely with CIOs to ensure increased vigilance and responsiveness to security issues.

Meet the new chief marketing officer In summary, to leverage big data and analytics for better business outcomes, the new CMO has to be willing to step out of their comfort zone, experiment and implement something different. This is the time for CMOs to step up to embrace and tap on technologies to add value to the company’s offerings.

Additionally, as more marketing-related technology and services emerge, bringing along a set of opportunities and risks, the new CMO has to become more collaborative than ever before with the CIO to ensure consumer confidence is not adversely affected.

“TO LEVERAGE BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS FOR BETTER BUSINESS OUTCOMES, THE NEW CMO HAS TO BE WILLING TO STEP OUT OF THEIR COMFORT ZONE, EXPERIMENT AND IMPLEMENT SOMETHING DIFFERENT.”

The writer is Ashley Tollitt, vice-president of marketing, Verizon Asia-Pacific.

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24/9/2014 3:05:23 PM

MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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AT THE FOREFRONT OF INNOVATION Inventions such as the telegraph, telephone and computer have set the defining foundations for an unparalleled integration of capabilities – the internet. It has revolutionised the communications and computer world like nothing before. Today, carrying more than one digital device at any given time is a norm and this medium is slowly taking over our lives.

In this multi-screen, multi-device environment, it is crucial that interfaces developed for specific devices offer a buttery smooth user experience, and are bundled with high-quality content.

We invested heavily in our R&D efforts to ensure the new technology would perform in accordance to our clients’ needs. Coupled with our constant communications trend research, we developed the first proprietary and patentpending technology – Multi-Flip – a system that takes advantage of the iPad with the capability to display extended content on multiple larger screens simultaneously.

As a result, we recorded an increase in our revenue. With a team that is more tolerant towards risks and is keen on learning new skills and technology, we are experiencing a

“IN THIS MULTI-SCREEN, MULTI-DEVICE ENVIRONMENT, IT IS CRUCIAL THAT INTERFACES DEVELOPED FOR SPECIFIC DEVICES OFFER A BUTTERY SMOOTH USER EXPERIENCE, AND ARE BUNDLED WITH HIGH-QUALITY CONTENT.” Forefront embarked on its journey in the 2000s as a web design agency – from developing our first flash-based website to our first digital sales kit and touch-screen technology in 2006.

Innovation is the key to value augmentation Innovation is to us, the planning of our future ahead and the anticipation of changes in technology and design trends. We innovate our product offerings and operations to stay relevant to our stakeholders, namely, our clients and our employees.

Making innovation our strategic priority, we decided to expand our workforce – with clearly defined roles between the UX team and the art department – streamlining the process of creative conceptualisation and interface development.

From innovation to commercial viability To innovate, a business must take calculated risks. Since the release of the first-generation iPad, we saw the potential of the tablet as an integral part of our creative solutions to ease a client’s selling process. We, however, didn’t know whether the platform would work in the long run.

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solutions that has helped us retain some of the nation’s major brands such as EcoWorld, S P Setia and Gamuda Land.

Cultivating an innovative culture Keeping future expandability in mind, we make technology an integral part of our daily operations to secure our product life cycle through innovation.

Recognising the importance of people to an organisation’s success, Forefront provides an open work environment in which employees, regardless of job functionality or seniority, are encouraged to share their ideas.

With our flat organisation structure that encourages a highly collaborative work environment, we are able to ensure consistent work output via optimised inter-functional work relationships that ultimately form an innovative culture.

profound increase in operational efficiency, thereby expanding our competitiveness in the industry.

Making competition irrelevant The innovation of products can only be of value to a firm when it is exclusive, hence, we actively explore options to safeguard our inventions. We quickly learnt that having a patented offering among our products and services ecosystem is the key to not only securing our market share, but also making competition irrelevant to a certain extent – thereby achieving horizontal integration.

Beyond patents, our creative conceptualisation and execution process is also under constant innovation. Designs, at superficial levels, are highly replicable. User experience, on the other hand, requires a highly orchestrated development process.

Our strategic hiring moves, in line with our operational expansion, enable us to package creative services such as advertising, design and strategic communications planning with our digital offerings – blueprinting holistic marketing

Darien Mah is the chief executive officer of Forefront.

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24/9/2014 11:16:30 AM

MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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THE DEATH OF TRADITIONAL AND DIGITAL MARKETING Digital marketing is dead. Long live integrated marketing in a digital world!

When I started work at the beginning of this century, marketers looked at marketing according to what they had been trained in, that is, “traditional” marketing – whether TV, print, radio, in-store and PR or this new, confusing thing called digital. Marketers also looked at all these touch-points discretely and the primary task was to generate trials.

This thinking gave rise to 360-marketing, which had a successful run, but in my opinion has run its course. Now, in the middle of the second decade of the century, with the astounding proliferation of different media as well as technology and content providers, the way to think about it is integrated marketing.

There are three aspects of integration we need to recognise. First, the most obvious one is the consumer today lives in a digital world, so we should not be thinking of digital as something she spends her time with part of the day before going to the “real” world. Her world is digital – this is where she goes for information, where she makes and interacts with friends, where she gets her entertainment, browses for and purchases products and comes back to share her opinions about the experience.

Therefore, at Kimberly-Clark, we believe we need to engage with her in her world, at touchpoints where she is most receptive and with content that is most meaningful. So, we brief our agencies in an integrated manner and expect them to come back with ideas that are medium neutral and a recommendation on the media channels before we look at executions.

We think of an integrated approach that looks at data analytics as a way of identifying real consumer insights; drives consumer engagement through relevant content delivered to the consumer through multiple media; continues the relationship through CRM; invites the consumer to browse via search; buy our products through e-commerce and advocate for us through social.

Second, there is the integration of the product and its marketing. Consumers no longer buy

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products or brands – they look for experiences and a narrative. Brand fanatics don’t just buy products because they are great, but because of the entire experience and what it tells the world about them. This can be true of any category, including seemingly mundane categories such as laundry and baby care and marketers need to understand the experience the user is buying into when she purchases their category.

Finally, and most excitingly, consumers are no longer satisfied with being broadcast at by brands. Social media has given them the means

Content is, if anything, more important.

The amount of content needed has increased exponentially and brands still need to partner with their agencies to generate this ever increasing amount of content. What needs to change though are the traditional processes of generating briefs and executions and getting approvals that are too slow and time consuming for today’s content requirements. Agility is going to be key and brands that recognise this will succeed.

This is an exciting time to be a marketer and I look forward to the future.

“WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE THOUGH ARE THE TRADITIONAL PROCESSES OF GENERATING BRIEFS AND EXECUTIONS AND GETTING APPROVALS THAT ARE TOO SLOW AND TIME CONSUMING.” to participate in the conversation and they expect to be listened to. Companies that do not recognise this are increasingly being seen as out of date and out of touch.

At Kimberly-Clark, a key expectation of our commercial programmes is we drive consumer participation and we have had many successful examples such as Kotex in Malaysia, Huggies in Singapore and Depend in the US. What doesn’t change though?

Consumer understanding is still so important.

We still need to understand the real consumer insights that can help unlock the category value for us and overcome the barriers that are stopping us from achieving our objectives.

However, there are new and exciting ways of getting at this insight – it can be through analysing large amounts of data that is freely available, through neuroscience techniques that tell us what the consumer is really thinking versus what she is saying, in addition to more traditional methods.

Rahul Asthana is the marketing director, baby and child care, digital and e-commerce, Asia Pacific at Kimberly-Clark Corporation.

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24/9/2014 3:37:29 PM

MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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SOCIO-MARKETING: THE FINAL FRONTIER OF MARKETING It has been the marketer’s Holy Grail to individually communicate with every consumer and customise their offering for each consumer.

The Holy Grail has arrived in the form of social media or people-to-people communication. Individualised, customised and instant, its flagship is Facebook, now the third largest country in the world with 500 million users and millions more being added every month.

Of course, there is a catch and that catch is what most marketers in the offline world don’t get – in social media all the power is with the individual – to accept or reject any communication, to recommend whether to love or hate something, to support or revolt against anything – all these decisions are now 100% in the hands of the individual.

Billion-dollar brands such as Nestlé, Dell, Apple have the same weightage as friends on our Facebook pages as John, Sarah and David.

Hence, marketers, despite the overwhelming success of brands such as Google, Apple, Blendtec, Old Spice and Dell having been built by this social community, are unable to bring themselves to commit to participating in this future where the consumer truly is king. Three key reasons why A&P spending on the web is still less than 5% for the global consumer goods industry are:

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Unable to fathom how to measure effectiveness or ROI of campaigns and generic new media investments.

2. Fear of loss of control of the brand to consumers and it morphing into something they do not like or do not want.

3. Simple lack of belief. Despite there being no conclusive evidence that TV advertising drives sales, billions of dollars are dumped every year on TV ad spots. The reason – marketers believe that TV works and their belief masquerades as fact.

So what really drives sales?

We know for a fact word of mouth is one of the top three drivers of purchases in the offline world – the other two being advertising – quality and quantity and point-of-sale promotions.

In the online world this trend is accelerated.

People are willing to trust friends, neighbours and even complete strangers in reading reviews and making decisions on what products and services to buy.

So much so, that views of ordinary people like this are considered three times as effective as advertising and four times as effective as any celebrity endorsements as a driver of purchase.

For example, the travel industry has moved almost completely to a point where no one plans a trip without reading the reviews of people who

have been there. So our goal as marketers in the online world is to “create a mountain of amazing opinions about our brand that drives word of mouth and eventually purchase for our brand”. The right question to ask is not, “what will make them buy”, but “what will make them recommend”.

The big threat to big brands is that if you don’t start now, the mountain of opinions is going to keep building – of the one billion-plus people online, half are already in some form of social media and one in five write some form of blog to share their opinions.

So what will it take to win?

Put very crudely, marketing in the offline world is like parenting and marketing in the online world is like dating. (Refer to the chart below.)

In the offline world you can win them over with exaggeration, bombardment and a mindset of, “I will get you somewhere, somehow”. When the choice to reject moves 100% to the consumer then the only choice left is to create attraction and love that voluntarily brings consumers to me.

In such a world, if you want your consumer to date you there are four key factors to succeed: 1.

You must have a remarkable point of view that attracts others to you. Without this no one will want to be your friend or

Marketing in the offline world is teaching/parenting

Marketing in the online world is dating

Teach and take a break

No breaks … dating is always on in some way – meeting, talking

Educating, instructing, teaching

It’s about loving

Prove it to them

Win their heart

Predictable

Surprising

Deceit/exaggeration works

Exaggeration fails badly

You can’t escape me – in both my testing and execution

Please come to me – without your willingness I cannot do anything

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spend time with you. Some examples of remarkable points of view that attract consumers on the web: Dove’s vision of real beauty and rejection of the artificial stereotypes that drive women crazy.

•

• •

Lipton’s vision of a simple healthy choice made every day can help you live a happy and positive life forever.

Axe – boys deserve to win in the mating game and we will help them.

Ben & Jerry’s – find innovative ways to

improve the quality of community life and support peace and justice.

2. You must offer the great value that a true friendship brings • Novartis’ hay fever alert service helps 10

Phase

Brand

Activity and results

The world is doing it. Let’s do something online, anything

Domestos

Game created to show how the category works, the product’s functioning and circulated internally – a few thousand users and views

Multiple

Created a site, bought some search words, did a campaign or two

Rexona

Rexona for men deodorant launch Created a game that had users doing various challenges – 24 million plays in Europe with four million links to the site

Omo

Created a blog-based site to create a community of mums who believe that learning via experience is the best way to learn. Nearly 25 million people logged in and read some of the content, but less than 1% participated in an activity or shared a comment – high on awareness, but low on engagement

It’s another media channel – let’s use it where it’s relevant

Most of my target group is online – I can’t afford not to engage them online

Here is my chance to show every consumer how much I love them

Axe

Axe

Mr. Chocolate Luvah – insight that women cannot resist chocolate. Photo contest where participants could convert their Facebook profile or blog to become mr.chocolate luvah – the hero of the campaign and win prizes – nearly 200,000 people visited and 40% registered. The variant became the No.1 best seller in the Philippines

Ben & Jerry’s

Social philosophy is to show the fans how much we love them. On election day, to support democracy as a way to promote peace and justice, offered on its Facebook page “a free scoop when you vote”. Tied up with Google to show locations of voting booths and Ben & Jerry’s sites – over 600,000 cones given out and nearly 1.35 million searches – top six on Google

Lipton

Overall philosophy is to help consumers make a simple healthy choice (drink tea) to help them live a positive and healthy life every day.

To launch a new tea with Theanine that makes the brain sharp, Lipton created the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle and invited Indians to solve it online.

Nearly 200,000 people worked together day and night to solve the jigsaw.

Now a Guinness record for the largest online jigsaw solved – this alone led to a 25% increase in sales

Lipton

Linea tea – rediscover your waistline in eight weeks – invite 10 other friends on any social platform and win eight weeks of tea 2.5 million views 50% increase in sales 300,000 registered

Lipton

Add flavour to my office life – afternoons in offices are boring – make videos to show how they can be interesting – Lipton starts off the viral Viewers are guided to register for free tea delivery in the office to create a fun moment Six million video views 700,000 requests sent for tea 300,000 tea sets delivered

Lipton

Customise your new year greeting by blowing tea steam in unique greetings and shapes via QQ – leading IM platform in China – 45 million unique visitors 23 million greetings sent Three times the servers crashed No.1 social media activity in China, ever

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The online and web wake up service done across Asia – massive success – in India four million wake up calls – database then used for CRM and sampling

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Marketer’s goal

Online I can do a census

Offline I have to do a survey

Bonding – Love for the brand – do they love you

Voluntary actions Feedback – comments Blogging Spreading feedback – likes Participation Can be accurately measured and mapped to each individual

Surveys to check loyalty

Trial – experiencing the brand/purchase – do they try you

Surveys to attribute to sales Direct redemption promos can be tracked Direct redemption offers can be accurately measured and mapped to each individual – becomes even more effective with mobile

Correlate sales plus surveys to attribute to sales

Awareness – do they know you

Clicks Visits Unique visitors Page views Ad impressions Can be accurately measured and mapped to each individual

Ad awareness Surveys/trackers

million sufferers every day by alerting them as to which areas are likely to get the hay fever next.

Best Buy’s Twelpforce on Twitter helps customers with IT issues whether they bought with Best Buy or not – 30,000 followers within months.

IKEA’s do your own home is now one of the top apps on the iPhone allowing users to place any furniture they want to buy in their home and take snapshots before they actually buy.

3. Do it in a way that is remarkable and inspiring • The Old Spice man is funny, inspiring and interesting enough for thousands to ask him questions and spread his funny answers – 100 million views and 100% increase in sales.

• The Blendtec videos shocks consumers – 700% increase in sales and more than 200,000 subscribers on YouTube plus 10 national TV appearances.

• Axe’s “call me” campaign gets four million subscribers asking for a wake up call from a hottie – Tanya who called them in a husky voice.

4. Do it forever with passion – you are only as good as your last action • Starbucks – it’s an always-on dialogue starting with My Starbucks Idea onwards with consumers.

• Apple – though secretive welcomes

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feedback on its site and dialogue between consumers on how to better use/improve Apple products.

Measuring digital effectiveness While the marketing jobs to be done remain exactly the same, the ways we measure marketing effectiveness improve radically when we come online. It’s quite simple – you can find what each individual is doing in response to your message and who they are doing it with – everything can be tracked, followed and measured. On online I can do a census, whereas offline I must rely on surveys.

(Refer to the chart above.)

Brands’ evolution in digital media There are four stages in the evolution of an offline brand in going online: 1. The world is doing it. Let’s do something online, anything.

2. It’s another media channel – let’s use it where it’s relevant.

3. Most of my target group is online – I can’t afford to not engage them online.

4. Here is my chance to show every consumer how much I love them.

Let’s look at some examples of what brands are doing in each of these stages with some successful cases and examples. (Refer to the chart on page 34.)

As we can see, brands that follow the four golden rules can win big, really big online.

Aseem Puri is marketing director at Unilever Asia.

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26/9/2014 4:41:32 PM

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FINDING OUR OWN KEVIN SPACEY! ARE WE GAME FOR IT? If 2014 was the year of riding the greatest sporting spectacle on earth – the FIFA marketing frenzy wave – 2015 will bring an altogether new realisation for our brand marketing industry. It is the “inconvenient truth” about our preparedness to engage the connected consumer in the absence of another sporting spectacle.

Sure our industry’s “30-second format storytelling” DNA has made some progress in terms of sponsoring and producing branded content, running crowd-sourcing campaigns, riding the ice bucket social/viral waves and such online stunts.

But ask a connected consumer and she’ll promptly say they don’t impress her much because our collective brand marketing campaigns are still driven to dial up likes, shares, views and social mentions.

The 86-minute engagement challenge Our ideas briefs have still not evolved to engagement and content marketing briefs.

We still tend to hesitate to accept YouTube, Flipboard, Vimeo, IM platforms and the likes of localised platforms such as Tonton as the primary source of engagement and entertainment for our connected customers.

Come 2015, and brand marketers will need to start searching for their very own version of Kevin Spacey’s House of Cards; or Game of Thrones as more and more consumers get onto streaming entertainment with Malaysia leading the APAC in consuming the highest number of long-format online videos [10 minutes and more] as per Ooyala.

As marketers, we will need to shift brand plans from online and on-ground stunts that give periodical spikes to a more serious commitment to investing in creating original content that our consumers will love to be engaged with.

Flipboard over Facebook We will need to go into 2015 more prepared to commit to platforms such as Flipboard and YouTube which drive over 86 minutes of voluntary browsing on a daily basis. So if you

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“CO-CURATION IS A BUSINESS MINDSET THAT DEMONSTRATES A BRAND’S GENUINE INTENT TO EMPOWER ITS FANS AND FOLLOWERS TO IMMERSE THEMSELVES IN STUFF THEY ARE GENUINELY PASSIONATE ABOUT.” are a runner or an exercise enthusiast then a brand such as Nike or New Balance co-create multimedia content that interests you with a clever weaving of product spiel or if you are a travel enthusiast how Lonely Planet or National Geographic engages you with its videosodes.

If you can’t create, co-curate Sure content and engagement marketing are new to the conventional advertising agency mindset that is still finding its place in the digital age, but that doesn’t prevent agencies and their client marketers to start playing the role of their favourite mixologist at the bar or the curator at the museum, who become not just the aggregators, but have the acumen and skill set to delight you with stuff you genuinely have a taste for.

Co-curation is a business mindset that demonstrates a brand’s genuine intent to empower its fans and followers to immerse themselves in stuff they are genuinely passionate about. It is also something the brand stands for and is committed to providing on any device and any platform whenever they want. And in the process building a voluntary engagement.

We genuinely believe 2015 belongs to the era of “flips”, call it tablet, engagement or content marketing, but every brand will need to ensure if they are getting “Flipped” enough!

The writers are Mazuin Zin, MD and Sailesh Wadhwa, head of strategy planning, Lowe Malaysia.

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TOMORROW’S (MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS) LANDSCAPE, TODAY Just look at how communication is incredibly fluid today. The past decade has seen transformations unparalleled since the discovery of electricity and the telephone, two important advances in technology that revolutionised the world and defined how we work in it.

Fifteen years ago, the internet was still relatively new and people didn’t understand its potential. Marketing 141, a basic marketing philosophy course that one of us taught, had one lecture on “internet marketing” that talked about using email blasts to connect with tech-savvy customers. That was our teaching content. The closest thing to social media then was ICQ, and none of us ever dreamed it would be appropriate for business internet use.

No one thought about touch-screen phones and tablets replacing print media as vehicles of information, nor did we think about what the impact of real-time news reporting would have on our consumption of news, events and occurrences worldwide or even in our own neighbourhood. Nor did we envisage a world where friends would sit at a restaurant table, upload photos of rice bowls in front of them and then use WhatsApp to discuss the food virtually without facing each other.

The art of conversation, coupled with the method of consuming information, has changed.

But one thing has not – the message.

This is the key to the future of our industry.

Yes, we must keep up with the times, there’s no denying it. We need to ensure we are abreast of the rapid changes, embrace new and emerging communications technology, and be ever vigilant of trends to determine the best approach to recommend to clients. As ambassadors of communication and change, we are responsible for enriching our clients’ awareness and understanding of the opportunities that new technology brings.

But let’s not forget the common threads.

The PR industry has evolved to integrate with all marketing activities and to take leadership in shaping the client’s message to be understood

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“THE PR INDUSTRY HAS EVOLVED TO INTEGRATE WITH ALL MARKETING ACTIVITIES AND TO TAKE LEADERSHIP IN SHAPING THE CLIENT’S MESSAGE TO BE UNDERSTOOD AND WELLRECEIVED BY ALL.” and well-received by all. This role has not changed. Whether it’s crafting press releases to highlight a new product launch, preparing copy for print brochures or simply quipping out a punchy one-liner for Twitter, the power of the message is paramount.

This emphasis on crafting effective messages (textual, visual, direct and subliminal) still remains the key skill of our industry.

Information consumption habits are changing, but expectations for sophisticated, well-crafted and considered messages remain. Let us as an industry not deviate from this.

A short Facebook posting, an infographic on Pinterest or a “tweet” needs just as much strategy behind it as does a press release or a pitch. We cannot take for granted the importance of skill in communication nor can we allow ourselves to commit the crime of allowing the inexperienced to handle social media content and activation.

Creating a strong message is a skill that will not go out of fashion: fads come and go, skills remain.

What was once considered a fad has now become a marketing reality. Social media has necessitated enhanced communication between all aspects of marketing to warrant the seamless transmission of information to all parties, while ensuring each message reinforces and supports the other in record time via readily accessible technology.

The future of our industry is in adapting to change. It’s understanding and embracing new technology and communication vehicles. But it’s also recognising that our current toolkit of professional practice is still extremely valid, and, in fact, most desirable to ensure the message shared with the world is as strong as ever.

Craig J Selby is the managing director and Farrell Tan is the founding director of Orchan Consulting Asia.

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UHH . . MARKET RESEARCH HAS A FUTURE? Big data is here. Measuring behaviour constantly is better than measuring attitudes.

Face to face interviews are a thing of the past. MR has no future, there will only be data scientists and consultants. Wasn’t the same being said when computers arrived on the planet, that man would become redundant?

That didn’t happen.

Partly we market researchers are to blame.

We forget that market researchers do not research products and services; rather our job is to understand people – the consumer.

If we do understand the consumer, then we can explain why they use certain products and services. Rather than understanding consumers, the research industry ended up with the commercialisation of research, where analysis constructs are sold in the name of “proprietary models”.

the marketing and communication methods.

Market research will be no different. We will always be in the business of understanding people and machines cannot do that, but yes they can be aids to do just that.

The future of market research and, hence, market researchers, will be to look at multiple data points that go beyond just data collection alone, fuse them with behavioural economics and come up with insights. In fact, there may be no one big insight, rather a combination of many smaller insights that add up to form a synergistically relevant business solution for marketers. One thing that is certain is the current way we do research will change.

It will become smarter with new data acquisition methods and, yes, face-to-face may be a thing of the past. We are in for the days where we will need to collaborate with

replace “thinking”. We do not have qualitative researchers and quantitative researchers; we just have researchers who are trained to look at information, be it words or data and provide insights to our clients.

The methods may change, the Acorn researcher’s DNA needn’t. We believe researchers will be looked upon as consultants and an integral part of the marketing team by clients because surely they will need experts who can make sense of all the information coming at them and that’s how Acornians are trained.

We have adopted app-based, tablet-based, mobile-based and eye-tracking technology not just in quantitative research, but also in our qualitative research. We are also looking at possibilities to do quantitative research without even a questionnaire! The idea is to be futureready.

“WE’RE IN FOR THE DAYS WHERE WE WILL NEED TO COLLABORATE WITH CONSUMERS TO DO MARKET RESEARCH RATHER THAN APPROACHING THEM IN A RANDOM WAY, BE IT ONLINE PANELS, CONSUMER LABS, SOCIAL MEDIA OR ONLINE FORUMS.” This has erased the true purpose of market research, that is, understanding consumers intimately and getting insights into their behaviour. Hence, the client is provided with data-driven findings rather than informationdriven insights. One must not confuse number crunching with developing insights. It takes humans with great foresight to come up with great insights.

Yes, surely market research in the future will change in terms of execution, but it will never change in terms of its principles. The principles of marketing and advertising never changed.

One still needs to price it right and shout well enough to be heard in the market place just like in medieval times. What changed were

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consumers to do market research rather than approaching them in a random way, be it online panels, consumer labs, social media, online forums, etc.

What may change little will be the qualitative methods even though they are already taking a more scientific approach with eye-tracking, brain scanning, pupil dilation methods, etc.

Possibly FGDs will be conducted more virtually in a “Skype room” or a “Webex room”. Time and distance will be killed and, hence, market research will have to adopt digital mobile technology and innovations to carry on its trade.

We at Acorn are well aware of this fact.

Acorn has always been an insights-driven agency and strongly believes that models do not

Julius Augustine is the associate director and country manager of Acorn Marketing & Research Consultants.

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BACK TO THE FUTURE Advertising + Marketing investigates how an agency that has been pioneering mobile integration goes backwards to make its mark.

The seamless integration of mobile into the existing online-offline model has always been a never-ending challenge for marketers since the debut of the iPhone in 2007. While products such as Candy Crush have bewitched the world into a fruit-bombing frenzy, a truly jaw-dropping game-based mobile campaign has yet to reveal itself in the past year. Why? Because though games can easily drown a user in addictive engagement on one of the most frequented platforms in the digital era, they’re not a very practical tool to convey product information.

So, while marketers continue to delve into this problem, a potential area is using mobile as a gaming extension of the traditional TVC and microsites – something local agency Kitchen has been leading the pack in. If you aren’t familiar with the name, you’ll know the Coca-Cola’s Chok App and the Coca-Cola Music Beats Game, both of which gathered more than 200,000 installations in the first five weeks.

Recently, the agency came up with a similar

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concept for DBS Black Card, an online virtual flying game that – if played at home – rewards a cup of coffee after winning, and flight tickets or cash coupons if played at a weekly event held in Causeway Bay this summer, where all the players’ virtual aeroplanes show up on a big screen on Great George Street. The campaign was complemented by another Facebook virtual flying game.

Likewise was the movie-inspired Performan push for Durex, where viewers had to successfully “catch” the world-saving ring when the superhero in the micro movie “throws” it to the viewer, and point it upwards (that’s how the superhero transforms in the story) to receive a prize.

All of Kitchen’s most successful campaigns link the television to the mobile to not only lure viewers at home to, literally, stop what they’re doing and focus on the TVC, but also to effectively make what is thought to be a fleeting medium – the television – immediately relevant again.

Yet, while every marketer across all industries has been racing to the front with his/

her own native app for their brand, Kitchen’s creative director Alan Kan and IT director Henry Wong see the future in web-based mobile and online campaigns.

“A native app is something marketers can say they’ve done and say ‘there, we have it’, but like any Facebook page or an app, you need to maintain it so you’re still relevant and valuable to have in users’ phone,” Wong said. “And, to be honest, that’s not the case with many of the native apps we’ve seen.”

Web-based campaigns, on the other hand, allow a smooth integration to any device or screen size, which is particularly essential for one-off events.

“Take the DBS push, for example. It’s very instant: people don’t need to download the app, they can just scan the QR code and play immediately. We get instant response, and the entertainment value is very high,” he said, adding that given every campaign and industry require a different strategy and mobile apps are not the answer to everything, a cheaper web-based version would suffice in most cases.

“I wouldn’t sell diamonds like this, for example.”

Wong chimed in, saying present-day technology allowed web browsers to perform like apps anyway: the latter only has an advantage of letting users capture photos, which is a function he believes web browsers will eventually have.

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SERIOUS PLAY Games have triggered something of a revolution in the business and marketing worlds, writes Matt Eaton.

For a long time it’s been drilled into us that play is something we do when our real jobs have finished. Almost like a secondary activity to everyday life. But play and gaming are set to take on a greater meaning in the very near future.

But is there something more going on in this quickly emerging field? Jane McGonigal for one is betting the power of gaming will change the world.

A future forecaster and author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, she says games and gaming have moved way beyond their original purpose and will become a hugely influential part of modern life.

She is not alone in this thinking.

Some of the world’s biggest companies are now plunging millions into research about how gaming will play a bigger role in society – perhaps sooner than we think.

Gartner research predicts that by 2015 the gaming ecosystem will reach US$112 billion.

“We need new habits if we are to survive the next century on this planet,” McGonigal told attendees at a TED talk called Gaming Can Make a Better World.

While many of these Fortune 500 companies believe in the power of gaming and play as a means to inspire their workforce, McGonigal goes one step further.

“If we want to solve problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict and obesity, I believe that we need to aspire to play games online for at least 21 billion hours a week by the end of the next decade,” she says.

“Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds and incentives to learn the habits of heroes.”

But away from world-saving problems, gaming is influencing marketing in new ways: from customer loyalty to brand engagement, networking – heck even commerce and social activism are using themes of play and gaming as a way to engage consumers.

“It’s quite powerful to embrace the idea of gamification, especially in the innovation area,” says Susana Tsui, Asia Pacific CEO at PHD. “If you look at technology and how it has evolved over the years, what’s really promoted

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“IF WE WANT TO SOLVE PROBLEMS LIKE HUNGER, POVERTY, CLIMATE CHANGE, GLOBAL CONFLICT AND OBESITY, I BELIEVE THAT WE NEED TO ASPIRE TO PLAY GAMES ONLINE FOR AT LEAST 21 BILLION HOURS A WEEK

BY THE END OF THE NEXT DECADE” digital marketing has been the big social networks and a lot of that is gaming.”

So influential has gaming become on the marketing industry that in 2013, PHD, a global media unit under Omnicom, stopped working and started playing.

Called Source, the agency has embraced the system built using gaming mechanics – with the objective of fostering high-levels of collaboration between staff.

Today thousands of people within the PHD network can see how they are performing on a real-time global leader board.

“Why are people in the workplace not as productive and efficient as they could be? It’s because work is a badly designed game,” Tsui says.

“If you redesign work with a gaming element, staff are more motivated and it keeps everything a lot more interesting. That really differentiates us.”

Source is now a hugely influential planning tool for one of the agency’s biggest clients, Unilever.

Yes, the future of marketing is looking more and more like a virtual playground and brands will only delve deeper into this space.

“We’re all very serious when we talk about digital, but people forget the majority of time we spend in the digital space a lot of it is due to entertainment,” Tsui says.

“People expect to be entertained.”

Susana Tsui, Asia Pacific CEO at PHD

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GOING OVER THE TOP OTT (over the top) seems to be the buzz word of late and broadcasters everywhere are jumping onto the multi-screen services bandwagon and burning the midnight lamp figuring out monetisation. What once seemed to be too small a business is now a reality which can only be ignored at one’s own peril.

The big question is how do we have two separate, but seemingly competing business models and platforms without one cannibalising the other? Do we have a separate team handling the broadcast TV service and another experimenting with OTT? Or do we upskill the broadcast team to think beyond TV screens?

Should long form content stay on TV and the other “not so premium” content go to the OTT service? How do we protect our broadcast TV share?

The answer is you can no longer protect your TV share on TV alone! Look at where your consumers are heading. TV audiences will not

care if you have the best content on TV or on your OTT platforms. They only care about getting it at their convenience, in their own time and according to their lifestyles. If you are not where they want you to be, they will give their attention to someone who’s there for them.

Fidelity is not something broadcasters should expect from viewers.

Media Prima envisaged this early and in 2010 streamlined its digital operations under a single roof and launched Tonton to ensure the TV audience is contained within the group’s ecosystem. This digital arm has since evolved into what is known as Media Prima Digital.

Within its first year of operations, Tonton was in Google’s top 10 fastest rising searches and introduced responsive web applications to cater to the arrival of the tablet. The following year in 2012, the Tonton Smart TV application was developed, which later became the most downloaded app on the Samsung Smart TVs

in Malaysia. Live streaming of global sporting events became big on Tonton with live streams of the UEFA Euro 2012, and later in the same year, Tonton’s Live TV started streaming all of Media Prima’s TV networks (TV3, ntv7, 8TV and TV9).

Tonton started as a catch-up TV service for the group, but has now gone on to provide live streaming and syndicated content from all over the world. While local drama series remains the core content for Tonton, international content has been gaining momentum in the past two years with Korean, Filipino, Chinese, Hollywood and kids content playing an increasingly important role in driving traffic through Tonton.

This has resulted in the exponential growth in unique visitors every year since its launch.

Today, Tonton has more than 70,000 episodes available and a big local archive from the Media Prima TV networks which has yet to be completely mined. Celebrating its

TONTON’S 2011 TO 2013 GROWTH CHART 105% 35%

62%

37%

million

1.9

2.6

3.5

2011

2012

2013

Registered Users

million

73.9

119.9

245.2

2011

2012

2013

Page Views

107% 65%

107%

million

28%

17.2

25.7

53.2

2011

2012

2013

Unique Visitors

million

22.8

29.0

48.0

2011

2012

2013

Video Views

Source: Omniture Site Catalyst

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MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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“OTT IS THE NEW BASELINE AGAINST WHICH HISTORY WILL JUDGE BROADCASTERS AND WILL EVOLVE INTO SOMETHING BIGGER.” fourth anniversary, Tonton is currently the No.1 Malaysian video portal with more than four million registered users and can now stand alongside mainstream broadcasters in producing exclusive original content.

With this, broadcasters can no longer afford to have OTT as an afterthought as it should be firmly entrenched in the content planning process from the beginning. Take it as part of the content strategy to expand their TV reach and the content being made available on all possible platforms immediately and not just as catch-up.

Today it may be TV, online, mobile devices

and Smart TV … the next phase could be on your wearable devices or even on an outdoor digital screen. Nothing is stopping a TV drama playing directly from a TV listing on an e-paper or an e-magazine. If that is where your audience is, it’s also where you want to be hanging out right now because that space is going to get crowded.

The potential of OTT is endless and limited only by one’s imagination. It is the new baseline against which history will judge broadcasters and will evolve into something bigger. Having said that, perhaps the bigger picture is about staying true and remaining relevant to the market.

Lam Swee Kim is the group general manager of Media Prima Digital.

MMSG

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24/9/2014 11:35:44 AM

MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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BLURRING THE LINES BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL WORLD As the physical world comes online, “smart” objects and devices are increasing our insight into it – as well as our control over it. No longer just an “internet of things”, this new world intelligently connects consumers, while at the same time empowering them to make informed decisions.

Being informed enables consumers to interact and influence the way they experience everything around them. This in turn allows brands to make real-time connections and act and react both faster and more intelligently, enhancing ROI. But how is this connection between traditional companies and the online world enabled? It is driven by the power of technology.

With the continual blurring of the line between the digital and the real world, organisations are using technology to deliver immersive consumer experiences in their physical spaces – thereby changing where and when the decision is made – allowing them to get ahead of online competitors.

For example, retailers are continually looking for ways to deliver unique and meaningful experiences to consumers. One of these ways is through beacon Bluetooth Low Energy technology.

Online retail has long had the edge when it comes to seeing how shoppers are moving around the virtual shop floor, what they are buying and how often they revisit a site. They have also traditionally had a price advantage over their brick-and-mortar counterparts – even if this is just a perceived advantage.

The physical retail floor has had to settle for intelligent assumptions with limited ability to verify or, better yet, maximise the effectiveness of data usage, and be reactive with competitive pricing.

Beacons promise cost-effective, targeted, localised, personalised and timely messaging to shoppers in or before a store, delivering communications direct to the consumers’ mobiles. By enhancing the consumers’ experiences, their ability to gain and share

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“ONE THING IS CLEAR: THE LINES BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL WORLDS ARE BLURRING. IT’S UP TO THE DIGITAL LEADERS OF TOMORROW TO ENSURE THEY ARE USING TECHNOLOGY TO CREATE THOSE IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES TODAY.” insights are improved, and they are more likely to take action when and where they have the experience.

Other ways brick-and-mortar retailers are differentiating themselves from their online-only competitors is through the use of interactive touch-screens to communicate and engage with consumers right at the point of purchase, using value exchange methodology to provide something consumers want (such as free Wi-Fi and top-quality content) in return for something organisations want (a captive audience engaging with their brands) and extending the interactions between consumers and brands using things such as gamification.

So consumers gain by having organisations

provide them with meaningful interactions that can learn their wants and predict their needs – something many have even begun to expect.

These interactions sense the consumers’ needs and respond appropriately, in real time, making possible better-informed decisions at critical times. Organisations in turn are able to not just gather insights to make smarter business decisions, but act or react in real time in the real world, as well as change the “when” and “where” consumers are making their critical decisions – having a significant impact on brands’ ROI. One thing is clear: the lines between the physical and digital worlds are blurring, and it’s technology enabled immersive experiences that are blurring those lines and connecting consumers. It’s up to the digital leaders of tomorrow to ensure they are using technology to create those immersive experiences today.

Moti Mimeran is the CEO and founder of the MAS Holdings Group.

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24/9/2014 11:33:50 AM

MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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3 TRENDS SHAPING EVENT MARKETING

It’s no secret that events, whether corporate or consumer-focused, can be a powerful tool in any marketer’s arsenal. In fact, recent research from the third annual Event Track study by the Event Marketing Institute in the United States found that events positively improve brand perception, increase purchase intent, and are easily the most successful mediums for helping consumers truly understand a brand’s product.

But like any medium, the event landscape will continue to change and evolve, and event marketing in particular will see the adoption of several new trends and technologies. Here are three trends to watch out for in 2015 and beyond.

1. Event marketers will get smarter with integrated event management systems (IEMS). The infrastructure, hardware and know-how are now in place for event marketers to take advantage of event mobile platforms to engage event participants. With this emerging technology, registration and event details – key information, floor plans, agendas, message

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update centres, post-event follow ups – are consolidated in one central location for attendees – their phones.

For organisers, IEMS will generate realtime reports, streamline attendee management and booth tracking, and provide them with customised tools such as self-service kiosks for on-site check-in. In short, goodbye to long registration queues and tedious handwritten feedback forms. The IEMS will seamlessly transition the online experience to one’s offline environment for a smoother event experience.

2. Photo booth applications must be on your check list. Nothing helps guests interact at events more than pictures, pictures that are shared and viewed long after your event is over, leaving lasting impressions and a powerful brand association.

Applications and services that help marketers streamline this technology into their content strategy will only grow in importance in the years to come. Furthermore, the integration of photo booths with smart badge technology will become an even more powerful trend.

3. Geolocation platforms as event invites. If you’re 200 metres away from a major exhibition and receive a promotional offer to check out a booth there, it’s much more likely you’ll find that message meaningful compared to if you were, say, 200 kilometres away, right? Thanks to the increased frequency of user-submitted location data, spreading the word about your event with the right potential customers who are nearby and fit your audience profile is no longer a pipe dream.

Geolocation platforms will only become more important for event marketers who understand the importance of reaching the consumer at the right place and time.

Events will continue to be an important medium for marketers to connect with, engage and influence consumers. These are just three of the trends that will – when done right – increase interactivity, ROI and satisfaction for all. Watch out for these trends at the next event you attend, and good luck with your own.

The contributor is the team at In2 Marketing & Consulting.

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26/9/2014 5:27:50 PM

MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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MANAGING AND LEADING CHANGE IN A PATCHY FUTURE Our industry is rapidly changing and will continue to do so at an accelerated rate. From the days when media unbundled from the ad agency, we’ve seen the emergence and splintering of units breaking out into separate companies specialising in out-of-home, digital and mobile, CRM and activation, and so forth.

Currently, a majority of advertisers pull together multiple agencies to work on a campaign – a creative agency, a media agency, an out-of-home agency, a digital agency, a performance marketing agency, an activation agency – and bear the challenge of “stitching the swatches” together to create the perfect picture.

More swatches, more seams, more stitches.

As more specialised units form, the more advertisers need to ensure the picture created from the stitching is clear as a whole. In marketing parlance, that the sum of the parts is “holistic and integrated”.

More specialised units, more operational steps, more integration to manage.

Integration is a monumental task. Advertisers who employ multiple communications agencies hope to “talk to a significant few” where it can.

At Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN), we believe we have created an operating model to meet this need: One Country P&L, whereby a group of diversified, best-in-class specialist agencies collaborate and work closely together to provide holistic and integrated solutions for clients.

At DAN, we believe there are two ways a perfect picture will form as imagined. First, the individual swatches are produced from the best parts. Second, the stitching is of the finest and strongest thread to keep the seams. One Country P&L achieves this for clients seamlessly, pun intended.

As an illustration, when a client appoints Carat Malaysia as their media specialist agency, Carat offers solutions which, if necessary, will include the expertise and services of the other DAN units such as Posterscope (out-of-home), psLIVE (events, activation and PR), isobar

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(digital creatives) and iProspect (search and programmatic buying).

While many specialists are involved, one contact point within Carat is established to streamline account management and communication. Multi-dimensional solutions are presented en masse from already integrated and specialised teams.

We have had multiple successes with the One Country P&L. The free-flow exchange of expertise and ideas can only mean faster collaboration (efficiency) as opposed to the usual stop-wait-and-go operation of the unrelated individual agencies model. With efficiency in place, more time is spent on crafting effective solutions: a win for DAN and our clients.

To add to our point of difference, DAN is the only global communication network able to tap on the Dentsu-Japanese connection which is unsurpassed in the areas of sports marketing, TV content and innovation. As the wheel of change turns, our clients will soon see these capabilities well integrated into our solutions.

In keeping with and managing changes in the industry, I believe the One Country P&L will allow us to resize or add “new patches” along the way. My take on the two major ones worth mentioning are: 1. Social and search. The “social network” is here and more powerful than ever. It has greatly shaped the way we consume the internet from learning about new things to hearing the latest news. It will be a major source of learning for brands-consumer interaction. Search and performance marketing, however, will grow at the expense of traditional media. Marketers will invest more here to be where consumers are.

2. Innovation margins. The industry fears the time when margins can no longer justify business decisions, thus, operations suffer.

This is an accident waiting to happen. With budgets meticulously combed to “spot for savings opportunity”, media agencies are seen to deliver only on efficiency rather than

with effectiveness combined. To mitigate the risk of thinning margins, media agencies should devise ways to benefit from client’s profits as a result of exemplary performance.

Win for both.

I’ve been a pioneer in this industry having set up Malaysia’s first media specialist agency and the formation of the Media Specialist Association.

As an advocate of the need to move and lead change to meet current and future needs of our industry, I resonate with the vision and direction of the DAN leadership which sets us apart from our competition and meets the needs of our industry.

I’m excited with the opportunity to lead DAN Malaysia and my immediate task will be to ensure we work with one common vision which is “Innovating the way brands are built”.

And the leaders have been charged to ensure we walk the talk, and the work we do reflects that – to create the perfect picture.

Margaret Lim is the CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network, Malaysia.

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24/9/2014 11:28:32 AM

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MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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HOW MOBILE CAN HELP RETAILERS In this day and age of smartphones, businesses should be present on any platform possible to be accessible and remain relevant to customers.

Mobile commerce (m-commerce) sets a new standard for accessibility because purchases can be done at a customer’s convenience, for example, a mobile app provides more opportunities for the customer to research a purchase, creates a tremendously more convenient transaction option and is a constant companion to a customer wherever they go.

According to a study by Ericsson ConsumerLab, smartphone penetration in Southeast Asia increased from 47% in 2012 to 63% in 2013, while tablet penetration increased almost threefold from 14% in 2012 to 39% in 2013. With the rising affluence of the Southeast Asian population, these numbers are expected to grow even further, demonstrating the opportunities for m-commerce remain incredibly vibrant.

Our own experiences at Groupon have also shown a growing preference towards mobile as a gateway for subscriber purchases.

We have seen a surge in Malaysian users on our Groupon mobile app, and worldwide the Groupon mobile app consistently ranks as one of the top 25 all-time most downloaded apps.

The main benefit is convenience. Our customers are able to identify the location of the vouchers they have purchased, and start redeeming the ones closest to their current location. This, of course, is an exciting development because mobile creates new opportunities for us at Groupon to explore – be it in enhancing the consumer experience or presenting opportunities for our merchants.

However, since a mobile app enables options such as location-based targeting, it’s important for the business to draw the line between being informative and being intrusive.

Organisations must curate and structure push notifications that are actually useful to customers to increase the likelihood they will choose to opt in.

I am a believer in the opt-in model, where I as a consumer make the decision to receive push notifications from a particular organisation or not. It should also be easy for me to opt out at a later date when I choose to do so.

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“AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT OF THE MOBILE EXPERIENCE IS PAYMENT. ORGANISATIONS MUST ENABLE CUSTOMERS TO SORT, SEARCH AND PAY AS SEAMLESSLY AND SAFELY AS POSSIBLE.”

must enable customers to sort, search and pay as seamlessly and safely as possible.

Implementing a safe payment solution that offers an easy to use cross platform (mobile and desktop) process can significantly increase conversions from browsing to purchase.

Most payment gateway providers have crossplatform technologies that offer solid and safe payment solutions.

Indeed, mobile has changed the landscape for Malaysian retailers, offering the opportunity to reach a wider audience with greater convenience, connection and flexibility than ever before.

There are many mobile app analytics that can be used to help the business such as: Supply Understanding what items to carry to fulfil the demands of the customer (generally via search, i.e. top searched keywords are items that people actually look for the most; and null searches – i.e. searches that do not correspond to an item are supply gaps which should be filled.)

Understanding what categories sell better/ worse during specific periods of the year, which will help with stocking/supply chains.

Demand Understanding what items have the highest conversion ratio (from page view to purchase), which should always be the items on “recommendation” or on “discount” to attract customers.

Better understanding on price elasticity (by monitoring conversion while doing price changes) to maximise profits Another important element of the mobile experience is payment.

Organisations

Rafiq Razali is the country general manager for Groupon Malaysia.

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24/9/2014 12:29:13 PM

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26/9/2014 12:38:47 PM

MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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DEATH OF THE MARKETER? Mark Twain once said: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” I wonder sometimes about the marketing profession today – is its relevance in today’s world greatly exaggerated?

As a professed marketing man, the advent of social media has caused me many sleepless nights. No, not because my next pay cheque may be in peril (though the mere thought sends shivers up my spine!), but more because I feel the marketing field – as we, or at least, as I know it – is undergoing cataclysmic changes that could render us inutile.

In essence, what is a marketing man? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a marketer as a “specialist in promoting or selling a product or service”. That’s the long and short of it, I guess. The operative word for me is “promoting”.

To achieve this, I believe the most important weapon of the marketing professional is the ability to communicate – to identify the target audience, create the message, disseminate the message, stimulate a response through the call-to-action, track audience reaction, measure sales leads, conversion and finally loyalty – in pursuit of business goals.

To me, the most critical dimensions of the marketer’s job is identifying the audience, creating the message and stimulating a response. This may seem too narrow or self-limiting to some. It is, however, what I have come to define as the core functions of marketing. And, in this context, I think the job is getting away from us and more into the hands of the consumers themselves.

Why do I say so? Well, first, social media is a truly global phenomenon that has up-ended our ability to strictly identify audiences. We now have more of a moving target than a predefined one because our intended audience itself defines or redefines who they think may be interested in our product or service.

They know more precisely who among their sphere of “followers” or “friends” are in the market for a product or service, who are intenders or who are merely passive receivers. If we do our homework right, the resultant audience may

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match. But I submit that because the market is spinning at an ever more rapid pace, “target” users are lost and gained in seconds.

The social community tracks this more precisely than we are able to. It is real-time targeting that we can – or should – follow more than lead.

“WE NEED TO LISTEN FASTER THAN WE TALK, GIVING CREDENCE TO THE ADAGE THAT WE WERE GIVEN TWO EARS AND ONE MOUTH FOR A REASON.” Second, creating the message is also now more a matter of seeding a proposition than a full-on assault on the left and/or the right brain.

Where before we could revel in the one-way nature of marketing communication from the manufacturer or provider to the customer, we are now bedeviled with an infinitely more complex messaging process.

Previously, we were much more able to “manage the message”. These days, it’s more about managing a conversation. The message evolves and shifts and turns until eventually the “receiver” becomes the “sender”. Again, if we do our homework right, our message is amplified and cloaked with real-world endorsements.

If, on the other hand, we get it wrong, our message can completely backfire before it even gets off the ground. How we say things, when we say them and where we say them

is now such a dynamic exercise that we have to constantly track, fine-tune or reform our message so we can quickly align or realign it with rapidly emerging social views.

We need to listen faster than we talk, giving credence to the adage that we were given two ears and one mouth for a reason.

Finally, the call-to-action. Eliciting a desired response – buy my product! – is no longer as much of a linear equation as it used to be. Now, it’s much less about what we want to happen as what the wider social community is willing to endorse. Negative customer voices used to be kept in the realm of the customer service office.

Social media now allows an unprecedented level of transparency in the customer experience.

Therefore, market response can be geometrically expanded – upwards or down – causing significant disruption to our desired response and our supply chain.

How can we avoid being relegated to being an “observer” in this evolving new marketing landscape? Or can we? I am not convinced one way or the other … yet.

But of one thing I am sure, my “marketing staff” has multiplied manifold with the advent of social media.

I am certain, though, that from the chaos will come order. Being able to shepherd that process is the key for marketers to remain relevant.

So that obit might be premature just yet.

Vince Socco is general manager, Toyota Motor Asia Pacific (Japan) at Toyota Motor Corporation.

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24/9/2014 11:49:43 AM

MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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Y MARKS THE SPOT The complex, yet exciting future of marketing lies firmly with the Gen Y consumer.

This group has been described as financial freshmen, independently dependent, practically motivated, tech savvy, entrepreneurial and socially mindful.

These characteristics are beginning to show themselves in this group’s rising expectations when it comes to customer experience, product offerings, marketing and distribution – hence the need for out-of-the box approaches.

Established companies such as ours will increasingly be taking cues from younger tech companies and start-ups, which have a better understanding of what works when it comes to Gen Y. Back to basics Ironically, the most powerful marketing tool in this digital age is word of mouth. Gen Y are children of the search engine era; they are pragmatists who do not take anything at face value. The rise of blogs, online forums and portals as well as social networking sites has enabled unprecedented consumer-toconsumer interaction.

Thousands, if not millions, of reviews of a particular product, brand or company are

stellar performance in one area could result in a huge drag on or damage to your brand.

As such, companies will increasingly see value in investing in areas that previously were not considered vital to a company’s brand message. In fact, at AIA, we are taking measures to ensure that all areas of our business translate into a compelling brand – whether it’s during a meeting with a life planner, at an event sponsored by AIA, on our AIA Facebook page and even when they visit our offices.

Keeping it real Gen Y consumers value authenticity.

Companies now have to walk the talk, and they are accountable for their actions beyond their products. Corporate responsibility, brand messaging and leadership all play important roles when trying to get buy-in from a Gen Y customer. It is important a company’s total brand message feels authentic to the Gen Y customer.

At AIA, we felt we needed to reassess our role in the lives of our customers and the way we market our products. Traditional marketing approaches tend to have a one-size-fits-all characteristic, which runs counter to what real life is all about. We launched The Real Life

With digital increasingly becoming an integral component of the overall media mix, companies need to revisit the ways in which they reach out to the Gen Y consumer.

Companies must continue to create meaningful “share”-worthy campaigns and events to not only engage with their customers, but also drive organic social media marketing.

AIA, for example, saw a great opportunity in sponsoring The Music Run and Taylor Swift’s Red Tour in Kuala Lumpur. We were also the first insurer in Malaysia to introduce the interactive point-of-sale (iPos) – an iPad-based system that allows policies to be underwritten and processed in an hour. The application not only reduces the processing time, it also significantly reduces the carbon footprints to the environment as the entire process is paperless.

These various initiatives are all part of AIA Malaysia’s aggressive plans to connect with the Gen Y consumer through mediums they can relate to and are in line with their interests and way of life.

Gen Y has given marketers a taste of what is to come. The future of marketing looks bright, thanks to a generation that demands innovation, authenticity and corporate responsibility – served with a side of wit and ingenuity. Those who don’t swim with the tide will inevitably sink into a sea of irrelevance..

“COMPANIES NOW HAVE TO WALK THE TALK, AND THEY ARE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS BEYOND THEIR PRODUCTS.” available at a few taps of the screen. This often means the Gen Y consumer has already made the decision to purchase a product even before entering a store (online or otherwise).

Today, every aspect of your business becomes part of your brand. Are you a good employer? Are you a socially responsible company? Do your employees share your values? Do you pay your vendors on time? Do you have a nice office space?

Some of these areas were not priorities 10 years ago. But in the age of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, 9GAG and reddit, companies are realising that every facet of the business forms a cohesive brand. A less than

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Company brand positioning last year because we saw the need to develop products and marketing messages that were personally relevant to our customers, while being socially mindful.

Reinventing the wheel The trend is moving towards usage of multiple screens concurrently rather than just a single screen. Nielsen research indicates the time spent on TV, especially among urban viewers, lags the time spent on a tablet, laptop and smartphone put together. In fact, they’ve found most viewers tend to use other devices such as their tablet or smartphone while watching TV.

Thomas Wong is the chief marketing officer of AIA Bhd.

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24/9/2014 11:57:14 AM

MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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IT’S ALL DOWN TO EXPERIENCE How experiential game-inspired campaigns can boost your brand.

The ancestor of gaming on media placements in Hong Kong was perhaps the 2011 game show, Action-to-Money, whereby every subscriber to now TV could participate in the multiple-choice questionnaire with the red, green, blue and yellow buttons on their remote control when the programme was aired from 9:30pm to 10:30pm.

Only the people who answered correctly within the time frame could advance to the next level; and those with a perfect score would split the HK$100,000 jackpot of the night. If nobody won, the prize money was carried onto the next episode.

Though it claimed to be inspired by the popular American game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Action-to-Money was the first in the city that really interacted with every viewer.

Media placement, therefore, was literally the bridge between the gamer and the game: in other words, when media is optimally placed, true experience will result.

Globally, an impressive experiential game-inspired campaign of late is Heineken’s Departure Roulette at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. As the name of the campaign suggests, it dares players to test their fates by letting the machine dictate their next destination.

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Heineken will even foot the bill, as long as players are willing to change their plans immediately – a fitting mission expressed in its tag line, “See what happens when someone travels outside their comfort zone”.

Though physical experiential/gameinspired events are rare to find in Hong Kong because of the conservative nature of our population, Imagination’s Asia Pacific head of marketing and PR, Pablo Cot Gonzalez, said the region could still include play in its strategy, but as a part of a brand’s ongoing principle instead of a one-off push.

“Most often than not, people think experience is an out-of-home push, but it’s not an event: experience can happen on any platform, online or offline.”

For Pacific Place in Admiralty, for example, Imagination created an animated interactive map complete with arrows that point visitors from their current locations to where they want to be.

Further up north in the Mainland capital is another eye-opening example that demonstrates Cot Gonzalez’s point: Asia’s first Audi City – an interactive showroom where car buyers can virtually choose the specifics of their future car on the wall-sized screen.

Aside from offering a play-like retail

experience for shoppers, the interactive showroom also saves space and offers all possible selections to consumers.

Though gaming-related experiences are often more glamorous when a new technology is used in the execution (imagine the hype when the first Nintendo Wii was born), Cot Gonzalez advises against using “pointless technology”.

“Like any other medium, it’s not just about the platform, it’s about the essence of the brand; it must problem-solve whatever issue the brand is having. So if it’s a technology that’s unsuitable for the brand, and they’ve already spent so much money on it, it doesn’t make any sense.”

While technology will be a big player in the future of experience marketing across all mediums, he further suggests brands to always look back to see if their consumers are catching up, and are not going out of their way to incorporate the gimmick.

Finally, Cot Gonzalez says these campaigns are the ideal veil for big data collection: in this year’s Auto show in Shanghai, Imagination set up interactive experience centres for Ford that allowed visitors to make personalised videos (one, for example, sees a Ford skid around the visitor).

But to conveniently share this video with users’ friends on Weibo, they had to apply for a RFID card, whereby the brand could then gather their information.

“The key is to make interesting content for people to take part in and, rather than forcing them to give us information prior to the experience, we tapped into their habit of Weibo-sharing so we can grab their details then.”

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24/9/2014 11:57:40 AM

MARKETING SPECIAL FEATURE: THE FUTURIST

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WE’RE DELIGHTED TO ANNOUNCE . .

The death of the press release?

The public relations profession is in a whirl.

The press release – that standard of every corporation and organisation to announce a new product, service, earnings or change of CEO – has been reported to be dead and buried. Gone with the relics of the past such as typewriters, fax machines, print newspapers and traditional journalism, the press release has been relegated to the dustbin of corporate public relations history.

Not so fast. Perhaps the press release hasn’t been rendered dead on arrival. Perhaps the release is now changing form, like all other media. It’s transmogrifying into more than just words. The modern press release now has pictures, video, infographics and sound to bring the news to life. It’s taking a new shape and has more narrative.

Brand journalism is the buzz phrase in corporate PR. What it means for marketers is that you now need to tell the story of the company, product or service so the media and readers get an idea of why it’s different and merits mention in a news story.

Releases are no longer written, approved and sent to a wire. They are now offered to the media with a story; offers of interviews with highlevel executives; b-roll video that can be spliced into an online report; or a series of pictures that can be weaved into a slide show.

The media is hungry for content. In the halcyon days before the internet (yes, there was a time) newspapers went to print, reporters went home, and the news cycle started again the next day at 8am. Today, it’s a never-ending churn and the responsibility for content has fallen on corporations since most traditional media

make with releases: dull and wordy. Today, the make or break is your ability to offer up “content” with the release. Editors need more than just words. They need visuals to tell the story and to create their own content. For corporate marketers, this is the perfect opportunity to write a release, shoot some video, take a few pictures, create an infographic, and get your business noticed by the media.

Many corporates are bypassing traditional media, producing online magazines and blogs with small teams of former reporters that look at news instead of announcements. Corporations are creating the news.

The press release isn’t dead. It has just changed with the times. The press release now must have more to offer than: “We’re delighted to announce …” It must be content-ready and made for the digital age.

“ONE THING IS FOR SURE, WHAT WAS ONCE THE STANDARD FORM FOR WRITTEN RELEASES IS DEAD. AND FOR THAT, I SAY GOOD RIDDANCE.” One thing is for sure, what was once the standard form for written releases is dead.

And for that, I say good riddance. How many times have I received a release with quotes that start with: “We’re delighted to announce …” or “This is a true game changer that will alter how business is done.” No one talks like that.

Then there is the closing quote by some CEO who rattles on about the fact his manufacturing company is still manufacturing things. And the boilerplates that go on for a page with every legal detail and caveat about how publications are to spell a company name that starts with a lower case letter. No one cares.

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outlets don’t have the money to hire writers, photographers and video editors to fill all the space on their websites and e-zines.

A press release just isn’t enough. You must have visuals. And they must be able to be shared on social network sites.

The press release was once very simple.

Although agonised over by corporate executives and PR pros, the idea was to get the media writing about your business. As a journalist, press releases used to come into my email by the dozens each day. It was always the first few sentences that would be the make or break.

The greatest mistake most corporations

Kris LeBoutillier is director of digital content, Visa Worldwide.

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24/9/2014 3:26:00 PM

MARKETING FEATURE: CREATIVITY AND DATA

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TURNING ON

THE CREATIVE LIGHT BULB IS THERE A WAY TO MASSAGE INSPIRATION? ALCOHOL (OR WORSE) MAY HAVE WORKED IN PAST YEARS, BUT WHAT DRIVES MODERN CREATIVE THINKING? JENNIFER CHAN FINDS OUT.

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MARKETING FEATURE: CREATIVITY AND DATA

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Ask any professional what the key is to creativity in this multi-billion dollar advertising industry and the answer is most likely to be something quite simple. A flash of inspiration – or what some call the light bulb moment – is really all it takes.

If you look up the definition of inspiration in the Oxford Dictionary, it means: “The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.”

In Hong Kong, a city that has long been criticised as a creative desert, rarely have we seen mind-blowing advertising stake its claim on the world stage.

But perhaps a city such as this is more suited for some rather than others. One of those is SK Lam, the creative director of independent creative outfit, AllRightsReserved.

“Stress fosters creativity,” says Lam, whose agency was behind the widely known Doraemon 100 Birthday Exhibition; adidas’ “We Print Originals”; and 2013 local favourite, Rubber Duck@Harbour city.

“Hong Kong is an overly crowded city under land constraints, and pressure is a by-product when you don’t enjoy your surroundings.

“That may hamper creativity because inspiration comes from our surroundings and things happen in it. But if you know how to convert negative energies into stimulations, it opens up the pathways to creative thinking.”

He emphasises the importance of transforming stress into stimulation for creativity, ironically, with more practice.

“Inspiration may originally come from gut feelings but self-criticism is also important, especially when most creatives believe they are the only ones in the world who can come up with such ideas.”

“But creativity doesn’t work this way in advertising. Creativity is used to provide solutions to existing problems for clients and to communicate. It should be logic.”

This theory is supported by Andrew Lee and Snowman Tsang, the founders of another local digital firm Rice 5.

“Creativity is all about the skill set of problem solving, and a process of analysing problems. It’s something that is inspired from daily life that is waiting to be translated into creative ideas and content,” Tsang says.

Says Lee: “It’s from daily happenings being converted into something with empathy.

“Everything you come across is an input or a resource for creativity.”

So are we born with creativity or is it fostered? Lee considers them equal.

“You may be born with higher curiosity and sensitivity, but further development is required before evolving into creative ideas.”

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KC Tsang made his name for the renowned commercial for Sunday Communications “Nine out of ten SUNDAY users are handsome” back in 1999, starring the young Ella Koon.

But both Lee and Tsang are concerned evolving technology may quell creativity.

“Technology helps realise an idea. But the increase of creative ideas on the internet makes audiences more savvy and more difficult to satisfy then ever. Technology is making creativity harder in this sense,” Tsang says.

Adds Lee: “Entering information is almost too easy on the internet nowadays.

“At the same time technology facilitates the collection of creative ideas, it also dilutes the potential of cognitive and creative stimulation.”

This statement would not have TBWA\Hong Kong’s group creative director Sami Thessman’s vote. By collaborating with technology startups, the creative agency is now using what it calls data-driven creativity as a method to get ideas down in digits and mathematics.

This programmatic system is for making creative decisions based on data, Thessman explains.

“It kicks off with social listening to data from the internet before creative planning. That allows us to dive into consumers’ psyche and to learn how information is perceived. It hands agencies the power to influence clients’ briefs, where business problems are addressed.”

Data-collecting may help big companies such as TBWA\ generate big ideas to cater for the rapidly growing digital trend.

But KC Tsang, assistant professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design, brings the conversation onto a theological level by suggesting creativity is spurred by a theme that will never age – self-cultivation.

“In advertising, there’s no textbook to teach you how to think or no rule to follow to be creative.

“Creative people need to be indomitable, which is defined by experiential growth and personal development in your life.”

He stresses unique insights are developed from observation and contemplation.

“You won’t stay long in the creative business when you overvalue superficial layers, such as packaging, while overlooking the meaning within.

You need to go deeper to reach into behavioural insights in order to add value to your works.”

After more than 20 years of juggling leading creative roles at Ogilvy & Mather Hong Kong and BBDO Hong Kong, to setting up his own business, Chan Tsang Wong Chu & Mee Advertising, the brain behind the most well-known ad classics in the past decade for brands such as Optical 88, HGC, Sunday, ING and Kowloon Motor Bus, persists that inspiration is a godsend.

“In most cases, good advertising always comes from a flash of inspiration out of thin air,” the Christian believes.

To KC Tsang, creativity lies in how people respond to ideas.

“The key is to well-equip ourselves to get ready when an idea hits. This is the reason why an enriching life experience is essential as it provides the ability to recognise and to translate ideas into something creative.

“They say opportunity comes to those who are prepared. This is an old cliché, but nothing could be truer.”

KC Tsang cut his teeth in the industry with great help of the famous local philosopher TinMing Lee, who is known for his “impeccable way of logical thinking and precise semantic analysis”.

Taking advertising back to the basics, it keeps a tight grip on philosophy, he believes.

“Creativity is basically taking philosophical thinking backwards. The evolution from idea to creativity encouraged by critical thinking, and the ability to apply a philosophical and a logical mode of thinking.”

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24/9/2014 11:45:50 AM

MARKETING FEATURE: CREATIVITY AND DATA

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TIME FOR CMOS AND CIOS TO BECOME FRIENDS THE CMO-CIO RELATIONSHIP HAS NEVER BEEN MORE INTIMATE, ALONGSIDE THE TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS FOR COMPANIES TO SEIZE DIGITAL OPPORTUNITIES, WRITES JENNIFER CHAN. The line between the chief marketing officer and chief information officer has never been more confused.

But Julie Woods-Moss, CMO and CEO of Nextgen Business at Tata Communications, says there’s good reason for this.

“Today’s CMOs are looking at social, mobile and big data, as they are all interconnected,” Woods-Moss said.

As a CMO, she has been putting more focus on bringing her team to engage with big data, especially in the context of social and mobile.

“While the CMO’s role used to focus on advertising, sales and brand-building in the past, the rapid growth of internet brings social data and mobile data onto the CMO’s agenda to understand the needs of increasing numbers of smartphone and tablet users,” she said.

“Data scientists are dealing with customer data, competitor data, business data, etc. Most CMOs now have some big data strategies around cyber security, cyber-attack, respecting customer data security and corporate reputation management.”

Since the use of big data to drive marketing

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We are entering the third era of enterprise IT We are here IT craftsmanship

IT industrialization

Digitalization

Technology

Processes

Business models

Capabilities

Programming, systems managemant

IT management service management

Digital leadership

Engagement

Isolated; disengaged internally and externally

Treat colleagues as customers; unengaged with external customers

Treat colleagues as partners; engaged with external customers

Outputs and outcomes

Sporadic automation and innovation; frequent issue

Services and solutions; efficiency and effectiveness

Digital business innovation; new type of value

Focus

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MARKETING FEATURE: CREATIVITY AND DATA

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will inevitably drive demand in computing power and storage, a new dynamic has emerged between CMOs and CIOs. “CMOs now see CIOs as their new cohort in the boardroom. The job of CIOs can be more effective if they have a strong business sponsor.

I see my role as being the sponsor for a strategic or marketing bet, and CIOs are one of the key people to help me to deliver.

“If CMOs want to get the best out of their CIO, they have to be able to talk the same language. Marketers have to understand technology,” she stressed.

So what should CIOs be doing to adapt to the new media industry?

A recent Gartner study suggested that the two complementary goals in technology priorities that digital leaders should target were to renovate the core of IT and to exploit new technologies and tech territories, including digital design, data science, digital anthropology, start-up skills and agile development.

When new capabilities are required to survive the radical digital disruption, CIOs are showing anxiety around digital marketing.

The research shows 42% of CIOs express concerns over their lack of talent to face the fast-changing digital environment.

“So rather than trying to do things behind his back, I prefer to say, come and join my marketing meeting and get to know the people, especially those in digital marketing,” WoodsMoss says.

In the midst of the digital revaluation, the line between the CIO’s and CMO’s roles in the changing industry is increasingly blurred.

Most organisational structures are about trying to get the right clusters in companies to deliver the most value.

At Tata Communications, CMOs report directly to the CEO as a strategic role; whereas in other organisations, CMOs usually report to sales, for which Woods-Moss said, “is not recommendable as it makes marketing tactical”.

“We have clustered IT with product and engineering. Could there be clusters of IT with marketing? I don’t know any structures like that right now. I’d say it’s two to three years away.

“I think the most important thing is digital marketing and IT need to be close in product launches and in planning and in strategic positions. That’s the first step.”

Tata Communications’ digital marketing team sees high integration with its product – a joint force between its digital and product team.

To cope with the digital revolution, Tata Communications is on a journey of investment in hiring more data scientists, IT and digital talents.

“We found if people stay with us beyond

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Reimagine the core

Increased adoption and integration of public and private laaS, PaaS, SaaS and BPaaS

More-federated ERP, multi-enterprise solutions, cloud components, mobile support embedded analytics

Postmodern ERP/apps

Hybrid cloud

Volume/velocity/variety; in-memory databases; advanced analytics; unstructured and multimedia data

Nextgeneration information capabilities

two years, they tend to stay with us for five or more years.

“My digital team is based in Silicon Valley. In India, digital marketers, particularly in big data, are found to move very quickly, changing their jobs every year. What we found is we have to work harder to recruit talents.

“But when they’ve come on board, they

More-diverse partnerships Use of SMBs/startups; U new categories of partner (e.g., mobile, design, analytics)

are likely to stay with us because we are a fast-pace company with interesting projects.

Young talented people see their CVs growing by participating in really big projects.”

In India, the average age of the employee at Tata Communications is 36 from a base of more than 7000 employees; 30% of which are located outside of India.

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24/9/2014 12:22:55 PM

EVENTS

THREE COMMON DIGITAL MARKETING MISTAKES Brands are you guilty of allowing these mistakes in digital marketing?A+M asks.

While digital is no longer a new medium, many brands, especially those that are just starting out, are still struggling with the basics.

Advertising + Marketing recently organised an event – “Rethinking digital – leveraging the power of cross-media marketing” – and gathered experts to talk about the topic in detail.

With more than 80 marketers in the room, the event sponsored by Yahoo saw speakers from Millward Brown, KFC, Mindshare and Yahoo touch on various aspects of digital marketing.

“As marketers we are in a war of sorts – how to get market share, generate brand awareness, gain share of mind of consumers and so on. It’s always about crafting the right plan, delivering on your KPIs and charging ahead of your competitors,” said Kelvin Hong, general manager of marketing at KFC Holdings Malaysia.

Hong, in his presentation, featured multiple case studies from KFC and also shared some common mistakes marketers commit.

Mistake No.1 – not understanding or establishing the role of digital “A lot of us want to jump into digital without really understanding its role. Don’t look at digital in a silo.

It is important to integrate it with existing traditional marketing strategies and platforms,” he said.

While not all brands will have the expertise right away, jumping on the digital/social media bandwagon for the sake of it, is wrong to begin with, Hong warned.

“Marketers need to ask what the role of each platform is. Is it about fan acquisition or

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driving awareness or sales? Goal setting is quite important.”

Mistake No.2 – your agency is copy pasting the work … and you’re not stopping it “Many agencies, especially creative ones, tend to adopt a copy paste strategy when it comes to digital marketing. They create ads for TV and/or print and reproduce them on digital. The two need to be treated differently.”

But it’s not the agencies only that are at fault, Hong said. As brand custodians, marketers must be able to ensure agencies don’t do it.

“Marketers should not encourage this behaviour and challenge the agencies to think about digital as another medium with its own set of requirements.

“We personally have to push back and force the agency to think harder about campaigns running on different platforms.”

Mistake No.3 – failure to set KPIs and measurement metrics Marketers tend to fret over KPIs, Hong said.

According to him, brands starting out with digital should have simple KPIs. “As marketers we tend to expect a lot from the platform or the medium, but what we forget is that it’s a process. Brands will get better at it eventually, but when starting out, they need to focus on basics first.”

said Hong. It is important to bear these three points in mind.

• Keep digital content social at heart; don’t drown the audience with your story and listen to theirs.

• Each platform is unique; find out what works for you.

• Make it easy, simple and rewarding; if it’s complicated it means you’re heading for failure.

Content helps a brand go beyond the traditional banners and search advertising to sell a brand message in an informative or entertaining manner to consumers, in a native voice, said Rueben Vijaratnam, deputy head of ad sales for Yahoo Malaysia.

It caters to the always-on user, but the challenge brands often struggle with is great content and its distribution.

Citing the example of Bellroy Wallets, Vijaratnam said not all content marketing had to be as expensive as scripting a film or sending a man to the edge of space.

Talking about LEGO, he said about the same time of the movie launch for LEGO, it also launched an official content marketing site in Singapore (and Hong Kong). The site spoke about how Lego was really good for early development in young children.

The articles on the site spoke to parents and children. For parents, the site focused on

DATE: 31 July 2014

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Keeping content at the heart of it all Brand story does not equate to brand broadcast,

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EVENTS

CONTEXT The haircare and shampoo category has been dominated by multinational/international players in the Malaysia market for a long time. But the category has been stagnating at 15% CAGR. One of the ways in which these players are trying to steal market share from each other is by launching specialised haircare products. Most of the brands have an anti-hair fall shampoo and nearly all of them boast damage control features Sunsilk has been one of the leaders in this category. It had around a 21% share in 2012.

But over the years, the growth has stagnated as with any mature product category. Sunsilk also launched a specialised product called Sunsilk Clean & Fresh to arrest this growth. The product was targeted at young hijab-wearing working women. Because of cultural sensitivities, however, it couldn’t show the hijab-wearing women washing their hair (usage) or flaunting their hairstyles (core proposition) in the communication.

STRATEGY Sunsilk embarked on owning the “hijab styling” territory. “Hijab styling” replaced “hair styling”, and Sunsilk engaged with its audience through three big content initiatives revolving around the hijab (hijab styling videos, mini-drama, and a hijab fashion reality show) as part of a well-integrated campaign.

The campaign was based on the insight that while by wearing the hijab women conformed to their culture and religion, by styling it they showcased their individuality and distinct personalities.

Sunsilk thought of using this consumer insight to use hijab fashion as a platform to communicate to its audience. Usually, Sunsilk’s ads featured women washing and styling their hair. In Malaysia instead it replaced it with hijab styling. The campaign Sunsilk Hijabista was born.

EXECUTION Sunsilk, together with Mindshare, created a series of core content projects across multiple media and used the synergies across the media to communicate better. TV was used to create mass awareness for the content and then it took it from TV to digital media to create further engagement.

On digital it used banner ads, Facebook ads, YouTube channel ads, bloggers, and also had a sponsored lifestyle page on MSN Yahoo and a Twitter page.

To begin with, it partnered with five popular hijab bloggers and created 10 hijab styling videos for 10 different occasions. These videos were put on the Sunsilk YouTube channel as well the social networking sites.

It also featured these in popular hijab magazines. Taking it further, it had a drama series in which it showed a journey of a young woman who was inspired to become a hijab fashion stylist, but since she came from a very conservative background, she had to go through various struggles.

In the series, it showed Sunsilk had a contest online and she goes online and participates in it which helps her realise her dream.

Sunsilk also had a nationwide hijab designer/model reality show. It was primarily driven by social media. It invited people to photograph their hijab designs and themselves wearing the hijab and put it up on its Facebook page through an app which it had created. Once up, based on the judges’ view, 10 people were chosen as designers and 10 as models.

They competed against each other through the reality show. These were very short-form content on TV so about five-minute shots on some of the most popular channels in Malaysia.

For people who wanted to catch more content, they had to go to the Sunsilk YouTube page and Sunsilk’s social media. TV also drove traffic to its digital brand platforms. All this culminated in a fashion show in which the designers and models were showcased at the Islamic Fashion Festival.

RESULTS These activities led to a great deal of digital engagement for the brand. About 50% who were exposed to the content on TV also went online to engage with its content through social media, according to Mindshare. The brand had about 3.5 million views on its channels which were newly created. In terms of social media, it saw 300,000-plus engagements and acquired more than 28,000 new fans, purely based on the hijab contest.

After a decline of minus 5% in 2012, Sunsilk grew by 9% in 2013. Brand imagery scores among Malay hijab-wearing women grew by double digits.

The case study was shared by Saurabh Tyagi, director of client leadership for Mindshare at the Insights.

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how children enjoyed playing with LEGO, while enhancing their skills, how to develop creativity in children, and other family oriented content on spending quality time with children.

Sharing tips on content marketing, Vijaratnam said: • Be native, not deceptive.

• Inform or entertain.

• Do not hard-sell.

• Act like the locals.

• Mean a lot to a small group of people.

What about the rest of the mediums?

According to insights from Millward Brown’s CrossMedia Research, TV is still the key driver of awareness in Southeast Asia. While other media change mindsets, TV and online persuade. But given the fragmentation of media, what should brands bear in mind? Here are three tips from Rob Valsler, regional director of media solutions at Millward Brown.

• Campaigns should not be designed in the myopic pursuit of reach and frequency; brands should add channels to duplicate and multiply brand effects.

• Thinking in terms of a “primary” channel and “the rest” can be high risk; a more equitable division of the marketing efforts is optimal.

• Don’t be slaves to TV-centric SOV; to avoid over delivery and wastage, re-allocate budgets from under-performing channels.

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24/9/2014 11:44:07 AM

LAST WORD

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WHAT NOT TO DO WHEN CLIENTS STEAL YOUR IDEAS What should you do to a client that invites you for a pitch, listens to your ideas, takes the presentation, gives the business to an unheard-of agency, then pays it a piddly amount to execute the ideas you presented? Bodhisatwa Dasgupta, creative director at Grey Worldwide, Delhi, makes his stand.

“You should never, ever call the client to find out why he has done what he has.”

Nothing whatsoever, if you happen to be in advertising. You should smile the entire thing off with a shrug of your shoulder. You should say: “Ha! That’s my idea up there. So what if nobody knows about it!”

You should not write nasty comments on the films you originally wrote, naming yourself as “Anonymous”, “Mother------” or “GoDie”.

You should never, ever call the client to find out why he has done what he has. And does he have no conscience? And absolutely no respect for the creative process?

Doing that spoils the chances of him calling your agency for another pitch a few months down the road when they’re in desperate need for some really fresh game-changing, award-winning, mind-numbing 360 ideas for a 10%-off brief.

So you pour yourself a puddle of the most expensive whiskey that has set up home in your bar, smoke a cigarette, curse him a bit, curse your fate more, tell yourself, “hey, s--- happens”, drown yourself in a bowl of spicy curry, go to bed and forget about the whole damn episode.

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When what you should be doing is fixing the system, changing it. This warped system of constant pitches that protect a client, but the leave the agency vulnerable to the theft of intellectual property rights.

What you should be doing is making clients sign a non-disclosure agreement before you pitch. So what happens in that conference room stays in that conference room. They make us sign one after all. It’s only fair.

What you should be doing is charging a pitch fee. Many agencies do that, and they’re the happier for it, if not richer. Charging a pitch fee indicates two things. One, that the client is really looking for a new agency. Two, even if the client decides to run with your ideas and doesn’t hand the account to you, you’ve still got something slightly significant in the bargain.

Lastly, what you should do if the client steals your idea is get very, very angry. Because ideas are really all we have.

Take that away, and what are we left with? Nothing.

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