Marketing Magazine SG - Apr 2015

MARKETING MAGAZINE SINGAPORE EDITION

THE ART & SCIENCE OF CONNECTING WITH CONSUMERS

SINGAPORE

APRIL 2015

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

Elizabeth Low, Deputy Editor elizabethl@marketing-interactive.com Rezwana Manjur, Senior Journalist rezwanam@marketing-interactive.com Noreen Ismail, Journalist noreeni@marketing-interactive.com Editorial – International Matt Eaton, Editor (Hong Kong) matte@marketing-interactive.com Production and Design Shahrom Kamarulzaman, Regional Art Director shahrom@lighthousemedia.com.sg Fauzie Rasid, Senior Designer fauzier@lighthousemedia.com.sg Advertising Sales – Singapore & Malaysia Johnathan Tiang, Senior Account Manager johnathant@marketing-interactive.com Grace Goh, Account Manager graceg@marketing-interactive.com Jocelyn Ma, Account Manager jocelynm@marketing-interactive.com Ong Yi Xuan, Advertising Sales Coordinator yixuano@marketing-interactive.com Advertising Sales – International Josi Yan, Sales Director (Hong Kong) josiy@marketing-interactive.com Events Yeo Wei Qi, Regional Head of Events Services weiqi@marketing-interactive.com Circulations Deborah Quek, Circulations Executive deborahq@marketing-interactive.com Finance Evelyn Wong, Regional Finance Director evelynw@lighthousemedia.com.sg Management Søren Beaulieu, Publisher sorenb@marketing-interactive.com Tony Kelly, Editorial Director tk@marketing-interactive.com

“I’m parched. I could really use a nice icecold Coke.”

“Could you pass me the Scotch tape?”

“Are the baby’s Pampers wet again?”

“I can’t wait to hop in a Jacuzzi.”

“Could you Xerox that for me?”

“Your sandwich is in the Tupperware over on the cupboard.”

It’s the Holy Grail moment for every marketer – that moment when your brand is so ubiquitous and strongly entrenched in the mind of the consumer it becomes a noun – a kneejerk reaction, if you will.

The consumer thinks of the product, and it’s no question, it’s your brand first. He wants a Coke, not a cola. You’re borrowing Scotch tape, not clear tape. Your friends want to jump in a jacuzzi and not a hot tub. Your wife’s kept your lunch in a Tupperware, not just in any plastic container. (Of course, for some of these, clever trademarking helps.)

But how does a brand, company or product get there?

When we thought of our first guest marketer edition, we wanted to speak to key senior marketers to discuss their most pressing issues, in their own words. When we sat down with this issue’s guest editor Michael Chadwick, head of branding for Mondelēz, the vital topic of going back to the brand was unavoidable.

Chadwick talked about the importance of going back to the brand in a world full of new innovations. The topic was set.

David Ogilvy once termed a brand as “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes”.

What are the tenets that build a brand? Is it advertising? Is it the product? Is it well-played marketing tactics? And most importantly, can all that hard work be quantified?

Also, it used to be that companies would spend millions of dollars building their brand by marketing over many years. But the digital age may have thrown that off.

If the worth of a brand is best known by its acquisition value, then the fact that new tech upstarts are being bought over at high prices (take for instance, WhatsApp’s multibillion dollar price tag during the acquisition by Facebook) should show a changing of the tides.

Or another example is young Chinese brand Xiaomi, which has already become the world’s third largest smartphone maker, despite only debuting five years ago. Is the brand playing field finally levelled?

In this issue, we discuss several tenets of building a brand, all from the collective wisdom of key senior marketers.

Find out how Mondelēz crafts its briefs and communications processes to place the brand in the centre. Read about how P&G and Fraser and Neave empowers its marketers to run with the brand direction. Read how Subway ensures its franchisee model stays on brand, as well as many more perspectives on creating a compelling brand.

Most of all, I hope this issue gives you new insights for your own brands and businesses.

Enjoy the issue.

Justin Randles, Group Managing Director jr@marketing-interactive.com

Marketing is published 12 times per year by Lighthouse Independent Media Pte Ltd. Printed in Singapore on CTP process by Sun Rise Printing & Supplies Pte Ltd, 10 Admiralty Street, #06-20 North Link Building, Singapore 757695. Tel: (65) 6383 5290.

MICA (P) 180/03/2009. For subscriptions, contact circulations at +65 6423 0329 or email subscriptions@marketing-interactive.com. COPYRIGHT & REPRINTS: All material printed in Marketing is protected under the copyright act. All rights reserved.

No material may be reproduced in part or in whole without the prior written consent of the publisher and copyright holder. Permission may be requested through the Singapore office. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in Marketing 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 198755 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 Marketing magazine, go to: www.marketing-interactive.com

Elizabeth Low Deputy Editor

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Photography: Teck Lim — Lumina Photography (www.animulstudio.com); Makeup & Hair: Michmakeover using Make Up For Ever & hair using Sebastian Professional – www.michmakeover.com

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

ARE YOU A KNEE-JERK REACTION BRAND?

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GUEST ED’S LETTER

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DO WE NEED TO REWORK THE MEANING OF “BRAND?

Photography: Edwin Tan — Lumina (www.animulstudio.com)

When Marketing first asked me to guest edit this issue, I was slightly nervous of tabling a theme around the word “brand”. I half expected to be met with a chorus of yawns and “so whats”.

Brand is a word we have become a little bored with as an industry, and a little sceptical about. We wonder whether brands are still meaningful to the modern consumer. And we have so much other stuff to be getting on with anyway – so many tactics to consider that we no longer have as much time for the strategy.

In such an environment, it’s little wonder that some are losing faith in the whole concept of brands. The past few years have seen some argue that in a world of total transparency, with consumers demanding authenticity and truth, and harbouring a post-2008 disdain for corporations, “the brand” is losing its lustre.

It feels like maybe the word “brand” itself is in need of a bit of a, well, rebrand. Or maybe it’s not the word, but the concept itself that needs a reboot.

As a guy whose job title includes the word “brand”, that’s clearly a hot topic for me. But the theme of this issue is (hopefully) not entirely self-serving. Given the BrandZ Top 100 Brands had a combined value of US$2.9 trillion in 2014, it would be a problem if the bottom was dropping out of the market.

No doubt, our lives as marketers have become more complicated.

But if that means we spend less time crafting the brands we guide, then those brands will become less powerful and, ultimately, less valuable.

So this issue looks at how we might reboot and refresh brand thinking – how we can take brands forward into the future. How we can make “the brand” central and relevant to the ongoing conversations about data, about channels, about new and different partners, about our more connected, participative, always-on culture. And how we can find the time and space to craft great brands when there are so many other demands on us.

Or maybe you disagree. Perhaps you feel the art of brand development has long taken up too much of the marketer’s headspace. In that sense, the question is: ultimately, do we still believe in brands? And if so, how do we build them in this exciting, complicated and ever-changing marketing landscape?

Whatever your perspective may be, I hope you’ll find the debate worthwhile.

Michael Chadwick Director of brand strategy for APAC Mondelēz International

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CONTENTS

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S P ECI A L G U ES T EDI TO R ED I T I O N: 4 DO WE STILL BELIEVE IN BRANDS? It’s a big question for anyone in marketing, but justifying it is the challenge. Michael Chadwick, director of brand strategy for APAC at Mondelēz International, writes.

8 MARKETING IS ALL ABOUT THE WHY Great marketing is all about pulling the right insights. Here’s how you know you have them, writes Hugo Saavedra, associate regional director at Mundipharma.

10 FEATURE: WHAT’S THE WORTH OF A BRAND? Is the worth of a brand really intangible? Here are the traits of a strong one, writes Elizabeth Low.

20 BRAND FIRST OR MEDIA FIRST? Should media planning take up the majority focus? How Mondelez ensures buy-in on the entire brief.

Global innovations director Pete Mitchell writes.

What’s the worth a brand? Our special guest editor edition with Michael Chadwick of Mondelēz discusses the biggest issues around the idea of brand, all in the words of marketers.

22 WHAT DOES BRAND-LED CREATIVITY MEAN THESE DAYS? Creativity can come from anywhere. Here’s how to keep it on brand, says Chantal van Wijnbergen, regional manager for marketing and PR for Jetstar.

26 ANALYSIS: IS P&G’S MARKETING TRAINING THE IDEAL MODEL? 28 CASE STUDY: HOW SUBWAY KEPT ITS FRANCHISES TRUE TO BRAND How putting marketing back at the centre of its operations created a “dramatic” impact on the business.

Rezwana Manjur writes.

30 9 THINGS BRANDS OVERLOOK ON SOCIAL MEDIA It’s important for brands to transform their likes and followers into connected users on platforms that the brand owns. Preetham Venkky of KRDS Singapore writes.

SCAN TO SUBSCRIBE!

46 40 KEY TAKEAWAYS: >> The key tenets of brand-building. >> How to build a team around brand-centricity. >> A discussion on top training strategies for marketers.

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ON THE COVER: Art Direction: Shahrom Kamarulzaman; Photography: Edwin Tan — Lumina (www.animulstudio.com)

Procter & Gamble has long held the reputation of grooming some of the top marketers regionally and globally.

Is its training and structure really the ideal marketing model? Elizabeth Low finds out.

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Photography: Edwin Tan — Lumina (www.animulstudio.com)

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IT’S A BIG QUESTION FOR ANYONE IN MARKETING, BUT JUSTIFYING IT IS THE CHALLENGE. MICHAEL CHADWICK, DIRECTOR OF BRAND STRATEGY FOR APAC AT MONDELĒZ INTERNATIONAL, WRITES.

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o we still believe in brands? It’s a big question and, for most of us in marketing at least, I think the intuitive answer is easy: yes, of course we do.

But increasingly, the industry conversation suggests that faith in the idea of brands is wavering.

The most apocalyptic marketing prophets are using the familiar old trope that brands are “dead”. Even the more considered seem to suggest there is something fundamentally rotten in the state of brand marketing.

There is no doubt we need to change the way we work. Technology has wrought fundamental changes. Socio-economic structures are shifting. The consumer has been transformed to the extent that we can no longer simply call them a consumer.

But I am not sure that relegating the brand to an afterthought in that conversation helps in dealing with these changes. In fact, I’d argue, strong brands are one of the few things that can help us make sense of and simplify a complex marketing environment.

And that breakthrough innovation (across everything from comms to product) comes about most easily and quickly when a great brand beats at the heart of the enterprise. Being lucky enough to work in an environment where fantastic brands act as the wellspring for such activity only reaffirms my belief.

There are many reasons to believe that far from being on the wane, the brand as a business asset is going from strength to strength.

To give one quantitative example, the combined value of the BrandZ Top 100 increased by 12% year-onyear in 2014.

But perhaps the best and most empirical evidence is sitting right before our eyes. Very simply: brands are, perhaps more than ever, a foundational part of our daily lives. They are still the bedrock of most of our purchasing behaviours.

They remain an incredibly deep and defining part of popular culture. And they don’t just permeate, but in many ways build our day-today experience.

Technology means that hundreds of them now sit in our pocket, accessible at

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the touch of a button, ready in the whim of a second.

Sure, you may say, brands are still big, still omnipresent, still influential – functional, if you like. But are they losing that more emotional tug? Have they lost that ability to capture the public imagination? To be liked, even loved?

Well, every year, millions of people tune in to observe a brand – Apple – making product announcements, such as the recent watch launch. So again, I’d say the evidence before our eyes suggests not.

So why then is this decline in faith in brands happening? I’d suggest there are two very straightforward reasons.

One is that we have begun to wonder whether brands are in some way a flawed model – the wrong approach to marketing in the modern world and to modern consumers.

And the second is that our agendas as marketers are so packed, we no longer have the capacity to give them the space and time they need to flourish.

Consider these two areas a little further:

1) IS THE BRAND A FLAWED MODEL TODAY? It’s easy to make an argument that the most dynamic brands today – the fresh faces growing at a lightning pace – are somehow fundamentally different; a new kind of brand species, and so different, it is not even right to call them “brands” at all.

Indeed, many companies now successfully position themselves on this basis, declaring themselves to be a new breed. Businesses are growing and flourishing on the basis they are more real, more artisanal, more personal. To use one whole industry as an example, the explosion in craft beers demonstrates this trend: the brand stories are those of craft versus commerce, pitting themselves against the big, behemoth “brand” beers found the world over.

Such products are almost perceived as “antibrands” – and this chimes with the narrative that consumers are now too smart for brands and too clever for them.

There is a temptation then to start thinking this is the new brand model;

“A BRAND SHOULD NEVER BE A FICTION ABOUT WHAT A BUSINESS MIGHT WISH ITSELF TO BE. INSTEAD, IT SHOULD REPRESENT THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT IT IS – A DISTILLATION OF WHAT AN ORGANISATION STANDS FOR, AND WHY IT EXISTS.”

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that the “anti-brand” is the kind of marketing modern consumers now love. That we should do everything we can to jettison the “artificial skin” that brands create, a skin that seems to be chafing on modern-day consumers.

Now personally, I love some of these “antibrands” very much (by the by I also love craft beers.) But I don’t think that means the notion of branding is dead.

Because it’s worth remembering the anti-brand is, itself, just another brand story.

A really clever one too because it means you can get away with marketing that no one even thinks is marketing – the ultimate in subliminal ads.

Take the movie The Internship – essentially a two-hour advert for the coolness of Google.

They get away with it (just about) because there is a sense that, somehow, Google is not really a “brand”. Perhaps the greatest trick some of our new favourite brands ever played was convincing people they didn’t exist.

And while this is one great brand story, there are many others that are just as powerful.

Let’s look, for example, at the fastest risers in the BrandZ Top 100 2014. Yes, Tencent, Facebook are in the top 10 – new model businesses. But the others? BT, Ford, DHL – even those which stand out as more “progressive” somehow – Uniqlo, IKEA, Nike – are in fact just plain old brands executed wonderfully.

But there is one thing every business can and should take from these “anti-brands”. And that is authenticity. Authenticity is the reason these businesses are not seen as brands.

There is a much tighter fit between who they are and what their brand is; there is a smaller gap, if any, between the organisation and the image. The “skin” the brand creates is organic, not artificial.

This is important because – in part due to the greater transparency of our age, in part due to the fact we live in a more mature consumer culture – people now simply see through organisations where the brand bears no relation to the reality of the business. That doesn’t mean brands are dead, though. It just means the age of the brand as a “sticking plaster” over an unappealing product or organisation is over. But did it ever really exist?

Perhaps what we should really be learning – or indeed remembering – is the real definition and purpose of a brand. A brand should never be a fiction about what a business might wish itself to be. Instead, it should represent the truth about what it is – a distillation of what an organisation stands for, and why it exists.

At Mondel z, we look at where our brands have come from to understand what they might be now. The best brands are discovered within the business – not created from thin air.

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“GREAT IDEAS, INNOVATIONS AND EXECUTIONS EMERGE ORGANICALLY FROM TEAMS FIRED UP AND FUELLED BY A CLEAR BRAND MISSION. WE PUT THE BRAND AT THE START OF THE PROCESS – AND AT THE HEART OF THE PROCESS – FOR EXACTLY THIS REASON.” 2) WHERE DOES THE BRAND FIT IN OUR AGENDA? The other critical issue then is time scarcity, and the complexity of being a marketer today.

At times, it seems, we simply don’t have the capacity to do the real brand legwork anymore.

Our to-do lists are too full. But I would suggest this is having an observable, detrimental effect on the quality of communications output we are seeing.

Think of recent work you have seen at award shows and conferences. How many great new brand ideas are there floating around to get really excited about? How many case studies on superb brand-building are we seeing? If consumers aren’t in love with many of these brands – are seeing straight through them – then it may not be the brand model per se which is at fault. It may simply be the executions are just not good enough.

Before we start beating ourselves up about that, we should remember: great isn’t easy.

But we shouldn’t think we can get anywhere near it if our brand thinking is anything less than great to begin with. So perhaps we need to re-examine our priorities a little, and reassess where the brand comes on our list of actions.

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Jony Ive, of Apple, has a nice quote on this theme: at Apple, he says, it follows “the idea that if we are heavy in our thinking we can be much lighter in the implementation”. In other words, the mental legwork – the “heavy thinking” – around its brand makes its output simpler, more elegant, and more powerful.

This is the right rebuttal to anyone who says they don’t have time to “over-think the brand”. I would suggest under-thinking the brand is a much more real risk. Because fundamentally, a brand is just a set of mental associations, an intellectual construct. If we don’t design it with precision, you can bet it won’t amount to much.

And it’s from tightly honed brands that innovations spring and breakthroughs are built.

Clarity of purpose and meaning provide fertile ground for new thinking. Marketing becomes not just better, but also easier. Great ideas, innovations and executions emerge organically from teams fired up and fuelled by a clear brand mission. We put the brand at the start of the process – and at the heart of the process – for exactly this reason.

Crucially, all of the above cannot afford to become an academic exercise. The best way

of learning how your brand should behave is the same way we learn to behave as human beings: through experimentation.

So, my answer to the question we started with is: I believe in brands, passionately. I just happen to think that – like most things – they need to be honest, well-made, well-crafted and plain damn good for people to like them.

And in a marketing world of ever great complexity, where the brand truly must live in the most real sense of the word; where people interact with and dialogue with the brand on a daily basis; where brand behaviour is an imperative – the need for brands to be strong is greater than ever.

Brands need to be strongly designed, strongly executed, strongly linked to the organisations they describe and, therefore, strongly able to lead those organisations and act as a north star for their every action.

We may be faced with more decisions every day than ever before, and that complexity may well grow exponentially with every year that passes. But the power of a brand that is true and deep is that it makes those decisions a whole lot simpler, and the solutions a whole lot greater.

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GREAT MMARKETING IS ALL ABOUT PULLING THE RIGHT INSIGHTS. HERE’S HHOW YOU KNOW YOU HAVE THEM, WWRITES HUGO SAAVEDRA, ASSOCIA ASSOCIATE REGIONAL DIRECTOR AT MUNDIPHARMA. MUN

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hen I grew up in Brazil, the youngest of three siblings, I used to get away with a lot because I was “the little one”.

This used to drive my sisters crazy. However, my mother always tried to keep things balanced by giving each one of us our own list of chores.

Those chores were always between me and the beach or a fun game of futebol. So, I did my “best” to check the box of each of those tasks very quickly so I could get on with my life.

Marketers should not approach how they try to reach their brand goals the same way kids approach their list of chores. I have seen examples of brand executions that missed a brand-centric approach. Being brand-centric means to truly understand your brand’s objective.

For those who don’t truly understand their brand objectives, executions become about checking the boxes: “When is the TV ad going on air? Does the sales team receive their consumer samples? What are the sizes of the digital banners we need to create?” Marketers can’t achieve their brand objectives by simply checking the box of each task at hand. You need to set a clear marketing task that will help you achieve the brand’s short and long-term goals.

Your marketing task has different components in it. Start by identifying a clear target – this is not only the demographics, but also the psychographic profile of your consumer. The business objectives will define how you want to drive sales, while your equity objectives define how you want to grow your brand. Finally, you have to understand the current consumer behaviours and mindsets and the insight that will unlock a new mindset and engage a new behaviour.

IDENTIFYING YOUR OBJECTIVE If you understand what the consumer is going through and understand the triggers or barriers they are facing, you can find creative ways to change their behaviour. Then you start to think about how you can do it. For example, if educating the consumer is a big part of what you want to do, would you go for a 30-second TVC as the main media channel? Probably not.

Here are a couple of examples.

One came from my experience with SlimFast, a weight-loss brand owned by Unilever.

We identified a strategic period when a woman wants to look at her very best – her wedding day. Finding the perfect dress is

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extremely important for every bride so we did a campaign centred on the first fitting. We partnered with a large US department store to interact with brides while they were shopping for their wedding dress.

Once a year, this department store held a sale where dress gowns from well-known designers sold for up to 80% off. This has become quite famous and hundreds of women line up in front of the stores for hours waiting for the doors to open, and when those doors open those brides storm into the stores and “fight tooth and nail” to get the dress of their dreams … as you can imagine, it can be quite entertaining to watch!

We saw that as a great opportunity to sponsor the event and bring celebrity stylist bloggers to provide tips on how these brides could look their best for the big day.

Incorporating Slim-Fast to these crazy events, with relatively little money versus buying a TVC, helped the brand reach more than 500 million impressions on earned media and drove strong brand sales growth.

Another example comes from a Nivea campaign that I recently reviewed. This campaign targeted mothers in Brazil who enjoy going to the beach with their kids. Nivea is one of several brands that have a sunblock product to offer protection for kids, so it’s not easy to differentiate against the competition.

The team created a “Nivea Protects” app as part of its campaign, and placed a tear-out digital bracelet on a magazine ad that could be paired with the Nivea Protects app. Mothers would then put the bracelet on their child’s wrist and let them go out and play while they read their magazines.

The app would sound an alarm if the child went beyond a safe distance to keep kids protected and give mothers peace of mind.

The brand found a very differentiated way to offer mothers protection to their kids while

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enjoying their time on the beach. This was a brand-centric way to build the brand.

BUILT ON BRAND INSIGHT Every marketing task needs to be built on strong insights, otherwise, the brand’s efforts go in the wrong direction and you end up wasting money.

While there are typical ways to get insights from poll groups to quantitative surveys, you need to keep asking “why, why, why, why” until you dig deep enough to understand why the consumer does what he or she does.

Good insight statements tend to start with words such as “I hope” or “I wish” or “I believe”. That’s how you can best express the true motivation behind the consumer behaviour.

Let’s take an example on healthcare.

Everyone knows mums want their children protected, but is that what you would call a sound insight? Definitely not. Through research we found that mums do want their children to be protected, but more importantly they wish to be confident on how to best handle the healthcare of their family. You want consumers to be able to say “Yes, that’s exactly how I feel” when you read back your insight statement to them.

A good insight needs to be “true”. It uncovers a consumer tension. It is relevant to your brand objectives. It will unlock a new consumer mindset. It will engage a change in behaviour.

If you talk to dog owners, many will say, “I love my dog”. That’s a statement and not an insight. If you ask them “why, why, why, why” you may hear they love their dog because “I believe my dog is a part of my family” … but why? Well, “I believe my dog is my perfect child – in a dog suit”. That’s a deep insight.

I have already mentioned a couple of traditional ways to seek for insights. There

MARKETING TASK TEMPLATE Audience: Description of your target – includes demographic and psychographic profile.

Business Objective: Get more users? Attract competitive users? More consumption?

Equity Objectives: Brand measures that you want to build.

BEHAVIOR

CURRENT

DESIRED

MARKETING TASK

What your target currently does

New behavior

Get [audience] to do [new behaviour]

MINDSET

What your target currently thinks

TO

New desired mindset

by [new mindset]

BRAND

are three other ways I like to seek for insights.

First, use social listening tools to listen to what consumers are sharing (for free) online. Several agencies offer these tools, but you should also keep an eye on comments being made on your Facebook page, posts, or YouTube channel.

Second, it’s by doing “consumer connects”. This is a one-on-one interaction between you (the marketer) and your target. It’s an opportunity to interact and ask consumers why they do what they do in their natural environments – during a shopping trip or at home or during a commute to work.

I used this approach during a project for a kid’s nutrition brand. Several members from the team went into the homes of consumers to ask them stories about the challenges they faced to feed their kids. We were trying to understand what was stopping mothers from using the brand more often.

When talking to a consumer, get them to tell you a story instead of just asking about their challenges and wishes. Then be attentive to the nuggets of insights that come out of those stories. For example, if you are a kid’s nutrition brand, you could ask your consumer to “Tell me a memorable story of when you had to prepare breakfast for the entire family?”

That’s a much better question than asking, “What do your kids like to eat?”

The third way to get insights is to walk in the consumer’s shoes. This is most applicable when you’re working on a new product development.

Let’s say you are developing a new packaging structure, you should “walk in the consumer’s shoes” to experience that new packaging. For example, if you’re working on a new packaging for an antiseptic, you should try to open the bottle while wearing plastic gloves. Would a gloved nurse in the hospital be able to open your packaging? Is the cap too tight that it rips the gloves? If it does, the nurse may think: “I’m never going to use this product again even though I think it’s really efficacious.”

LESSONS LEARNED I’m sure there were times that I missed out on a life lesson that my mother was trying to teach me through the chores assigned. Looking back now I understand that buying the newspaper every morning was more than just delivering the news, it was about being responsible and keeping my promise.

Hopefully, this framework of defining a clear marketing task built on “true” insights can be a lesson on how marketers can keep their promise to stay brand-centric while delivering business results.

Insight: A trigger or barrier that influences the [audience’s] mindset. *The views in this article are the marketer’s own.

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D N A R B A OF H T R O E R W A E R E H IS THE E? L B I G N , A E T N N I O Y G L N L O R REA T S A F O S THE TRAITIZABETH LOW. WRITES EL

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You’re at the supermarket, and there’s a glass of fizzy cola from say, a local brand you’ve never heard of. Next to it is one from Coca-Cola or Pepsi, retailing at a dollar more.

Which do you buy?

Atul Chandna, ASEAN consumer goods and services lead at Accenture, suggests a strong brand will have consumers willing to pay premium prices.

BrandZ, a study done globally by Millward Brown, showed the combined brand value of the world’s most important brands as being worth US$2.9 trillion as of last year.

However, much to the chagrin of marketers and brand leads, many firms consider brands intangible assets. According to an Economist article, the value of a brand, usually “invisible” when internally generated, is revealed when it is bought by another company. This is due to the different rule that applies to acquisitions.

For example, in 2005 Procter & Gamble, a consumer-goods company, paid US$57 billion for the Gillette razor company. The brand itself, P&G reckoned, was worth US$24 billion.

BrandZ now ranks the brand as being worth at least US$19 billion. Roger Sinclair, who advises MASB, an American body that sets marketing standards, opined in the article that investors have a right to know how much brands are worth because so much of a firm’s future depends on them.

In the tech space, which is doing remarkably well in terms of making it to the top of brand valuation lists, also saw several high-profile acquisitions. One of them was Facebook’s stunning US$19 billion acquisition of messenger

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“Brand building is always important. But brand advertising is not.”

Damien Cummings – regional vice-president and chief marketing officer for Philips ASEAN and Pacific.

service WhatsApp, a move that surprised many.

What made it so valuable?

Accenture’s Chandna says building brands is like growing the market share value of a company, “though the face value of the share is much lower, but with strong brand development the worth of the company is much higher”. “The brand is part of the product’s social stature.

Building the brand is strategic for almost all consumer goods companies, it is like a personal reputation and everything we or a company does is to work towards increasing it,” he said.

Added Sandeep Kohli, chairman and vicepresident of Indochina (Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos) and CMO and vice-president of ASEAN/ Australasia for Unilever said: “People buy into experiences and products which help fulfil a need they have. Brands help people to navigate the choices they have to fulfil these needs. They help provide a guarantee of quality.

“Successful brands are those which provide both emotional and functional gratification consistently. They need to be sharply defined and positioned towards a specific target audience.”

consumer goods firm, the contribution brands make is less clear.

Millward Brown’s BrandZ study makes an attempt to quantify the strength of a brand, that is, without financial or other elements.

“Brands that score high in brand contribution have distinguished themselves in the consumer’s mind. This step quantifies the power of the brand in the mind of the consumer that creates predisposition to buy and, most importantly, validates a positive correlation with better sales performance,” said a note in the study.

The study ranked 15 top brands for brand contribution. (See chart one) Luxury brands were the most represented in the list unsurprisingly, with brands such as Gucci, Hermes, Audi, Rolex and Chanel in the ranks.

However, according to researchers, regardless of product category or place of origin, brands can achieve high brand contribution. Most importantly, what was noticed about the brands on the list was that most of them (nine out of the 15) also appeared on the same list the year before, denoting staying power.

Brand: An intangible asset?

However, there has always been a struggle for marketers in trying to convince management of the importance of brands. Unless the firm is a

Brand building versus brand advertising While brand building is a vital business strategy, marketing experts say it’s important to outline the difference between building a brand, and mere brand advertising.

Damien Cummings, regional vice-president and chief marketing officer for Philips ASEAN and Pacific, says that both are often confused, with many marketers making the mistake of viewing their brand campaign or advertising as the way to build customer engagement.

“It can, but only if it’s done really well. Too often, brand advertising is simply a feel-good exercise that builds brand awareness, but not much else,” he said.

Brand building, on the other hand, is not about advertising, but about understanding and engaging customers – what Cummings terms brand advocacy.

“It’s fundamentally about building advocacy – either by being great at customer service, having products that delight customers and most importantly, delivering on promises. There are many fantastic examples of companies, such as ASOS, Starbucks and Xiaomi, that deliver great experiences, build loyal customers and create tangible value without doing a lot of advertising. “There are many ways of looking at the impact and value of a brand. The most tangible effect is on a company’s valuation

The Top 15 in Brand Contribution Rank

Brand

Brand Construction

Category

Brand value 2014 $M

Brand value 2013 $M

Brand value % change 2014 vs 2013

1

Agulia

5

Beer

3,676

3,903

-6%

2

Gucci

5

Luxury

16,131

12,735

27%

3

Panera

5

Fast Food

2,871

3,025

-5%

4

Hermes

5

Luxury

21,844

19,129

14%

5

Pampers

5

Baby Care

22,598

20,594

10%

6

10%

Chanel

5

Luxury

7,810

7,075

7

Coca-Cola

5

Soft Drinks

67,712

64,698

5%

8

Burberry

5

Luxury

5,940

4,194

42%

9

Audi

5

Cars

7,058

5,545

27%

10

Falabella

4

Retail

5,187

5,611

-8%

11

Rolex

4

Luxury

9,083

7,941

14%

12

Baidu

4

Technology

29,768

20,443

46%

13

Stella Artois

4

Beer

8,237

6,319

30%

14

Gillette

4

Personal Care

19,025

17,823

7%

15

Louis Vuitton

4

Luxury

25,873

22,719

14%

Source: BrandZ study, 2014, by Millward Brown.

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“The brand is part of the product’s social stature. Building the brand is strategic for almost all consumer goods companies, it is like a personal reputation and everything we or a company does is to work towards increasing it.”

Atul Chandna – ASEAN consumer goods and services lead at Accenture

and/or share price. Well-known, trusted, cool or high potential brands add a premium to a company’s valuation (if they’re private) or to their share price (for public companies).”

The age of digital has changed the playing field for brands significantly as well.

It has levelled the playing field for building brands or brand advocacy. This means some of the biggest and most valuable brands may not be the most established, with many relatively young brands in the top brand rankings. For example, the likes of Facebook and Twitter are about a decade old.

“All (of the above) now feature heavily in almost all top 100 brands lists. This is because amazing or appalling experiences are easily shareable (viral) – and they are incredibly easy to find via search or product review or friend/ peer social recommendation,” said Cummings, referring back to the idea that successful brandbuilding is really about advocacy.

What does a strong brand have?

Ambrish Jain, vice-president of marketing for Asia at Lenovo, says that while across brand categories, branding has a differing amount of significance on a company’s bottom line, a strong brand should drive three things: price premium to competitive offering; loyalty resulting in lower cost of acquisition or higher “lifetime customer value”; and advocacy – resulting in trials among other consumers with low marketing spending (hence, higher margins).

According to the BrandZ researchers, there

are several things brands do right when it came to brand-building: Trust The study details how strongly consumers expect brands to keep their promises.

However, this is tough to keep, with several sectors disappointing in this area. It highlighted several brands that were in violation of this.

“Lost trust damages brands,” says a note in the study. It outlined the examples of apparel maker Lululemon – when the stretch fabric of some of its products performed poorly and the company initially blamed customers for the fault; and GM and Toyota earning public rebuke when they failed to maintain safety standards – as instances of what could happen when this was violated. “Strong brands are better able to sustain fluctuations in trust,” it said.

Share of life While the goal of brands is the bottom line ultimately, forward-thinking brands have learnt that success comes from making a consumer’s life better or simpler. The study cited Apple, Google and Amazon as models for surrounding consumers with product, services and content.

Brands such as Chinese internet brand leaders, Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba, who built online banking centres and mobile payment systems, were cited under this example. “Share of life helps broaden and deepen the bond between customer and brand. This relationship potentially benefits the customer with improved service and the brand with additional sales.”

The Top 10 brands from Asia Rank

Brand

Category

Brand value 2014 $M

Brand value 2013 $M

Brand value % change 2014 vs 2013

1

Tencent

Technology

53,615

27,273

97%

2

China Mobile

Telecoms

49,899

55,368

-10%

3

2%

ICBC

Regional Banks

42,101

41,115

4

Baidu

Technology

29,768

20,443

46%

5

Toyota

Cars

29,598

24,497

21%

6

Samsung

Technology

25,892

21,404

21%

7

China Construction Bank

Regional Banks

25,008

26,859

-7%

8

Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Regional Banks

21,001

17,745

18%

9

ANZ

Regional Banks

19,072

16,565

15%

10

Agricultural Bank of China

Regional Banks

18,235

19,975

-9%

Source: BrandZ study, 2014, by Millward Brown.

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Seamlessness A seamless experience for the consumer is vital, said the study. “But by definition, seamlessness means that the brand makes the transitions between physical and virtual invisible to the consumer who’s interested in the results not the process. And seamlessness centres on the customer,” said a note in the study.

Personalisation Mere designer logos will no longer appeal to the consumer, says the study. “Self-expression is in.

In the luxury category, popularity increased for interesting jewellery, not simply the traditional precious gems, but other colourful, distinctive stones that consumers chose for their uniqueness. The celebration of uniqueness was evident in the extensive personal care product ranges for hair and skin types serving a more inclusive ideal of beauty,” it said.

Customisation Customisation was another tack these brands got right, with the likes of Starbucks and McDonald’s cited. Other brands that allow this include Nike and adidas, which allow consumers to personalise their shoes. Coca-Cola was another example from the study, where it has moved beyond its Freestyle vending machine that enables customers to mix ingredients and make about 100 varieties of soft drink.

Convenience European hypermarkets and other retailers have evolved to allow consumers to order online and to pick up in-store, boosting sales by allowing their consumers convenience. In Asia, examples of this include Zalora, which allows consumers to buy online and pick them up via partners such as 7-Eleven in Singapore.

Authenticity “Sometimes the most compelling aspect of a brand is the product itself. To accrue economies of scale the major brewers generally produce beer near where it’s consumed rather than where the brand originated. But sometimes the brewers balance this business imperative with the need for brand authenticity,” said a note in the study. This allows the likes of major global brewer SABMiller, which makes Peroni, its Italian brand in Italy itself, to charge a premium to cover the additional cost. This also includes how Heineken, sold in the US, is brewed in Denmark. This also applies to luxury brands.

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HOW GUCCI KEEPS ITS BRAND RELEVANT IN A HYPERPERSONALISED AGE Robert Triefus, chief marketing officer, Gucci talks about the implications of the digital age for the brand. *This interview was done by Interbrand for its Best Global Brands report. them, whether it is the iconic bamboo handle of the Gucci Bamboo bag that was first introduced in 1947; the horsebit that adorns the Gucci loafer, which celebrated its 60th anniversary last year; the diamante and GG patterns that have symbolized our travel collections for decades; or the Flora pattern that was designed specially for Princess Grace of Monaco.

Gucci recently rescued Richard Ginori, the traditional Tuscan porcelain maker, from bankruptcy. Does this purchase reflect Gucci’s deep-rooted passion for preserving traditional craftsmanship-or are you planning to extend more into areas beyond high fashion?

There were a number of motives behind Gucci’s decision to acquire Richard Ginori.

First and foremost however was the belief that this great Italian brand, whose name is held in such high esteem all around the world, deserves to have the support and resources it needs to carry it forward toward its 300th anniversary. Of course, as with Gucci, it is thanks to a combination of creativity, innovation, and artisanal craftsmanship that Ginori has established the reputation that it is has today. Gucci’s commitment to its province, represented by the “Made in Italy” label, is well understood now. It therefore should come as no surprise that Gucci is extending its support to another famous Italian brand that has also been responsible for the recognition Italian craftsmanship has achieved in the world.

Of course, for a luxury lifestyle brand like Gucci, home interiors offers a natural future opportunity, but at the moment, our focus is on creating a firm foundation for Richard Ginori to be able to go from strength to strength.

Italian crafts-and much of Italian life-are characterized by slowness, a hand-wrought or personal touch, and attention to detail. In this digital age, in which connections and purchases are often made in an instant,

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is the value of craftsmanship becoming outmoded-or is it more precious?

I certainly think it would be shortsighted of anyone to think that technological advances will somehow render the inherent value of craftsmanship outdated. Craftsmanship is the sum of human experiences that evolves over time. Handed down from generation to generation. Behind craftsmanship there is an artisan, who is creating something new and unique. This is real luxury, that is ultimately entirely distinctive and will always be valued and appreciated. Today’s “click of a button” society will in fact only serve to reinforce the values of true luxury. It is no surprise that luxury restaurant and travel experiences continue to thrive, even when the alternatives for instant gratification are so plentiful.

Craftsmanship does not, however, imply that one is stuck in tradition. In fact Gucci’s Creative Director, Frida Giannini, has become acknowledged for combining craftsmanship and innovation in her collections, which ensures that Gucci will continue to be recognized as a brand that is pushing forward.

In years past, a high-profile designer logo was a status symbol. Is that changing? How do you see today’s Gucci customers identifying with, relating to, and incorporating the brand into their lives?

It’s really just a matter of balance. The logo, icons, and motifs, for which Gucci is recognized the world over, continue to represent the heritage of this brand. They each tell a story, as there are so many wonderful narratives behind

How is the concept of luxury being redefined in this era of hyperpersonalization? How is Gucci making its goods-and the Gucci experience-more personal for consumers?

Customization and personalization are definitely facets of the luxury experience today that will only grow in importance. In this regard, we believe Gucci has more to offer through our specialist production facilities and artisans than other brands. We are proud to offer our clients the opportunity for the ultimate Made to Measure experience in one-of-a-kind couture dresses and leather goods. And for our top clients, we provide unique experiences in Italy attending our fashion shows or seeing behind the curtains at our Tuscan factories.

High fashion reflects life (and human aspirations) in the present, while traditional craftsmanship has its roots in the past. How does Gucci manage to stay relevant, while also maintaining its rich heritage?

Gucci’s unique duality as a brand, born from its history over the last 93 years, means that it is recognized and valued both for its fashion authority and its heritage of artisanal craftsmanship. This duality distinguishes the brand from others in the luxury sector. Over the last five years, coming out of the world financial crisis when luxury consumer habits and preferences changed, we have successfully increased awareness and appreciation for the brand’s rational values of heritage and Italian craftsmanship, while at the same time keeping the focus firmly on the brand’s own iconic fashion personality and leadership, which ultimately creates such a strong emotional connection for our customers around the world.

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HOW TECHNOLOGY AND GLOBALISATION PUSHED CITI TO EVOLVE ITS STRATEGY Dermot Boden, chief brand officer, Citigroup talks about how the company got innovative. *This was part of an interview done by Interbrand for its Top Global Brands study.

In this time of accelerating change, what are the core challenges for the Citi brand?

Similar to the fundamental challenge all brands face in any category, it is about building a strong connection between Citi and our clients-not only consumers but also including institutions (or businesses) and aspiring communities around the world. It is still about the key issues of: differentiation, staying relevant, and building an emotional connection to engender loyalty.

That is, loyalty from our clients, but also from us-we should generate and give loyalty to our customers in return.

Some research we recently concluded on consumer experiences indicates that the Citi brand and the solutions we offer are resonating globally. We see that the Citi brand is wellpositioned, particularly in Asia and Latin America where we are focused on uniquely serving the needs of individual and businesses with ambition for real progress in an increasing global world.

Overall, the relationship we have with these customers and clients is very strong.

Are you more cautious on the innovative side now because it is a very large organisation and there are all these regulatory issues?

Would you say the financial services industry is a little more cautious now in general?

I think we are innovating smartly-and with energy and passion. However, we are clearly conscious of our obligations-not only regulatory, but also our CEO has laid out expectations around ethical performance and requirements. We are very conscious of delivering progress, guided by those principles.

We are a global organisation, which is one of our strengths-we have tremendous reach and the capacity to allow businesses to innovate.

Citi is about enabling progress, about helping our clients on their journey from ambition to achievement. As long as we are delivering against those objectives, and that it is relevant to our customers and consumers, we are going to continue innovating. And it has been working.

Citi Mobile Snapshot, for example, allows people

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to access their account information from their mobile device without logging-in every timesimple, quick, and easy. Citi Price Rewind, another great example, allows people to make purchases, enter the details on our website and, if we find a lower price, we will give the difference back. As long as innovations are relevant to our consumers, and if they are also differentiating, they are good for the Citi brand. Most of these propositions will be about enabling progressand we have more on the way.

There is a focus on delivering smart banking branches-initiated in Asia-and now prevalent in the U.S. The original idea was to go as paperless as possible, delivering our products via touch screens: an innovative, almost Star Trek–like direction. Based on research, people under 34 are looking for good apps, not for branches.

People over 35 are looking for a convenient branch, but a technologically developed branchan experience that is consistent with the image of the brand. So, we are trying to build a leading digital experience overall, which includes apps, the website experience, and more high-tech branches.

How has digital technology and globalization pushed Citi to evolve its business and brand strategy?

We are the most global bank. When we play to our strengths, globality becomes a key component. There are three secular trends that

inform our strategy: globalisation, urbanisation, and digitisation. From a global perspective, no other bank is better positioned than Citi. We are in more countries than any other bank, and have been for a while. In fact, we have been in some locations for more than 100 years. We have been in Singapore, for example, since 1902 and employ 10,000 people, the substantial majority of whom are Singaporeans. This presence has given us a strong position in a critical leading market in terms of growth, technology, innovation, and the community. We also see tremendous opportunity in the rapid urbanisation that is occurring globally. We have identified more than 100 key cities internationally, and we are in a majority of them.

Digitalisation, however, is the trend that is making the biggest difference to the entire industry. Not just apps on mobile phones for consumers, but how we engage with other institutions. How do we help businesses get better value along their commercial journey? We have Citi Innovation Labs in cities around the world. To Citi, big data is a concept that we really have been dealing with for many years. We now have the ability to look at even more of the data and gain something meaningful from it, rather than just scratching the surface. Our Innovation Lab is helping with international transaction flows so that clients get greater value out of those flows-which is obviously highly beneficial for our global clients.

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SHOULD MEDIA PLANNING LANNING TAKE UP THE MAJORITY FOCUS?? HOW MONDELEZ ENSURES BUY-IN ON THE ENTIRE BRIEF. GLOBAL INNOVATIONS ONS DIRECTOR PETE MITCHELL WRITES.

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hould the brand come first or media planning come first?

The secret for developing great marketing plans is about starting with the consumer first. And starting with the consumer also allows us to deliver those experiences on platforms which reflect their actual behaviour.

I advocate for an approach that’s simply about giving consumers the types of brand experiences they seek from us, but in a scalable manner through media, which ultimately grows business.

So the debate of media versus brand could be seen as intangible because they’re two sides of the same coin in today’s world of communication, but where it used to be about starting with a single message and then deciding all the places to syndicate that, it’s now about knowing where consumers are and considering what the appropriate message, engagement or conversation should be. This is what gives media more potency and value than ever before.

So for me the most exciting part of my job is to create brand communications that penetrate culture and resonate at a more meaningful level with consumers. Media allows us to do this with scale, and increasingly, at near real-time speeds.

Forging better ways of getting to know our consumers has come on in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years – this has been primarily data-led, helping to expand our line-of-sight into the daily lives and habits of lin our consumers, while also allowing us to dig ou deeper into their passions and interests. Of de course, data does not automatically equate to co great insights or even a great campaign, but gr coming up with great plans that “hit the nail co on the head” and also pushes the boundaries of creativity is much easier to achieve through the power of data. So I would say I’m less th of a media or brand advocate and more of a consumer advocate. co

IS IT ALWAYS SENSIBLE TO THINK MEDIA FIRST? Th best approach is first putting consumer The un understanding at the heart, then creating a very close collaboration between media experts, brand teams and creative partners. ex This is how Mond lez, with the help of our Th partners pa at Carat, has set itself up to develop communication co plans. We call our approach “connections “c planning” because it does exactly ex that – it is designed to create an indelible in link between our communication assets as and our consumers.

The agencies which generally lead our communications co planning process are our media m agencies. This is primarily down to the

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fact they tend to have a better grasp of consumer understanding in today’s convergent world.

Media teams are much better equipped than several years ago because the questions they ask their consumer panels, such as Carat’s powerful CCS product, now delve much deeper than just the media devices they use and when.

Their beliefs, attitudes and passions as well as specific brand and product questions, along with real behavioural data, which now streams in from data management platforms, are all layered on to build a 4D view of the consumer. This is enabling us to hone in and focus on exactly where the value lies and how, where and when to best engage consumers. This is not to say the power of a great creative idea is diminished at the expense of media. In fact I would argue the opposite. The ability to amplify a great idea has never been more prevalent.

This is what our connections planning process allows us to do – focus on a great insight that penetrates culture, leading to a great media-neutral idea, which can be amplified through an interconnected communications experience.

Our approach is designed to help get us out of the old model where you’d typically start with a script for a TV ad, along with a few key visuals for print, point of sale and maybe a promotional radio jingle. Then you would build a media plan around those. It’s pretty clear the old ways of working simply don’t apply anymore. Planning for traditional TV first doesn’t make sense today because many of our consumers aren’t watching TV from morning until night.

The irony is not lost in the fact that before connections planning we might have started with a TV script when it was not even part of the communication experience. Connections planning is designed to put a stop to that.

We ensured this new mindset was hardwired to our new process when we developed it recently. Now our process is much more collaborative. Collaboration is starting to drive better creative production and media effectiveness. Suddenly I’m not creating a TVC anymore, I’m creating a connected set of experiences. Then creative production helps to bring the elements to life with various formats.

We now set ourselves up to leverage

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“THE BEST APPROACH IS FIRST PUTTING CONSUMER UNDERSTANDING AT THE HEART, THEN CREATING A VERY CLOSE COLLABORATION BETWEEN MEDIA EXPERTS, BRAND TEAMS AND CREATIVE PARTNERS.”

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the best media and best creative thinking to unlock the power of our brands.

The power of creativity has been elevated to new levels through both creative agency and media thinking and that’s what I look for when working with agencies.

When it is done successfully we see a tangible, positive impact on the bottom-line results. So there is a real business case to implementing this type of approach.

CONNECTING MEDIA AND THE BRAND

For me, connections planning is a dynamic, but brilliantly simple planning framework. Through application, the approach allows us to keep our finger on the pulse of consumer behaviour and helps us to develop communication solutions that reflect the dynamism within the market, while simple enough to be easily applicable. Its simplicity is a key feature of its success and traction that it has received within the business. It is essentially a three-stage process.

Stage one is to concisely summarise the key opportunity in one sentence; stage two is to develop a creative amplification platform which is media neutral; and the third stage is to design and build a connected communication experience that brings the creative platform to life. All three stages are interdependent and therefore if you adjust one, it has a knock-on effect over the others.

To elaborate how we successfully implement the process, more often than not we have found that summarising the key opportunity in one sentence is the hardest and most time consuming. That’s because it needs to sum up the entire ambition of an annual marketing campaign in a single sentence.

Essentially, the one sentence is a short description that captures who the key consumers are, the tension they face by getting them to change their behaviour and the requirement from communication to help create that behavioural change.

“The create stage” happens next. It’s essentially when media and creative agencies collaborate to develop a complementary, intertwined, creative approach. This is the point where creative agencies work their magic in the form of a creative platform, while at the

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same time, the media agency develops an approach to amplify the creative platform.

It’s about delivering creativity in media.

This is where we really see the power of the media’s potential. With so many new developments within media, this stage is about ensuring we can deliver consumer engagement that scales.

We ask our media partners to express their approach in one punchy sentence. We ask them to use plain language, the kind that your mum would understand, and capture in a nutshell exactly what the creative approach to media should be to maximise the impact of the big idea.

A list of media principles then expand on the implications of that approach; what it really means in practical terms – the context, what content, channels and formats are most relevant, and which media partners might be relevant to helping us deliver it with scale and impact.

After our partners have originated the right creative idea and complementing media approach the design stage starts. Both sets of partners are brought together to design a blueprint that orchestrates the way in which consumers will experience and interact with our communication.

It is essentially a mapping exercise that combines the most appropriate media, be it bought, owned or earned assets into a cohesive story. Painstaking detail and thought is given to exactly how the communications experience should be built to maximise impact and engagement. Key to the design of the map is knowing how we expect consumers to interact with content as they experience it in a seamless manner.

A big part of the mapping exercise is the ability to test and learn new ways to interact with consumers through emerging technologies and media platforms. Our ambition is to deliver the scale required, but also to provide consumers with new engaging ways to interact with our brands. We’ve got a great track record of balancing both aspects within our communications plans.

So, how do we know if it works? Setting expectations in terms of the levels of scale and consumer interaction is critical to defining the success of the connections map.

The agencies set clear KPIs against each stage of the consumer journey and then we track if the components are fulfilling against those measures of success as we go.

The sum of these parts is where the real success is happening, because connected ways of working are creating connected experiences that our consumers are wanting to have. That is the thing that we are most proud of.

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CREATIVITY CAN COME FROM ANYWHERE. HERE’S HOW TO KEEP IT ON BRAND, SAYS CHANTAL VAN WIJNBERGEN, REGIONAL MANAGER FOR MARKETING AND PR FOR JETSTAR.

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n a decade where the media landscape is becoming increasingly diverse, personalised, brand-led creativity becomes more important than ever.

Although it may seem that marketing becomes more complex than ever, this only forces us to go back to the basics.

With the rapid changes in technology, digital and social which are reshaping our lives, there has never been a more exciting time to be in marketing and advertising. It’s about being omni-present in the omni-age while going back to the essence of the brand.

It all starts with a sharp understanding of the target group and the key insight. We need to have a clear understanding of the universal truth, the human need and the friction the brand is built on. If you’ve cracked that, a clear brand purpose can be defined.

The purpose can either be functionally, emotionally or ideally societal. This enables you to make meaningful impact to the lives of your customers and the world they live in.

The purpose is fuelled by a clear belief and point of view on the category and the positive difference that it wants to make.

A clear and powerful purpose that is truly meaningful to target consumers allows the brand to connect on a higher level and lets it earn a unique competitive advantage in consumers’ minds, lives and shopping baskets.

For example, Jetstar offers everyone a smart way to travel. On a functional level, this means all day, everyday low fares to enable more people to fly to more places, more often for less. On an emotional level we are making your world more accessible: connecting people with people and people with experiences.

If the purpose is built on a universal truth, it inspires globally developed content. This global inspiration can be used for locally relevant activation. The purpose is the key driver in everything we do at all touch-points in the customer journey, and essentially, it makes our lives as marketers easier.

agencies that can come up with ideas.

Basically everyone can come up with an idea, whether it’s advertising or an innovation.

And it can be that one agency comes up with an idea, and we engage and add on some other agencies to make the idea work across touch-points and disciplines. By doing that we make sure we implement beyond silos and we maximise the impact for the brand.

One example is Jetstar partnering with Asia’s Got Talent, where we work together with Fremantle Media, a set of production companies, our PR and media agency and our in-house designer team.

Asia’s Got Talent is a great platform to increase the awareness of our product and services in lesser developed markets and build that emotional connection via stories where we surprise and delight a few contestants from across the region by flying in their loved ones to the semi-finals so they can be part of this important milestone in their life which they have been working so hard towards.

In the past it was creative and media, now we are shifting towards content and distribution.

It used to be that HQ controlled top down, now we are shifting towards regional and local inspiration and empowerment – top down and bottom up. A global idea can be localised, and a local idea can go global – all based on the same brand purpose and insights, creating a total customer experience across markets.

Our regional marketing teams guide their regional strategy and share best practices, while tapping into needed resources existing inside and outside the organisation.

An example was our “Take On The World” campaign where we connected people to their someone or something, somewhere. The idea came from global, and every region executed it locally.

Conversely, some ideas come from local markets, and are translated to others.

For example, our feng shui Lunar New Year campaign which is replicated now in other markets.

BLURRED LINES

GETTING TO THE HEART OF THE BRAND

When all the agencies, regardless of their expertise, live and breathe the purpose, a briefing is almost unnecessary – ideas can just blossom. The idea itself will lead and filter out which touch-points it needs. This means that digital or PR ideas are not solely the area of any one single agency.

Relationships with agencies change – where you had a global creative agency, media agency and maybe one other specialist agency, now you can have a network of

The brand purpose lies at the heart of the brand strategy, just like our employee and operational strategies, as it’s embedded in the overall company strategy.

This improves alignment throughout the organisation and ensures consistent and seamless messaging across all touchpoints in the customer journey: whether a customer is exploring their next travel destination, just booked a flight on Jetstar. com, received their itinerary or a travel alert,

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and is checking in, the in-flight experience or even coming home and dreaming of their next trip.

The total customer experience is datadriven which helps us improve the targeting of our messages. This is led by understanding what our customers are doing and when and why they are doing it, so we can meet their needs at that very moment.

We aim to smoothen the customer journey by offering only relevant products at relevant moments. We are personalising our offerings more and more with segmented emails. And hold back when it is not appropriate – should we bother our customers with car hire when they book a flight?

We are continuously reviewing if we can add or limit the number of touch-points and what devices they use and when, in order to improve and deliver a seamless Jetstar travel experience.

If someone is a JetMail member, and has downloaded the app, should we push a message to both or limit it to one of the two? Where is it most relevant and appropriate?

This goes beyond the marketing team and involves agile, cross-functional teams with commercial, sales, distribution, IT, customer care, customer service, HR, finance, etc, to bridge organisational silos.

A good example of this is our website redevelopment project which touches on so many different departments and cultures, as localisations and different needs and customer habits are taken into account. To deliver a seamless experience we all share the same common vision.

The rapid social, digital and technology developments ask for different capabilities in a marketer. Where we used to be generalists, a marketer these days has to be focused on either data and analytics (the number cruncher), consumer engagement (the customer lover) or content and production (creators and producers – doers).

Depending on the “task”, touch-point or initiative, a team can be tailored with the right proportion of marketing capabilities and other functions and disciplines. In a way, we operate as an orchestrator to assemble cross-functional teams and draw from different disciplines and cross-regional teams as well as outside agencies.

Having these more specialised capabilities in the marketing team makes building marketing capabilities such as consumer understanding and insights, brand positioning and brand strategy more important than ever to ensure everyone has those basic capabilities and we have a single marketing language and way of doing marketing.

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IF YOU REALLY WANT A BRAND-CENTRIC COMPANY, WHERE THE BRAND IS THE CORE DRIVER OF GROWTH, THEN YOU NEED TO STRUCTURE YOUR BUSINESS UNIT AND PROFIT CENTRES AROUND THE BRAND. WHAT DOES A BRAND-CENTRIC MARKETING TEAM LOOK LIKE? IT’S ALL ABOUT EMPOWERED BRAND MANAGERS, WRITES BART LIM, GENERAL MANAGER, NON-ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES, CEO’S OFFICE, FOR FRASER AND NEAVE.

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irst off, let’s start with defining brandcentric marketing. What does it mean?

It actually all starts with the consumer.

For many brand or marketing teams we always start off with the brand.

We ask these questions: What do we stand for today? How do we want to differentiate it? But what many are forgetting are the consumers. What are their deep-seated needs? And is your brand fulfilling those needs? This is what I have personally gathered from some of the brand discussions I’ve had in the past.

What’s worse, personal preferences and egos also come into play in the decisionmaking process. A more outspoken individual may come up and say, our brand should stand for this and that. But is this backed up by what target consumers are saying? Often, it isn’t. If you check with consumers what your brand stands for today, you might find very surprising answers. There’s often a huge gap.

One brand I personally feel that has done well is Mercedes-Benz. It has smartly repositioned itself in the past decade or so.

If you asked what Mercedes stood for in the past, you would get an image of luxury and opulence, but at the same time of a brand for more mature executives – possibly your dad’s car.

It would be a challenge getting the younger aspirational target customers into the brand franchise then. I believe they realised that and started marketing themselves very differently, leaning towards a more energetic, adventurous and life-style position.

Most brands, especially in that sector, would have been resistant to making such a big shift. Most importantly, this wasn’t just in its communication approach – changes seem to have taken place in its product architecture, design and offerings. If it only still had an S-Class model, it would have been the same. It was a total system change. You could see it in the way it styled its C-Class. Everything looked integrated.

STRUCTURING A TEAM TO BE BRAND-CENTRIC So how does this work when it comes to structuring your team? First, different structures work for different companies. Some structure themselves by business channels, some by geographies, some by brands. These work well in different settings.

But if you really want a brand-centric company, where the brand is the core driver of growth, then you need to structure your business unit and profit centres around the brand. Make the brand the core business unit.

The P&L of the company shouldn’t be overly aggregated in a simple manner. Many

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VISION PLANNING There’s so much information these days and it is available equally to every competitor. You need to make a smart bet on the five-year view of things. In five years what will your brand look like?

Who will you be serving? What will the market share be like? Once you are clear on that, you can do your planning.

Usually companies do one year growth plans, but this is too short. You may decide you no longer want certain brands, or decide that you want certain brands to be ramped up.

Here are three key questions to ask in vision setting: • What does success look like?

What does winning look like in terms of market share and size.

• Now that you’ve defined it, what resources do you need to get there? People structure?

• What products do you need?

What innovations do you need?

Plan your next five years, then think of the resources and marketing needed.

companies often ask, “how are we doing as an overall company?” This approach will not allow you to accurately see which brands are profiting or making losses.

To have a totally brand-centric company, each brand needs to be measured separately, with brand owners strictly accountable for their own brand. If one particular P&L is doing badly, it should be quickly corrected and dealt with, instead of dragging the whole company down.

You need to ask, is that brand strategic to the portfolio in the long term? Is it relevant to the consumers and the company? If not, fix it or dump it. This will force the company to be extremely brand-centric. Very often, when you have a big portfolio of brands, you can’t always see what’s wrong with individual brands and you may end up wasting money and resources on it.

I also believe that two key drivers of commercial success are our brands and our route to market. However, some companies today still don’t assign P&Ls to these key core drivers. Overall company P&L is often owned by finance or the general manager.

While management does ask, “how are the channels doing, how are the brands doing?”, sometimes it is unable to pay greater attention to the finer details that make up the brand’s

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health and performance. So that brings me to what I said – it is important to make sure each brand is measured separately, but at the same time, matrix it over with the different channels. Each commercial driver should have a P&L to it.

Also, a brand manager should have full control over the entire brand – cost of goods, which channels to distribute it over, what the investments should be over the next five years and investment in R&D. The channel leaders should also do the same.

THE EMPOWERMENT OF BRAND MANAGERS A typical organisation is structured by functions – marketing, R&D, finance, supply chain, sales, etc. There’s normally a director in charge of each function, who is accountable for their own function.

Typically only the finance directors and the GMs are looking through the whole thing.

Brand managers need to be empowered to manage all the elements that impact the whole brand’s P&L lines. At P&G, where I started, the brand executives closest to the ground (sometimes the most junior ones) would be making the most important decisions on the brand.

The brand manager would own their own brand P&L, cutting across all functions. They would have an influence on the product, where it was made, what it would be priced at and how customers would be served, and would know at the end what the brand P&L structure would look like.

While being possibly more junior in the company, the brand manager would have to influence at times more senior function heads or the general manager on their decisions.

The challenge now is increasingly that most companies today don’t enable their brand managers to do this.

Ultimately, the responsibility lies with senior management to make sure traditional functional silos do not dilute the brand’s holistic plans and health.

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should ideally have these relevant commercial competencies: First, taking P&G as an example once again – back in the day, it would ensure its newly hired brand executives went through a rigorous and on-ground sales training.

You took on a role of a salesman for your initial few weeks or a couple of months in the company – so a marketer would have to walk the streets for those months and see firsthand what it took to sell the brand to a retailer and a consumer. Then they would get a more intimate feel of the marketplace and what works and doesn’t. So sales experience is very important for marketing.

Another important skill set to have would be financials. A good marketer should have sound training in financials and know how one little change would shape the overall financials of the brand. They should be able to think if prices need to be pushed up, if cost of goods can go down, etc. The third competency would obviously be their ability to keep a close pulse on consumer trends and effectively/creatively communicate our brand’s proposition across that.

Brand people are typically very creative people with strong communication capabilities. But they must not forget to stay close to the commercial aspects of things – at the end of the day, we are here to delight consumers, and at the same time, maintain a sustainable and profitable long-term strategy.

“A GOOD MARKETER SHOULD HAVE SOUND TRAINING IN FINANCIALS AND KNOW HOW ONE LITTLE CHANGE WOULD SHAPE THE OVERALL FINANCIALS OF THE BRAND.”

HAVING THE RIGHT SKILLS Placing so much responsibility with a brand manager is a huge thing. What skills should a marketer in such a role possess? They

F&N’S STRATEGY As for F&N, we are trying to learn from our historical marketplace experiences and successes and move towards this model. We are measuring P&Ls at the brand level. We are looking at where our brands will be in five years time and which of our core/segment brands we will drive harder.

We are also moving towards this, especially with F&N’s integration into the broader ThaiBev group of companies. With a larger organisation now, this is critical. Our vision for 2020 is now crystallised, and we now have a greater clarity of what the F&N corporation will look like and where we are heading. We now have clarity on our core brands and categories. Resource allocation is also clearer.

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IS P&G’S MARKETING TRAINING THE IDEAL MODEL? Procter & Gamble has long held the reputation of grooming some of the top marketers regionally and globally. Is its training and structure really the ideal marketing model?

Elizabeth Low finds out.

Procter & Gamble has long held the reputation for producing top marketers. In my chats with many of the senior marketers in the region, many have cut their teeth in marketing in P&G’s structured ranks. Or let’s put it this way, throw a stone in the industry and you’ll hit an ex P&G marketer.

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While the company has had to face several restructures to its brand operations, its extensive marketing training and processes remain fairly entrenched in the mindsets of many senior marketers in the region today.

Marketers such as Ambrish Jain, global vice-president of marketing for Lenovo; Sophia

Ng, vice-president of advertising and marketing at OCBC; and Bart Lim, general manager, nonalcoholic beverages, for F&N, are among those who have credited P&G for a strong foundation in their marketing careers.

Another industry veteran (not from P&G) remarked to me: “You can always tell a P&G

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marketer.” P&G marketers are known for their structure and “left-brain” type of thinking: analysis, logic and process.

Globally, P&G counts the likes of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, HP CEO Meg Whitman, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and even CEO of closest competitor, Unilever’s Paul Polman, among its alumni.

A LinkedIn search in 2012 found 100 CMOs of other companies started their careers at P&G – a number greater than Nestlé, Unilever and Kraft Foods combined, according to an AdAge article.

One senior marketer, who preferred not to be named, credited her time at P&G as being “pivotal” for her marketing career. She was in a brand manager role at the company, and was later head-hunted by a major local organisation for a role in change management and that the structures P&G had was what the firm wanted for its marketing processes. She now holds a senior marketing role at a major local firm. She spoke in depth about the processes in P&G for grooming marketers.

Structure, in-depth training and empowerment for juniors “In fact, it was the only structured training and all-around education for marketing that I ever received. No other organisation (I’ve been in since then) puts marketing training at the front and centre like they did,” she said, describing the organisation as a “marketing university”.

There are several key processes it has in place that makes it so effective, she said.

First, it stemmed from its policy not to hire from external sources for senior roles, but have their juniors work their way up to senior positions.

“By the time you get to associate marketing director position, you really know what you’re doing,” she said.

Another thing P&G does is to place a heavy emphasis on on-the-job coaching.

“Eighty per cent of supervisors’ appraisals were hinged on how they trained their staff. If they wanted to move up the ladder they had to groom their juniors to take over. Therefore, they would have a vested interest in training,” the marketer said.

P&G also has centres of expertise with collections of best-practice case studies for staff to refer to.

“It was like a marketing university. You were always learning at P&G. At other organisations, you prepare to take this knowledge (that you learned at P&G) to them.

“Also, as marketers in P&G, we would manage the brand P&L. Marketers provide

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“Certainly the P&G brand name carries significant weight in the business world as far as marketing is concerned.

Having it on one’s CV opens many opportunities.”

Alvin Neo — chief marketing officer at Integrated Healthcare Holdings/Parkway Pantai

the brand leadership, supported by a multifunctional team. All the other functions would be a support to it and not just be an isolated function.

“That’s how it tends to work in the FMCG world where P&L is taken care of by marketing, and marketing gets to influence other functions such as strategy, research and development, product supply, finance, sales, design, pricing and more.

“Marketing roles, however, in other industries, could be at the end of the value chain, as a support role after other functions such as sales and product development.

“This is why many other organisations often look to hire FMCG marketers because they’re equipped with such skills. That was why I was head-hunted by other organisations,” she said, admitting she is an advocate of marketers going through the experience of marketing in the FMCG sector. The interviewee has since held senior marketing roles in sectors such as banking and government.

A P&G spokesperson confirmed these structures to Marketing.

Alvin Neo, chief marketing officer at Integrated Healthcare Holdings/Parkway Pantai, echoed the marketer’s views.

“P&G was my first job ever and key to helping my foundation as a marketer. It taught me the core of marketing: consumer is boss first and always, the importance of being insight-driven, the optimisation of the media mix, agency management, etc,” he said.

“Certainly the P&G brand name carries significant weight in the business world as far as marketing is concerned. Having it on one’s CV opens many opportunities.”

Too structured for speed?

While its sophistication of processes and training does P&G and its marketers well, many P&G alumni also cite several shortcomings with its monolithic and process-driven approach: it’s too slow to change.

Neo put it this way: “P&G is highly structured, highly prescriptive and ‘scientific’, with tight control from the centre as far as the brands are concerned and used to sizeable media budgets.

“This is very beneficial for young marketers to learn the important basics of marketing

which are universal and evergreen.”

However, this presents challenges in an increasingly dynamic marketplace, with new media proliferating and empowered consumers.

“For marketers trained in big budget research-driven ‘one-way’ advertising, reliant on best practice, this requires a major adjustment,” Neo said.

“The need to be nimble, flexible, responsive and interactive is critical and this is often when it’s a struggle for P&G. “The ideal mix of experience in my view is foundational experience with P&G, but at a certain point one needs to strike out for wider exposure to companies and industries which allow more freedom to drive as a marketing leader.”

Several P&G alumni, who also declined to be named, have even suggested that competitor Unilever trumps P&G in the area of speed to market because of its decentralised structure. P&G could not comment in time for this article.

P&G is currently the largest consumer packaged goods (CPG) firm with revenues of US$80 billion in 2014. Unilever is the world’s second largest CPG company with revenues of US$57 billion from over 400 brands, according to Forbes.

Perhaps the directions both are moving in at present are telling. While Unilever has gone on an acquisition spree and introduced major new initiatives such as its incubation programme for tech start-up Foundry, P&G is going on a major cost-cutting exercise.

In 2012, P&G announced a major productivity plan with plans to cut costs of US$10 billion over the next five years, including restructuring its marketing and communications operations.

In late 2014, it confirmed a big part of this plan in a major restructuring exercise – up to 100 brands in the following two years would be sold, discontinued, merged or eliminated as part of a cost-cutting exercise – to focus on its top 70 to 80 brands. Since then, Duracell has been sold.

Whether its new structure and growth plans are enough to carry it forward, it’s certain the FMCG giant will strike a note in many a marketer that has passed through its ranks for a while.

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HOW SUBWAY KEPT ITS FRANCHISES TRUE TO BRAND How putting marketing back at the centre of its operations created a “dramatic” impact on the business. Rezwana Manjur writes.

Marketing the brand hasn’t always been easy for Subway.

Because Subway is an entirely franchiseowned brand, up to five years ago, the marketing department was separately owned by the franchises. This was run by an elected board of franchisees called the franchisees advertising fund trust. The franchisees also had development agents which were responsible for growing the brand and the business in each territory. That created issues in consistency.

“That whole structure made it difficult to run anything from a marketing perspective in a single country, let alone on a regional or global perspective,” said Karen Eidsvik, regional director of Asia Subway International B.V. “In my team, the marketing, operations, research and development (R&D) were all sitting on the same floor, but they were not communicating with each other. As a result our teams were not focused.”

She added that challenges for the brand were many because of this lack in direction and communication.

For example, operational testing in the stores was difficult. She explained the marketing team and the operational team would usually be heading in opposite directions, which would lead to the sandwich artist hearing two different wants and needs from these departments.

“Our product development was also

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calendar-based which meant that marketing would highlight the ‘limited time offer’ coming up in August to R&D as late as in May,” she said.

“They would then demand for R&D to create something around that period. But we can’t possibly have a new sandwich produced and test the product in three months and then get it ready for the store.”

As a result, product development would also be misaligned. Meanwhile, she added, the data teams were dealing with a lot of feelings, instead of fact-based information.

Because most of the owners of the franchises of Subway were not marketing professionals or were not from the target market themselves, there would be conflicts with the marketing teams, resulting in the same issues surfacing over and over.

“We needed to be dealing with numbers and customer insights to know if our products and plans would work. Because we weren’t using consumer insights, R&D was wasting all its time creating new products that weren’t relevant to what customers wanted or needed.”

How did the brand counter this?

Subway started a committee called the “products and promotions” committee that was made up of marketing, R&D, operations, development agents, purchasing and also people from the franchisees’ advertising fund

trust board. This allowed the brand to once again be in the centre of all operations.

“This was painful when we first started.”

She added the teams came together to decide what Subway’s main problem areas were.

The committee collectively went through every product and decided whether or not there were enough healthy sandwiches and indulgent sandwiches because simply pushing the health proposition would not attract customers to the restaurant.

“The committee also had to decide on having several core sandwiches because it is ultimately a global brand and consumers have their hot favourites. If we start eroding our core products then we lose our brand.”

Taste, consumer insights, cleaner labels, redundancy and profit impact were some of the main priorities the committee was looking to address.

Next on the agenda was the sharing of its marketing plans. The marketing team briefed the respective teams on who their customer base was and the information it had gathered on their customer profiles. The marketing department also shared its plans in advance during these meetings, allowing the rest of the departments to have a six-month warning to negotiate better pricings with external partners.

Just recently, the brand also hired a marketing director for Asia who overlooked the data and insights gathered by the brand. Eidsvik also added the team was making planning decisions for 2016 as early as mid-2015 rather than in the last quarter as it usually does.

She added that last year the brand also decided not to have any new products in 2015 as this was the year it would go in-depth to understand its products and processes to have fresh ideas for 2016.

Ultimately, armed with consumer insights and a cohesive team, Subway as a brand is able to have a more effective response time when it comes to products in the market and better marketing roll outs. This led to the marketing departments spending funds much more effectively.

“Working together on the products and promotions committee was not rocket science.

But the impact on the business was dramatic.”

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9 THINGS BRANDS OVERLOOK ON SOCIAL MEDIA It’s important for brands to transform their likes and followers into connected users on platforms that the brand owns. Preetham Venkky of KRDS Singapore writes.

Social media has always existed since the advent of the internet, though in a rudimentary form. What really accelerated the growth of the current version of social channels was the “feed” (from your subscriptions) on the homepage. The “feed” has become such an integral part of our interaction online, that it has replaced Google to become the homepage of the internet.

During the heydays of Google, users would

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throng to the search engine and search for content or information that most interested them. It was easy for brands to target users, based on these interests. Brands had to compete with just 10 other search results.

On social though, the context has changed.

Content created by brands has to increasingly compete with content shared and created by a user’s friends. A lot tends to get overlooked and brands are not always sure on how to adapt

to the new situation. Listed below are a few common aspects that tend to get overlooked or taken for granted.

1. Growing a community beyond social While most brands gather likes and followers at a steady pace, most of them forget they are doing so on a platform they don’t own. In the real world, just like how you meet people at conferences, but have more meaningful

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7/4/2015 8:07:07 PM

We are Epsilon Epsilon is an all-encompassing global marketing company, the leader in making connections between people and brands. We find, acquire and retain customers for brands around the world.

We employ over 5000 associates in 60 offices and are recognized by Ad Age as the #1 World’s Largest CRM/Direct Marketing Network, and the #1 US Agency from All Disciplines. Independent studies by Forrester Research name us as a leading service provider in database marketing, email marketing and loyalty programs.

epsilon.com

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Epsilon International, a trading name of Alliance Data FHC, Inc.

24/10/2014 17:01

GUEST

EDITOR

EDITION:

NEWS

ANALYSIS

conversations with them at other venues later, it’s important for brands to transform their likes and followers into connected users on platforms that the brand owns.

This can simply be done by running campaigns or incentivising the users to register on the brand website or subscribe to newsletters by sharing their email.

2. If you build it they will engage Most brands believe that users will engage with any (and all) content they create. Far from the truth – it’s important for brands to look at engagement and reach data to see what kind of content actually works.

3. Content type based on business objectives To this day, we often see brands create content which doesn’t match their business objectives.

If you want users to register, you need to create a link post and not a photo post with a link embedded in the copy.

4. Keeping up with the changes (algorithmic) Almost all social media sites change their “feed” algorithm on a frequent basis. They do so to keep up with the changing demand from users.

But we seldom see brands keep up with these changes. If as a brand you are seeing video posts deliver more reach and engagement, then it’s time to repurpose your pictorial content to video content.

5. Framing the narrative Reposting the same content without truly understanding the context of user interaction on a social channel is the most common mistake brands tend to overlook. We constantly see brands post their Facebook posts without the necessary copy and image changes on Twitter and Instagram.

GIFs work better on Tumblr, humorous one-liners work better on Twitter, while focused images with an image filter work better on Instagram. Brands need to keep up.

6. Building deeper engagements Likes, comments and shares aren’t deep enough engagements. The time spent and emotional context to these engagements don’t do much for brands anymore. It’s important, now more than ever, to truly build deep experiences on social media.

7. Using social media as a lab Your fans and followers are the perfect respondents to test a variety of content.

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Is your social media engagement boring the consumer to death?

Brands should feel free to test their multiple versions of TVCs, radio jingles and print ads before committing media budgets on the creative.

Brands should also be willing to back “engaging and responsive” social content with appropriate media spends to increase its reach and engagement.

8. Planning for newsjacking Most brands claim to be adept at real-time marketing and yet they cling to the monthly calendar. Your agency’s community manager should behave more like a radio DJ. Definitely plan for content, but be prepared to create something creative quickly. This needs to be part of the process and not a one-off attempt.

9. Reach and engagement are declining This actually couldn’t be further from the truth.

Interestingly, for almost all brands we work with, we’ve seen an increase in both reach and engagement metrics. Three factors play an important role: type of post, time and curated community. In some cases, we’ve had seen an organic reach of more than 90%.

Despite social channels being around for over 15 years, there’s still plenty that brands have to learn when it comes to creating engaging stories on social media. Users are adapting and their tastes are ever changing.

The questions is, can the brands keep up?

The writer is Preetham Venkky, head of digital strategy & business at KRDS Singapore.

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7/4/2015 8:07:34 PM

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7/4/2015 9:58:13 PM

GUEST

EDITOR

EDITION:

NEWS

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

Lego’s record-breaker The first-ever interactive Vikings Village broke the Singapore Book of Records for the largest wall mural made of Lego bricks.

With the help of the public, the wall mural depicted a Viking longship crossing the seas. The record-setting mural measured 5.4m by 2.3m and was built from more than 140,000 pieces of Lego bricks. It was on display at Westgate until 13 March 2015.

Thereafter, it was taken apart and the Lego bricks donated to charity.

Augmented reality Singtel’s advertising arm, Singtel Advertising, has tied up exclusively with a virtual reality and augmented reality broadcast studio under Infinite Studios, which was launched in January.

Singtel partnered with the studio to produce its Singtel mio FA Cup programme. However, Singtel offers advertising opportunities to brands to get airtime during the programme, filmed in the studio. Singtel TV is Infinite Studios’ anchor partner and first client for its VR and AR studio, with Infinite Studios owning the facility.

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CapitaLand’s SG50 celebrations CapitaLand Limited kick-started its year-long activities with the “Building communities – setting the stage for Singapore 2065” campaign. The campaign features various milestone events and rallies Singaporeans can join in with CapitaLand in the nation’s celebrations. The campaign also features a new tag line, “You construct the moments, we build the stage”, along with a refreshed brand campaign titled “A stage for life”. The brand campaign will run on print, digital and broadcast platforms.

A sporty partnership Sports media rights company MP & Silva will kick off a partnership with the Football Association of Singapore to create new revenue streams that will provide growth platforms for the sport and take the game of football in Singapore to the next level, said MP & Silva.

The multi-pronged partnership will focus on Singapore’s National “A” team and age group teams.

NTUC FairPrice reviews accounts Local supermarket chain NTUC FairPrice is reviewing its creative and media agencies, putting incumbent Havas Creative and Havas Media on alert. Marketing understands this is part of its periodic review which happens every two years. Both Havas Worldwide (previously called Euro RSCG) and Havas Media have been working with FairPrice since 2008.

OCBC Bank appoints agency OCBC Bank concluded its pitch for its youth banking brand Frank with the appointment of Isobar Singapore as its new agency. The contract is for two years with an option to extend for another year. The pitch was first called in November last year and R3 was then handling the pitch. Incumbents on the account include Arcade and Wild Advertising & Marketing.

Popular jobs Among the job applicant pool, candidates in sales and marketing are the most sought after in 2015 followed by those with expertise in human resources and engineering, a recent study

by JobStreet.com revealed. This is despite having a conservative outlook on the job market in 2015.

Most Singaporeans’ employment and salary expectations are aligned with that of employers.

Courtesy is back Awkward Ah Seng is back to inspire Singaporeans to be more gracious to one another. The YouTube series created by the Singapore Kindness Movement was renewed for a second season, spelling out more social misadventures for the local hero.

All six episodes of the latest season went live on 11 February.

#SG50ShadesOfGrey goes viral The #SG50ShadesOfGrey combined the current buzz of the huge #SG50 event this year with the steamy launch of the movie Fifty Shades of Grey. The hashtag drew overwhelming hits, making it an international phenomenon being covered by global and local press. Jokes online ranged from the haze to local delicacies and rising ERP prices.

South Beach settles agency line-up Luxury hotel The South Beach appointed Havas Media for a two-year contract to lead its media and advertising efforts for the Singapore and regional markets. The agency is tasked to handle the hotel’s advertising efforts focusing on a more integrated approach to advertising planning. Meanwhile, The South Beach also picked its creative and PR agencies for the Singapore market.

Singapore’s mini Silicon Valley Singapore unveiled what it is calling its biggest integrated startup space, BASH. BASH, which stands for Building Amazing Startups Here, is an initiative led by Infocomm Investments Pte Ltd (IIPL).

IIPL has a memorandum of understanding with Singapore Press Holdings and global accelerator Plug and Play to run a corporate-accelerator programme for Singapore-based digital media startups.

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GUEST

Mentoring help The GroupM Singapore’s executive leadership team appointed seven of its staff to form a cross agency community.

The selected candidates will work directly with the leadership team to engage in GroupM’s areas of business for its clients. The mentoring programme seeks to engage key talents and bolster the company’s strategic business goals. The eMpower team is tasked to work on strategic business projects and present the outcomes to the Singapore executive committee.

New platforms and offerings MediaCorp’s OOH media platform has converted all its 12-sheet screen wrap formats inside the bus shelters in the city to an “Opti-Prime” format. This includes incorporating three new different formats – 4 Prime, Digiboard and Digi6. The 4 Prime static is said to be bigger than the typical 4-sheet size and provides a medium static format for advertisers to engage audiences within the shelter.

Creatives for a cause Three Singaporean youths launched a pro bono creative agency, Creatives for Causes (CFC) – reportedly a first in Asia Pacific. The team behind Creatives for Causes comprises Jeraldine Phneah, Kevin Ng and Mah Poh Ee. CFC matches creative volunteers to the needs of charities, community service groups and social enterprises in Singapore. The pro bono agency provides creative services such as photography, videography, copywriting, graphic design, public relations and social media marketing.

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EDITOR

Kallang Wave Mall’s official opening In partnership with The Walt Disney Company (Southeast Asia), Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and Citibank Singapore, Kallang Wave Mall is celebrating its official opening with a line-up of events in 2015. Kallang Wave is managed

by SMRT Alpha, a joint venture between the subsidiaries of SMRT Corporation and NTUC FairPrice.

SMRT worked with Citibank to offer exclusive privileges and benefits for dining and shopping.

NETS picks social media agency NETS (Network for Electronic Transfers) appointed social and mobile agency KRDS Singapore as its social media agency for the year following a multi-agency pitch. KRDS Singapore now handles NETS’ Facebook and Instagram accounts. The agency will help NETS maintain its legacy of over 25 years and push for the consumer preference for making the card the most widely used e-payment option in Singapore.

Coming home Changi Airport is bringing its brand values to life with its “I’m Home” campaign. This is an online campaign created by J. Walter Thompson (JWT) Singapore to celebrate the company’s vision and pay tribute to the nation’s 50th birthday. The campaign was in collaboration with Benjamin Kheng, co-founder of the popular Singaporean indie band The Sam Willows, and directors Wee Li Lin and Charles Lim.

EDITION:

NEWS

Gender diversity SapientNitro partnered with Singapore Committee for UN Women to launch “TRIBE”: Promoting gender diversity in leadership. This is an umbrella network for corporate diversity programmes. The initiative comes as the two try to counter institutional barriers that continue to exist – impeding opportunities for women to rise to their fullest potential.

Nivea ad slammed Women’s rights group AWARE Singapore has slammed Nivea for its latest ad. The threeminute ad depicts the perils of a woman caught in awkward social situations due to her dark underarms. The ad has been shared more than 383 times since it was posted on 28 February on Facebook and caught the attention of AWARE following a number of consumers slamming the brand for the ad.

CAG launches media agency tender Changi Airport Group (CAG) called a pitch for its media buying duties. The new contract will run for two years with an option to extend for another two and the briefing has already been held.

The incumbent agency on the business is ZenithOptimedia and the contract with the agency is set to conclude in June this year.

Thanking the pioneers The Ministry of Communications and Information Singapore was tasked to convey the policies of the Pioneer Generation Package, an initiative introduced by the Singapore government to honour and thank the pioneers for their hard work and dedication that contributed to Singapore’s success to this day.

A classy interaction Singapore Airlines and TBWA’s Digital Arts Network (DAN) Singapore created a new interactive website for its new premium economy class. This interactive site allows consumers to experience the new premium economy class without having to step inside the aircraft. The website (siapremiumeconomy. com) has been designed for seamless use on all digital devices and platforms.

KFC Singapore appoints Ogilvy & Mather KFC Singapore appointed Ogilvy & Mather Singapore as its agency of record moving the account from Ren Partnerships.

Ogilvy & Mather Singapore will be responsible for all KFC’s communications in the Singapore market. Before working with Ren Partnerships, which was appointed a year ago, KFC Singapore’s account was held

by Grey.

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Guinness throws St. Patrick’s day bash Guinness extended its St. Patrick’s festivities in Singapore from a weekend carnival to a week of celebrations on 11 to 17 March. Partnering up with Singtel, Guinness pints were redeemable using Singtel’s mWallet app. In total, more than 4,000 pints daily and a total of over 11,000 litres of the brew given away over five days.

Singtel’s media short-list Singtel was tipped to have narrowed its media review down to four agencies. The agencies remaining in the pitch are CaratVizeum’s Team Connect, MEC and Havas, and PHD. Singtel called the pitch in December last year putting incumbent agency MEC on alert Guerrilla marketing gone wrong On 2 March 2015, blogger Jerome Lim wrote a post called “Stumbling upon a Tiger’s lair”.

In this post he describes coming across a lair in Mount Faber which had a wooden crate which was filled with old Tiger Beer bottles and cans. However, this was uncovered as a marketing stunt for Tiger Beer, to the chagrin of the public.

SPH invests SG$2 million in tech firm Handshakes Singapore Press Holdings has made an investment of a SG$2 million cash injection into DC, which owns and operates tech firm Handshakes. This gives SPH a 20% stake in the company. Handshakes is a young technology company founded in April 2011 by two Singaporeans, Charles Poon and Daryl Neo. It is a service that provides quick access to curated information about companies and the people who run or own them.

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EDITOR

Spark Architects retains Epic PR Spark Architects reappointed Epic PR for another term, based on the successful delivery of key PR campaigns in 2014. One such high-profile campaign was built around the thought leadership of Singapore establishing its first floating hawker centre – called the Solar Orchid – as a cultural and architectural nod in celebrating Singapore’s 50th birthday, said the agency.

Hootsuite’s new PR agency Social relationship platform Hootsuite has appointed Waggener Edstrom Communications (WE) as its PR agency following a pitch.WE will drive Hootsuite’s communications program across the Asia Pacific region, focusing on Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. The agency will collaborate with the marketing and communications team on messaging, media relations, speaking platforms, influencer strategy, and delivering bespoke research.

Campaign for shoe lovers Digital agency Section tied up with Bata to launch the integrated digital campaign, “Have We Met”.

Aiming to reconnect with younger consumers, the campaign included a microsite to extend online dedicated engagement and reach. Bata’s targeted social media marketing also included a short film that enacts the reunion of two long lost friends through a pair of shoes.

EDITION:

NEWS

A Cinderella story KOSÉ Singapore has tied up with Disney Pictures’ signature property, Cinderella, to celebrate the SEKKISEI range’s 30th anniversary. “With this partnership, we are seeking to leverage on the SEKKISEI range’s 30th anniversary, as well as KOSÉ’s tie-up with Disney’s Cinderella, to promote the SEKKISEI range and reach out to a new target audience – upwardly mobile young Singaporean women. The key thrust of our messaging is that KOSÉ SEKKISEI makes Wishes Come True for all modern-day Cinderellas,” Dana Goh, marketing manager of KOSÉ Singapore, shared.

Emirates holds hackathon Emirates partnered with WIT (Web In Travel) to run its first 48-hour hackathon in Singapore.

The airline company held the hackathon in collaboration with Keio-NUS CUTE Centre and Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore. This coding marathon brought together developers and designers from the Asia Pacific region.

Hungry for HEAT A La Carte Productions, a division of Peter Knipp Holdings, appointed HEAT branding as the official public relations agency of the World Gourmet Summit (WGS) 2015. With a clientele that includes some of Singapore’s top dining establishments, HEAT branding will represent WGS 2015 in all public relations and communications activities.

Internationalising business The support level for SMEs for activities under IE Singapore’s grant schemes will be raised from 50% to 70%, according to the new Budget 2015. Other initiatives included enhancement for its Double Tax Deduction for Internationalisation scheme, covering salaries incurred for Singaporeans posted overseas, and greater support to companies venturing overseas.

The Vikings Village StarHub and History channel have partnered to create a first-ever interactive Vikings Village. This was inspired by the show Vikings and will be set up at Marina Square in Singapore. Vikings Village is aimed to educate the public about the medieval world of the Vikings, while providing an in-depth historical representation to visitors at the Village.

A stronger Asia presence GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is strengthening its presence in the region by establishing a new global headquarter for Asia in Singapore. The new global headquarter for Asia will support local GSK businesses across the region by providing the relevant leadership, expertise, capability and services to consumers.

CORRECTION *In Marketing Magazine Singapore’s March issue, the wrong images were used for Reyka’s direct mail campaign.

The images depicted were from Grant’s Whiskey’s The Ship event. Marketing apologises for the error.

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New marketing strategies Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) appointed J. Walter Thompson Company as its new global marketing services provider. Walter Thompson will provide TWE with marketing communications, creative strategies, trade marketing, shopper marketing, digital marketing and consumer and lifestyle public relations services for every TWE brand in every geography worldwide, with the exception of Penfolds advertising and related creative development.

Social spending rises Despite a predicted 6% increase in ad spend in 2015, Hong Kong advertisers remained cautious about the year ahead. Digital media platforms have yet to provide clear return-on-investment data. The latest survey on advertising spending projections showed that despite the digital trend, TV and newspapers will remain dominant over the next 12 months.

Ogilvy & Mather wins China Merchants Bank Ogilvy & Mather Beijing won a yearlong project for China Merchants Bank, with a brief to improve user experience and increase the bank’s attraction to a younger generation. A CMB spokesperson said the brand wanted to enhance its image and internal cohesion.

Further, the company aims to be more commonly recognised for providing customers with the best experience.

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Taking over ad impressions Asia overtook Europe to become the second highest generator of mobile ad impressions on the Opera Mediaworks mobile ad platform at the end of 2013.

According to Opera Mediaworks, smartphone adoption rates across 29 APAC countries spiked from 48% to 60% in 2014. Throughout 2014, the region’s impression market share continued to grow with the fourth quarter nearly tripling the 10% it had three years ago.

Rugby fever PCCW-owned broadcaster now TV is this year’s host broadcaster for the Hong Kong Sevens in partnership with the Hong Kong Rugby Football Union. Now TV took over the broadcast rights from last year’s host broadcaster TVB. The pay-TV group will air the games on its paid TV channel SPORTS 4 as well as two free channels, accessible only through mobile devices, now Hong Kong and now SPORTS Prime.

Spotify goes to the Circus Spotify has partnered with Circus Social. The latter helps to create apps with Spotify functionality for brands on the Spotify API. Apps that were created under this partnership include one that enables users to select a time duration for an activity, choose their favourite artist, and have the app generate a playlist that runs for their chosen time comprising of artists that are similar to their favourite artist.

TBWA’s new addition Ed Mapa, Jr. returns to the Philippines to lead TBWA’s Digital Arts Network (DAN) Manila.

Commenting on his new role, he said: “I have always admired the creative work of Melvin Mangada (managing partner) and TBWA\ SMP and as a network, I think TBWA is more progressive. With Melvin and I sharing the same vision for digital and the role of organic data as the catalyst for innovation, TBWA\SMP is the perfect inspiration for me to come back home.”

Honda’s new campaign Honda Australia launched a new campaign as it enters the competitive compact SUV category with its new range of HR-V. With the help of Leo Burnett Melbourne, Honda has created an action-packed TVC. The TVC is part of an integrated campaign that includes cinema, outdoor, direct, online, social and dealer communications. Directed by Goodoil’s Nathan Price, the TVC takes place within the lucid dream of the main character.

Vacuuming controversy A vacuum cleaner brand RoboVac Malaysia drew the ire of Indonesian authorities over an ad it called “utterly insensitive” to its citizens working as maids in Malaysia. The ad, seen on social media, said: “Fire your Indonesian maid now!” reported The Guardian. The controversy drew condemnation from the public and the ad has since been removed from circulation.

Tinder set to charge Popular dating app Tinder will begin efforts to monetise the product, and has announced a premium service, Tinder Plus.

Premium services will allow users access to what Tinder calls its “most-requested features” – passport and rewind – as well as unlimited liking capabilities. This is the first time the service is looking to charge users.

Marks & Spencer expanding into China Flagship stores and e-commerce is high on the agenda for Marks & Spencer in the Greater China region. The brand has announced its plans for Hong Kong, Macau and Mainland China in the upcoming year. In Hong Kong, the brand will focus on modernising its stores and expanding its food store portfolio. A Macau flagship store will be opened at Shoppes at Venetian in November. In 20152016, the brand plans to enter key Mainland Chinese cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou.

JW Marriott appoints M&C Saatchi Marriott International luxury hotel brand JW Marriott has appointed M&C Saatchi to undertake the global creative and strategic duties for the luxury group’s local markets. The appointment came following a pitch. The pitch was led by M&C Saatchi’s New York office and SS+K, a creative shop it acquired late last year.

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ADVERTORIAL

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More Versatility More Performance The VersantTM 80 Press reduces operator intervention while enabling high quality prints with the ‘Advanced Simple Image Quality Adjustment’ feature which is an improvement from the existing Color C75 Press. Adjusting alignment takes less than half the time required by Color C75 Press, reducing the operators’ burden while maximizing the printer’s availability.

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7/4/2015 10:12:29 PM

DIRECT MAIL CASE STUDY

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TAKING NOTHING FOR GRANTED Grant’s Whisky chose the coolest invite to draw its young male audience to its party.

THE MAIL Objective: Create a social currency worth exchanging in the consumer’s mind in the form of epic experiences, bragging rights and inclusion to the “in-crowd”.

Idea: One of the boys: How Grant’s Whiskey engaged its party-going male audience.

Grant’s Whisky wanted to draw an audience of young, aspirational men to its brand, looking to reposition itself as a cool and accessible alcohol. It also had a rebranding movement to #IOU, #StandTogether on “It’s the Ship”.

“It’s the Ship” was a five-day, four-night event on Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas, featuring international dance acts.

It wanted to create a social currency worth exchanging in the consumer’s mind in the form of epic experiences, bragging rights and inclusion to the “in-crowd”. The target audience was males aged 21 to 30. These men would want a life in the fast lane; crave instant gratification; follow trends; want to be perceived

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as rich, popular, risk-takers; be sociable and have a tight-knit group of friends they party with; and flaunt their lifestyle on social media.

The direct mail invite to the target audience had “golden tickets” to the party; an initiation guide to the party called a “Broble” (this would list 10 epic deeds available on board worthy of any self-respecting bro); a magic eight ball and Grant’s Dollars – which partygoers could place their bids to win a private party with DJ Sasha Grey.

As a result, the brand received a 90% response rate to invites sent out, with more than 200 creative opinion leaders attending the fiveday four-night event.

The direct mail invite to the target audience had “golden tickets” to the party; an initiation guide to the party called a “Broble” (this would list 10 epic deeds available on board worthy of any selfrespecting bro); a magic eight ball and Grant’s Dollars – which partygoers could place their bids to win a private party with DJ Sasha Grey.

Results: A 90% response rate to invites sent out, with more than 200 creative opinion leaders attending the five-day four-night event.

Marcus Low Regional marketing manager William Grant & Sons

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8/4/2015 5:42:39 PM

OPINION: AD WATCH/WEB WATCH

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Andrew Hook Group executive creative director Havas Worldwide Singapore

AD WATCH HOT: Airbnb “Welcome to Airbnb”

Sealy “We work hard. We deserve it.”

It’s pretty unusual to see a TVC produced out of Singapore gaining much attention overseas. So, the rare time that one does, I think it’s worth a nod of the hat. Such is the case with this little gem for Airbnb. I’m intrigued the darling of the “sharing economy” would be doing something as anachronistic as, gulp, a TV ad. (Is it running on TV? Is it only on YouTube? If everyone has seen it, does it really matter?) There’s obviously been a tonne of time, love and effort poured into this thing (the behind the scenes is proof of that), and it’s interesting to see a supposedly “digital” brand going against the grain and doing something purely handmade. It’s an amazing piece of craft – the kind of thing any creative would look at enviously and think, “now that looks like fun”.

Sorry, what is going on here? I get the strategy. If you work hard, then you deserve a good bed. Fair point. But the wheels fell off when they hit the execution. This copy is going to give me nightmares for weeks. Apparently “driving a sports car” and “owning multiple homes in numerous locations” is evidence of being hard-working. Eh? What planet is this? The talent is an “executive director” with “28 years of industry experience”, although he looks barely 17 with a bad toupee (and he still can’t get his apostrophes right). It makes me wonder: if you don’t own a “high-end home in a prestigious location” are you even allowed to buy one of these beds? I’m giving it one star for pure Python-esque absurdity. Now I’m off for a nap – under my desk, on the cold concrete floor. I guess that’s all I deserve.

Kim Douglas Vice-president and managing director SapientNitro

WEB WATCH HOT: redmart.com

NOT: ezlink.com.sg

RedMart prides itself on making grocery shopping a breeze, and it’s true to its word. The home page presents users with all the information that a time-starved user requires – deals, local favourites, a discount code and free delivery above a certain spend. Scroll down. Without the hassle of needing to navigate through the site, six top items of each category are displayed right on the home page which means I can “Add to Cart” with a single click. The “Add to Cart” button is paired with the “Change Quantity” button on each image, which allows purchasing decisions to be made from the very first click on the home page. Better yet, all items are displayed clearly against a clean white background (with the exception of meal kits), so the products, the main stars of the site, are in focus without any distractions. The best feature on the product page is its suggestions – users can choose between related products, or products of the same brand. All the way through to payment, the site upholds its minimal design and clear copy, making the shopping experience thoroughly enjoyable.

The makers of the site seemingly failed to tap into any user journey logic, an irony given ez-link’s core business supports the local transportation industry. An instant pet peeve unfolds by discovering the main URL leads to a landing page where its main function is to house two options. One: checking the eligibility of exchange of an ez-link card, or two: visiting the home page. Why the “eligibility check” cannot be incorporated into the site’s actual home page is a mystery.

Clicking through to option two leads the user to a home page with Sims-like graphics of a modern city, unnecessary since aside from visually occupying a page of space without any information, none of the elements are clickable. Upon closer look you’ll find conspicuously placed on the image are two more buttons: consumer or corporate?

The frustration mounts. Clicking on either one of the options opens the user to even more options. Keeping count, so far the user has had to make three big decisions before getting anywhere useful in the site’s navigation nightmare.

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7/4/2015 9:28:35 PM

ADVERTORIAL

Chinese New Year Zodiac Snap and Win

Client MediaCorp OOH Media campaign Campaign period 13 February – 4 March 2015

by MediaCorp OOH Media OOH format 6-sheet creative Campaign objective The campaign was aimed at showing the creativity that OOH Media could offer, demonstrate the outdoor medium was a great way to engage the audience, and that advertisers could look forward to more of such opportunities from OOH Media as well as engage consumers.

In Search of the Runaway Christmas Tree

Client MediaCorp OOH Media Campaign Campaign period 6 December – 31 December 2014

by MediaCorp OOH Media OOH format 6-sheet creative Campaign objective In the campaign, “In Search of the Runaway Christmas Tree”, OOH Media aimed to showcase its creative options to advertisers.

At the same time, the campaign aimed to entertain commuters by creating a fun atmosphere while they waited for their buses.

This was in theme with the Christmas season.

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Strategy and execution OOH Media transformed two of its prominent bus shelters’ ad panels into an interactive zodiac fortune wheel along Orchard Road. The large zodiac fortune wheels were located outside the bus shelters of Midpoint Orchard and Far East Plaza – the two prime high-traffic locations in Orchard.

The public could spin the wheel to their Chinese zodiac sign to read about their fortune in the Year of the Goat. The 3D cut-outs, secured rotating wheel and LED lighting, made the panel stand out in the night. OOH Media also came up with a contest where the public could win a festive hamper by snapping a picture of the zodiac and viewing the zodiac video about their fortune using TODAY’s online app’s in-built Snap function.

Strategy and execution The idea was to create an easy to install 3D element on the 6-sheet panels in a cost-effective manner to show advertisers that implementing creative elements does not necessarily call for high costs.

Seven 6-sheet panels were dressed up as Christmas trees at the bus shelters outside Concorde Hotel, Orchard Plaza, Midpoint Orchard, The Heeren, Lucky Plaza, Royal Thai Embassy and Delfi Orchard – the prime locations in Orchard. There were four different designs for the campaign allowing the public to take pictures to draw awareness to the campaign.

A contest, “In Search of the Runaway Tree”, was also launched to get the public to hunt for an eighth roving tree, which moved to eight different locations in the CBD and suburb areas.

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8/4/2015 5:59:07 PM

ADVERTORIAL

Top image: Opti-Prime (Clockwise) – 4Prime, TVC and Digiboard. Bottom image: Opti-Prime (Left to right) – 4Prime, Digi6

Mediacorp OOH Media Platform

Client MediaCorp OOH Media campaign Campaign period Launched from 2 March 2015 onwards

by MediaCorp OOH Media OOH format Opti-Prime Campaign objective To provide advertisers with a new platform that will have the flexibility and variety to reach a wide spectrum of demographics.

These new formats enable consistent engagement from home to out-of-home with the ability to push ads synchronously with print and time-belt scheduling.

It can be made more effective with the ability to target specific audiences via a locality.

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Strategy and execution The three new presentation formats of Opti-Prime includes 4 Prime static, Digiboard and Digi6.

Located at strategic path-to-purchase locations, these new formats can help to seal the last mile marketing frontier from home to store.

The three new presentation formats help tackle the different needs and objectives of the advertisers – the 4 Prime static is bigger than the typical 4-sheet size and provides a medium static format for advertisers to communicate to the audiences within the shelter. It can be used in conjunction with the digital screen or as a standalone static poster.

The Digiboard is suitable for zonal activation with a short and crisp tag line for call to action, the TVC generates a more localised call to action and the Digi6 can be deployed to augment the 6-sheet poster network to provide additional city coverage.

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10/4/2015 10:16:55 AM

ADVERTORIAL

Disney – Have a Jet-Setting Christmas

Client Changi Airport Group Campaign period 14 November 2014 – 5 January 2015

by MediaCorp OOH Media OOH format 12-sheet panel and 6-sheet panel Campaign objective This campaign aimed to use a creative way to engage the public and provide a platform for interaction giving Changi Airport a brand image of being fun. At the same time, it also aimed to raise awareness of its Jet-Setting Christmas event at the airport’s Terminal Three for families with kids to participate in.

Strategy and execution Changi Airport’s Jet-Setting Christmas event

Bee Cheng Hiang

Client Bee Cheng Hiang

by MediaCorp OOH Media Campaign period 8 January – 4 March 2015 OOH format 6-sheet, 12-sheet, digital screens and 2D flagship Campaign objective Bee Cheng Hiang aimed to raise its brand awareness by using a wide array of advertising platforms to reach out to the mass audiences who were celebrating Chinese New Year, as its barbecued meat products are well-known in almost every household during the season.

Strategy and execution By making use of the different platforms in OOH Media, Bee Cheng Hiang was able to reach out

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brought a touch of Disney to Orchard Road with the use of OOH Media’s 12-sheet panels to showcase the creative. The identified 12-sheet panels used were located at the prominent bus shelters in Orchard – outside Tangs Plaza, The Heeren, Royal Thai Embassy and Orchard Midpoint.

It helped to reach out to more of the public, getting more people’s interest in this campaign.

With the idea to create a 3D version of real snow fall, the 12-sheet panel had a machine installed to create the snowing effect and Christmas lightings flashing around the poster.

The use of 12-sheet media made it possible to create a life-size example to give commuters an exciting introduction to the Disney Snow Palace at Changi Airport. Together with the 12-sheet creative, there were also 6-sheet posters placed in the city locations to help create more awareness about the event held in Changi Airport.

to a wide array of target audiences. Bee Cheng Hiang implemented a 2D Flagship in populated neighbouring areas such as Tampines, which has a residing population of more than 230 000*.

The 2D flagships could easily catch the attention of not just pedestrians, but also motorists and commuters who were travelling around the area.

Aside from the 2D flagships, it made use of digital screens and more than 150 6-sheet panels to bump up awareness.

The digital screens were screening the TV commercial of Bee Cheng Hiang at four different locations such as Bugis, Chinatown Point, Junction 8 and JCube. One of the four locations, Chinatown Point, was selected specifically to target Chinese residents who would do their Chinese New Year shopping there. *According to HDB InfoWEB, last updated 17 Dec 2014.

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8/4/2015 6:01:09 PM

ADVERTORIAL

SG50 Flagship

Client SG50 Programme Office

by MediaCorp OOH Media Campaign period 4 December 2014 - 8 January 2015 OOH format 3D Flagship Campaign objective This campaign is to commemorate SG50 on all the icons of Singapore, reminding Singaporeans what are the elements that make Singapore what it is today. It aims to give Singaporeans the sense of identity and belonging, celebrating the nation’s 50th year of independence.

Strategy and execution The Lucky Plaza flagship is one of the popular and high-traffic areas along Orchard Road. It is a

National Heritage Board On-theMove Billboard Truck

by MediaCorp OOH Media

Client National Heritage Board Campaign period January to March 2015 OOH format On-the-Move Billboard truck Campaign objective The “200 Years of Healthcare in Singapore” mobile exhibition aimed to educate Singaporeans on the history of healthcare in Singapore, looking into the differences during the evolution of healthcare in Singapore – from a rudimentary healthcare system during the colonial era to our nation’s present world-renowned public healthcare system. This campaign was targeted at young Singaporeans.

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strategic location to reach out to Singaporeans from all walks of life, helping to promote the SG50 branding campaign to residents of wide demographics.

Not only does the flagship reach out to pedestrians, it also reaches out to motorists and even commuters travelling by buses. The visual chosen were the icons of Singapore as they showcase the unique characteristics of life in Singapore through a series of 49 images and the key centre piece as a SG50 logo.

Each little icon depicts a slice of life in Singapore – from iconic HDB flats to Singaporeans’ love for durians. The last missing image that adds the entire picture up to 50, representing the 50th year of independence in Singapore, is the centre piece among all the other 49 images. The centre piece is an SG50 logo, which represents Singapore’s spirit of resilience and our collective sense of identity.

Strategy and execution The mobile exhibition went along a route in the vicinity of the NHB museum between January and March 2015, reaching pedestrians and motorists.

The truck travelled to more than 20 schools such as Concord Primary School, Seng Kang Secondary School, Nanyang Polytechnic and National University of Singapore Central. It also made its way down to public hospitals and other public venues. The design on the outside of the truck was themed on the campaign’s objective of going back to the past. The interior of the truck was mapped out by NHB, providing interesting facts and comparisons on the healthcare system in the past and present. Artifacts from the museum were also showcased in the truck.

(Pictured, extreme left: Heng Swee Keat,Minister of Health with students from South View Primary School.)

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More than 120 marketing professionals gathered at the Customer Experience conference, which took place over two days, to learn what constitutes a great customer experience and how brands can create an impeccable one. Here’s a recap of what was discussed.

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Gold Sponsor

Exhibitors

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8/4/2015 5:50:03 PM

HOW TOYS“R”US POSITIONS ITSELF AS A MEDIA CHANNEL

In keeping up with the rapidly changing Asian consumer, toy retailer Toys“R”Us is trying to transform itself into more than just a brick and mortar store. It is now positioning itself as a viable media channel.

Speaking at Marketing’s Customer Experience Conference 2015, Jo Hall, regional general manager of merchandise and marketing for Toys“R”Us (Asia) said the company’s media channel strategy stemmed from the need to tap into the digitally savvy APAC customers.

Social media aiding in its evolution With an impressive 300 million page views on YouTube, and more than 36 million and 17 million viewers in Singapore and Hong Kong respectively, the brand consistently pushes its curated content on social media sites to reach out to its consumers and keep them entertained. This not only drives interest, but also builds on a loyal consumer base.

Hall elaborated that one successful content push by the brand was when it developed its digital “advent calendar app” where parents could count down to Christmas with their children, allowing “parents to interact with their children and share an experience”.

As one of the leading children’s websites in Hong Kong and Singapore, Toys“R”Us leverages its social media reach to push out new

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products. Building on the excitement around the debut of the Apple Watch, Toys“R”Us launched its own Kidizoom smartwatch via a campaign on WeChat. The brand currently has more than 400,000 followers in China and Hong Kong.

The campaign saw 28,494 followers viewing the message, with 40% of them (11,673) landing on the buy page within the first two hours of the product’s launch.

“This number was unprecedented in social media,” Hall said.

To meet the demands of the fast-adopting millennial consumer, Toys“R”Us has integrated all its different media channels. Given the average APAC consumer has at least four different devices, the need to know how to market to the consumer in a versatile manner is more pertinent than ever, explained Hall.

In-store experiences still matter Despite the proliferation of digital, on-ground and in-store experiences still matter for the brand, especially in Asia where “shopping in malls is part of quality family leisure time”, said Hall.

In 2015, the retailer is catering to the selfie phenomenon by providing selfie stations with green screens for customers to create unique selfie moments which it hopes will ultimately

result in increased time spent in stores.

Toys“R”Us will continue to roll out augmented reality booths and 3D floor stickers to entertain families entering the store.

The brand also prides itself on making its stores more of a “theme park [experience] rather than a trolley dash”.

Hall added that speed to market is a priority for the brand. Working with the Rubber Duck sculpture floating on Hong Kong’s Harbour Bay in 2013 that attracted about 300,000 visitors per day, Toys“R”Us launched a “Bye-bye Duck Party” by selling replicas of the iconic duck.

Additionally, it set up 3D printing booths and recreated the store experience for consumers.

Events are also a big marketing initiative for the brand. For example, the company capitalises on events such as the Chinese New Year and Children’s Day when targeting its consumers in the region.

Also to lure in customers, the company often sets up pop-up stores to “create excitement and thrill”. These events held off-site from its usual stores tactically expand Toys“R”Us’ physical presence, said Hall.

Hall was speaking at the Customer Experience Conference 2015, a two-day conference held on 11-12 March at the InterContinental Hotel Singapore.

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5 THINGS YOUR LOYALTY PROGRAMME SHOULD AND SHOULDN’T BE when the customer joins our loyalty programme can we monitor their preferences and find out more about their intimate moments,” he said, adding that within that data, he could then tier customers and target them accordingly.

“When you understand your consumers, you can exploit their wants and desires. At the end of the day loyalty programmes are intended to be profitable and increase revenue to your business.”

How loyal can customers actually be?

Your customers today can be reaping benefits of your brand’s gold-tier loyalty membership programmes while simultaneously purchasing your competitor’s latest products.

The truth is, exclusive loyalty is long gone as customers today are spoilt for choices. But loyalty programmes are a vital part of generating revenues.

For example, members pull in a whopping 90% of revenues for local IT retailer Challenger Technologies, revealed its head of marketing, Loo Pei Fen. The challenge for the brand is adding new customers and keeping the old ones coming back. For this, a strong strategy for its loyalty programme is vital.

Here are five tips to making a strong one: 1. Simplicity and intuition “Loyalty cards have now become obsolete.

Customers no longer carry 10 to 15 cards in their bags. Today, apps make the process simpler,” Loo said.

She added that to digitise itself, Challenger Technologies started eliminating paper documentation of customers. This took away manual labour documentation for both the marketing and data teams and saved on time and resources.

To attract people to join its loyalty programme, Challenger decided to make its programme extremely simple keeping its questions to the bare minimum.

However, while it is important to make the sign-up process to your loyalty programme clean and to do away with irrelevant questions, sufficient member data still needs to be collected, explained Loo. Without it, all is lost for

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the marketing department to build a campaign around it.

2. Speed Speed, she added, was necessary in any loyalty programme.

“If your customer signs up for a loyalty membership today, they should be part of the programme today itself. If you take two weeks to register them, chances are they would have lost interest in your brand by then.”

3. The right data to collect: the must-haves versus the good-to-haves Citing an example of her own company, Loo explained the Challenger brand’s loyalty programme had once missed out on getting the birthdates of customers. This led to the company having to scrap its birthday benefits promotions for its members. While it is good to keep the sign-up process simple, it is also crucial to be mindful of the collection of vital information.

“While you can have information about their hobbies and personal interests – these are all ‘good to haves’. It is vital not to miss out on the ‘must haves’ such as birthdays to cater more personalised promotions.”

4. Micro-segment your audience Kittisak Eh Chuei, director of loyalty marketing at Pan Pacific Hotels Group – Pan Pacific and PARKROYAL brands, talked about how vital it was to target audiences as precisely as possible.

He called it creating micro-segments within existing data.

“As a hotel brand, we might have a rough idea of who our customers are from their names and passport details, but we still don’t really know our customers’ likes or dislikes or personalities. Only

5. Don’t make it a pricing war With the competition in the market increasing, many brands today are entering the price war through their loyalty programmes. While this tactic might work for brands whose communications strategy is built around competitive pricing, for others it might simply result in a transactional relationship rather than long-term engagement.

Chuei explained the true essence of loyalty should not be about selling the product at a discounted value.

“Brand marketers need to rally together and make a stand to push for the fact that loyalty is not about discounts and devaluing your brand.

“At the end of the day you need to secure your business’ future. How can you do so if you are selling your brand at the 60% discount rather than a 120% profit?”

Create instead, experiences. This is particularly prevalent given the rise of the “experience economy”. Consumers today demand for travel experiences that resonate on a deeper emotional level. Brands, hence, need to develop products that are more adventurous, more personalised, and more attuned to the culture, said Chuei.

“Service and goods have become a norm and commoditised. Loyalty programmes should ultimately provide organisations with the best platform to deliver outstanding and memorable experiences as a competitive advantage,” Chuei said.

Philipp Kristian Diekhöner, senior manager of innovation at MetLife and founder of futureLab, MetLife, added that at the end of the day brand experience is what drives and inspires loyalty.

“Customers essentially interacted with brands only if they had a purpose or a reason to do so.”

“Brands are simply a vehicle to getting their task at hand done. What brands should then aim to do is be disruptive and find out easier ways to help the customers before they actually ask for it. Customers may be loyal to a brand, but they are open to seduction.”

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Ink Awards(Marketing Mag).ai

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23/3/15

10:15 am

McDONALD’S ON WHY CUSTOMER SERVICE IS A BOARDROOM ISSUE

When McDonald’s appointed its new director of corporate communications, Carolyn Khiu, more than a year ago, the company also chose to add e-commerce and customer relations to her role, effectively giving the customer service function a voice at the boardroom table.

The move was an understandable one.

“At McDonald’s, we are a lightning rod for everything and social media has made our world a very transparent place. A lot of conversations you might think are private will become public the minute a customer blogs about it,” Khiu says.

One key example was an incident last year where McDonald’s all-day breakfast promotions became a PR fiasco when a visually impaired customer, Cassandra Chiu, was “refused” service at McDonald’s because she was with her guide dog.

Khiu said the conversation was initially a private one over the phone. However, since the customer took to blog about it, it became a public matter.

Khiu explained that because the proliferation of social media, online and offline communications has become more closely tied, companies and their operations have now become more transparent.

As such, more brands should push for CS to have a voice in the boardroom.

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She added that traditionally sales and marketing simply minded their daily tasks without much interaction with their CS counterparts.

“Only when a problem arises is the CS team consulted. This needs to change,” she said.

“CS should no longer be seen as a back end function, but rather a change agent. CS folks know best what customers want and problems they are facing day to day. They need to be taken seriously. It should be an alignment of all departments working together. It cannot just be customer service solving the problem.”

Using a crisis to your benefit No doubt when a communication crisis hits any brand, it is a testing period for the whole organisation. However, what brands need to do during such an occasion is to keep calm and tailor the conversation towards topics that customers may not otherwise pay attention to.

“Use this as a branding opportunity. Take the opportunity to reaffirm your company’s commitment to certain values.

“All people want is transparency. Use that occasion to talk to your customer and explain what is happening behind the scenes and why you have taken the steps you have.”

Giving an example of its styrofoam breakfast packaging, she explained the packaging caught the attention of the public for not being eco-

friendly. While the rest of the brand’s packaging is now paper-based, it wasn’t able to change the ones for the breakfast menu because of the complexities required in the supply chain for this to take place.

However, the brand has a multi-pronged approach which it uses for its CSR initiatives, and it used the opportunity to share more about them, which she said went far “beyond just packaging”. For example, here’s a video on one of McDonald’s sustainability initiatives.

She added that authentic communications were vital, although this may not immediately lead to sales.

However, she added that while this helps in winning over some consumers, you still have to be ready to lose some as not every customer will agree with you.

Nonetheless, when a brand explains its views or addresses a complaint on social media, it has to be extremely careful “as the whole world is watching and listening”.

For McDonald’s, before addressing any customer concern, the brand always consults a legal expert and a subject matter expert before constructing a response.

“You have to be careful about phrasing and if this is managed well, you can build a community of support. But don’t be afraid of social media.

Take it as a way to explain yourself.”

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ARE BRANDS TURNING CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS INTO VALUABLE INSIGHTS? An inability to see immediate positive impact on the bottom line is one of the key reasons customer complaint systems are not highly valued. Ambrish Bandalkul reports.

Getting too many complaints? It could be a good thing for your brand.

Customer complaints are supposed to be a great way to find out what your customers actually think of you. Yet why does it so often feel like businesses are tone deaf? During our Customer Experience conference, we spoke to Reshel Chan, senior customer service manager at iconic Singaporean travel agency Chan Brothers Travel, to find out why process improvement can be very hard.

Marketing: Customer complaints are supposed to be a great source of customer intelligence. Why do so many businesses fail to take advantage of this to improve processes?

Chan: Instead of using the label complaint, we prefer to label it feedback or feed-forward. The former helps the company retain its customers by providing service recovery whenever required while rectifying current issues.

The latter helps us understand how we can wow our customers. When recorded systematically, feedback and feed-forward can become a huge asset in improving business processes. The reason that customer complaint management systems are not more highly valued are:

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1. Incorrect understanding of feedback/feed forward.

2. An inability to see immediate positive impact on the bottom line.

3. Staff complacency and lack of desire within an organisation to improve the customers’ experience.

Marketing: What are the biggest challenges you face in handling customer complaints?

Chan: One of the biggest challenges we face is in maintaining Singaporeans’ high standards and managing expectations in foreign countries. We also face problems in service recovery post-tour.

Sometimes customers choose to remain silent and allow their dissatisfaction to fester during the tour, while expecting a tour refund instead of voicing their complaint early. Eighty per cent of such cases can be resolved easily if they were raised immediately to our tour managers.

Marketing: How do you ensure the feedback from customer complaints is taken into account to improve your processes?

Chan: We interact with our customers through several touch-points – at point of sale, through

continual Facebook, email and phone dialogue, during pre-departure briefings and on tour 24/7 with our tour managers.

We table all feedback formally for subsequent action and improvement via personalised notes on a customer’s account history, point-of-sale customer feedback forms, post-tour customer feedback forms and posttour tour manager feedback forms. In addition to immediate action where applicable, all feedback is then consolidated and reviewed again quarterly.

Marketing: What’s the most difficult part of drawing the process improvement insight from customer complaints?

Chan: The most challenging part would be identifying the areas where elevated customer service standards brings significant enough utility to justify investment, yet keeping in mind business sustainability through maintaining profitable margins.

For example, we may serve chilli sauce for Singaporean travellers on our tours to enhance the overall dining experience, but we may just stop short of delivering six-star Michelin cuisine on a four-star tour fare.

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4 TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE CONTENT MARKETING Speaking at Marketing’s Customer Experience Conference 2015, Vivek Kumar, director and head of NTUC Membership, said that most content today does not engage the consumer and rarely makes an impact in their decision-making process.

However, effective content is crucial to the customer experience. According to a study by the CMO council, 80% to 90% of consumers, particularly in the B2B sector, will buy from a brand that has content that appeals to them.

It is now a must for companies to adopt a holistic view on content creation and exceed a consumer’s expectations. So how exactly do marketers create content that cuts through the clutter and resonates with consumers?

Kumar gave four tips: 1. Involve your consumers Brands should actively involve the consumer at the initial stage of content creation.

Using the example of Coca-Cola, Kumar said that a decade ago, Coca-Cola innovated the music scene and launched a “passiontargeting approach” to generate its brand presence. Since then, it has evolved its strategy to build on consumers’ passion points.

More recently, it partnered with Maroon 5 to stream the band recording their music live in the studio. Fans were encouraged to follow their live feed on-the-go and simultaneously give the musicians live feedback.

By doing so, the brand was able to encourage its consumers to be part of the content creation process.

Another example of successful content creation with fans was when Harley-Davidson created its “No Cages” campaign. The brand created an engine for its fans on its 110th anniversary to create ideas of the kind of bikes they would like to ride. Customers were allowed to design and custom colour their dream bikes on an interactive website.

Kumar said: “Engaging its customers started even before the brand sold its bikes. It started during the pre-sales period when the brand was trying to communicate with them – when they were designing the product.”

Using the insights and building on the consumer engagement, Harley-Davidson also decided to launch a separate campaign called “No Cages”.

2. Be relevant and target segmented audiences According to Kumar, NTUC Income’s content marketing team takes into consideration the brand’s role in building communities, and

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reaching out to various groups in society. It then builds its campaigns around issues its consumers are passionate about.

“It is essential to tap into the audience that is already available in a brand’s database.”

Citing the example of the NTUC Income 350 Run event, Kumar explained the company leveraged on its youth group’s interests by using environmental concerns as a passion point for its campaign. Pre-event and volunteer groups were formed to help clean up several neighbourhoods.

“At the start, there were 5000 runners and this year that number grew to 15,000. The whole movement has been growing.”

He added this was probably because of the consumers’ excitement around the environmental causes which were further amplified by initiatives built around the event and not just limited to the run itself.

By being attuned to the needs of its young union members, NTUC Income successfully “built a movement in which members and customers were emotionally engaged” with the brand. The movement encouraged NTUC Income’s members to continue to be socially engaged and active, even after the run.

3. Stay on-brand Whatever a brand decides to do, it is essential to be “true to your DNA”, said Kumar. It is important to be sincere about the content and stay true to the brand to ensure success.

As part of its “Labour of Love” campaign, NTUC Membership launched a “Free Coffee Wednesdays” initiative to promote conversations. When consumers gifted a cup of coffee to their friends, they were able to redeem a free cup of coffee “to inspire conversations

and improve any social divisions within society”, said Kumar.

The campaign led to a 772% increase in campaign application participation.

The movement was also a catalyst for the brand to start conversing with the public.

The campaign prioritised the company’s outreach to its members. An initiative included opening at more accessible locations for union members to turn to for help. NTUC also shared personal stories of its members, but de-branded its content for a more genuine approach to its consumers.

Accompanying the month-long campaign, NTUC had a built-in Facebook app to manage its union’s own account to cater to the “overwhelming response from the CBD area”, Kumar added.

4. Campaigns need to be consistent Kumar said when a brand launches an interesting campaign, it “cannot go missing in action … that leaves a very bad taste [for consumers]”.

It is crucial to be consistent with consumer engagement and participation so as not to leave the audience hanging in the lurch. This lack of continuity disconnects the kind of traction that a brand might have received from a prior campaign.

A company must also be conscious of people movement within an organisation so as to avoid a loss in connection with loyal consumers who were engaged with a past campaign.

Because IT infrastructure within a company may not be as fluid as marketing changes, brands need to be wary of their own limitations before creating content. A brand has to ensure that all security measures, especially ones related to IT, are well-managed and updated.

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HOW IS THE

ROLE OF COMMUNICATIONS CHANGING? Public relations is no longer just about press releases. Encompassing a much wider array of initiatives, PR now has more power to drive conversations for a brand than ever before. In fact, some practitioners argue it should not be called PR at all. It is communications.

With all this and much more, communications is now ďŹ nding a voice in the boardroom as well. Encompassing the hows of communications in this new era is our dedicated one-day, power-packed conference. The Comms Malaysia 2015 conference will highlight the needs and concerns of communications professionals across Malaysia.

Standard rates Client-side marketers: USD799 Solution providers: USD1,099 * Under the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF), registered employers can claim rebates for trainings conducted by an overseas trainer/training provider.

To learn more and view the agenda, visit: www.marketing-interactive.com/communications/my Communications 2015 takes place at Aloft Hotel, Sentral Kuala Lumpur 14 May 2015 8.50 am - 5.00 pm

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For more information, contact Carlo Reston, assistant project manager - conference & awards at +65 6423 0329, +65 9727 0291 or carlor@marketing-interactive.com

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SILVER SPONSOR

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PARTNERS

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This year was the first time that Marketing magazine’s PR Awards went regional, seeing major corporations recognised for the top PR campaigns in Southeast Asia. Here is the list of judges and winners for the big night.

JUDGING PANEL Vasu Thirasak, director of communications, Southeast and Northeast Asia, Accor Darshini M. Nathan, head of corporate communications, AIA Malaysia Aziz Laikar, head of communications, AirAsia Haviez Gautama, senior vice-president, head of corporate communications, Commonwealth Bank Indonesia Frazer Neo Macken, vice-president, communications and digital, Electrolux Asia Pacific Ada Wong, head of public affairs and communications, Asia, FrieslandCampina Ma. Yolanda C. Crisanto, senior vice-president for corporate communications, Globe Telecom Shane Chiang, head of corporate and consumer PR, South Asia, HTC Corporation Jojo Cheung, director of marketing and communications, IBM ASEAN Arline B. Adeva, PR director, Jollibee Foods Corporation Lisa Williamson, vice-president, communications, Marina Bay Sands Kate Hegarty, vice-president of communications and CSR, Asia Pacific, MasterCard Eliza Mohamed, executive vice-president, head of group corporate affairs and sustainability, Maybank Nicola Gilchrist, director of corporate and government affairs, Asia Pacific, Mondel z International Nur Shilla Christianto, head of corporate communication, Nestlé Indonesia Koh Ching Ching, head of group corporate communications, OCBC Bank Erin Atan, communications director – Asia Pacific, Middle East and Turkey, Rolls-Royce Alethea Lam, director, corporate communications, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Asia Pacific Tino Fritsch, head of communications, Asia Pacific, ThyssenKrupp Regional Headquarters Singapore Dinesh Subramaniam, director, global communications network, Wärtsilä Corporation

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UNILEVER AND TATE ANZUR TOP PR AWARDS FOR 2015

Unilever Singapore once again triumphed at Marketing magazine’s second annual PR Awards in Singapore being named “PR Awards Champion – Brand”, while Tate Anzur took home the top agency title just beating last year’s champion Golin Singapore in a tightly held competition.

Over 70 brands and more than 40 agencies were short-listed by a panel of senior communications professionals from brands that included Kimberly-Clark, MasterCard, Nestlé and OCBC Bank.

The judges were met with a fierce competition when assessing the best communications campaigns from Southeast Asia and two points or less separated the top two performing brands and agencies according to an exponential-weighted point system, meaning four points were allocated for gold, two points for silver and one point for bronze.

Unilever Singapore’s trophy haul included gold in the categories of “Best Engagement for a Targeted Community”, “Best PR-led Integrated Communications” and “Best Product Re-Launch PR Campaign”. It also scored silver for “Best Use of Social Media” and bronze for “Best Product Launch PR Campaign”.

Award-winning campaigns from Unilever Singapore included the “Taylor Swift The Red Tour presented by Cornetto”. This campaign cleverly combined a product launch with event

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sponsorship and celebrity ambassadorship through pop star Taylor Swift to engage directly with the young adult target audience, yielding maximum effect, especially over social media.

World Wide Fund for Nature Singapore/ Earth Hour Global was only just behind by one point and impressed the jury with the highly engaging “Use Your Power” campaign for Earth Hour 2014. The campaign also used celebrity ambassadors in the form of Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone and Jamie Foxx, and the cast of the film The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

The partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment and the involvement of SpiderMan as the brand’s first superhero ambassador allowed it to deliver engaging content across digital platforms and with mass media coverage. This, coupled with the simple call to action “Use Your Power”, saw Earth Hour gain record-breaking levels of participation to become the biggest environmental movement in the world in 2014.

The campaign secured it gold in “Best Digital Communication Strategy” and “Best PR Campaign by an In-House Communications Team”, as well as silver for “Best Employee Engagement/Internal Communications”, “Best Event-led PR Campaign” and “Most Creative PR Stunt”.

Other high-scoring brands included iFly Singapore, Microsoft Asia Pacific, Urban

Redevelopment Authority Singapore and Glenfiddich.

Only two points separated the leading agencies Tate Anzur and Golin Singapore, but Tate Anzur made it to the finish line as PR Awards Champion, the first time the local agency has won the prestigious title.

A campaign that stood out for Tate Anzur included the “Singapore Night Festival 2014” for the National Museum of Singapore, an event that had more than 500,000 people in attendance and garnered high levels of earned media coverage.

The agency bagged gold in “Best Event-led PR Campaign”, “Best Government Sector PR Campaign”, “Best Media Relations Campaign” and “Best PR Idea” and silver for “Best Government Sector PR Campaign”.

A total of 77 prizes were awarded to more than 300 finalists from across the region at the Shangri-La Hotel Singapore.

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BEST CSR COMMUNICATIONS

BEST INSIGHTS-DRIVEN PR CAMPAIGN

GOLD

GOLD

Client: Microsoft Asia Pacific Brand: Nil Campaign: Coding as the Second Language of Asia Agency: Nil

Client: SAP Brand: Nil Campaign: Workforce 2020 – #MillennialMyths and The Future of Work Agency: FleishmanHillard

SILVER

SILVER

Client: Reckitt Benckiser Brand: Durex Campaign: #Somebodylikeme Agency: Vibes Communications

Client: GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Brand: Panadol Campaign: Panadol Understanding Pain Management Survey Agency: Rantau PR

BRONZE

BRONZE

Client: Heineken Asia Pacific Brand: Nil Campaign: Enjoy Responsibly Day Agency: Nil

Client: Sarawak Energy Brand: Nil Campaign: Issues Management and Crisis Communications Campaign Agency: Edelman Malaysia

BEST PRODUCT LAUNCH PR CAMPAIGN

BEST INVESTOR RELATIONS CAMPAIGN

GOLD

GOLD

Client: GrabTaxi Brand: Nil Campaign: GrabTaxi: Fixing Singapore’s taxi-to-passenger matching system Agency: Ruder Finn Asia

Client: Yangzijiang Shipbuilding (Holdings) Limited Brand: Nil Campaign: Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Investor Relations PR Campaign to Boost Investor Confidence and Share Price Agency: Financial PR

SILVER

SILVER

Client: British Airways Brand: Nil Campaign: British Airways A380 launch in Singapore Agency: Grayling Asia

Client: Starburst Holdings Limited Brand: Nil Campaign: Starburst – Shaping a Safer World Agency: Citigate Dewe Rogerson i.MAGE

BRONZE

BRONZE

Client: Unilever Singapore Brand: Magnum Campaign: Magnum Celebrating 25 Years of Pleasure Agency: Golin Singapore

Client: ZICO Holdings Inc. Brand: Nil Campaign: ZICO – Connecting The Dots, Integrating For Growth Agency: Citigate Dewe Rogerson i.MAGE

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BEST ENGAGEMENT FOR A TARGETED COMMUNITY

BEST GOVERNMENT SECTOR PR CAMPAIGN

GOLD

GOLD

Client: Unilever Singapore Brand: Cornetto Campaign: Taylor Swift The Red Tour presented by Cornetto Agency: Golin Singapore

Client: Urban Redevelopment Authority Singapore Brand: Nil Campaign: i Light Marina Bay 2014 Agency: Tate Anzur

SILVER

SILVER

Client: Petroliam Nasional Brand: PETRONAS Campaign: #tanahairku Street Art Agency: dnaCOMM

Client: National Museum of Singapore Brand: Nil Campaign: Singapore Night Festival 2014 Agency: Tate Anzur

BRONZE

BRONZE

Client: Asian Football Confederation, Asian Development Bank and UNAIDS Brand: Nil Campaign: Protect The Goal Agency: Shekhinah PR

Client: Science Centre Singapore Brand: Nil Campaign: Singapore Science Festival 2014 Agency: Ogilvy Public Relations Singapore

BEST SPORTS PR CAMPAIGN

BEST USE OF TECHNOLOGY

GOLD

GOLD

Client: ONE Fighting Championship™ Brand: Nil Campaign: ONE FC: BATTLE OF LIONS PR Campaign Agency: Nil

Client: William Grant & Sons Brand: Glenfiddich Campaign: The Glenfiddich Experience Agencies: Make Studios, GOODSTUPH

SILVER

SILVER

Client: Unilever Philippines Brand: Master Facial Wash Campaign: Master Game Face All Star Challenge Agency: Strategic Works, Inc.

Client: William Grant & Sons Brand: Glenfiddich Campaign: The Reyka Encounter Agencies: Make Studios, GOODSTUPH

BRONZE

BRONZE

Client: SM Lifestyle Entertainment, Inc. Brand: SM Skating Rink Campaign: Cool as Ice: An SM Skating Rink Campaign Agency: Nil

Client: Qlik Brand: Nil Campaign: Where do APAC CEOs come from?

Agency: The Hoffman Agency Singapore

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BEST EVENT-LED PR CAMPAIGN

BEST USE OF INFLUENCERS

GOLD

GOLD

Client: National Museum of Singapore Brand: Nil Campaign: Singapore Night Festival 2014 Agency: Tate Anzur

Client: iFly Singapore Brand: Nil Campaign: So You Think You Can Fly? Agency: Cohn & Wolfe Singapore

SILVER

SILVER

Client: WWF/Earth Hour Global Brand: Earth Hour Campaign: Use Your Power: Be a Superhero for the Planet Agency: Starcom MediaVest Group

Client: Tourism Australia Brand: Nil Campaign: Restaurant Australia – Invite The World To Dinner Agency: Nil

BRONZE

BRONZE

Client: Procter & Gamble Brand: SK-II Campaign: SK-II at The Audi Fashion Festival Singapore 2014 Agency: DeVries Global

Client: Auric Pacific Malaysia Brand: Buttercup Campaign: Kelab Cinta Ketuhar Agency: Nil

BEST USE OF BLOGGERS

BEST CRISIS MANAGEMENT

GOLD

GOLD

Client: Procter & Gamble Brand: SK-II Campaign: SK-II Beauty Circle Agency: DeVries Global

Client: Sarawak Energy Brand: Nil Campaign: Issues Management and Crisis Communications Campaign Agency: Edelman Malaysia

SILVER

SILVER

Client: Atlas Sound & Vision Brand: Bose Campaign: The Noise-Cancelling Lifestyle: Headphones On, World Off Agency: The Hoffman Agency Singapore

Client: Hong Leong Bank Brand: Nil Campaign: Hong Leong Bank Berhad vs NUBE Agency: Nil

BRONZE

BRONZE

Client: Changi Airport Group Brand: Nil Campaign: CAG Blogger Engagement Programme 2014 Agency: Golin Singapore

Client: Globe Telecom Brand: Nil Campaign: Globe Fair Use Policy Awareness campaign Agency: Nil

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BEST B2B PR CAMPAIGN

BEST EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT/ INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS

GOLD

GOLD

Client: Microsoft Asia Pacific Brand: Nil Campaign: Migrate to Modernise. Don’t Get Left Behind with Windows XP End of Service Agency: IN.FOM

Client: Heineken Asia Pacific Brand: Nil Campaign: Enjoy Responsibly Day Agency: Nil

SILVER

SILVER

Client: NICE Actimize Brand: Nil Campaign: Cultivating the Culture of Compliance Agency: Nil

Client: WWF/Earth Hour Global Brand: Earth Hour Campaign: Use Your Power: Be a Superhero for the Planet Agency: Nil

BRONZE

BRONZE

Client: Panasonic Asia Pacific Brand: Panasonic Campaign: Launch of Singapore’s First Indoor Vegetable Farm Agency: Golin Singapore

Client: The Hoffman Agency Singapore Brand: Nil Campaign: A look #InsideHA Agency: Nil

BEST CONSUMER PR CAMPAIGN

BEST PRODUCT RE-LAUNCH PR CAMPAIGN

GOLD

GOLD

Client: GlaxoSmithKline Brand: Nil Campaign: GSK Inner Age Index Earned Media Campaign Agency: Edelman Singapore

Client: Unilever Singapore Brand: Lux Campaign: Lux Ignite the Spark (Global) Agency: Golin Singapore

SILVER

SILVER

Client: GrabTaxi Brand: Nil Campaign: GrabTaxi: Beating the Biggest Competitor – Fixed Human Behaviour Agency: Ruder Finn Asia

Client: William Grant & Sons Brand: Glenfiddich Campaign: The Glenfiddich Experience Agencies: Ketchum, Vivaldi PR, GOODSTUPH, Make Studios

BRONZE

BRONZE

Client: OLDTOWN White Coffee Brand: Nil Campaign: The Art of OLDTOWN Agency: Text100 Malaysia

Client: Crystal Time (S) Brand: Edox Campaign: “The Iceman Cometh” – ReLaunch of the Edox Hydro Sub North Pole Agency: Nil

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BEST USE OF CONTENT

BEST MEDIA RELATIONS CAMPAIGN

GOLD

GOLD

Client: Reckitt Benckiser Brand: Durex Campaign: #Somebodylikeme Agency: Vibes Communications

Client: Urban Redevelopment Authority Singapore Brand: Nil Campaign: i Light Marina Bay 2014 Agency: Tate Anzur

SILVER

SILVER

Client: NICE Actimize Brand: Nil Campaign: Cultivating a Culture of Compliance Agency: Nil

Client: Grey Group Singapore Brand: Hearing Aide Campaign: Launch of Hearing Aide and Say it with Signs Agency: Cohn & Wolfe Singapore

BRONZE

BRONZE

Client: Singapore Tourism Board Brand: Nil Campaign: Singapore Extraordinary 50 Agency: Masso Group

Client: Singapore Art Museum Brand: Nil Campaign: Singapore Biennale 2013 Agency: Ogilvy Public Relations Singapore

BEST USE OF BROADCAST/VIDEO

BEST PR CAMPAIGN BY AN IN-HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS TEAM

GOLD

GOLD

Client: Petroliam Nasional Brand: PETRONAS Campaign: Festive Social Cohesion 2014 Agency: Leo Burnett

Client: WWF/Earth Hour Global Brand: Earth Hour Campaign: Use Your Power: Be a Superhero for the Planet Agency: Nil

SILVER

SILVER

Client: Unilever Philippines Brand: Nil Campaign: All Things Hair Agency: OgilvyOne Worldwide

Client: K & N Kenanga Holdings Brand: Kenanga Campaign: KenTrade Trading Challenge by Kenanga Agency: Nil

BRONZE

BRONZE

Client: Reckitt Benckiser Brand: Durex Campaign: #Somebodylikeme Agency: Vibes Communications

Client: Crystal Time (S) Brand: Luminox Campaign: Luminox “Time and Space Converge” Agency: Nil

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BEST DIGITAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

BEST USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

GOLD

GOLD

Client: WWF/Earth Hour Global Brand: Earth Hour Campaign: Use Your Power: Be a Superhero for the Planet Agency: Nil

Client: iFly Singapore Brand: Nil Campaign: So You Think You Can Fly? Agency: Cohn & Wolfe Singapore

SILVER

SILVER

Client: Changi Airport Group Brand: Nil Campaign: Fans of Changi Agency: Nil

Client: Unilever Singapore Brand: Cornetto Campaign: Taylor Swift The Red Tour presented by Cornetto Agency: Golin Singapore

BRONZE

BRONZE

Client: Unilever Philippines Brand: Dove Campaign: Dove #IamBeautiful Movement Agency: Bridges PR

Client: Nanyang Technological University Brand: Nil Campaign: Click, Like, Share: NTU on Social Media Agency: Nil

BEST PR IDEA

BEST PR-LED INTEGRATED COMMUNICATIONS

GOLD

GOLD

Client: Liberty Insurance Singapore Brand: Liberty Hunt Campaign: Liberty Hunt 2014: Rise of the City Guardians Agency: Tate Anzur

Client: Unilever Singapore Brand: Cornetto Campaign: Taylor Swift The Red Tour presented by Cornetto Agency: Golin Singapore

SILVER

SILVER

Client: Singapore Press Holdings Brand: Nil Campaign: See The Big Picture Agency: Germs Digital

Client: The European Union Delegation To Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam and ASEAN Brand: Nil Campaign: Destination Europe Agency: Edelman Indonesia

BRONZE

BRONZE

Client: Coca-Cola Far East Brand: Nil Campaign: Happiness from the Skies Agency: Ogilvy Public Relations Singapore

Client: Nanyang Technological University Brand: Nil Campaign: A Global University on the Rise Agency: Nil

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MOST CREATIVE PR STUNT

GOLD Client: Coca-Cola Far East Brand: Nil Campaign: Happiness from the Skies Agency: Ogilvy Public Relations Singapore

SILVER Client: World Wide Fund for Nature Singapore Brand: Earth Hour Campaign: “Use Your Power” for Earth Hour 2014 Agency: The Hoffman Agency Singapore

BRONZE Client: Singapore Press Holdings Brand: Nil Campaign: See The Big Picture Agency: Germs Digital

METHODOLOGY The PR Awards is the premier event celebrating excellence across the public relations spectrum in Southeast Asia. From one-off stunts to long-term programmes, the PR Awards recognises brands (followed by their agencies) that have pushed themselves towards measurable success through sound and strategic communications. Agencies may enter the awards on behalf of their clients.

Eligible work must have been conceptualised and carried out in Southeast Asia (SEA) for the SEA market or for markets that include at least one country/market in SEA. This allows the awards to celebrate the best public relations departments, partners and agencies the region has to offer. Entrants from the following countries were eligible: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Entrants must have an office in the eligible region.

The finalists and winners were selected by a distinguished panel of 20 judges made up of senior communications professionals from leading brands and experts from the industry.

The judges looked for the following key criteria when assessing each entry – challenge, strategy, execution and results.

Winners of the PR Awards represent the very best in the industry and their work sets an invaluable benchmark for success.

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Check out all upcoming courses here: WWW.MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.COM/ MASTERCLASS-SERIES/SG

Sales Power for your Trade Shows/ Exhibitions Date: 16 April Writing Winning Proposals Date: 21 April Digital and Social Media Marketing Performance Date: 19 May

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

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CAREERS

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CAREER PATH Markus Keiper Chief marketing officer Rolls-Royce, Marine

First job in advertising/ marketing? Brand management

of Mercedes-Benz passenger cars. Mercedes-Benz being such a premium brand made it all the more important that we actively upheld its brand values through strategic partnerships and extremely deep insights into our customers dreams and desires.

Best job? Current one at

Rolls-Royce as EVP for all customer-facing engagement in the marine sector, including marketing, communications and key account management. To drive B2B marketing communications for the most iconic brand in the marine industry is both a privilege and a big responsibility. Our brand promise of “Trusted to deliver excellence” does not leave room for any errors.

Perks of your current job?

Engaging with customers and agencies around the world while calling Singapore home.

Rolls-Royce is a global leader in highly efficient, integrated marine power and propulsion systems and services, so I have the privilege of meeting the top names in the marine industry such as Keppel, and going on board some very technologically advanced vessels – from big naval ships to state-of-the-art anchor handler and platform supply vessels.

Worst job? Building an outdoor exhibition stand while gale winds were hammering the coast line of the Gold Coast in Australia.

The upside is nothing seems impossible after that.

Marketing professionals you admire? Marketing is

almost always a team effort so it is difficult to short-list names.

I found the marketing teams behind Emirates and Nike to be exceptional. In other words, I’d say the ones who go against all odds and turn organisations into customer-centric driven ones: Win if you can, lose if you fail, but never quit!

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JOB SHUFFLE Former Leo Burnett Malaysia ECD Eric Cruz has taken up a role at digital agency AKQA. He will be based in the agency’s Shanghai office.

He has been at Leo Burnett Malaysia for the past three and a half years. Before his stint at Leo Burnett, he worked across various markets such as the US, Tokyo and London. He announced his departure from Leo Burnett in January.

and marketing communications India Practice lead.

Her remit will also encompass the role of India marketing communications practice lead and she will report to the H+K president of South Asia, Radhika Shapoorjee. A communications veteran, Bajaj is a specialist in corporate and brand reputation management with deep exposure in the consumer, corporate, financial and technology sectors.

A+E Networks strengthened its content distribution team and promoted Pooja Nirmal Kant to the role of director of international content sales. Based in Singapore, she reports to Glen Hansen, vice-president for international content sales for Asia Pacific. She will oversee content distribution across Southeast Asia focusing on driving sales for A+E Networks’ scripted catalogue throughout the region. She will continue to lead and develop A+E Networks’ client base in the industry.

Media communications agency OMD appointed Scott Kimberley as managing partner of OMD International. Headquartered in Singapore, OMD International is OMD’s specialist unit managing multinational client assignments.

He will lead the OMD International team which manages OMD’s key global and regional client relationships. He commences his new role in the first week of April, reporting to Torie Henderson.

Publicis-owned global marketing and technology agency DigitasLBi promoted Himani Kapadia to the newly created role of chief operating officer across Asia.

Based in Mumbai, Kapadia will report to Asia Pacific chief executive Roy Capon and will assume responsibility for helping manage the growth of DigitasLBi throughout the region. In the new role, Kapadia will concentrate on optimising the agency’s fastgrowing talent base.

Hill+Knowlton Strategies appointed Carolina James Bajaj as the vice-president, West

Publicis Groupeowned global marketing and technology agency DigitasLBi has appointed Debbie Aryandari head of media for Southeast Asia. She is tasked with implementing a centralised media practice for the SE Asia region and promoting overall growth of the agency’s media business in this region. She was CEO at iProspect Indonesia for more than two years, credited with winning accounts such as Philips, General Motors, AIG, Microsoft and Reckitt Benckiser.

Meanwhile, Yossaporn Rengpian advanced from associate director to digital director. Rengpian continues to

focus on building and maintaining key client leadership in digital communication planning and buying, as well as to supervise a digital team of 12 specialists developing social media strategy, search optimisation and innovative technology development.

Rengpian will also join GroupM Interaction Thailand as a new member to the board of directors.

Albern Murty has been appointed chief executive officer of Digi. He is a Digi veteran who has been with the company since 2002. He was appointed chief operating officer in 2014 and before that he was the chief marketing officer responsible for driving the company’s overall revenue growth. He has held previous management roles as head of strategy and new business and co-chief marketing officer.

Global demand-side platform The Trade Desk hired industry veteran Matt Harty as its senior vice-president of Asia Pacific. He will be based in Singapore. Before this appointment, he co-founded the first pan-Asian Ad Network, Space Asia Media, which was sold to CMGI in 2000. He also co-founded Activ8, a yield management company preceding programmatic supply side platforms. He has held leadership roles at Omnicom in Asia Pacific.

MEC Thailand made two senior management promotions in its digital department. Supalurk Tangcharoensiri was promoted from digital director to the role of head of digital of MEC Interaction.

In his new role, he resumes full responsibility in MEC’s digital service.

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LAST WORD

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Less is more, people.

HAVE WE GONE OVERBOARD WITH SG50 BRANDING? Is it time to stop branding everything with the SG50 logo? Rezwana Manjur goes on a rant.

Since last year, a little red dot bearing the words SG50 has been slapped across every brand campaign, event and product imaginable across Singapore. According to the SG50 website, the logo celebrates the Singaporean spirit – “signifying that our dreams are not limited by the physical size of our island nation”.

Personally, I am excited to celebrate the nation turning 50 and promoting all things Singaporean. However, it seems as though every where we look, we are flooded by a vision of red polka dots. And one can only expect the campaign messages to amplify as the year progresses.

While I love my country, as a consumer, the wave of red dots have become somewhat muted and no longer bears weight on if or not I actually purchase a product.

In fact, I recently came across a blog called “Simi Sai Also SG50” (which means “Any Sh*t can also Can Be SG50”) that made me wonder: Is the best strategy for SG50 to do nothing at all?

In a conversation with Lars Voedisch, founder of PRecious Communications, he said the SG50 event was a double-edged sword for most marketers.

Brands want to show their support to Singapore and SG50 and do not want to miss out on a perceived opportunity. However, just by doing so, brands might actually be wasting their marketing dollars as their message might be swept away in the flood of SG50-linked stories.

“The SG50 scenario is much like the Super Bowl or the Oscars where too many brands try to leverage the chatter, but only a few succeed. Are you willing to take that risk with your limited budget?” he asked.

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He added that every brand manager needed to answer one simple question – what is your brand’s essence and how do you stay relevant to the target audiences. Before getting creative, brands need to see if they can actually contribute to SG50 and its business objectives.

Don Anderson, managing director at We Are Social, echoed similar sentiments adding that brands needed to be honest about whether they were just trying to ride a conversational trend, or did they truly want to celebrate this major milestone in Singapore’s history?

“You can’t fool people – they’ll easily read through the lines if a brand is doing this for all the wrong reasons, and that will only translate to negative brand sentiment across social. If you’re just doing it for the purpose of hijacking a rather significant event that has emotional and national pride associations, expect that less than noble activities may backfire,” Anderson said.

He added that given the sheer volume of conversations already happening around this milestone, marketers would be wise to look elsewhere for opportunities to “cut through the clutter” of ongoing advertising and related brand communications.

Stephen Mangham, founder of Mangham Gaxiola, said the slew of campaigns were expected because it was a massive milestone in Singapore’s history.

“It’s essentially a year-long celebration. You cannot blame companies for looking to associate their brands with SG50. But the companies need to make it relevant to their brand messaging. Otherwise it’s just borrowed interest, and the brand ads will do more to promote SG50 than their own product,” Mangham said.

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The umeboshi in the centre of the rice brings to mind the iconic ‘Circle of the Sun’ flag

Sauces come in their own bottles and are added according to personal taste

…as well as infusing the rice with more flavour

4-3-2-1 nutrition ratio 4 parts rice 3 parts protein 2 parts veg 1 part treat

The modern day bento was designed for hungry Kabuki theatre audiences in the Edo period

Insight Worth Sharing. www.kadence.com/share

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