Marketing Magazine SG - Jul 2015

THE ART & SCIENCE OF CONNECTING WITH CONSUMERS

MARKETING MAGAZINE SINGAPORE EDITION

SINGAPORE

JULY 2015

marketing-interactive.com

SHOPPER MARKETING STRATEGIES FROM EPICENTRE, CARLSBERG, AND MORE PAGE 42 JULY 2015

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CAN BRANDS SPEAK THE

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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 Ee Kai Li, Account Manager kailie@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 Circulation Executive Deborah Quek, Circulations Executive deborahq@marketing-interactive.com Finance Evelyn Wong, Regional Finance Director evelynw@lighthousemedia.com.sg Management Søren Beaulieu, Publisher sorenb@marketing-interactive.com Tony Kelly, Editorial Director tk@marketing-interactive.com Justin Randles, Group Managing Director jr@marketing-interactive.com

The months of June and July were very interesting months for news. The period was flooded with news on the US approving gay marriages, SMRT’s second major breakdown, the SEA Games and across the border, Prime Minister Najib Razak’s 1MDB scandal.

Disjointed events indeed, but all of them held important lessons for the communications and marketing space. In an era of content marketing and newsjacking, as these took place, many brands gave voice to these issues. In an earlier interview, Twitter’s managing director of sales, SEA, Middle East and North Africa, Parminder Singh proposed that brands should raise their “muscle memory quotient” when it comes to responding to real time events. “It should be so spontaneous that when something happens anywhere in the world, you think ‘is this the right moment for my brand to be a part of?’” said Singh.

That said, without a proper publicity or marketing strategy, this constant “extroversion” for brands could be nothing but disaster. One case in point is Malaysian PM Najib. At an extremely challenging time for Najib, his social media or PR team continued to offer a voice on his Facebook page - during the politician’s ongoing PR crisis with allegations of corruption with the 1MDB fund. As the public was in an uproar, the positive messages on social media appeared to only stir their ire more. On local shores, as a nation-wide train network breakdown frustrated locals, some brands stepped up to react to the situation. One brand that didn’t react so well was Xiaomi, who posted an ad that users slammed for merely trying to capitalise on the situation.

To be fair, since real-time marketing became a buzzword awhile back, more brands have matured in this space, with many offering beautifully crafted ads and messaging around world events. For example, following the US

approval of gay marriages, Google created a moving ad about a gym which offered its support to transgenders during their transition, subtly offering a message of acceptance on the gender identity issue. While some companies get it right, others in their haste to be noticed get it wrong.

One PR professional, who asked to remain anonymous, wrote a rant on Marketing’s site.

Her most dreaded words to hear were “Can we PR this?” - poorly thought out requests for publicity thrown at a PR person - ones that had no strategy for the company, brand or cause.

“Small, intangible efforts that don’t add up to the bigger picture, that don’t show a corporate as a differentiator from its competitors, that don’t tell a good story, often come to a communications lead’s desk to be “PR-ed”....If there is no story or a strategy, don’t PR it. Just please don’t,” she concluded.

While this was for PR professionals, the same goes for brands. Should your brand, figuratively speaking, be yakking away all the time? When it comes to directionless marketing, I’ll swing along those lines as well.

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this issue.

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

DOES YOUR BRAND HAVE TO BE AN EXTROVERT TO SUCCEED?

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45 Ubi Road 1, #03-03A, Singapore 408696

CONTENTS

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14 NEWS ANALYSIS: IS O&M PITCHING FOR COCA-COLA’S MEDIA ACCOUNT THE START OF A NEW TREND? Is this an indication that both clients and agencies are struggling with the ideal agency roster?

Rezwana Manjur finds out.

17 NEWS ANALYSIS: IRE OVER WPP’S MARTIN SORRELL’S PAY PACKAGE WPP’s Martin Sorrell has drawn stakeholder indignation as his remuneration rose another 43% last year.

Elizabeth Low reports.

22 THE INNOVATION CONUNDRUM Poorly thought through innovation can haunt your brand’s success. Noreen Ismail writes.

24 MARKET SPOTLIGHT: SWEDEN Covering a myriad of issues from gender bias to exposing a brand on a global level, Rezwana Manjur speaks to the Swedish Institute as well as key Swedish brands on their take of ad land in this series of articles.

How Gillette, Volkswagen, Energizer and other global brands are changing tack when it comes to reaching men. Read more on page 36.

28 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING Brands such as Lamborghini reveal their social media strategies at Socialbakers’ Engage Prague conference.

Elizabeth Low writes.

36 FEATURE: MARKETING TO MEN Has the rise of feminism alienated the male consumer? Here’s how brands are changing their marketing methods. Rezwana Manjur reports.

42 SHOPPER MARKETING 2015 CapitaLand, EpiCentre and other top brands on their best shopper strategies.

46 RESEARCH ASIA 2015 Market research has to remain one step ahead and that’s why Research Asia Interactive was back for 2015.

Here’s what the event looked like.

50 ANALYTICS INTERACTIVE 2015 Analytics 2015 guided delegates on their analytics journey through key insights and compelling case studies.

SCAN TO SUBSCRIBE!

24 14 KEY TAKEAWAYS: >> Learn about the dangers of innovation. >> Read about the top brands’ social media strategies. >> Shopper marketing, analytics and research dissected.

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NEWS

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

Enlarging the Pie Singapore’s start-up work chat platform Pie raised US$1.2 million in funding from GREE Ventures, businessman Koh Boon Hwee, Wavemaker Partners (DFJ Network) – Dennis Goh, and Ivan Yeo from YSS Capital. Including an initial funding round of US$800,000 Pie has raised a total of US$2 million to date. According to co-founder Pieter Walraven, Pie’s work chat platform is geared at "less tech-savvy workers" who currently still use email, Skype and WhatsApp.

One for the Community Former Havas chief creative officer Victor Ng has launched the independent creative shop Community – opening it with three new client wins. The agency officially launches this month having won Singapore’s retail mall group CapitaMalls Asia. It is tasked to develop integrated branded content campaigns for its entire west-side cluster of shopping malls. “Community is an agency that aims to unite creatives, clients, consumers, citizens – people – around great ideas,” Ng said.

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Asian invasion Online social networking platform Twitter officially opened its Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore.

The new regional headquarters is home to a wide range of business functions, including sales, partnerships, marketing, HR, finance, user services, legal, policy, and trust and safety. In addition to the #RealTimeLab in its new office, there are plans to hire more than 100 staff within the next year.

Pasta – well Done!

Pasta brand Barilla appointed cross-media agency Done! Asia Pacific as its digital and social media agency on retainer until the end of the year. Starting in June, the agency will oversee the brand’s social media marketing activities for Singapore and Malaysia, as well as manage Barilla’s Singapore website. “We are tremendously excited to work with Barilla,” said Alessandro Carniel, managing director of Done! Asia Pacific.

In-feed offering Content discovery platform Outbrain launched native infeed – a product that allows publishers to use the Outbrain platform to serve native (in-stream) advertising. Outbrain partners can sell their own campaigns and use Outbrain’s UI and tools to deliver these campaigns to their audiences. The new tool leverages Outbrain’s pool of data about online user behaviour, including more than half a billion unique visitors across the globe.

Media hunt Property firm City Developments Limited (CDL) is on the look out for a new media shop as its contract with its current one, ZenithOptimedia, is set to end this year, sources told Marketing.

CDL declined to comment on the move. Marketing understands it has been reaching out to several media agencies, with the review set to take place in 2016 for the local market.

SG50 fun packs SG$10 million has been spent on tote bags for every household ahead of the National Day Parade.

The National Day Parade “fun packs” will be distributed to all Singaporean and permanent resident households from July, according to a Today article.

These will contain nostalgic Singaporean symbols chosen through crowdsourcing for ideas by local designers and the public.

Google invests Google has invested SG$404 million to expand its Singapore data centre, located in Jurong.

The new data centre is said to support data demand not only in Singapore and the region, but across the globe. Google has 13 data centres globally. Google first launched its Singapore data centre in 2013, its first in Southeast Asia. Its other centres are in the US, Europe and Taiwan.

Smart fellas The InfoComm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) appointed local agency Goodfellas for its campaign efforts in publicising its major Smart Nation initiative. A tender was held earlier in the year, with agencies DDB, Havas Worldwide Siren, Imagination, Wild Advertising & Marketing and Aretease also in the pitch. The awarded value is stated to be SG$3,224,250, according to GeBIZ. Moving forward Ten of The Local’s team members, including its creative director and co-founder Kirsten Ackland joined Y&R, following the former agency’s closure in June. Ackland was previously from Y&R Singapore before she co-founded The Local where she was also creative director for four years. This move to Y&R brought over clients such as Al-Futtaim Group (Robinsons and Marks & Spencer), Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Lend Lease and Shiseido.

Watsons appoints PR agency Healthcare and beauty store Watsons appointed local PR agency Touch PR & Events for one year following a pitch. The agency is tasked to focus on highlighting Watsons’ range of health and beauty offerings as well as provide consultancy on PR strategy and influencer engagement throughout the year. The agency will oversee the planning and management of the biannual beauty fair – My Watsons Day Out.

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NEWS

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Zespri’s golden mornings Fruit brand Zespri branded itself with a series of early morning activities, including a pre-work party in the CBD. The idea was to create seven days of positivity and experiences, culminating in Asia’s first-ever pre-work party with Morning Gloryville from the UK. The Zespri Golden Mornings kick-started on 8 June with a SunGold kiwi-themed “ride with the pack” spinning class

by CruCycle.

Finding the right Formul8 Tertiary arts education institution Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) appointed independent agency Formul8 as its creative agency of record for a period of two years. The agency is tasked to provide creative, advertising and marketing services for NAFA. The agency will also help out in media planning and buying to achieve NAFA’s marketing campaign objectives. It will also manage digital marketing and social media community management.

New news portal Independent news portal six-six. com went live in June delivering talking points on news ranging from business to politics to lifestyle trends. The site aims to “challenge readers to think beyond what they glean from mainstream media to reach a balanced considered opinion.”

The site will bring together various views by offering a different and balanced analysis. The site was founded by Kannan Chandran, a former journalist at Singapore daily, The Straits Times.

Hello Kitty rides EVA Air launched an SBS Transit Hello Kitty concept double deck bus as part of its Hello Kitty Jet Launch advertising campaign with Moove Media. While the fully wrapped double deck bus is all white on the outside featuring Sanrio’s characters – Hello Kitty, My Melody as well as Kiki and Lala – the inside of the concept bus is decked in pink, blue and yellow from the interior walls, the seats to the stairs as well as the upper deck of the bus.

Closing down Singapore-based independent agency The Local ceased operations in June. Co-founder Shaun Quek confirmed the closure to Marketing. “We have aided our clients with the transition process to alternative options.” The agency was established in July 2011. Its short description read: “No one understands Singapore better than The Local.” The agency was founded by Quek, Ho Peck Kheng and Kirsten Ackland.

Centre of attention Starcom MediaVest Group set up a social command centre at the SEA Games. The command centre was made up of members from the SEA Games’ organising committee, a creative director, content designers and producers, and a team of community managers from Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. In addition, SMG reported and provided communication strategy recommendations based on its monitoring.

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Going Down Under DBS Bank received regulatory approval to carry out banking activities in Australia, expanding its presence to a total of 18 markets worldwide. The licence allows DBS to conduct institutional banking activities. The bank’s first branch opened in Sydney in June.

It is headed by DBS Australia’s country head Helen Yap. With the new branch, DBS hopes to better support Australian companies looking to expand in Asia.

Ku De Ta rebrands L Capital Asia, the Asian private equity business arm of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, rebranded the iconic restaurant and lifestyle brand Ku De Ta and launched it as the new luxury lifestyle and entertainment brand Ce La Vi. The new brand name officially launched last month in Singapore and Hong Kong.

In July, it will be opening a new venue on the top floors of Hong Kong’s California Tower.

Taking a bite Magnum partnered with MediaCorp’s OOH Media to instal a few interactive bus panels that will allow passers-by to virtually take a bite of the new Magnum Infinity ice-cream and go on a virtual swing experience. To promote the Magnum Infinity ice-cream, Magnum worked with OOH Media to come up with an interactive bus panel to attract and engage its target audience.

Jack Wills engages AKA Jack Wills engaged AKA Asia on a retainer basis with immediate effect. The new retainer includes media relations, influencer relations and partnership management. Jack Wills launched its flagship store in Singapore at Raffles City in November 2014, with plans to open a second store within the next 12 months. The retailer was established in 1999 by founders Peter Williams and Robert Shaw in Salcombe, Devon, England.

Singular metrics for TV The Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) is looking to create a single unified audience measurement currency for TV. For this, it has appointed GfK for three years, with a two-year renewal option to run the project.

Singapore will get an integrated measurement system that will include the complete audience for traditional television, as well as those using computers, smartphones and tablets to access TV and video content, said the MDA.

Another win for Havas Following its massive win of the Singtel media buying business, Havas Media bagged another major local account with the Changi Airport Group business.

CAG appointed Havas Media for its media buying duties which is reported to be for SG$16 million.

The new contract with Havas is slated to run for two years with an option to extend for another two.

The new contract will run from 1 July 2015 onwards.

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NEWS

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New show for A+E Networks A+E Networks Asia acquired viral video show Right This Minute which premiered 8 June on its female-focused channel Lifetime in Asia (StarHub TV Channel 514), coinciding with the US launch.

Right This Minute brings viewers the hottest videos from the internet with exclusive interviews and information. The series features five hosts who will watch and comment on the videos, including multi awardwinning host and Singapore native, Oli Pettigrew.

Everyday heroes Sentosa unveiled a campaign called “The Fun Movement”.

The campaign was aimed at rewarding the “everyday heroes who bring joy to the lives of others”, said the company in a press statement. Conceptualised

by Grey Group Singapore, the campaign invited residents of Singapore to nominate people who most deserve to take a break from everyday hassles. “The Fun Movement” was launched with the release of two videos celebrating everyday heroes.

The apprenticeship GroupM Singapore launched its first apprenticeship programme, aimed at helping undergraduates understand the local and regional media landscape. GroupM Singapore’s talent acquisition team worked closely with local tertiary institutions including NUS, NTU and SMU, to match students with GroupM’s subsidiaries. Out of a pool of 550 applications, 27 students were selected for tenure between one to six months.

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Global experience Singapore Economic Development board (EDB) partnered up with The Secret Little Agency (TSLA) to help accelerate the agency’s growth in global user experience and experience design capabilities.

This will take the form of a global UX Lab that focuses on three key pillars — user experience, technology, and product design.

According to a statement from the agency, with EDB’s support, it aimed to deliver innovative experiences that go beyond the realm of advertising.

Promoting NETS NETS (Network for Electronic Transfers) appointed M&C Saatchi as its agency of record. M&C Saatchi’s remit covers all NETS’ communications from corporate and product, to promotions, activation and B2B. Earlier this year, NETS appointed social and mobile agency KRDS Singapore as its social media agency for the year following a multi-agency pitch. KRDS Singapore will handle NETS’ Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Prime expansion MediaCorp’s OOH Media rolled out an additional 20 Opti-Prime locations on the city fringe and in suburban areas, bringing it to a total of 40 Opti-Prime locations, including the Orchard and city areas. According to Nielsen, OOH Media’s networks are able to reach out to more than 90% of PMEBs, youths, women, men and parents. Advertisers will now have more choices in extending their brand presence and engagement with different groups of people.

National support SIA launched a campaign to celebrate the SEA Games.

Nicholas Ionides, vice-president of public affairs for SIA, said this was a way for the airline to demonstrate its commitment to local sports, in particular Team Singapore, at this year’s SEA Games. Aside from print and digital executions, the airline rolled out several videos that ran on social media featuring six of the athletes from various sporting arenas.

Far East story SG Story was appointed by Far East Hospitality Management to handle their social media activities for two of their Singapore-based brands: Village Hotels and Residences, and The Quincy Hotel. SG Story manages Stay Far East, the company’s main Facebook page. Through this partnership, SG Story was tasked to build and execute campaigns to boost the brands’ local and global awareness, while expanding the brand’s digital presence.

Boosting tourism The Singapore Tourism Board launched an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at boosting tourism in Singapore this year.

The campaign has been launched in conjunction with Singapore’s SG50 celebrations. The global Golden Jubilee campaign will run in two phases until the end of the year. While the global campaign launched on 9 June, STB had already launched the ads earlier in several key markets, namely Indonesia, China, India, the Philippines, Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

Soup’s up Local restaurant chain The Soup Spoon underwent a re-branding with the help of design agency JKR. JKR was first appointed mid last year without a pitch.

According to co-founder and owner Benedict Leow, the move came in as the restaurant outlet was looking to expand within the region. The agency was tasked to redefine the brand idea and establish a fresh visual brand language that extends across all brand touch-points.

Four new wins The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Pringles International, and the Singapore Navy Information Centre appointed Dentsu Singapore for various creative and media duties. Following a pitch in April, Dentsu Singapore was appointed the agency of record for the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore, the governing organisation that oversees and promotes safety in the aviation industry. The agency will handle its integrated media and creative campaigns.

NEA picks Starcom The National Environment Agency appointed Starcom Mediavest Group, to handle its media buying business. According to the announcement on Gebiz, IPG Mediabrands and Group M were also vying for the account. The pitch was called in March this year and is for of an initial ten months with the option to extend until March 2017. SMG was tasked with media buying and planning initiatives for its public education and communications campaigns.

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Colloquial marketing The J. Walter Thompson Company (JWT) and Group SJR, a unit of Hill+Knowlton Strategies, have launched a content marketing unit called Colloquial.

Through this joint venture, Colloquial will build publishing environments for brands, specialising in content that builds loyalty and audiences over time.

It will publish short articles, infographics and visual stories for brands. Colloquial will share locations and draw on JWT’s presence in key global markets.

On the move?

HSBC bank is rumoured to be mulling over plans to relocate its HQ to Asia, with Hong Kong in its sights. HSBC will cut its global workforce by up to 50,000 in a US$5 billion cost-cutting initiative, said an AFP article. The bank will use a set of 11 criteria in deciding whether it will move its headquarters out of London. The bank will also rebrand its UK retail banking unit.

In pursuit of luxury Bloomberg Media has introduced a redesigned Bloomberg Pursuits magazine, a quarterly guide to intelligent luxury. Bloomberg Pursuits, which is closely aligned with its digital home on Bloomberg Business, is a key pillar of the company’s consumer media strategy. Editorial content will go live across the web, mobile, television, digital video, print, radio and live events. The magazine’s design was conceived by creative director Robert Vargas.

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Kering sues Alibaba Luxury brand company Kering is suing e-commerce Alibaba Group Holding for allegedly abetting and profiting from the sales of counterfeit goods on its platform.

In a statement to Marketing, an Alibaba Group spokesperson said: “We continue to work in partnership with numerous brands to help them protect their intellectual property, and we have a strong track record of doing so.” The lawsuit alleges that Alibaba “provide the marketplace advertising and other services for counterfeiters to sell their counterfeit products”.

Twitter’s CEO hunt Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo stepped down on 1 July, with co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey becoming the interim CEO. Dorsey will serve as interim CEO while it continues to hunt for its next boss. In a statement by the company, it declared that Costolo will continue to serve on the firm’s board of directors, while Dorsey will continue to serve as CEO of Square, Inc. the payments and financial services company, he started.

CNBC’s new deal CNBC announced its second regional multi-platform sponsorship deal with Hitachi for the network’s Managing Asia: Asia Builders series. Content was largely drawn from a special event in Jakarta on 11 June and was broadcast in two parts on June 26 and 3 July across CNBC’s Asia Pacific TV and all digital platforms. CNBC anchor Christine Tan hosted the Jakarta discussions, “Innovative cities: rising to the challenge”, at Hotel Indonesia Kempinski.

HOW MUCH DOES THAT COST?

SAMSUNG’S 3D CRYSTALS

Samsung collaborated with MediaCorp’s outdoor advertising arm OOH Media to install a larger-than-life 3D creative of its latest phone model on a bus shelter in front of Tangs. The

installation was set up to promote Samsung’s newly launched Samsung Galaxy S6 4G+ and Galaxy S6 edge 4G+ among the public. The 3D creative by Cheil consisted of a giantsized Galaxy S6 edge 4G+ mounted at an angle with “crystal” structures to illustrate its extended screen to the edge. The campaign cost about SG$60,000.

Journalism rejoices Audi’s communications team launched a central research platform for journalists and bloggers. Media representatives will be able to use press releases, photos, videos and other content related to Audi for their editorial work without registration. The online portal at www.audi-mediacenter.com can be easily used on all modern end devices. Toni Melfi, head of Audi communications, said it was a “modern research platform for journalists, bloggers and online multipliers”.

Lenovo renews its vision Lenovo unveiled its new logo as a response to the company’s renewed vision for its brand. To express the brand’s diversity, multiple colours and visuals are interchangeable behind the logo, which according to Lenovo, was intended to connect its company with key social trends and local preferences. The new logo will be rolled out in phases throughout the year.

Parting ways Heineken ended its global ad contract with Wieden+Kennedy, its creative agency of five years.

Heineken announced both it and the agency had reached an agreement to terminate its global ad contract for the Heineken and Desperados brands. Both have worked together since 2010, and last year saw Heineken push to the top as Cannes’ Marketer of the Year with the partnership.

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NEW WORK .................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Client

Building & Construction Authority

Creative

Addiction Advertising

Media

Bioperfect

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Who you sleep with is your business.

What you sleep with is ours.

Brief TrusCo was a two-week teaser campaign launched on 11 May 2015

by Courts Singapore as part of the retailer’s efforts to create buzz before the official launch of YourBedding, its new bedroom and bedding retail concept. The integrated throughthe-line campaign ran on TV, print, online and as an on-ground activation.

The campaign ran only in Singapore and preceded the official launch of YourBedding on 23 May. Client

Courts Singapore

Creative

DDB Singapore

Media

While the choice of your bedroom company is entirely up to you, we do have some suggestions when it comes to what you should be sleeping with. We boast an extensive range of mattresses and bedroom furniture to suit everyone’s needs.

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The bedroom expert

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3 Campaign Fun Movement by Sentosa Brief Sentosa, as the state of fun, wants to bring fun back to the people who deserve it the most. The campaign is a digitally led activation (social, microsite banners, etc) with content (films) at the heart as well as an on-ground activation. The campaign launched on 27 May with the public voting from 3 July to 16 July. The winners will be revealed on 20 July.

Client

Sentosa Development Corporation

Creative

Grey Group Singapore

Media

OMD

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4 Campaign EVA Air Hello Kitty Jet Launch Brief The campaign aims to create awareness for the launch of Hello Kitty flights with EVA Air. For this, the airline launched an SBS Transit Hello Kitty concept double deck bus as part of its Hello Kitty Jet Launch advertising campaign with Moove Media.

This campaign also runs on threedimensional floor stickers of a mock runway along the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station on the North East Line. The campaign will run until 6 August.

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Client

EVA Airways

Creative

Bates Chi for buses and Asia PR Werkz for Dhoby Ghaut advertisements

Media

Asia PR Werkz

SUBMISSIONS PLEASE SEND US YOUR BEST NEW WORK REGULARLY IN HIGH-RES JPEG OR PDF TO BE CONSIDERED FOR THESE PAGES. EMAIL RAYANAP@MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.COM

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10/7/2015 6:55:11 PM

OPINION: AD WATCH/WEB WATCH

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Tan Junhong Copywriter formul8

AD WATCH HOT: Touch Community Services

NOT: MCYS For me, my favourite ads are those that make me stop and take a closer look.

And the one that made me do a double take recently was this ad for Touch Community

Services from Publicis Singapore.

The imagery is simple, easily understandable and well-thought out. It manages to relate something intangible such as online comments to real-world consequences. Many times, you see ads where the visual and copy compete for attention. This, on the other hand, is a pretty balanced combination. The copy itself plays a key role in the visual, illustrating the consequences of cyber bullying. While this may not be a Cannes Lion-winning ad, it certainly is clever and is one of the better ads I have seen in Singapore.

When it comes to ads from the Singapore government, they are often safe and boring with little to talk about.

There are a few exceptions once in a while, such as the Health Promotion Board’s short films that are funny and touching. Then there are some ads that totally miss the point such as the one above from MCYS. MCYS launched a campaign to create more awareness about the role of social workers in Singapore, but ended up victimising the less fortunate. The ad just further perpetuates the stereotype that the less fortunate are liabilities that need sympathy and rescuing, rather than normal people who just find themselves in unfortunate circumstances.

If they really want to promote social workers, just give them higher salaries instead of running ads about the profession.

Kyoko Matsushita Managing director, APAC Essence

WEB WATCH HOT: shaw.sg

NOT: cathaycineplexes.com.sg

Sitting in a movie theatre and watching your favourite stars on the big screen is an enjoyable pastime for many of us. Getting your tickets in advance for that big new release for a Saturday night and trying to find the best seats in the house is significantly less so. Shaw Theatres has made things infinitely simpler for everyone in Singapore. With a scroll of the mouse, you have everything you need as you land on the page, from a slide show with the latest releases and movie times at your nearest theatre to a clear call-to-action button showing where you can buy your tickets. In a world of HTML5, with clean white aesthetics trying to do too much, it’s great to see something so simple being used for what is essentially a very simple task. The mobile-friendly site does an even better job of catering to people on the move with the immediate option to pick your movie time and location, so you can just get on with it.

Oh, easy – a drop down menu of all the things I need to choose to go ahead and book my movie tickets for Saturday. Select a movie, a location, a date and time and off you go, book now. Wait, a new tab, and there’s no seats I want at that time. Let’s go back and do that again, and again, until I can find a time, place and a seat I want. Four tabs, and I’ve realised that I’m going to try another cinema, just down the road at Dhoby Ghaut owned by the same company (another tab).

Singapore isn’t that big, and I’d love to be able to see all my options on one simple easy to use page, so I can pick what I want and get on with my day, safe in the knowledge I’ll be watching that summer blockbuster this weekend. The less said about its fancy new mobile site that doesn’t give me a mobile optimised seat map, the better.

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10/7/2015 8:38:05 PM

DIRECT MAIL CASE STUDY

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HEINEKEN’S COLD AND BOLD MOVE A frozen invite direct mailer broke the ice for Heineken to reach its media partners.

A real ice-breaker: Heineken’s invite to the media.

Heineken launched its latest innovation, Heineken Extra Cold, in Singapore in April.

Created by Heineken’s award-winning technology for innovation, Heineken Extra Cold serves its signature Heineken draught beer at subzero levels for a truly invigorating and extra refreshing experience until the last sip – perfect for Singapore’s year-round summer heat.

Tapped as a smooth draught from its new and innovative frozen draught column, straight into a super chilled glass, Heineken Extra Cold is served at an impressive -3°C to +1°C for an optimum subzero Heineken experience.

To kick-start the launch in Singapore, Heineken organised an exclusive media-only preview at one of Heineken’s partnered outlets, Kyo. Converting the club into a laboratory experimenting with subzero temperatures for one night only, invitations were sent out before the media preview to give media and bloggers a teaser on what was to come.

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To create suspense for the launch, Heineken ensured the Singapore media beat the city heat with a rather cool invitation to its subterranean Extra Cold laboratory, so cold the invitations were frozen in a block of ice and invitees had to “unlock” their invitations by literally breaking the ice to retrieve their invite.

Delivered in a sealed and insulated specimen box, adorned with authentic temperature warning labels and stickers, this media kit was the perfect way to invite them to the media launch of Heineken Extra Cold in Singapore. This is, after all, a beer engineered to remain below the freezing point, and to remain crisp, clean and smooth to the very last drop.

In true Heineken style, the media kit was innovative and focused on consumer engagement making it a big hit with invitees who shared their opening and ice-breaking videos on their social media accounts.

THE MAIL Objective: To create suspense for the launch and invite media and bloggers to the media launch of Heineken Extra Cold in Singapore.

Target audience: The media invite was directed at mainstream media – from print to online – and bloggers.

Results: This resulted in Heineken reaching out to an audience of 1.5 million via social media, and a 92% attendance rate for the media event.

Errol Tan Creative group head Iris Worldwide

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15/7/2015 9:56:26 AM

NEWS ANALYSIS

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IS O&M PITCHING FOR COCA-COLA’S MEDIA ACCOUNT THE START OF A NEW TREND? Is this an indication that both clients and agencies are struggling with the ideal agency roster?

Rezwana Manjur writes.

While several small independent agencies today still offer the complete package of creative capabilities tied in with media executions for their clients, this rarely happens with larger agencies in media pitches.

However, WPP’s Ogilvy & Mather is about to set a new trend as reports claim the creative agency is vying for Coca-Cola’s media buying and planning account. O&M is reportedly running against big boys such as MediaCom and Starcom MediaVest for the media account.

According to a statement by Ivan Pollard, senior VP for connections, investments and assets at Coca-Cola North America, given to AdAge, the brand is not only reviewing its agencies, but its whole agency model.

“We have invited Ogilvy instead of Carat to provide an alternative perspective on the communications strategy,” Pollard said.

The article also suggested the piece of business Ogilvy is running for is called “connections” which could entail communications planning and strategy execution.

Coca-Cola would not comment on Marketing’s queries at the time of writing.

The start of a new trend?

Darren Woolley, CEO of TrinityP3, said CocaCola’s move indicated many marketers and advertisers were now struggling with “the ideal agency roster”. However, he noted that while the market was struggling to find the right solution in the face of huge disruption, Coca-Cola’s approach was not ideal as it leads agencies to misinterpret that they need to be offering everything to everyone.

“The mistake they are making is trying to answer this question through a tender or pitch process,” he said. What would be more effective in today’s marketing mix would be to assess and align the current roster structure against

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the agreed marketing strategy requirements and then create agreed success models.

“Only then should the brands go to market with a clear view of what the ideal looks like and create the best-fit model from what is available in the marketplace. This allows for a very strategic and forensic approach to roster structure.”

Greg Paull, principal consultant at R3, added the move indicated the lines were definitely blurring between content, connections and collaboration.

“If you look closely at what Ogilvy is already doing for IBM and a handful of other clients, there’s a strong connections planning role.

Coca-Cola is always looking to lead and not follow – this is just the latest example of that,” he said.

He added this trend of collaboration

needed to start first with the creative agencies.

However, not many creative agencies have evolved the way Ogilvy New York has evolved.

“The whole agency model is under review,” he said.

“The AOR concept is dead, marketers are now dealing with dedicated digital, social, mobile and analytics agencies. Building integrated marketing has never been tougher, and is a million miles away from the Mad Men days. We believe there will be just as many media agencies (and media owners) offering creative services, as there are creative agencies offering media services in the future.”

Paul Davies, managing partner for Asia Pacific at Roth Observatory International, added this was symptomatic of the fundamental changes going on in the industry in general.

On the media buying side specifically, media agencies have been trying for some time to get into the creative space. Meanwhile, creative agencies have been trying to set up more holistic planning departments and including media neutral channel planning to fill the gap when media is separated.

Like Paull, Davies agreed that Ogilvy, in particular, has been at the forefront in this area.

“The agency set up Neo as a global digital media business back in the early 2000s to help clients exploit digital media. In Asia, it has bolstered its planning capability to add very strong measurement components and looked to bring their strong digital consultancy and analytics closer to the mainstream planning group.”

He added it would not be long before the management consultancies get in on the act in this type of area. Increasingly, clients today are re-evaluating their agency model to see how it should be structured to best suit their needs.

“I would expect more of this and maybe even more extreme models in the future.”

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NEWS ANALYSIS

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HOW BRANDS PLAYED THE SEA GAMES The SEA Games, was a huge event, with these major brands also showing up to play.

Noreen Ismail writes.

The 28th SEA Games generated quite a buzz.

Eager to tap into the event, brands were also busy marketing around it. Here is how they cheered on the SEA Games.

Singtel As the official multimedia partner and official pay-TV broadcaster of the 28th SEA Games, Singtel provided multimedia services such as data centres that processed the Games’ information, high-speed internet and Wi-Fi at venues, and mobile broadband and telephone services to SINGSOC, officials and delegates.

To publicise this, the telco created a showcase at the SEA Games carnival where its pavilion featured an experiential showcase of these multimedia services and technology deployed for the Games.

It also created two dedicated Singtel channels with 24/7 live coverage. Exclusive programmes included SEA Games Tonight. An app, Singtel TV GO, was also launched for free viewing of the Games. The brand produced video tributes for ordinary Singaporeans who supported Team SG athletes. Online and on the ground, Singtel created a movement to galvanise support for Team Singapore through its SEA Games microsite. The public could submit a cheer via the Singtel cheer aggregator for Team Singapore which tracked millions of web pages, tweets, postings, articles and videos through data analytics. This provided a gauge of support for the Games. Singtel reportedly tracked more than 990,000 cheers during the launch of the Games, a spokesperson told Marketing.

Singapore Airlines Singapore Airlines (SIA) launched a campaign to support Team Singapore. Unlike its brand or tactical campaigns, this campaign focused on its support for Team Singapore. The campaign was also an extension of SIA’s sponsorship of the SEA Games. “We were proud to be a conduit in bringing people from around the region to celebrate the spirit of sportsmanship,” Ionides said. The campaign included a series of social media videos which focused on six athletes – Quah Ting Wen, a swimmer and the national flag bearer for Singapore at the SEA Games; netball player Micky Lin; hockey

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SIA’s campaign for the SEA Games.

player Silas Abdul Razak; footballer Al-Qaasimy Rahman; bowler Jazreel Tan; and athlete Shanti Pereira. Dentsu Möbius was the agency behind the social media videos for the campaign.

DBS Capitalising on the excitement surrounding the regional sports event, DBS held its water sport festival DBS Marina Regatta in conjunction with the SEA Games races in Marina Bay. An initiative under the DBS Marina Regatta included an “urban beach” on the Promontory @ Marina Bay where the public could enjoy food and beverages from various pop-up cafes and activities at the pool, while watching the sailing races. DBS’ aim was to celebrate the nation’s 50th birthday and support the SEA Games, said a spokesperson.

The SEA Games’ traditional boat (Dragon Boat) races were held on 6 and 7 June in conjunction with the regatta’s mixed category Dragon Boat races on the same days and in the same waters. The pop-up “urban beach” was held on the third weekend of the regatta festival, allowing the public to watch the SEA Games sailing races held at the Marina Bay. Most of the regatta’s activities were free of charge, and the SEA Games’ Dragon Boat and sailing races at the Marina Bay were unticketed as well.

Deloitte As the official professional service partner,

Deloitte was involved in supporting the Games with its professional services expertise, with a number of staff on a special secondee programme with the SEA Games committee.

In addition, it engaged its employees for the Games, and this continued throughout the Games. It included facilitating ticket purchases for its staff to be part of the opening and closing ceremonies and for the different sporting events. Deloitte had some of its own employees participating in the Games – 10 athletes in seven sports. It also participated in the SEA Games countdown with a video helming the number “2” for the 50-day countdown. Its video was aired on 3 June.

100PLUS The official isotonic drink of the Games, 100PLUS, launched a campaign that aimed to rally fellow Singaporeans to unite and cheer for Team Singapore. 100PLUS also rolled out a commemorative gold can in support of the Games. Each limited edition of the 100PLUS gold can was a symbolic gesture of support for Team Singapore as it strived for gold. Members of the public could upload pictures of themselves with the limited edition 100PLUS gold can on Instagram, with the hashtag #GoforGoldSG and leave words of encouragement for the team.

JWT conceived and executed the campaign for 100PLUS.

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WPP’S MARTIN SORRELL’S PAY PACKAGE DRAWS IRE FROM SHAREHOLDERS Shareholders irked as WPP’s chief’s pay package rose another 43% last year.

Elizabeth Low reports.

Worth his weight in gold? Stakeholders are in a debate over Sorrell’s pay rise.

More than one fifth of WPP’s investors voted down a £43 million remuneration package for chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell at the company’s annual general meeting.

According to reports, WPP PLC shareholders approved Sorrell’s £43 million or US$66 million pay package for 2014, although this did not come without a revolt.

Sorrell’s pay package leapt 43% from £30 million the year before.

At the meeting, 77.8% voted for the pay package while 19.5% voted against and 2.7% abstained said The Wall Street Journal, adding that among most institutional shareholders of UK-listed companies, the default vote is usually cast in favour of management for remuneration reports.

“Abstentions are often viewed as a milder form of protest.”

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This puts Sorrell as the highest-paid chief of a UK public firm, more than double the amount paid to the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell.

One estimate has him being paid 179 times more than the average employee in WPP, added The Guardian.

Independent think tank High Pay Centre, which had a different view on the estimates, is another of those who have hit out at his remuneration. Deputy director Luke Hildyard said: “Sir Martin Sorrell has been a successful chief executive, but WPP apply that defence each year to increasingly provocative pay packages and it can only go so far.

“With Sorrell now paid over 1000 times as much as his average employee, they seem to have disregarded any interest in fairness or proportionality a long time ago.”

And a WPP spokesperson has responded

to the comments: “Over 90% of Sir Martin Sorrell’s 2014 compensation was performancerelated, the vast majority of which arose from the five-year co-investment scheme LEAP where he had to commit shares for five years.

“Given that WPP achieved total shareholder return of 171.5% over the period 2010-2014 when the FTSE 100 produced TSR of only 47% and also outperformed its competitors Omnicom and Publicis, the scheme produced a maximum match. And £19 million of the scheme award of £36 million was attributable to share price appreciation and dividends.”

However, while some industry watchers and shareholders may be in revolt, some of his employees may not agree.

One senior WPP agency lead in Asia told Marketing it was not a major issue.

“Let’s be honest, this company is his brainchild. If anyone deserves to be rewarded it should be him. There are schools of thought where the CEO cuts his pay to give benefits to staff, but I doubt the genuine intent of that – is that just for sensationalism?

“This is also part of what makes him successful as a businessman – he knows how to make money.”

Added Mike Langton, former lead for many network agencies across holding groups, including Interbrand, Momentum Worldwide, Carat, Wunderman, XM Asia and Bates 141: “A large part of his remuneration will be long-term incentives kicking in according to a formula predetermined by the WPP board.

“He rode the globalisation horse spectacularly during that era. (For) digital a bit less so, but still better than most, except maybe Maurice Lévy (chief executive of Publicis).

“Is it all Martin? Not really. His lieutenants deserve recognition, but tend to be bright wellpaid people who keep their heads down.

“Does he deserve the remuneration largess? Arguably yes, but that is really between the WPP board and shareholders. I think it’s all probably the last fireworks at the end of the party.”

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NEWS ANALYSIS

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BACARDI SCRAPS GLOBAL CMO ROLE Is the global CMO role still relevant, or is it becoming merely ceremonial?

Rezwana Manjur writes.

Dewar’s, William Lawson’s and Bombay. The CoEs will also be charged to create assets, and partner with the company’s external agencies, hubs and markets to ensure those assets are executed in locally relevant ways.

Bacardi Limited, one of the largest privately held spirits company in the world, has made a major rejig to its marketing team.

Six months into his role, Dima Ivanov, global CMO of Bacardi Limited, will exit the company as it looks to establish Centres of Excellence (CoEs) in Europe and North America. Each of these markets will be headed by a chief marketing officer who will report to Bacardi Limited CEO Mike Dolan on global brand decisions along with their regional presidents on regional issues.

“It has become increasingly clear that we have to change in order to win. And believe me we are in this to win. We have world-class brands and agency partners. Now it’s about changing how we organise to give our people, our partners and our brands a real shot at success,” Dolan said.

He added the company’s goal was now to be the company that attracted and retained the best of the industry. He said the “ultimate test of that is selling more cases, growing share and driving the bottom line” so the brand can reinvest more in its iconic brands and “industry leading innovation”.

Following the shuffle, heading up North America is Mauricio Vergara who came on board in 2013 and handled Bacardi and Grey Goose. Meanwhile, Shane Hoyne is now CMO of Europe. He was last the global lead for Martini,

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Is a global CMO role redundant?

According to Darren Woolley, founder and global CEO of TrinityP3, the role of the global CMO is much like that of a global CCO where both are roles that are largely ceremonial.

“They become the champion of the function they represent, but practically have little responsibility or authority as the business is a market by market and region by region proposition,” he said.

He added that while there was a need to have a consistency of brand, in actual fact, the expression of the marketing strategy and the brand strategy will vary depending on the market maturity, culture and competitive set.

Recounting a similar incident in China, but declining to name the brand, he said that about 18 months ago a global CMO who got involved in a regional pitch in China was overriding the local team’s choice of agency. This led to the local team deferring to the “superior” position of the global CMO and then within 12 months of the new agency being appointed, it had effectively changed agencies to the one it had wanted in the first place.

“The fact is that marketing is a central function of business and at a global level this is more about co-ordination and management than it is delivery at market level. As marketing is dependent on delivering the brand and customer experience it is more effective at a regional, but more specifically at a market level,” he said.

Added Paul Davies, managing partner for APAC at Roth Observatory International: “To give a true perspective of whether this is better than a global CMO depends upon the challenges and issues facing the organisation – both externally and (maybe even more importantly) internally.

“So only Mr Dolan can provide this perspective, but one consequence of his decision may be that he becomes the de facto CMO on critical decisions which raises other concerns or considerations.

“On a global CMO versus regional CMOs there is no definitive answer. The global CMO role is much maligned as it struggles to show value across the whole organisation – and how can it when a key part of the role is to make the hard choices. But it could work for some if they have some way of ensuring alignment, a strong culture of co-operation and the individuals act for the greater good of the company not just their own egos or targets.”

So what else might it mean for Bacardi?

Certainly for the brands more clarity and direction, which must be positive and allow them to be nearer to the ground where the action is, opines Davies. “So I would expect this to strengthen Bacardi’s brands over time as it will provide focus.”

Changes on the agency side The changes come shortly after Bacardi Limited consolidated its creative and media activity with BBDO and OMD. In addition, the company also announced it was in the process of consolidating its below-the-line spend.

“With these changes, we will be able to adapt our focus to our brands, not categories, and position ourselves to fully leverage the benefits of having world-class global agency and media partners,” Dolan explained.

Also, to manage relationships with the recently consolidated agency team, Zara Mirza, global communications director for Bacardi rum, was named the head of creative excellence. She will be responsible for the central creation and delivery of integrated communications ideas across the company’s core brands. She will also oversee the communication adaption in all key markets.

She will report directly to Dolan.

Currently, the company’s ready-to-drink and Tequila brands continue being led from Shanghai and Mexico respectively and brand leaders will be named shortly. The company also said it would continue to review plans with teams and finalise details in the coming weeks.

According to a release by the company, with these newly established plans, Bacardi hopes to “take a major step forward in bringing the company’s brand strategies closer to its markets” and making them more relevant to its consumers.

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AFTER THE MILLENNIALS COME THE PLURALS – ARE BRANDS REACHING THEM? Marketers, forget Millennials. Plurals are your new target group. David Webb of Turner Asia Pacific writes.

Millennials look out. There are some new kids on the block.

While much has been written about the Millennial generation and how brands can effectively market to them, the next generation of consumers are waiting in the wings and already wielding significant spending and influencing power.

And marketers who ignore them do so at their peril.

Plurals, those born from 1997 onwards, are the most affluent and digitally connected group we have ever known. And far from sitting back and letting their parents make purchasing decisions alone, they are increasingly helping to shape how and where the household’s finances are being directed.

In Australia, for example, the average kid now reaps A$14 a week in pocket money, according to Turner Broadcasting’s New

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Generations regional survey of the media consumption and spending habits of kids aged four to 14. And when monetary gifts and paid work is taken into consideration, this group has an annual spending power of A$1.8 billion.

In addition, right across the region – in Manila, Singapore and Jakarta – parents are saying their children are helping guide them to decide on everything – from what goes into their lunch box to where the family goes on holiday (80%) and even their preferred hotel and airline (50%).

Kids influencing their parents on what to buy is nothing new of course. What has changed is the diversity of influence that they now possess.

Not only are more kids from affluent Asian cities directly impacting the path to purchase for everyday items such as books, toys, clothes

and toiletries, but they now also hold sway over preferred car brands (51%), mobile phones (70%) and computers (80%).

Our research indicates that kids whose parents may be looking to go on a holiday, for example, are now suggesting accommodation, airlines and what activities each destination offers.

So why is this generation different to the one that went before?

Plurals, like no other, are consuming media, and in particular TV and digital media, very much on their own terms. As digital natives they access the internet when and where they want across multiple devices and with greater frequency.

An average of 82% of the surveyed kids aged four to 14 in Manila, Singapore and Jakarta use social networking sites regularly.

In fact, social networking was the top online leisure activity in our study.

As a result they are much more informed and able to contribute meaningfully when it comes to purchasing decision-making.

For some marketers, this is still fertile and relatively untapped territory. It’s a level of consumer sophistication we have never encountered from this age group and it should be a catalyst for brands to rethink how they engage with this audience.

Not only are kids increasingly more active in helping their parents make instantaneous purchasing decisions, but the Plurals generation are the highly prized consumers of tomorrow in their own right.

By building brand equity from an early age and doing it in a way that fits in with their media habits, forward-thinking advertisers can only benefit in the long-term.

Millennials look out. There are some new kids on the block.

The writer is David Webb (pictured) is director of research and planning at Turner Asia Pacific.

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10/7/2015 7:44:49 PM

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HP BRAND INNOVATION SUMMIT 2015

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ALL ABOUT INNOVATION Major brands and companies discuss pressing issues around innovation at HP’s Brand Innovation Summit 2015. Noreen Ismail reports.

In June this year, HP ran a conference its Brand Innovation Summit - inviting top brands such as Heineken, Durex and more to speak on the most pressing issues around innovation.

Here are some highlights from the conference.

Heineken’s Charzat on how innovation can damage your brand “While some companies may have a need to accelerate their innovation, the journey may not always take off the way it is intended.

“Innovation can damage your brand,” warned Cyril Charzat, senior director for Heineken APAC. Speaking at this year’s Brand Innovation Summit 2015 by HP held on 17 June 2015 at Resorts World Sentosa, Charzat discussed the challenges of innovation and shared the company’s three tips for successful innovation.

Challenges of innovation “Innovation distracts the organisation from business delivery,” he said. He explained the

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complexities that accompany the process of executing an innovative idea can complicate the general business goal because of additional tasks such as managing the supply chain and putting project teams in place that are needed for innovation.

Since companies need to invest in research and development and marketing when launching an innovative idea, the costs of such projects should always be considered.

“Innovation is expensive in time and budget, and brands need to take note of that. In terms of complexity, innovation can damage your brand.”

Before innovating, a brand must be sure its next move contributes something positive for the brand.

“The innovation must communicate something positive that contributes to the equity of your brand.”

He cited a few examples such as snacks brand Frito-Lay introducing “healthy snacks” and toothpaste brand Colgate selling entrees as some instances where brands got “hurt by the wrong innovation”.

“The core equity of your brand is going to be impacted by the messages you’re giving to the consumers,” he said, adding, “there are brands that are suffering from an association with their past innovation that failed and brought a bad image to a company or a brand.

“And because consumers are aware of

these past failures, it will impact your brand equity. The fact these did not deliver on their goals, can impact the brand in the long run.”

The complexity of innovation can impact the core equity of a brand if the message confuses the consumers.

Yet, brands are still eager to innovate despite these risks.

“Even the most traditional brands like champagne brand Dom Pérignon collaborated with industrial designer Marc Newson to launch its product wrapped in Newson’s designs,” Charzat said, acknowledging the success of the innovation led to increased sales and brand awareness.

Hence, according to him, the key question should be how to innovate the right way.

Three basic rules for successful innovation 1. Always check the brand is healthy.

“You don’t innovate to fix a problem, if you have a problem, you fix the problem differently before you embark on a plan to innovate.”

Innovating to fix a present problem is much like “hiding the dust under the carpet” since it seduces only loyal customers while making the problem merely dormant.

“In the end, the problem still remains.” To verify the health of a brand, a company must ensure it is doing well in its market.

2. Be single-minded about the objective A brand must be clear about its business objectives to support innovation sustainably.

“Brands need to have a plan to invest sustainably – they must believe in the innovation and won’t pull the plug on the idea,” he said.

There needs to be a proper assessment of the business opportunity and what innovation can bring to the business.

3. Business versus consumers “Fast-moving companies look at high repurchase rates to verify a sustainable business case,” he said.

In judging an innovation before launching, a brand must ensure three key stages from a consumer’s perspective regarding its product: (a) I understand it, (b) I would certainly buy it and (c) I love it.

He advised that innovation must create some appeal for consumers while simultaneously building brand equity.

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HP BRAND INNOVATION SUMMIT 2015

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5 TIPS FOR CONTENT MARKETING ON FACEBOOK Treat Facebook like a personalised newspaper - and these points will help you to tell your brand’s story better. Noreen Ismail reports.

“Facebook is a personalised newspaper,” said Roxanne Somboonsiri, global business manager for Facebook APAC, at HP’s Brand Innovation Summit 2015 held on 17 June 2015 at Resorts World Sentosa.

She noted that social media had greatly evolved from its humble beginnings of driving much simpler objectives such as “Likes”, “Fans” and “Sentiment”, among users. It has now grown to become a leading platform to enable marketers to move from merely fulfilling social objectives to expanding their businesses.

According to Somboonsiri, the term “social media” will slowly dissipate as the role of digital platforms takes centre stage, while steadily transforming into a more impactful way of engaging with people at scale. This, in turn, could help marketers deliver on core objectives such as in-store or online sales.

Mobile has become the main medium on which people are spending their time.

“The key takeaway here is that there is a lot of change impacting consumers, media, and ultimately, marketers right now,” she said. In times of such change, you have the opportunity to lead the way or the possibility of being left behind.”

Moreover, based on information that people provide to Facebook via their profile, pages they like and apps they download, it enables Facebook to provide marketers with the ability to reach exactly who you are looking for at scale. “For example, in the past, you’d only be able to reach adults 18-49, who like sports.

Now, you’re able to target John, who’s 29, single, watches NASCAR, eats at Chili’s and works 9-5. Or Sally, who’s 38, married and has three children.”

The availability of data can now provide relevant marketing to relevant people so as to not waste dollars when it comes to marketing to 74 million users on Facebook.“We can help you reach the people that you care about: your customers and your potential customers,” she said.Making a case for marketers to advertise on Facebook, she shared tips on how to leverage the social networking site to drive traffic on websites and encourage online orders. “In deciding what a creative newsfeed is, marketers need to ask themselves, ‘is it on brief, is it a relevant story, does it have thumb-

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sentences short. Use active voice.

Include a call to action early.

• Posts with less than 250 characters see about 60% more engagement.

stopping power?’” she said. This is especially critical in APAC where the use of mobile is exponentially increasing. “When somebody is on the phone, marketers have to have the ability to stop and capture the audience’s attention.”

Ensure brand relevance “Keep the ads short and sweet and ensure brand relevance at all times,” she said, emphasising the tone has to fit the brand’s personality well enough to drive brand recall.

An example, she cited, was Starbucks’ green straw used in its advertising – this, according to her, helped maintain the brand’s consistency through its various campaigns while generating brand recall.

Use the right imagery for the right time Use imagery designed for mobile – if it looks good on mobile, it looks good on desktop as well, since having an obvious focal point drives ad recall, she shared. Brands should also be timely with their creative ads to coincide with specific events and holidays. “Create something based on the events that are relevant and timely for the target audience. People will have a better connection with your brand when you evoke emotion.”

Content is king “On Facebook, your content is your marketing,” she said. To engage consumers where your story lands in their Newsfeed or on the side of the page, it is essential to capture their attention in a way that encourages participation. The key questions marketers should ask themselves are: 1. Is the language as tight as it can be and under 90 characters?

• If no, cut non-essential words. Keep

2. Could the story only come from your brand?

• If no, make sure it aligns to your specific values and identity. Or tweak the copy so that it sounds like something your brand or mascot would say.

• Ads where the brand is immediately identifiable perform better in terms of recall and purchase consideration.

3. Does the image or video thumbnail provide a clear visual cue for your story?

• If no, swap in a visual that users can easily connect to your message and brand.

4. Does it offer value to the user?

• If no, consider what you could post that will make your audience happy to be connected to you.

• Some ideas to adapt: An interview with the CEO/owner, a link to an article on a subject of interest to your audience, an insider discount code.

5. Is there a reason to post this story today?

• If no, find a way to tie the post to the news, current events, holidays or the season.

More importantly, storytelling is a key ingredient to marketing success on Facebook. “We remember stories that are told versus facts.

Brands have the capabilities to tell wonderful stories, but what makes consumers attract?

What stories will you tell?” Effective storytelling, she says, has the ability to deepen a consumer’s emotional connection by reminding them what they love most about the brand. Given this, a consumer is more likely to like, comment, or share a post, if it reinforces their choice to attach their identity to a particular brand, she said. Marketing to consumers on Facebook necessitates the need to identify key emotional triggers that inspire brand attachment and loyalty. “These triggers are core marketing assets, and they should dictate how you engage your fans on Facebook.

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MARKET SPOTLIGHT: SWEDEN

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MARKET SPOTLIGHT: SWEDEN The Swedish Institute is putting a focus on how advertising impacts society. Covering a myriad of issues from gender-biasness to exposing a brand on a global level, Rezwana Manjur speaks to The Swedish Institute as well as key Swedish brands on their take of the adland in this series of articles.

National branding and company reputations may be ill-fated bedfellows.

IS LINKING YOUR BRAND TO YOUR COUNTRY’S IMAGE ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA? Imagine the ideal Singapore girl in her dark blue kebaya and long silky hair – how much of that image is truly Singaporean?

While Singapore Airlines is clearly one of the brands that has leveraged the ideals of “brand Singapore”, using things such as safety, hospitality and reliability as part of its communication strategy to make a mark on the global platform, having a national branding may not work for many smaller firms, especially if they are looking for an international audience.

Jacob Ostberg, professor of Advertising and PR at Stockholm Business School, pointed out the perception of the home country might differ from market to market, and could have a completely different effect from the intended purpose.

“It might not always be good to use the national image to market all its products when looking to go global because we don’t know what ‘brand Singapore’ or ‘brand Malaysia’ might mean for a specific country across the world. The home country’s image will also most likely differ region to region,” he said.

While no doubt thorough research of the country’s image needs to

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be done before the launch of any new product or ad campaign, it is also important to remember that any country’s image is volatile and can shift very quickly.

Hence, sometimes it might be better for brands to completely stay away from tying up with the homeland image, he said.

Using examples of Swedish brands, he said while brands such as IKEA and Volvo clearly push the “Swedishness” agenda strongly in their communications campaigns, other brands such as H&M and Spotify take on more of a global image. He explained that brands loosely use four different verticals when devising a communication strategy.

These four categories are provincial, national, pseudo international and cosmopolitan.

He explained that when brands take a provincial market position, they usually use local insider knowledge on names, locations, traditions and inside jokes. Meanwhile, when looking to use a national brand image, brands play up their connections to their Swedish heritage. One brand that plays up the national image really well is Volvo which uses its engineering and design heritage and also the “blatant use of Swedish imagery and mythology” in its ad campaigns.

To take on what is known as a “pseudo international market”

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position, some brands also try to project “coolness” that is founded elsewhere.

“Some brands originating in Sweden disguise their heritage and claim lineage to some vague notion of being international. One such example could be H&M which doesn’t boldly portray its Swedish heritage, but rather comes across to many markets as an international brand,” he said.

Lastly, when brands wish to be perceived as more cosmopolitan in the international market they are more open about their connections to Sweden. But they also refuse to be reduced to just a “Swedish brand”.

One such Swedish brand that did so was Spotify, he said.

He explained that several Swedish apparel brands also would rather hold their fashion shows in Paris and London rather than Stockholm to come across more cosmopolitan in their communication and branding strategies.

Creating a national brand But nonetheless, it is vital for any country to create its own brand image before brands can use that image to springboard into different countries.

So how can we shape up a national brand image?

Sergio Guimaraes, communications strategist for the Events Unit at Swedish Institute, said the first step was a simple one. Like any other consumer-facing brand, the nation in question needs to come up with how the country wants to be perceived.

Giving the example of the award-winning Swedish campaign “Curators of Sweden”, he said that for Sweden, the country wanted to be known as open, innovating, caring and authentic, and ultimately, culminating to the idea of “progressive”.

“We want the world to come to the conclusion itself. We didn’t want to just shout about it. When we have our communication strategy we want to be perceived in some of these values, if not all,” he said.

In 2011, the government body launched the “Curators of Sweden” campaign where the country handed over its Twitter handle to the public to show what life in Sweden was like. Each member of the public had a week to use the handle to paint a “fair picture” of Sweden for the rest of the world before passing on the torch to someone else.

Members of the public had to nominate their peers and the Swedish Institute would then vet through the nominations to hand over the handle to these nominees.

“Some brands originating in Sweden disguise their heritage and claim lineage to some vague notion of being international.

One such example could be H&M which doesn’t boldly portray its Swedish heritage, but rather comes across to many markets as an international brand.”

with the move anyway.

As expected, it was not all smooth sailing with the campaign.

Several “curators” were very candid with their tweets. When the first curator took over the account, he decided to let the world know that he dealt with the Swedish winter with a bit of self-love – masturbation. While not exactly what the institute had banked on, the tweets no doubt got a fair bit of traction.

Meanwhile, another curator decided to voice the opinion that he was unhappy with how the Swedish government handled several political issues and criticised the Swedish foreign minister.

“When the minister was criticised, everyone was expecting us to pull the plug on the project, but since no rule was broken, we didn’t do it. Even the minister who was criticised voiced his opinion on the matter and backed us on the fact that we live in a free country with freedom of speech,” he said.

However, just a few days later, the real crisis hit when Sonya Abrahamson, a local Swedish comedian, tweeted on religious issues and questioned the sexual identification of Jews. This gained international media traction.

“This caused a great hoopla and everyone expected our campaign to be pulled. However, when we calmly analysed the tweet, we decided to take a stand on freedom of speech and fight the media calls. We stood by the tweet because she technically did not break any of the rules,” he said.

He explained that following what was a harrowing 24 hours of crisis management, the team managed to turn the negative association into a positive one to portray Sweden’s freedom of speech values.

Meanwhile, the attention also helped the project gain a big number of followers with the highest peak happening after Abrahamson’s tweet.

In about six months, the campaign gained more than US$40 million in PR value and had over 65,000 followers from 126 countries.

“The campaign was not an expensive one to create and launch, but the brand value and PR value we had was great,” he said.

So what can “Brand Singapore and Malaysia” learn from this?

Guimaraes said that when creating such a project, brands needed to remember that they had to launch a campaign that actually worked for their overall objectives. If the campaign objectives don’t fit with the brand objectives then there is no point in doing it.

“Give people what they want, but also give them something they are curious about. Give something which will incite them to learn more on their own,” he said.

Also, brands need to be vulnerable enough to show they are not perfect and are also learning. This will leave room for dialogue and the brand won’t just be preaching, but there will be peer-to-peer learning.

“It took us years to develop this and such a campaign doesn’t work over night. It requires a long-term commitment and strategy. But ultimately, this campaign showed us that if you give responsibility to people, they will live up to it. Sure some of them have made us sweat, but it has also made the project grow and mature.”

Jacob Ostberg – professor of Advertising and PR at Stockholm Business School.

“The idea was simple – there was no hidden agenda and the people were not titled brand ambassadors. They had the power to tweet about whatever that was interesting to them. They just had to abide

by Swedish rules and not sell products, incite hate or publish harmful material,” Guimaraes said.

While the initiative was a great one, he admitted it was also no doubt a high-risk initiative to let the collective Swedish public create a national brand image for the world to see. However, since it was in line with Sweden’s freedom of speech agenda, the institute decided to go ahead

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IS THE AD WORLD STILL GENDER-BIASED? The advertising agency has come a long way since the Mad Man era when it comes to gender equality. But the real question is: has it come far enough?

According to Elisabeth Trotzig, head of Swedish self regulatory ad body Advertising Ombudsman, in 2014, of all of the more than 200 cases the organisation handled, 52% of complaints were on gender discrimination.

This went up 9% from the previous year. She said this was because

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MARKET SPOTLIGHT: SWEDEN Swedish consumers were very aware of this prominent issue in marketing and advertising.

“Gender equality is very high up on both the political front and the Swedish consumer mindsets today. Nearly 90% of complaints usually come from the consumers and are regarding the ads from the fashion industry. Consumer trust is a brand’s biggest asset,” she said.

Meanwhile, author of Mad Women: A herstory of advertising, Christina Knight, said that for an industry that prides itself on being progressive and modern, the gender inequality is still quite “embarrassingly traditional”.

Knight, who has spent almost 30 years in advertising and is now a creative director for WPP’s INGO in Sweden, explained that she has often been the only woman on ad juries, events, award shows or panel discussions.

“It was almost as though I was only there to be the symbolic woman expected to represent all other women. The business world today is still

Gender discrimination was high on consumers’ list of grievances.

very much defined by a male norm and the ad industry is no different,” she said.

Knight added that today inequality in the ad industry is no longer about the men getting handed the bigger accounts or roped into the important pitches and client meetings, but rather it is the subtle experiences such as not being part of the crowd or opinions going unheard.

These “slight discomforts” ultimately result in women dropping out of the ad scene and result in the creation of what Knight deems “mediocre work” by the creative industry.

She added that while advertising is supposed to mirror society, the lack of diversity present in the ad world creates work which is less relevant and insightful and which is “tone deaf” to the needs of the target group.

“How can middle aged white men know what young girls want today? It is sad that the people who populate ad agencies are not mirroring people out there.”

According to Knight, while clients have seen and asked for the need of diversity, and are actively asking for teams with diverse backgrounds, ad agencies have not met that demand with supply. The responsibility now falls on the shoulders of ad agencies to pick up the pace and integrate more women and add diversity to their portfolios.

Women in marketing need to lobby for their rights Knight was also of the view that more women need to lobby and fight to have gender equality and rights in the ad world. She explained that women often put too much pressure on themselves to be exceptional whereas men get by with being simply “mediocre”, but having the

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aggressiveness to put themselves out there and market themselves better.

She advises that women who are already in the communications field take opportunities when given, be it speaking, presenting or teaching, to assert themselves into the ad world and influence the younger generation.

“Women have been told what and who to be through advertising,” Knight said.

Yet this field is still dominated by men. Speaking of the 1940s to the 1960s era, when the men were away at war, advertisements would often show women to be self sufficient and all capable. But once the war was over, women were once again encouraged to take their place in the kitchen and in the home through the same ads and companies.

These were all narratives created by the ad world, she explained.

Hence, today, more than ever, women are needed in the ad field to empower the gender for the future.

“Moreover, women today are the growing economy and are holding the money. They are no longer the niche, but rather the main market.”

Actively promoting women in the ad world are also young ad industry executives Sophie Lokko and Ellinor Ekström. The pair recently came up with Guldvågenpriset (The Golden Wave awards) this year in a bid to award the ad agency and marketing organisations that are not only good at communication, but also create a good workplace regardless of gender.

Partnering with the firm Add Gengerm, which is a consulting company that helps companies and organisations improve gender equality and diversity, the award hopes to create an equal society.

According to research, currently the top 20 earners in Sweden are all men with these men earning nearly four times that of the highest paid women. Also, 84% of ad agencies in Sweden today are owned by men.

In the CEO position in the marketing and communications industry, a man earns 12,000 SEK more than women monthly.

“This needs to change. To get equal communication we need equal agencies. That is why we created Guldvågenpriset,” the pair said.

CASE STUDY: IS YOUR BRAND BOLD ENOUGH TO GO GLOBAL? Initially just a homegrown Swedish underwear brand, Björn Borg, named after the famous Swedish tennis player, has been growing its brand name in the Nordic and Benelux. Today, it has more than 4000 retail shops globally and in the past year, it has ventured into sporting apparel.

In an interview with Marketing, Jonas Lindberg Nyvang, marketing director of the brand, boldly claimed it is today competing with the likes of Nike and adidas to become the number one sports fashion brand in its key markets. All this, he explained, is done with a focus on launching powerful digital marketing campaigns – with a bold stand.

“We are not doing TV at all,” he said.

Currently, the brand splits its ad spend between digital and OOH with the former taking up 70% of its marketing spend. The 30% allocated to OOH is simply because it is an expensive medium, he said. Björn Borg has over the years launched a series of feisty marketing campaigns that resonate with its core target audience – city living fashion-conscious men aged 20 to 30.

What is needed more in today’s advertising, he said, is for brands to recognise relevant issues that resonate with their audiences.

“Brands today have to be always on and we have to be relevant all the time in this media landscape.”

However, it has not always been an easy ride for the Swedish brand.

In fact, in 2012, it faced turbulent times because of an unclear brand positioning, a revolving door of marketing directors and its everchanging brand messaging. This led to the brand having a low emotional

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Björn Borg got users to vote where they wanted it to drop free underwear.

engagement and no brand continuity or consistency, he said.

The company soon realised a revamp needed to be made to strengthen the brand and drive sales. The new direction was needed to move away from just being an underwear brand to a sports fashion brand. The change with the communication landscape also pushed the brand to be far more digital and PR-driven.

“People today are far more aware of advertising than before. So we needed to create a new brand platform with four steps to establish our why, how, what and who,” he said. He added the brand needed to decide on its reason for existing in society, and how it could take a “more active stand for spreading love” – which was its core purpose in its communication strategies.

“We wanted not just the hygiene aspect in our brand communications, but to also push the agenda of sex and spreading love and bringing the Swedish mentality of strong equality and liberation through our communication campaigns.”

He added this “Swedishness” was a quality the brand embodied from the beginning – of being practical, yet stylish, and also standing for something. Hence, with a daring attitude, the brand “passionately and without fear” decided to throw itself into new bold ventures – no matter the challenge.

One of its first crazy campaigns since establishing its new identity was to drop free underwear in North Korea. This was part of the company’s campaign called “Björn Borg says JA! to weapons of mass seduction”.

Initially launched online, the campaign urged consumers to vote for a place which was in need of some loving. He added that initially the Björn Borg team thought the votes would be primarily from the markets the brand already had a presence in. Never did the brand envision venturing into North Korea. However, what resulted was the online campaign receiving more than 100,000 unique visitors from South Korea urging the brand to “bomb” Pyongyang with Swedish underwear.

“We also thought consumers would be ticked off as we were dropping underwear from a plane, but people loved it. In the end the blog had almost 200,000 unique visitors in two weeks and people were complimenting us.”

This gained the brand international recognition from markets which weren’t on its key target list. Nyvang, however, declined to comment on the cost of the campaign.

Meanwhile, encouraged by its last success, earlier this year the brand also launched a gaming campaign promoting its spring summer

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collection. Unlike any other campaign, this gaming campaign mocked the traditional computer games and gaming world where a first-person shooter has to destroy their opponent through violent means.

“In the gaming world, the most violent of games are in the category of ‘first person shooters’. We launched a game called ‘first person lover’ which went viral.”

Through the game, players were urged to destroy evil forces through the power of love. The game soon hit a sweet spot within the gaming world with playthroughs on YouTube having rendered more than 10 million views from 176 countries in less than two weeks.

First person lover also spread quickly in social media because of its storyline and political references. Players could, for example, get a North Korean haircut in Kim’s barber shop, love-bomb “God hates figs” demonstrators, and defeat a bare-chested tyrant riding a bear.

The game also gained the attention of Felix “Pewdiepie” Kjellberg who had almost 34.4 million followers and who deemed the game, “The most fabulous game in the universe”. This led to his followers also sharing it.

Meanwhile, American YouTube sensation Markiplier, who has 5.9 million followers, also called it “the game of the year”. This resulted in an overall increase in engagement in all social channels by 500% and an increase in PR clippings in both digital and analogue by 300%. The campaign also resulted in a 20% increment in sales compared with the year before.

What’s next?

Nyvang said for the brand that earned media such as PR was more effective for the brand when done right. Going forward, the brand is making a push into mobile by launching an app similar to Tinder. Like Tinder, the brand will use swiping functions, but rather than to find dates, it would be to find gym buddies or fitness partners.

As a marketing director in a fast evolving company, he said it was always a challenge for him and his team of 10 to constantly find the new idea that would resonate with the target audiences and bring it to life.

“It is not like we do the same thing. Every time it is a different packing, different idea, different pitch. But working with a good team and good agency partner is what is needed to constantly keep your ideas fresh and flowing.”

The Embassy of Sweden in Singapore and the Swedish Institute paid for this journalist’s accommodation and trip to the event.

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FEATURE ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

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ENGAGE PRAGUE 2015: A FOCUS ON SOCIAL MEDIA AT SOCIALBAKERS’ ENGAGE PRAGUE 2015 EVENT, TOP LEVEL MARKETERS DISCUSSED THEIR STRATEGIES FOR SOCIAL MEDIA. ELIZABETH LOW REPORTS.

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FEATURE ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

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At Socialbakers’ global conference in Prague, brands such as Lamborghini, Lego, Desigual, WeChat and more talked about their strategies for social. Here are the highlights from the conference.

IS GREAT SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING PAID OR EARNED? While it’s official – social media has become a paid medium – the most engaging brands and examples grow organically.

In an age powered by social media, the possibilities are incredible. “If you look at the data you can get on TV ads, social media, comparatively, has more data,” said Jan Rezab, CEO and founder of social media analytics firm, Socialbakers, at its Engage Prague conference.

There is a great breadth of data available on social media for all kinds of purposes, even national security.

The trouble is most marketers only use this data for reporting, when the possibilities are huge. For example, Kickstarter is a project completely powered by social media, Rezab said.

LESSONS FROM APPLE’S FORMER CEO SCULLEY ON MARKETING “FAILURES” John Sculley is no stranger to ailing business lines. Sculley is known for his work at pulling in market share for PepsiCo from dominant rival Coca-Cola. The New York Times credited Sculley for bringing his marketing know-how and corporate discipline to Apple, citing how the company grew tenfold in sales under his leadership from US$800 million a year to US$8 billion. His reign was also famous for being on the board that had Steve Jobs kicked out of his own company. Two moments, among many, highlight his marketing ingenuity: The wellknown Pepsi Challenge and Apple’s 1984 ad, both of which pulled in market share and sales for the brands respectively. Sculley terms the recurring theme in both instances: they were both examples of “experience marketing”.

Experience marketing: The Pepsi Challenge and Apple 1984 ad For Pepsi, Sculley described how Pepsi was outsold on a ratio of 10 to one by Coca-Cola.

“People used to say that if they had guests over, if they were pouring them a Coke, they would bring the can out of the kitchen and pour it for them. But if it was a Pepsi, they’d pour it in the kitchen and hope no one was the wiser,” laughed Sculley, speaking at Socialbakers’ Engage Prague 2015 conference. “We had a problem.” But in actual taste, both brands were similar, and in fact, Pepsi could “likely beat Coke by a small margin”, he added.

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“There’s a great potential to use it in business strategy,” he said, and marketers need to use it to get a seat in the boardroom.

Also, most brands complain that social media has become a paid media, he added. It seemed that while some felt this was necessary, others seemed to prove this was not always the case.

“Marketers often ignore the best inspiration, that is the media and journalists.”

He cited the example of most media outlets, 90% of which have driven their social growth organically, and said that brands needed to think more about operating in a similar fashion.

One brand who also takes this perspective is Lamborghini. Roberto Ciacci, global head of digital for Lamborghini, declared the brand did not do advertising, and said he had internal teams working on digital content. “Buying paid media is like forcing a conversation,” he told Marketing. “We don’t need advertising, that is our stand. What (activity) you see on Facebook is purely organic.”

Another marketer Marketing spoke to, however, disagreed, saying this depended on

the brand and category.

“If you work in a luxury brand then yes, you might not need this. But what if you market milk? Do you think people would want to follow you as easily?”

Meanwhile, Socialbakers also announced its new tools at the event. One of them was its dashboard, which now allows brands better reporting capacities such as automated reports and benchmarking, as well as to measure, report and benchmark the social activity against up to 10 competitor profiles. It now also allows for Instagram integration in its analytics as well as video analytics. The latter focuses on the “churn rate” and behaviour of the user when he or she is watching the video. That also means its dashboard can analyse when users stop watching the video, skip particular parts of the video or leave the video completely.

Finally, it is also able to track how much the overall industry promotes, including brand competitors.

“So we created a campaign called the Pepsi Taste challenge and launched it in San Antonio Texas. We called it experience marketing, where you sell the experience and not the product,” he said. Pepsi filmed a nine-year-old girl and her grandma tasting the product without revealing the result until the end. At the end, the girl exclaims: “Grandma, you picked Pepsi!” “And the grandma goes, ‘I’ve never had a Pepsi in my life. I guess I must like Pepsi better’.That was a 30-second commercial.”

While eventually, Pepsi still lost the cola war to Coke, the marketing move helped the former to pull over some market share from the latter, though many argue the brand’s later marketing gaffes pulled it down.

As for Apple’s outrageous 1984 ad, Sculley marks it as a success. It was 1983 and the company was getting ready to launch the next Mac model. The trouble was, Bloomberg Businessweek had just published an article on how the winner in the PC business was IBM. “We were sitting there with our agency Chiat\ Day and thought – what are we going to do?

“We thought of the book 1984 and said, well, Orwell said it’s going to be a success. So we thought, let’s do something outrageous. So we created a commercial for 1984, with zombie-like figures marching, and a talking head saying ‘we will control your life’.” The scene ends with the commercial saying: “On January 24, Apple will introduce the Mac and 1984 won’t be like 1983.”

Sculley said board members hung their heads in horror when they saw the ad, but both him

and Jobs decided to go on with the plan. After paying a million dollars for a minute’s airtime during the Super Bowl, Sculley said it got 45 minutes of free publicity as TV networks kept running it for free after. Sculley told Bloomberg Businessweek that the move helped Apple sell 72,000 units in the Macintosh’s first 100 days, which was 44% more than its target.

Lessons for brands These days, Sculley has his hands full with a new venture – a low-cost smartphone venture he announced last year, Obi. The brand offers lowcost phones, competing with budget Chinese phone manufacturers (not Apple, emphasises Sculley) such as Xiaomi – packaged in a “beautiful design”. One vital lesson in marketing he has learned in all his years and is applying to Obi? Have a noble cause.“I remember when we talked about ideas with Steve, we never talked about making money. It was always about creating a noble cause,” said Sculley, talking about building the best brands, as well as expressing his admiration for the late Apple founder. “This phone is about changing the lives of people in less developed countries by giving them internet access, after food and water. “The role of smartphones for the rest of the world is a noble cause,” added Sculley, talking about how it would connect people even in villages with capabilities such as mobile payments and basic access to the rest of the world. “That’s what will differentiate us from a ‘manufactured in China’ brand.”

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14/7/2015 11:55:35 AM

FEATURE ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

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1

LAMBORGHINI’S SOCIAL MEDIA PLAYBOOK Before Lamborghini officially got on social media, it had a major challenge to tackle.

In 2011, when it wanted to properly get on social media, it found out it was already there.

A quick search found an avalanche of fake accounts. The brand took a comprehensive five-step approach to reclaiming its own assets.

First, it had to retrieve its brand online.

“We put in a lot of effort using our trademark to claim back all our properties,” said Roberto Ciacci, global head of digital for Lamborghini, speaking at Socialbakers’ Engage Prague conference. The efforts were painstaking. The next step was to make its brand online authentic.

Third, it pushed for growth through a focused editorial approach. Next, it had to decide how to sustain that growth, largely producing most of its digital content in-house. “Finally, this year’s focus is protection of our trademark,” he said.

After its painstaking efforts, the brand has also come up with comprehensive KPIs in its social media efforts. Ciacci told Marketing this was because its various offices would cite different achievements to justify their social media success, and ultimately, this led to inconsistency.

In terms of measuring its engagement, it defines its key performance indicators by these: Interactions – direct interactions from the audience during an analysed activity or time span.

Average engagement rate – average engagement for the analysed activity or time span.

Engagement rate by post type – average engagement differentiated by content type.

Strong/weak engagement rate – distinction on the engagement level based on the strength of the interaction. *See the formulas for engagement by Lamborghini in chart 1.

In terms of measuring loyalty, these are the KPIs: Audience growth – measurement of fan base variation.

Churn rate – evaluation of the rate of interruptions in the brand-user relationships.

Average page views – average number of users on the brand’s social property.

Feedback rate – amount of active interactions of the users on the brand’s social property.

Timing metrics – overall measure of the brand’s ability to retain the audience through its videos. *See the formulas for engagement by Lamborghini in chart 2.

Its stand on advertising? “We don’t need advertising, that is our stand. What you see (on our social media efforts) is purely organic.”

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MEASURING ENGAGEMENT KPIs (OWNED EMBASSY)

Interactions (owned)

=

Total number of direct interactions from the audience for the selected activity or time span.

Likes + Comments + Shares + Negative feedback + Video plays + Image views + Link clicks Likes + Comments + Shares + Negative feedback + Video plays + Image views + Link clicks

Average ER (owned)

ER per Post Type (owned)

Engagement rate by users reached and by published post.

Total Reach =

× 100 # of published posts

=

Interactions Post Type A, B, C…

× 100

Total Reach Post Type A, B, C…

This KPI evaluates which type of published content generated the highest engagement relatively to the visibility achieved.

MEASURING ENGAGEMENT KPIs (AGAINST COMPETITORS) Interactions = (competitors)

Likes + Comments + Shares Likes + Comments + Shares

Average ER = (competitors) ER per Post Type = (competitors)

2

Total Fans × 100 # of published posts Interactions Post Type A, B, C…

× 100

Total Fans

MEASURING LOYALTY KPIs (OWNED EMBASSY)

Audience Growth (owned and competitors)

=

Churn Rat (owned)

=

AVG Page Views (owned)

Feedback Rate (owned)

Lifetime Total Likes Tn

−

Lifetime Total Likes Tn-1

× 100

This KPI allows to monitor how many new fans the page gained during the selected activity or time span.

× 100

This assesses how many fans decide to stop following the page.

Lifetime Total Likes Tn-1 Total Daily Unlikes Lifetime total likes Tn

=

Total Daily logged-in page views (total count)

Average number of page views of the social property per user.

Total Daily logged-in page views (unique users)

=

Likes + Comments + Shares + Links Clicks + Negative Feedback

× 100

Total Reach

This KPI encompasses those user feedbacks which require a stronger level of participation or which leave a public track on the published content, such as a comment.

MEASURING LOYALTY KPIs (COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS) Audience Growth (owned and competitors)

=

Feedback Rate = (competitors)

Lifetime Total Likes Tn

−

Lifetime Total Likes Tn-1

Lifetime Total Likes Tn-1 Likes + Comments + Shares

× 100

× 100

Total Reach

Source: Slides by Lamborghini's Ciacci

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14/7/2015 11:55:48 AM

Business is dominant.

Bloomberg News App dominates in Asia Pacific.

Bloomberg’s App is the leading business News App across the Asia Pacific with more Smartphone users than any other international news App in the key markets of Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia*.

The number of Bloomberg News App users continues to grow, and in Singapore increased by 327% in the past 12 months (Vs. April 2014). * According to Bloomberg’s custom-defined ranking based on comScore data. The custom-defined category consists of BBC News, CNBC, CNN, CNN Money, and NYTimes apps.

Source: comScore Mobile Metrix, April 2015, Markets: Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia.

Talk to us apacmedia@bloomberg.net

bloombergmedia.com

NEWS ANALYSIS

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WHAT DOES DELOITTE DIGITAL’S REGIONAL LAUNCH MEAN FOR THE INDUSTRY? The move comes at a time the likes of Accenture Interactive, McKinsey Digital and other direct competitors are upping the ante. Is this an alert for marketing and advertising agencies as well? Rayana Pandey writes.

Deloitte Digital, offering end-to-end digital services from strategy to delivery has launched in Southeast Asia, at a time competitors are ramping up operations in the region as well.

Led by Jonathan Rees, executive director and leader of Deloitte Digital in Southeast Asia, it works with clients across multiple sectors such as banking, finance, telco and government.

“Digital is part of an evolutionary journey and only one disruptor in a sea of disruptors,” he said.“The business landscape is more complex and businesses must face a tension between the realities of operating a business and responding to disruptive forces.” It offers strategy, mobile, social, web, cloud and digital content management solutions to brands.

The move comes at a time with the likes of Accenture Interactive, McKinsey Digital and other direct competitors upping the ante. Most recently, Accenture acquired Australian digital agency Reactive Media. Having newly launched its digital marketing services, consultancy Accenture has already executed several digital projects for brands.

For example, it partnered with Philips to create the proof of concept for delivering vital patient data via Google Glass, potentially providing physicians with hands-free access to critical clinical information. It also built a digital social platform for Unilever’s global marketing to connect its marketers, brand managers and partners in 190 countries in 12 weeks.

McKinsey also recently acquired Lunar, a design firm that has been in operation for more than 30 years. It’s McKinsey’s first acquisition of a design firm. McKinsey Digital is now eyeing Asia Pacific as one of its next growth areas.

The promises all three giants of the professional services firms are making look similar. While time will tell what the real differentiator is, Frank Farrall, lead partner of Deloitte Digital in APAC, believes the strength

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is required, and “focus on being ‘creative providers’ with work being bought by the metre, rather than having deep insight into a marketer’s challenges”, he said.

for Deloitte Digital lies in its complete integration of “left and right brain offerings”. The company recently hired a team of designers to offer clients the complete suite of services. “We have the ability to offer the full spectrum of services as opposed to our competitors,” he told Marketing.

A red flag for agencies?

Meanwhile, this move also implies even tougher competition for marketing and advertising agencies in the market offering digital services.

In a previous interview on the impact of such developments on agencies, Darren Woolley, managing director and founder of TrinityP3, said: “It’s interesting to watch how media agencies will often have data analytics offered as an additional service to their core offering. Analysts and data management capabilities are what the media agencies are only just beginning to build.

“The agencies need to become more results-focused and less cost-focused.”

According to Richard Bleasdale, regional managing partner at The Observatory Asia Pacific, the marketing agency industry has been trying to move “up the food chain” to regain the business-focused strategic role at the top table that it used to enjoy, but hasn’t for a long time.

This has had limited success, largely because most fail to have the depth of understanding of a marketer’s business that

Why Southeast Asia?

Countries in Southeast Asia are in a different playing field – the digital capabilities and knowhow are ripe and ready to be harnessed – and they need not and/or cannot follow in the digital footsteps of the mature markets.

A recent Deloitte paper states that smartphone penetration in Southeast Asia is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 20% to reach an overall 38% of mobile subscriptions, a projection that translates into about 200 million smartphones.

“With this changing reality, companies in the region are faced with a rapidly evolving consumer profile, and are in danger of lagging behind in their consumer engagement efforts,” Rees said. Digital is the CEO’s next battleground.

“It is the speed and thoughtfulness with which businesses respond in the digital age that determines their future.

“Whether companies prosper in Southeast Asia over the coming decade will depend on their CEO’s willingness to embrace digital.

As the engine room for growth in emerging markets, responsibility for digital cannot be delegated. It must start at the top.” Deloitte Digital is also confident of Singapore, given the launch of initiatives such as Singapore’s IDA Smart Nation and the recent boom in local technology start-ups.

In particular, for countries such as Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, it believes there is an impetus for industries such as financial services, technology, media and telecommunications and the public sector to embrace digital.

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10/7/2015 7:38:31 PM

NEWS ANALYSIS

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WHY AGENCIES STRUGGLE WITH AN INNOVATION MODEL Why the agency model often sits poorly with the idea of innovation. Elizabeth Low writes.

Working with start-ups has been the biggest buzzword of the business world, with many MNCs looking to disrupt their models with a start-up culture.

This throws up many questions for the marketing and agency landscape. Can their businesses work with a start-up culture? How should marketers get involved? Do startups even need ad land and are they beating agencies to the best talent?

Marketing spoke to founding partner of start-up accelerator Rockstart and former chief technology officer of OgilvyOne Asia Pacific Chi Tran on where ad land sits in the newfound start-up economy.

Can agencies really innovate?

It depends on how you define innovation.

Agencies have an amazing talent pool with in-depth understanding of how to unlock the full value of consumers, however, they are not true innovators. They are able to drive innovative experiences, develop amazing brand innovation, but essentially these are short-term campaigns that don’t have to be supported long-term.

In my view, the true innovators are the startups that have created disruptive experiences and platforms that have changed and driven consumer behaviour for the better. When was the last Dropbox, Spotify or Airbnb solution that an agency created?

What’s the challenge holding them back?

I do believe that agencies have the potential and opportunity to create the next Spotify or Airbnb because they create brand value, understand the consumer experience, creative, strategy and deliver digital solutions.

When I first arrived in Singapore, an agency with a digital innovation lab came up with a concept similar to Dropbox, however, they

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didn’t know how to monetise it or how to get traction in financing the concept.

You have amazing world-class talent, but when the business is not structured to support these digital innovations or are not connected to the right eco-system, ideas remain a dream and the opportunity is lost.

In addition, an agency’s business model is to wait for a client brief, deliver on it, which in turn restricts the opportunities these talents can work on.

Finally, with all the funding and ecosystem available to entrepreneurs and startups, attracting the best talent is only going to become a greater challenge for agencies.

Are clients actually doing a better job at it and why?

It’s not about whether agencies are doing a better job than clients, it’s about whether they understand that they need to get involved because their clients are doing it and they are doing it now.

You have initiatives that I like to call innovation marketing, where clients create an accelerator model focused on their core vertical so that it drives their eco-system, crosspollinates enterprise skill sets with those of the start-up community and be innovative through actions rather than advertising.

PepsiCo10 has been doing it for several years, and now within this region, you have initiatives such as DBS Accelerator, AIA Accelerator and Unilever Foundry.

Everybody talks about innovation, but when do you consider a business to truly be embracing it – either from the client or agency side?

When’s the last time a large enterprise tells their employees it’s OK to fail? I believe that when they have a great eco-system and are structured to foster entrepreneurs and to reward them accordingly, they have the potential to be truly innovative.There is one large multinational insurance company that has created a separated structure where the entrepreneurs within the innovation division have a potential upside on the innovations that are created. Now that to me is how you get the best opportunity to create the right ecosystem to truly innovate.

Does innovation belong to the marketing industry?

To be successful in the industry, people have to start with understanding the consumer and how to reach them. I believe innovation absolutely should be a part of the industry because marketers have to find new ways to reach out to consumers.

What do start-ups have to gain from the marketing profession?

There are benefits both ways actually. Startups provide expertise and a perspective on building a business and product with lean marketing or growth hacking techniques that typical marketing professionals could learn from. Marketing professionals have expertise in brand, consumer insights and market access that start-ups could benefit greatly from. It is a cross-pollination of skills and collaboration that would be beneficial for both groups.

Which are the best examples of companies (either brands or agencies) that have nailed a strong innovation model and why?

AIA has launched an accelerator programme that focuses on health tech.

They’re doing the right thing in creating the ecosystem that benefits their business and drives and fosters innovation in the vertical that has a direct impact on their business.

Describe the digital start-up scene in Asia at present?

The start-up scene in Asia is growing at a tremendous rate and will continue to grow as the eco-system matures.

Governments are providing financial incentives directly for entrepreneurs in addition to supporting the eco-system such as support to investors, co-working spaces, visas, events, etc.There are new venture capital funds that have been established to focus their investments, while private investors are diversifying from their traditional portfolios to the digital space.

Accelerators are being launched, either through brands such as AIA and DBS, in addition to global accelerators such as ours at Rockstart. We believe there is tremendous talent in Asia and that we will see ideas flowing from Asia to the rest of the world instead of the other way around.

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14/7/2015 1:42:01 PM

NEWS ANALYSIS

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WHY MARKETING AND PR JOBS ARE SOME OF THE HARDEST TO FILL Nonetheless, employers do not seem to be putting strategies in place to tackle the talent shortage or stay ahead of the curve, writes Rezwana Manjur.

Marketing and public relations/ communications specialists came out as one of the top five positions that are the hardest to fill in Singapore.

According to a recent study by global workforce firm ManpowerGroup, other jobs that also made the cut in Singapore are accounting and finance talent, sales representatives, engineers and secretaries (including receptionists and administrative assistants).

However, globally, marketing and PR are skills that are not on the shortage list. The top five talents that are hardest to find globally are skilled trade positions, sales representatives, engineers, technicians and drivers (particularly of heavy vehicles), said the Milwaukeebased company. Linda Teo, ManpowerGroup Singapore’s country manager, said of the 234 respondents in Singapore, 40% of them said that they found it hard to fill these positions in Singapore. Yet at the same time, employers do not seem to show an urgency to put in strategies to tackle the talent shortage or stay ahead of the curve to find individuals to meet their business needs, Teo argues.

Teo attributes the shortage to “widespread restructuring that is sending tremors across sectors, with shocks being added from a tightening labour market”. “Today, merely recruiting and placing candidates will not yield results. Employers need to encourage a learning culture among their employees and to get them to chart their own careers,” Teo said.

So why is it so hard to attract talent in these areas?

Teo told Marketing that as Singapore expands her role to become a hub for various sectors, the country will draw more companies, including multi-national players here, leading to more employers looking for communications individuals within an already limited talent pool.

Moreover, the skill sets required for today’s marketing, public relations and communications practitioners, include handling more than just mainstream media.

“Members of the public expect to be

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reached over many touch-points – from feedback channels to Facebook pages. The talent pool which is already familiar to these new needs is, however, small. In addition, the fresh cohorts of talent – practitioners of tomorrow – now being groomed in polytechnics and universities in mass communication disciplines, are only beginning to enter the job market with ready skill sets.”

Goh ShuFen, R3’s principal consultant and president of IAS, said: “In my professional capacity at R3, where our client relationships average 8.5 years across private and public sectors, we have observed the number one issue on both sides is retention at the mid levels and filling in the right talent at senior levels (CMO, group director and upwards).”

She added that outside consumer marketing companies such as Unilever and P&G, most organisations do not have marketing and communications-specific development programmes for their staff. Marketers recruited into companies are more or less in charge of their own development and very few take the initiative to chart their own growth. “On the marketing services agency side, it’s been a perennial paradox that an industry that’s essentially a people and ideas business, does not in reality invest much behind their own people,” she said. She added this had been recognised as a pertinent issue in Singapore and, hence, government agencies such as EDB were supporting industry bodies such as IAS to spur talent attraction, development and retention. Currently, IAS has also been tasked to raise the professionalism and attractiveness of the sector, as well as offer more training and talent placement programmes.

Priya Bala, the regional director of recruitment agency Font, added that while there was undoubtedly the problem of Singapore being a tight employment market, another issue that had not been raised was the time companies and agencies were taking to hire.“Essentially, it’s taking too long to lock down talent. Companies tend to prefer to wait to see more resumes as they search for the

right person, but by the time they are ready to start interviewing, the candidates we’ve presented are no longer interviewing,” she said.

She added it is a talent’s market in this industry and employers must be ready to move when the talent is ready.

She also added the roles are increasingly seen as hard to fill because of the ever changing nature of the roles. Today, in PR and marketing, the roles either require a specialist skill set or they are really broad. “Marketing once used to be very traditional, but now the expectation is that people will join a company with 360-degree knowledge. But talent will never be an expert in everything, and so there needs to be some level of compromise,” she said.

Hence, employers need to know their “must-have” and “nice to have” criteria, and be prepared to learn and train and develop talent to fill any gaps they may have.

Meanwhile, in Asia Pacific, the proportion of employers who report talent shortages stands at 48%. Apart from Japan where 83% of respondents cite talent as a concern, the lack of talent is also a concern in Hong Kong (65%) and Taiwan (57%). However, talent inadequacies are least likely to be a concern for Chinese employers (24%) given the country’s huge population forming a formidable workforce.

The findings were released by global workforce expert ManpowerGroup in its 2015 Talent Shortage Survey (TSS), in which 41,700 hiring managers in 42 countries and territories were surveyed in the 10th annual survey.

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10/7/2015 8:30:00 PM

Get the recognition you deserve for your tireless events work at the premier awards programme celebrating creative excellence and strategic precision by event marketers and planners from across South Asia, Southeast Asia and ANZ. With 30 categories open for entry in 2015 don’t miss out on this opportunity to stand out in the industry.

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8/7/2015 10:20:08 AM

MARKETING FEATURE: MARKETING TO MEN

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CAN BRANDS SPEAK THE ‘BRO CODE’?

WOMEN ARE COMPLICATED CREATURES. BUT ARE MEN ANY EASIER TO UNDERSTAND? WHERE BRANDS ARE CONCERNED, PERHAPS NOT. REZWANA MANJUR REPORTS.

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As a woman, I admit we are complicated creatures. But are men today any easier to handle? When it comes to brands, they may not be.

A recent study by Nielsen on Millennial males tallies with this view, stating that Millennial males today, in theory, are elusive creatures.

Moreover, with the evolving role of women, and the rise of the she-conomy, it comes as no surprise that men have been forced to make room for women in a largely patriarchal society.

Shahvez Afridi, who is the head of strategy looking after all of Grey Group’s strategic thinking on the Procter & Gamble account in the Asia Pacific, is of the view that with the rise of female domination, men may be feeling the threat of losing their masculinity.

He explains that with the influx of educated women entering the workforce, and outshining their male counterparts, there is pressure on men with the changing gender roles.

Also, with the increasing focus put on society for gender rights and equality, much of the advertising and communication strategies today for companies have become more gender neutral where brands are engaging with people as humans and not necessarily male or female.

Afridi argues this is where the opportunity lies for brands to help men “reclaim” their lost territories.

“Somewhere deep down, there’s a sense of losing their old manly ways. They want to reclaim their ‘tribe’, be one of the boys. There seems to be a weekday routine that’s all about success and achievement, and on the weekend it is all about ‘going back to the old ways’ of being with the boys, enjoying sports and having a beer,” he says. The best way to target these men is to leverage this dichotomy.

Recently, Gillette India was one brand that played up this notion of bringing manliness back to men. Being the market leader for shaving products in India, the brand wanted to get Indian men to trade up to Gillette’s premium systems line of razors, such as Fusion and Mach3 to generate greater revenue per user.

To do so, the brand leveraged on its strong involvement in sports.

With cricket fever in India sky high this year with the World Cup 2015, Gillette decided it was the perfect time to get in on the action. India, being the champions in the last World Cup, had more than a billion people looking for an encore.

“Historically, Gillette has always been about the sport and the sports celebrity. But this time the mood in India was different,” he says.

“A somewhat Socratic piece of investigation with men led us to two fundamental truths about cricket in India today. One was with the retirement of demigod, and arguably the best

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10/7/2015 8:26:27 PM

MARKETING FEATURE: MARKETING TO MEN

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A manly perspective: Gillette got in their cricket fans' shoes to reach their consumers.

player the world has seen, Sachin Tendulkar, it wasn’t about hero-worship anymore, all the players were more or less seen as equals. And two was that this World Cup wasn’t really about the players or the cricketing heroes, it was about the common men, the fans.”

Now, if this World Cup was going to be about the common man – the fans, the brand needed to give the audience something tangible, something they could hold and use as a symbol of their spirit and passion.

The first thing it did was create special edition Gillette Fusion and Mach3 razors with the word India engraved on the handle. The products also proudly displayed the country’s colours on them to encourage cricket fans to continue extending their relentless support for the Indian team.

Following that, rather than celebrate the sport through the sportsmen or a sport celebrity, Gillette celebrated the sport through the unequivocal passion of a commoner, the ultimate fan.

It changed its decades-old tag line “The best a man can get” to “The best a fan can get” to celebrate the passion of the fans. The brand also created an online video of a first-person account of a diehard cricket fan, who did not give up “watching” cricket even after he turned blind, when hit with a ball on the cricket field.

The ad saw tremendous success with total YouTube viewership being more than 2.92 million and having more than 3000 shares.

In just six days, its YouTube viewership grew to more than 2.5 million, making it one of the fastest growing content online in recent times.

The video also started trending on social media within two days of the launch, receiving likes from cricket legends, celebrities and the marketing fraternity, including Sanjay Manjrekar (former cricketer), Harsha Bhogle (cricket expert and commentator), Atul Kasbekar (celebrity

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photographer), Anant Rangaswami (editor, CNBC-TV18), Sachin Kalbag (editor, Mid Day) among many others. On Twitter it generated more than 204,000 Twitter impressions and more than 3000 mentions.

Ultimately, this resulted in total free media earned in PR worth US$5.7 million.

Locally in Singapore, another brand that also actively uses sports in its targeting of the male consumer is Volkswagen. The brand is known to zoom in on focus areas of interest for men such as health, technology and, of course, sports to engage deeper with the male audience. Last year it also partnered with organisations such as the Football Association of Singapore, the Singapore Swimming Association and the Liverpool Masters Team.

In 2014, when Volkswagen Singapore decided to sponsor the Singapore Swimming Association, its managing director, Steffen Schwarz was quoted on the Sports Singapore site saying that globally Volkswagen has always been a strong supporter of sport. While a car brand may not be the first association one makes with swimming, Schwarz explained that Volkswagen Singapore’s position as the official car partner of the Singapore leg of the FINA/ Arena Swimming World Cup in 2013 helped enhance its brand image. Sport is a corporate priority of Volkswagen Singapore.

Meanwhile, a Nielsen study done last year called The Female/Made digital divide reiterated the fact that sport was one of the themes that greatly resonated with male audiences. Other things that resonated with male audiences was car themes, high energy or action themes and, of course, sexual themes. Simply delving into sport to target the male audience is not enough.

Deciding your move Geoffrey Pickens, segment director of men’s and shave prep for APAC at Energizer Personal

Care, says that for any brand looking to create a dialogue with its male audiences, the first step would be to figure out what is its consumers’ pain point. Whether or not this should be done through communications strategies bringing back manliness to its customers depends on the brand’s DNA, he says.

For Schick, the brand discovered that men often find shaving a stressful process and do not actually enjoy it because of the cuts and bruises. The brand took that as a starting point to figure out how it could make the process a less burdensome one for its male audience while keeping true to its own brand DNA. Through its research, it discovered that while men are different market to market in their tone and manner and even what they find masculine, there are some commonalities that run across all markets.

Speaking the male language Humour is one of them.

“Humour generally works well with men and it can be played in a masculine way without being stereotypical or offensive. We aren’t complicated creatures,” Pickens says.

For Schick, it is vital the brand comes across as approachable and real. Once a brand is able to speak the language of the everyday man, it gains brand affinity with its target group.

Ultimately, this leads to high consideration at the point of purchase.

“As a challenger brand, we have often had very high awareness on the Schick name, but not affinity and consideration when purchasing the product. But if a man has a good experience with the brand, even if not directly shaving, but maybe through humour we some how helped him relieve stress, then he will relate to our brand,” Pickens says.

He adds the “male language” can also be dominated by facts, numbers and precision.

Using the example of directions, he says that many studies have indicated that while women give directions using landmarks, men are more prone to do so with estimated distances and words such as “north” and “south” because they are more fact based.

This is why, many times, ads targeting men are dominated with facts and numbers and precision – a language that resonates better with men than emotions.

“It is not that men don’t have emotions, but they are more comfortable on using facts and precision in their communication strategies.

Brandon Tay, brand executive of Volkswagen Singapore, seconded the notion adding that despite Singaporean male audiences making rational decisions on car purchases, they are still attracted to cool new technological features

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10/7/2015 8:26:45 PM

MARKETING FEATURE: MARKETING TO MEN

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such as driver assistance systems, direct-shift gearboxes and touch-screen driver interfaces.

At the end of the day, boys still love their toys.

Hence, in its communication strategies, the brand often highlights these features to really resonate with performance-oriented males. He adds that often car brands play up on these precision factors in their ads because the majority of car drivers and owners in Singapore are male.

Does sex still sell?

According to Nielsen’s study “The Female/ Male digital divide”, sexual themes were noted as the top four themes that resonate with men.

Despite the strong fight many women’s rights groups have put out for gender equality, sex still sells in advertising. Brands such as Carl’s Jr, Axe and Björn Borg actively play up sexual themes to resonate with their audiences.

Pickens explains this procreation and sexual tension can be displayed in ads from the protagonist touching his own skin or someone else touching his skin.

Jian Yang, head of content at OMD Singapore, however, argues that sex is losing its novelty and does not really sell anymore.

Emotions and logic do.

“With the mainstreaming of literature such as Fifty Shades of Grey, and the R rating, losing its novelty, the playing field seems to have levelled. We can’t blind sight a man with cleavage anymore. This means a product has to either stimulate his problem-solving side or his emotional side,” he says.

One brand that uses sex along with tonguein-cheek humour in its communication strategy is Swedish underwear brand Björn Borg. The brand’s target audience is city living fashionconscious men aged 20 to 30.

However, marketing director Jonas Lindberg Nyvang says its communication strategy is one which is used to target both men and women. The brand currently does not have a differentiated strategy for marketing to men and women despite sales showing 50% of its consumers are also women.

He says that in countries such as Sweden, male consumers are fast taking on metrosexual roles and are looking to brands to display equality rather than masculinity. Particularly in Sweden, he adds, men do not want to be seen as macho and without feelings, but rather be looked as humans with real emotions. He also explains that in the Northern Europe region people are much more concerned with vanity and grooming and this is a trend growing in the fashion-conscious minds of European men.

Pat Law, founder of GoodStuph, also agrees that while there are definitely still a lot

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"The last beer commercial I saw didn’t include a scantilyclad woman running down the beach in slow motion.

I think that’s a good thing. Men are indulging in their vanity more, and not being apologetic about it."

Pat Law – founder, GoodStuph

of “run-of-the-mill” ads catering to the notion of “boys will be boys”, today there is a clear evolution of the modern man. Men today are more unapologetic when it comes to using grooming products. Vanity in men has become highly acceptable.

“The last beer commercial I saw didn’t include a scantily clad woman running down the beach in slow motion. I think that’s a good thing. Men are indulging in their vanity more, and not being apologetic about it,” Law says.

Moreover, brands such as Carlsberg have also only recently made a move into beauty products claiming that men do care about looking good, but they often seem to lack alternatives to the more female-friendly beauty options available.

Ways to attract Nielsen’s study “The men, the myths, the legends: Why Millennial ‘dudes’ might be more receptive to marketing than we thought” deems this group “cord cutters” who cannot and in fact, do not want to be reached. Yet marketers today remain eager to reach this young and digitally savvy bunch – and rightly so.

Millennial males, according to the study, are often perceived as innovators, trend starters and predictors of the next big thing.

In the US, these young lads have immense spending power with the purchasing power anywhere between US$125 billion and US$890 billion annually. Other estimates, according to the Nielsen study, attribute these young shoppers with US$200 billion of direct buying power plus an additional US$500 billion in indirect influence.

Millenial Men So how exactly should one target the rising male shopper today?

One way to go about doing so is by igniting his sense of discovery, explains Yang. While hunters in the past used to venture out to the wild to understand the world they lived in, today in the digital era, this understanding happens indoors with the help of the internet.

Male consumers today are much more research oriented because of the changing media landscape. Consumers today are no doubt bombarded with ads and product choices from mainstream media, BTL channels,

recommendations and editorials and are forced to make decisions. Simply put, he now explores and hunts down the best deals through research online to make the most informed decision.

According to a study in 2012 by iProspect in the US, the affluent male, defined as over the age of 18 with a household income of US$100,000, is doing significant research and buying online.

All but 2% of the affluent males surveyed purchase products online. An overwhelming 70% prefer to research and buy online, versus researching online and purchasing in store. The study also advises that brand marketers use a mix of research-driven and direct response messaging, combined with appropriate goals and measurement criteria, to see the best results.

“He may not realise this though, since we call it ‘surfing the net’,” Yang says. “However, he is actually researching and actively forming pictures in his mind on where he is holidaying next, what car he is going to drive and many more.”

And this phase is crucial when you want to lure the male consumer.

Law seconds the notion adding that essentially, when targeting the male consumer, you need to win the consumer over even before the path-to-purchase begins. This is because men, as compared with women, are more specific in addressing their needs. Men generally do not go to a store to browse.

When it comes to communicating to them, the path-to-purchase strategy is not about being there in the path when decision-making happens, but owning the entire path itself, explains Law. This is where word of mouth and endorsements from a familiar and trusted source is key.

“If a man is looking to go into a store and find a camera, he probably already knows the specifics and lenses he would want to go with it. To get to this target group, you’d need to find ‘a photographer friend’ of theirs they have recently spoken to who has convinced them of the camera to purchase,” Law says.

Only by getting that source to endorse your brand can you successfully bring over to your side the male consumer.

“That is the hard part,” Law says.

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EVENTS

VIDEO MARKETING – A KEY TO CONTENT MARKETING SUCCESS While more and more marketers are embracing online videos as an important part of their communications arsenal, many still have questions regarding integrating them into an overall campaign strategy, adopting the right approach, and getting the most out of their online video investments.

The rise of online videos has also sparked a new debate over their role in a company’s SEO presence, and whether this new platform is a replacement or a complement to traditional TV advertising, leaving many marketers scratching their heads as to the best stand to take.

Marketing recently organised a halfday seminar for marketers, sponsored by Brightcove, featuring thought leaders from the online video hosting platform, along with others from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Ayam Brands, NTUC FairPrice and Brand New Media to share case studies and insights on how to get video marketing right.

Setting the context right Greg Unsworth, partner at PwC Singapore, set the context for the conference by sharing nuggets from the PwC “Entertainment & Media Outlook 2014-2018” report which stated videos would see the sharpest growth in internet advertising with ad spend rising at 23.8% – 4 0 MARKETING J ULY 201 5

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faster than mobile at 21.5%. In fact, Asia Pacific video ad spend is already growing faster than global.

According to Unsworth, there are some key trends in the video space brands should note.

These are: • Facebook videos, Vines, Snapchat videos and Gifs are winning against YouTube.

• Over 60% of consumers are willing to pay for a video subscription service.

• Increasing importance of mobile devices.

About 87% will watch programming via mobile by 2018.

• Using the word “video” in headlines boosts open and CTR rates, and reduces email unsubscribers.

• Over 60% watch free video content over pay-per-view and subscription.

• Interactive videos, including games, surveys and social sharing buttons will become mainstream.

• Video how-to and tutorials will be the bestselling tool for businesses.

• Users are increasingly creating videos to relay news and to keep in touch.

What does this mean for marketers?

Digital marketers are faced with a new challenge in the current context, where almost 54% of

the buying journey happens before you even reach the first touch-point of your customer, and customers are researching, reading and consuming content online before making a decision.

“Content is the new sales person,” said Paul Casinelli, director of product marketing at Brightcove. The goal of marketers, therefore, is to then create the right content and connect at the right time to coincide with the customer’s journey.

“Video, therefore, is one of the most powerful ways to drive marketing results,” he said, adding that web properties with a video-centric strategy covert twice the rate of websites without video.

He shared some best practices for video content creation and distribution.

According to him, it is crucial for brands to review corporate brand guidelines to figure how the brand fits into the video, and how the video itself fits in with other pieces of content the brand is producing.

On video distribution via email, blogs and social media, he outlined best practices brands should follow. For emails, brands should add “video” to the email subject line coupled with an engaging image with a play button. They should also A/B test different subject lines, thumbnails and/or copy which should have a call to action such as “watch now” and “play”.

In the social space, brands should choose the social channels that are best suited for them and treat each channel differently. What’s equally important is they distribute shareable, short-form videos with calls to action back to their own website or property they are promoting.

As far as blogging is concerned, brands should use teaser videos to drive traffic to other assets or campaigns, followed with full video assets to drive engagement. Just as in emails, using the word “video” in the headline drives much higher conversion embedded with a call to action to drive results.

Making the piece of video content discoverable is an equally important step for marketers, he added. He outlined the best

DATE: 26 May 2015

VENUE: Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore

MADE POSSIBLE BY:

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EVENTS

practices for brands as far as discovery is concerned.

From creating unique URLs for each video that play in-line on the page to creating a video XML site map and using meta data and smart content organisation to getting the most from the video library, he shared in detail what makes videos discoverable.

He further advised brands to organise video content into logical collections through a portal and make that portal brand-compliant.

This portal should then be plugged into other systems.

“Brands can develop as many video portals as they need,” he said responding to questions on how many such portals can a brand have.

Lastly, while touching on best practices for analytics, he urged brands to look at both macrolevel metrics such as total views, engagement scores, play rates, device types and referral sources as well as micro-level analytics such as engagement rates and time viewed.

Success stories of online videos NTUC FairPrice, together with Brand New Media, launched Singapore’s very own food channel, “food for life tv”, with a large library of food and recipe videos. The unique selling proposition of the channel was that it required no downloads and could be viewed by simply

logging onto www.foodforlifetv.tv for live streaming and video-on-demand content for free.

There were concerns of quality, quantity and sustainability when launching this initiative, said Christina Lim, director of brand and marketing at NTUC Fairprice Co-operative.“Television shows, campaigns and events are great for short-term hype and buzz, but how can we achieve a more sustainable effect?” said Lim about what the brand was thinking back then.

The channel was launched as a result of this thought-out strategy to engage customers long-term. As a marketer, the channel took into consideration relevance of content and content mix, brand experience, compatibility of video content on multiple devices, and so on.

This was also tied in with in-store activation and rallying CPG partners and suppliers to create a better content eco-system.

As a result, FairPrice saw engagement with the audience at all levels.

With more than six million views of the video, the total time spent with the brand stood at more than five million minutes. Total channel sessions stood at over two million and 70% of the viewers watched videos on food for life tv until 75% of them were completed, with a 60% average return for visitors to the channel.

Another example shared at the event was

that of Ayam Brand. The goal for the ageold brand was to educate the public that a homegrown traditional label such as Ayam Brand can be used for up-to-date recipes and that they are healthy and nutritious, tasty and simple and stylish enough to impress friends and family, explained Priscilla Tan, marketing manager at Ayam Brand. It launched a multisensory campaign that included production of short-form videos. Seventeen videos of traditional and fusion recipes were produced and aired on food for life tv. The amplification and distribution of these pieces of content was done via a variety of owned, earned and paid assets together with enhancing the instore presence at FairPrice. The video page views soared with more than 360,000 views, and impressions on social media stood at a staggering 1.2 million. All this led to a direct and tremendous uplift in sales as well.

Do’s and Don’ts Summarising the two case studies and highlighting the lessons from each, Nick Fawbert, managing director for Asia at Brand New Media, concluded that brands should build an asset in the current age where content is driving most of the conversations.

“Becoming a media owner paves the way for long-term value contribution and strengthens one’s positioning. This in turn becomes a point of competitive differentiation,” he said.

Engaging and converting customers through great relevant content is the ultimate pull strategy instead of a push one. It entertains and inspires and therefore changes customer behaviours, he added. And in doing so, brands need to continuously keep a tab of the data they are generating through their pieces of content and insights. In summary, he highlighted a few do’s and don’ts for brands.

Here are the do’s • Retain customers to deliver long-term cost efficiency.

• Aggregate consumer data into long-term CRM models.

• Create a community that allows consumers to interact and transact.

The don’ts • Invest in driving audiences to third-party properties.

• Allow your competitors to access your data for themselves.

• Give your customers a shortcut to your competitors.

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ALL ABOUT SHOPPER MARKETING 2015

For two years Marketing magazine’s Shopper Marketing conference has brought to you fascinating insights into a topic of growing importance to the marketing community.

As pressure on the marketing department to justify expenditure continues to grow, it made sense for us to bring back Shopper Marketing for its third round.

This year, as shopper dollars continue to move online, we shifted the focus of the conference accordingly. We focused on

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shopper technology and e-commerce, giving delegates the opportunity to find out which technology will really help drive their business forward, how to manage their product pricing across different e-commerce channels, and which payment solutions will dominate in 2015, among other things. Here are snapshots and key discussions from the event, which was supported by gold sponsor eBay Enterprise, knowledge partner iQnect, and exhibitors Aimia and Singtel’s Tao of Shop.

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CAPITALAND ON HOW TO USE BIG DATA IN SHOPPER MARKETING products, Wi-Fi usage, digital platforms, mall traffic sensors, shopper surveys and feedback, queue systems, CCTV and tenants transaction reports, among others.

For example, the mall is able to track the time of day when data is used frequently, signalling areas of heavy traffic in the mall. The mall’s free Wi-Fi also requires a user to sign in, thus enabling another form of tracking and customer insight.

CCTV technology allows the study of shopper habits and preferences in shopping malls.

CapitaLand Mall Asia also conducts shopper surveys to study shopper behaviour.

In deriving reliable customer insights from these sources, Ong explained that to process multiple sources of insights, marketers need to understand the differences of these sources and mix and match them accordingly to derive fresh shopper insights.

The digital age has given rise to a new marketplace borne out of the combination of physical and online stores.

Speaking at Marketing’s Shopper Marketing conference 2015, Jason Ong, senior marcom manager for CapitaLand Mall Asia, said this meant that now, more than ever, “consumers are empowered”.

Here’s how brands can cater to this audience.

How the era of big data has changed shopper marketing Noting the rise of the new-age shoppers, Ong said that consumers were equipped with a digital voice that enabled them to be connected and influential.

“Digital has allowed consumers to become even more influential and the digital sphere now replaces the traditional word-of-mouth where information and opinion can be shared instantly and wirelessly,” he said.

The rapid rise in technological adoption means that shopper behaviour within malls can be traced to discover shopper habits.

“You can see a lot of technology, with censors looking at all the traffic points,” he said noting that high investment in new infrastructure is being made to ensure connectivity.

“Because of this one-touch lifestyle,

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shopper behaviour has changed,” he added, arguing that marketers also need to reinvent themselves and learn new skills to keep up with this shift.

“A lot of things are influencing consumers.”

Big data has contributed to a more measurable and more trackable platform, generating a lot of data on shoppers’ habits.

Thus, shopper marketing has changed due to the specific insights gained from big data that were unavailable before, adding that “past shopper marketing theories and approaches are becoming redundant”.

“Five to 10 years ago insights drawn from data were limited compared to where we are now,” he said, adding that marketers should change their playbooks.

“Marketers should forget what you have learnt and learn new shopper marketing knowledge and skills in order to target the empowered consumer effectively.”

Getting insights without POS systems “Since points of sales are owned by tenants, deriving customer insights through points of sale is not possible,” Ong said, explaining the firm had other ways of tracking insights.

However, according to Ong, there are other sources of customer insights that can be gained through other platforms, namely loyalty

Using customer insights to take the retail experience forward “Big data is overwhelming and there is a need to simplify it. Select what is essential and stick to the three T’s – target, test and try again.”

Since shoppers are increasingly going digital, on-site shoppers are more than ever looking for an experience.

“On-site shoppers these days are looking for entertainment, not just for product, so a sales person must do more to delight your customers so they can then share this experience on social media.”

Consumers want to contribute and have a share of voice in the digital and shopping spheres, since big data goes beyond transactional data.

Ong cited examples of taking the retail experience forward by mixing digital and physical interaction. CapitaLand Mall Asia, for example, installed a Social Wall @ Westgate – a self-service kiosk to encourage mall shoppers to interact with one another.

Other digital initiatives also include the #BuildSG2065 campaign which encourages Singaporeans to submit inspiring ideas online on the kind of buildings, for example, malls and houses, they envision in the next 50 years.

The era of big data has changed shopper marketing, therefore customer insights will be the key to staying relevant, he concluded.

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HOW EPICENTRE IS CRACKING OMNI-CHANNEL MARKETING She advised that companies should expand their market size and sell outside their geographical zone to facilitate cross-sell and up-sell between the channels.

The move to an omni-channel strategy is never an easy one.

Recognising the inevitable change in customers’ buying behaviour, Danielle Siauw, manager of CRM, M&E-commerce and new media at EpiCentre, explained that its adoption of an omni-channel approach to marketing was borne out of necessity.

Speaking at Marketing’s Shopper Marketing conference 2015, she shared a case study of EpiCentre’s omni-channel journey as well as the varied challenges it has faced in its quest to omni-channel marketing success.

The case for omni-channel “To be honest, rental is a big key component of the cost of running a store,” she said.

For this reason, venturing into e-commerce was a practical step for the company to reduce fixed costs and maintain a sustainable profit margin.

Rent increases every year makes it challenging for retail shops.

“Undeniably, there is always not enough space in the store for us to feature all of our items. The limited retail space in Singapore has made our push into e-commerce even more pressing.”

EpiCentre recognised it was becoming increasingly difficult for brick and mortar stores to compete with online retailers. Aside from this increased competition from online retailers, it also needed to combat the “showroom effect” of its stores and provide alternative ways that shortened the customer’s path to purchase.

She also recommended that a store should not be restricted by its geographic location.

“Don’t just limit your business in the tourist belt, there are many opportunities to combine your traditional on-ground marketing with e-commerce.”

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Implementation phases EpiCentre’s first adoption into a multichannel approach began with its use of ERP inventory management software for effective customer servicing and improved profits. Next, it started using membership CRM by Salesforce before graduating to a single source product CMS. Content pumped into its CMS will serve into other channels, so it is important to integrate them since “all channels are good, but the kinds of incentives and promotions are even more important”.

In order to not get lost in the cloud of tech jargon, she warned: “You must find ways to allow your staff to be able to manage these things in your system. The implementation of these channels should not be too time consuming or it will fail.”

Too many man hours should not be spent managing one aspect of the omni-channel marketing as it is not productive, she added.

Having a good analytics programme at the back-end is key.

“To go truly omni-channel is not just about having multiple channels, it is also about having a holistic view of the customer’s needs.”

Because marketing tends to be more traditional, adding a new programme constitutes the need to communicate the changes to the ground-level staff, that is, the sales people in the store – in order for e-commerce to succeed.

“Communication is the toughest thing that we have done so far, even the technology and marketing aspects are not as challenging as convincing the people on the ground to cooperate with our e-commerce strategy.

“Stores must get the basics right before adding on new components to their marketing plans.”

For example, EpiCentre’s implementation of iBeacon was intended to drive footfall into the stores.

“For closed door sales, it enabled us to update customers on stock availability.”

The store’s approach to omni-channel is thus dependent on its need to communicate with its customers as well.

“Wen it comes to adding channels to marketing, what matters is how you use them and what incentives you have for customers.”

Noting the challenges of hiring quality sales people and understaffing on the ground, EpiCentre generated a scan-code system using QR codes where customers can scan-code on items to find more information on an item and purchase it online. This ease of shopping has helped increase conversion, according to Siauw.

“Stores should also incentivise actions that you want customers to do. We issue rewards points for customers who leave reviews.”

Challenges One of the most challenging aspects of making the leap to e-commerce is convincing the top management of the new marketing strategies, while simultaneously encouraging the team to be on board with the plan.

There is a need for a cultural change for traditional marketers to understand and accept this paradigm shift in order to stay relevant in the business. Companies must change the mindset of staff on the ground; training and communication are very important.

“You cannot expect a traditional marketer to be a digital marketer overnight.”

For this reason, managers should address all concerns staff may have about any newly implemented omni-channel approach.

“In order for omni-channel to work, companies must have commission schemes to keep staff motivated.”

At EpiCentre, it conducts training regularly for ground staff on how to sell via iPads, thus combining its e and m-commerce goals.

More importantly, a company must be willing to invest in good talent because the learning curve for succeeding in e-commerce is very steep.

“Staff must understand the intricate web of movement of goods and processes.”

Lastly, it is essential to have a strategy and an end in mind. Still, when it comes to going big with e-commerce ambitions, time and patience are key.

“It took us two years and we had to take a lot of detours to get to where we are. You need time to see the ROI, especially when it comes to e-commerce.”

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HOW CARLSBERG DRIVES RESULTS THROUGH SHOPPER MARKETING your consumer, but when they are buying the beer at the supermarket, they need a reminder on the price or chilled availability rather than just seeing the movie star on a poster.

For Carlsberg, an increasingly restrictive marketing environment has meant that targeting shoppers at point of purchase has been high on the agenda for a long time.

Priyadarshini Sharma, international brand director for premium brands at Carlsberg, talks to Marketing magazine about the effectiveness of strong shopper marketing-led initiatives.

Marketing: What was the impetus for Carlsberg investing in shopper marketing?

Sharma: There are certain regulatory challenges around alcohol marketing that make shopper marketing even more crucial to Carlsberg than it might be for traditional FMCG companies. As markets around the world go “dark” (meaning above the line advertising or communication is not permitted) it’s important for us to be able to talk to our consumers in the only forum where we can reach them – in-store. This is why Carlsberg has been focused on shopper marketing for many years – even if it wasn’t formally called “shopper marketing” – the impetus was always there to talk to consumers where they make the purchase decision.

Marketing: How difficult is this compared to the usual way of TV advertising?

Sharma: The biggest challenge is that one doesn’t have the luxury of storytelling, and we need to find a way to distil our message to the simplest, yet most effective level. It’s relatively easier to “tell a story” via TV ads – you have 30 seconds, audio visual aids and the ability to give a voice to your message. In an in-store or on-premise environment however, you have

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less than five seconds to intercept a shopper on a mission, hold their attention and close the sale with your message.

When you need to plan your communication by starting with what you will say at the point of purchase, you’re forced to look at the creative development process in a different way, whereby everything from insight development to the agency briefing to creative qualification doesn’t follow traditional FMCG routes.

Marketing: What are the biggest pitfalls of reorganising marketing around shoppers?

Sharma: I believe that the danger lies in having a “pendulum” approach to marketing.

We have seen the tendency where companies either put consumers at the heart of their marketing (ignoring shoppers), or only base their marketing on shoppers, thereby missing out on truly heart and mind-opening consumer insights which create affinity for the brands.

The “secret” lies in having a balance, keeping in mind how your path-to-purchase works and leveraging the right insights for each touch-point. The other thing to understand is that consumer and shopper behaviour is not the same thing, even if you’re referring to the same person. Often in the beer industry in Asia (where the consumer and shopper usually is the same person), there may be a belief that “one size fits all”. However, this can be a pitfall because influencing consumers when they are in “shopping” mode requires an understanding of what drives their decision making. For example, having a movie star in your ads may generate the right imagery for

Marketing: Can you tell us about particularly striking examples of shopper marketing campaigns failing?

Sharma: Rather than campaigns failing, I believe it’s usually the execution that fails. So even if the marketing team has uncovered a true shopper insight and devised the best creative to fit this, if they don’t take into account the context within which it will get executed, it can lead to failure. I’ve seen many examples of great creatives which get pasted in a dark and dingy corner of a bar – this is an example of failed execution rather than failed campaigns. The other thing to be mindful of is that we need to behave like “one” brand – otherwise you can risk confusing the consumer and shopper and diluting your brand equity.

Marketing: Do you think that the days of traditional campaigns, i.e. those that used TV ads as their starting point, are over?

Sharma: No. We should always start with the objective – there are situations when it would still be relevant to start with the big idea or above the line engagement before you can filter messages down to the store level.

This would be true, for example, in the case of breakthrough technology where we need to create broader awareness and excitement – even before consumers come to the store.

Of course, the shopper piece would still be integral to the overall marketing plan – just the starting point would be different.

That said, the world of marketing is evolving very fast and the boundaries between the traditional stages of the path-to-purchase are blurring. This means that what would have traditionally been considered a consumer engagement touch-point (i.e. digital media) is now also a shopper touch-point. The only “rule” for marketers today is to have your consumer and shopper insights aligned with your brand’s equity at the heart of any messages you put out.

Priyadarshini Sharma is the international brand director for premium brands for Asia at Carlsberg.

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RESEARCH ASIA INTERACTIVE 2015 AT A GLANCE

The only constant in today’s market is change. Across Asia and globally consumers are becoming increasingly more adaptive to new digital platforms and innovations in marketing. Now more than ever, businesses must adopt a proactive approach to survive and

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thrive in this challenging economic landscape.

Market research has to remain one step ahead and that’s why Research Asia Interactive was back for 2015 with the aim of delivering concise impactful insights, best practices and help to give your business the competitive

intelligence and edge needed for a winning research formula.

The event was supported by gold sponsor Research Now, insights partner Agility Research & Strategy, knowledge partner Digimind and supporting partner Black Marketing.

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PEPSICO ON WHY MARKET RESEARCH NEEDS TO BE IN THE BOARDROOM The advent of new,wired consumers and an evolving business environment are reasons why market research (MR) will move from consumer to business, Priya Khanna, associate director, consumer insights, PepsiCo India, said at Marketing’s Research Asia Interactive conference 2015.

The emergence of pro-consumers signals a need to understand the consumers’ behavioural changes, given that new consumption trends are constantly being redefined. According to Khanna, digital can expand consumer touchpoints, advising that companies “must take internet and mobile in the same breadth.”

The connectivity that the digital sphere allows also brings forth a rise in opinionated and expressive consumers who have the influencing power to potentially bring down brands: “We cannot underestimate the consumer with a voice,” Khanna added.

The evolving business landscape on the other hand, brings into view the need for market research to serve a new client - the CEO. As brands struggle with facing increased competition, a rehaul of market research may be necessary.

Consumer to Business “Market research has moved from reporting to a marketer to the CEO,” Khanna said.

Today’s changing business environment also translates to having many more questions and expectations, especially from a sales perspective: “The moment you have a seat at the CEO table, you are an equal stakeholder,” she said.

To gain new shopper insights, market research needs to graduate from tracking and body analytics to predictive analytics to decode lead indicators, “Market research has to evolve and think like a business consultant,” she added.

A new skill that market research has to develop is to provide key insights on driving profitable growth. “A comprehensive dashboard is essential. Everyone has to speak to each other in order to deploy all metrics possible,” Khanna advised.

Some of the must-dos for market research

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includes matching pace with changing business landscape or consumer, embracing risk, curating new technology and capabilities, and building direct relationships with tech companies and partnerships. Most importantly, market research needs to adopt a consumer to business mindset.

On the agency side, companies that lead change and partner those with digital data are the ones who will win in the long run. For market research to transit to provocation exploratory research (using insights to ‘provoke’ your consumer), market research has to help the business distill the central idea of getting loyal customers to express their love for the brand.

To facilitate and support this transition from consumer to business, market research should be aware of maximising the use of digital as well as re-calibrating its core research techniques.

Building a dashboard “Digital is all about getting the right information to the right consumers, therefore everything has be on one dashboard,” Khanna said.

For example, Pepsi leveraged its position as the title sponsor of the largest summer cricket festival in India – the Indian Premier League (IPL) - reportedly the biggest broadcast opportunity in season. Through its brand presence throughout the stadium, Pepsi was able to market its portfolio of brands to cricket fans and major stakeholders. For its event, the company built a single-window dashboard to view to all KPIs and investments which enabled it to assess ROI for better deployment in the future.

Capturing the audience’s attention means it is important to manage and reach consumers to get the right information to them. Not only

that, a brand has to get consumers in the real context that they’re in, in order to align and embed its research to customer’s context.

“For example, gamification is a technique that works with millennials but might not work with other target audiences,” she said.

Traditionally insights used to be about a need gap or conflict and identifying what the consumer needs. Now, there is a need for deeper insights as a response to market challenges.

To do this, market research must decode new behaviour and patterns in order to lead insights to provocation.

Khanna explained,”Social listening is a good thing to do but it must be decoded and infused with traditional market research techniques. We need to start expanding our findings into discourse analyses, behavioral economics, and go beyond just understanding the consumer’s sentiment.” At the risk of using and relying too much on digital, market research needs to rethink how digital is deployed.

Re-calibrate core research techniques In recasting the way researchers test ideas, a more collaborative research method is key.

Research has to be much more flexible and more real-time in order to change start points considerably.

For example, given that the speed with which data changes is phenomenal, researchers must see behaviour and generate hypotheses as quickly. Hence, market research has to move from comprehensive to real-time: “Marketers are happy to live with 70% accuracy. What’s more important is to start with an idea and be able to see how much you can expand this idea to the masses.” In other words, there has to be much more real-time analysis for movement to happen from insights to provocation.

Khanna also noted that TV is not the only element in a brand’s idea amplification strategy.

Brands need to co-create using communities in order to expand the potential of the idea. For this, Khanna recommended real time testing and consumer dialogue to be incorporated into a brand’s research.

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COMMENTARIES FROM ROUNDTABLE HOSTS

The future of research: social media insights, the humanising of data and more.

While much was discussed on stage – a more intimate on-ground audience interaction led by our roundtable hosts – saw even more pressing issues covered. Here are some of the takeaways: Unpacking social media insights Social media has become an accepted part of a digital marketer’s arsenal, but what do insights taken from social platforms mean, and how can they be applied to answer business questions?

Regardless of the type of questions asked, social media monitoring and intelligence will inevitably merge, with the digital department at the helm of every organisation’s strategy.

This was a trend present across the discussions on social media at the Research Asia Interactive conference hosted by Digimind In the digital age, sources of information are varied and far-reaching. The social media front alone spans a vast array of evolving networks.

For industry specific sources, there are forums, blogs, trade journals and review journals.

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Four key areas emerged from the discussions with regards to what business questions social media and intelligence can answer. These were: 1. Measuring: Gauging one’s online reputation, as well as the success and reach of a campaign or product launch, helps companies understand where they stand in their respective industries.

2. Identifying: Regardless of what industry you are in, the environment is ever-changing.

It is imperative for the organisation to recognise and anticipate key trends, including sales opportunities, competitors’ moves and even risks and changes present in the market, and respond to them.

3. Monitoring: By listening to customers and partners that matter most, companies can understand how to continually serve them better.

4. Development: Innovating and ideating are key to maintaining a company’s success, whether it is for developing new products

or creating content to stimulate interaction and engagement.

With the distribution of information across a growing number of channels, social media is changing the face of market intelligence. The two will inevitably merge into a central hub of information to answer business needs, giving marketers unparalleled opportunities to support various departments by taking charge of both social and intelligence.

Many of the marketers and research professionals present at the conference noted there was a need to create an internal social network for colleagues to share information with one another, as well as support the overall strategy in their organisation.

In addition, they could also leverage an innate ability to sell the idea of such a community through networking and visually appealing sales materials such as customised reports and newsletters.

The growing role of social media and

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overall market intelligence will result in the democratisation of solutions providers, as well as the founding of an internal social network in organisations.

The writers are Stephen Dale, general manager; Olivier Girard, senior consultant; and Melissa Chue, marketing executive from Digimind.

Humanising data Agility Research & Strategy and Affluential hosted the “humanising data” sessions at the Research Asia Interactive conference, which focused on the data complexities companies face and how their firms help clients turn data into stories that unlock insights for growth.

Key takeaways from the eight roundtable discussions included that companies are looking to deal with vast amounts of data that sit in various silos and are not harnessed collectively within companies.

“Big data is essentially just data,” according to Affluential’s Ali Mirza.

“Companies sometimes get too caught up in the hardware and the infrastructure rather than looking first at what data they have in the company, and more importantly, having conversations with their key clients.”

Agility’s Amrita Banta added: “Humanising data starts with the human factor. Our data scientists and researchers apply a host of solutions to bring the story out of the data with context and in a format that is visually appealing to clients. No management team has time to sit through a 100-page deck!”

The engaging and interesting dialogue from brands such as Accor, Citibank, F&N, McDonald’s and many others provided fuel for a day of best practices in using data, research and the role of insights firms such as Agility Research and Affluential have in working with brands to extract meaning from data and drive strategic marketing decisions.

“At the end of day, what matters is who is looking at your data, the level of familiarity and experience they have in your industry and the skills they have to be able to make sense of the complexities,” Mirza said.

Market research has evolved and it is still evolving. The rise of the digital age has broken the barrier of the traditional question and answer format. Data now comes in the forms of free response sentiments from social media and web-surfing habits about a brand, product, service or experience.

They are not only in-depth and honest, but are coming to us at the speed of light, or at least at the speed of their internet service provider. So how can marketers convert this overwhelming amount of information into actionable insights?

During the Research Asia Interactive

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“Data now comes in the forms of free response sentiments from social media and web surfing habits about a brand, product, service or experience.” conference Agility spoke about using the best of both traditional research and new market research to generate the best quality insights.

Experts would agree the digital age had allowed brands to get closer to consumers’ behaviours and mentality. These are both quantitative and qualitative information that comes quick and changes rapidly. Researchers have to do what Evan Williams, of General Mills, calls “a pivot”, a sharp angle turn into something else and change in accordance to research progress Percentages speak, but words speak louder. Quantitative data, although impactful, provides greater meaning when it is supported by qualitative data.

It’s not good enough to know that 90% of your consumers come from the eastern part of the country. That can be seen through sales figures. But through a combination of research methods, we have the ability to know that out of those 90%, more than half associate your brand with “cheap” and are frequent travellers.

That will help your brand explore and expand its current position.

Affluential, for example, is a new intelligence platform that provides custom, syndicated and consultative research with the option to run quick and automated DIY surveys and segregate respondents by country and net worth. Unlike similar tools, Affluential gathers relevant and representative data sets from the emerging middle-class, affluent and high-networth respondents, a unique feature that has luxury brands such as BMW, Unilever and L’Oréal leveraging on it.

From paper and pen to web 3.0, market research has shifted from a long and tedious process to a rapid and essential part of business marketing in the blink of an eye. There is no doubt this new research methodology is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come as technology constantly evolves.

The writers are Amrita Banta, MD, of Agility, and Ali Mirza, CEO of Affluential.

Co-creation and collaboration Across the roundtable discussions at the Research Asia Interactive conference on collaboration, it was particularly intriguing to see how brands and agencies are approaching and using Market Research Online Communities (MROCs) as a means for collaborative research.

Who makes a MROC?

The first key point of discussion was around the composition of MROCs. The general direction it’s headed in is to start creating MROCs with your most loyal and engaged consumers.These types of communities largely help brands to get consumer input into new product ideas, advertising feedback and, in some cases, even get a lifestyle insight that no other form of research is able to mine.The second large theme was around the concept of “super consumers”. These communities firstly allow marketers to identify brand evangelists, but then also to create a niche super consumer community to get feedback on aspects of a brand these consumer care deeply about.

Why MROCs? One key reason to explore this type of marketing research over the more known methods is the rapid change in the pace of marketing. The goto market cycles are shrinking constantly and to get real-time consumer responses is becoming critical. Also, brands are a lot more comfortable with trading 100% accuracy for the ability to have some predictive power.

Formats and options Many brands opt for a brand-led community, which they can have more control over, but this also means much more commitment from a brand to keep it alive and interesting. Others are also experimenting with existing communities and conversations. For example, instead of just using a MROC, some design companies are researching Twitter trends to find the next design trend. Other brands are closely following conversations of their consumers across owned social channels, purely as a way to identify the “lingo” their consumers are using. While others are investing in co-creation spaces, where product passionate marketers, alongside consumers, are experimenting with products.

What makes for a successful MROC? Finally, successful MROCs are a careful balance of open consumer conversations and restrained moderation from brands. It is also advisable to have passionate representatives from the brand to be part of the MROCs, especially for categories, which are passion and interestdriven.

The writer is Preethi Sanjeevi, regional CMO at VML QAIS.

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14/7/2015 2:09:48 PM

ALL THAT WENT ON AT ANALYTICS 2015

The romanticised benefits that organisations can reap from analytics have been told and retold many times. However, the sheer scale of them and the rate at which analytics technologies are progressing have left many organisations scrambling to catch up. This has also created a chasm between the haves and have nots.

Bridging this gap not only requires the

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right tools and competencies, it also needs an organisational resolve to address the issues and challenges at hand. Building on the success of last year’s Analytics Interactive, Analytics 2015 guided delegates on their analytics journey through key insights and compelling case studies as shared by senior and experienced speakers. Here are pictures and discussions taken from the conference.

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CHALLENGES OF STARTING UP AN ANALYTICS TEAM With so many offers and privileges being thrown at customers every day, truly understanding your customer is vital in engaging with them. Whether in-store or through a loyalty programme, data is vital to getting to know your customers.

“Loyalty is different from CRM. Loyalty is an exchange of customer data for rewards and incentives,” said Hywel Evans, VP of analytics and professional services for AIMIA. Since it is an exchange, it is vital to offer your customers the right deal and create an ideal programme for them that will keep them in for the long run.

Evans was speaking during the recent Analytics 2015 Singapore conference at the Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre. Also speaking at the conference was Sandeep Mittal (pictured), MD of Cartesian Consulting, who said that despite knowing this, many retailers and companies today still did not capture their customer information well.

“Understanding your customer’s experience with your brand is the third most important piece of information out of possibly 40 different variables. This piece of crucial information when made obvious to everyone in the organisation can work very well. To get your company switched on to analytics, sometimes it just takes one quick win or one obvious fact,” he said.

However, the challenges to truly understanding your customers through data are many.

Skills and tools One hurdle almost all organisations face when first making a move into the data world is having the right skills and tools in place.

Most organisations that delve in often do not have the right business-minded framework.

They lack a disciplined structure in which they approach data. Mittal explained that while data analysts are often used to just looking at facts and ignoring customers sentiments, marketers sit on the opposite end of the spectrum where they are more in tune with customer feedback.

The two departments need to, hence, find a middle ground. Cross industry learning and collaborations are vital. Simply having tools is not enough. Human interaction and analysis is vital.

Evans said that with the right tools and skills in place, companies are able to reduce the repetitive tasks analytics teams carry out.

“It is such a shame to see talented statisticians sitting around doing data cleansing.

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Those are tasks that take energy out of the team and doesn’t inspire your staff members,” he said.

Support and faith Mittal added that when integrating analytics into your company, patience is vital. Companies need to be able to visualise and have a longterm plan in mind.

“Changes happen over three to four-year periods. Not overnight. People often initiate analytics in an organisation and want results in a month. It doesn’t happen that way,” he said.

However, he added, quick wins are sometimes just as vital to inspiring a team and convincing the management of the possible changes analytics can allow for the brand.

Evans also added that with adequate resources in place, companies can stop “re-inventing the wheel” and starting from scratch every time.

“While the buzz of figuring out something new about your brand is great, it doesn’t translate to value for the organisation. With the right framework, companies can speed up the ‘time to impact’ of analysis,” he said.

Data insights Data mining is also necessary. Companies need to look beyond just the transaction and behaviour to come up with customised customer profiles. According to Mittal, when mining for insights, companies should look at clustering, segmentation, profiling, predictive models for repeat, response or churn. Companies should also explore possible product adoption models.

Evans also added that businesses need to also be empowered in such a way that every

member of the company can all start using data in their processes and not run to the analyst team with requests at every turn. “There needs to be a balance because companies can’t simply just depend on the data analytics team, but at the same time, they can’t just shut them off completely. The two need to find a balance point,” Evans said. Evans added that if data understanding was shared, companies could reduce the “walk out” risk. This means that if someone on the data analytics team were to leave, all the investment and understanding of the company and consumer portfolio would not be lost with them.

Taking action With so much data at hand, companies should ideally have a customised marketing plan for each individual customer. An ideal customised marketing plan varies in messaging intensity, medium, offer, imagery, product and timing based on what companies know about their customers. However, this is not an easy task. Having so much data at hand can cause analysis paralysis for companies.

“Today the complexity lies in figuring out what offer and what trigger point works for the customers. Often who you deselect from your target group is more vital than selecting. It takes more analysing,” Mittal said. Companies should also track the ROI for every campaign and see how it leads to incremental sales tracking, while monitoring dashboards and reports.

“The most vital question to ask is: what did you add to your top line? That is extremely powerful in knowing the success of your analytics implementation,” he added.

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MONDEL Z ON SETTING UP AN INTEGRATED ANALYTICS FUNCTION IN-HOUSE With the rise of job titles such as chief data officer and chief technological officer, is it any surprise that data and analytics have become a pivotal part of any company’s success?

Jyoti Jain, regional associate director of strategy at Mondelēz International Asia Pacific, said during the recent Analytics 2015 Singapore conference at the Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre that the company puts a unique focus on analytics where the function cuts across all verticals in the company. As such, at Mondelēz, the analytics falls under the strategy function of the company rather than marketing.

“The function absolutely needs to drive meta-thinking for the organisation,” she said.

So how do you get started on analytics?

Invest The first golden rule to analytics is to invest.

Bigger brands get larger payback when they invest appropriately, explained Jain, alluding to the popular saying, “the rich get richer”. The right investment is needed for the success of an analytics team and the more a company is willing to clean up its processes, and sharpen its toolkit, the more “payback” it will receive in terms of measurement and putting frameworks in place.

This is what Luxola did. Adrien Eudes, head of data at Luxola, elaborated that when the company wanted to first understand its customers better, it launched a “data warehouse” and built up its own algorithms.

He explained that for the brand it was vital to see how the customer was interacting with it and what the different points of interaction were. Only then was the company actively able to segment its users and their behaviour on the site.

Playbook With analytics teams becoming the backbone function of so many of a company’s functions, Jain insists that analytics teams have “rules of thumb and a playbook” to go to when sales or marketing functions need immediate assistance.

Analytics she added, was a means to an end. Today, with timelines and budgets getting tighter, analytics has a bigger role to play in answering key business questions with measurement, evaluation and feedback.

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“We often have marketing and sales coming up to us with what they think might be opportunities of business growth to help with the entire business portfolio. This is where we have rule of thumbs or playbooks,” she said.

She added that often marketers and sales folks wanted the analytics team to make sense of unstructured data.

Benchmark Businesses also need to have benchmark databases. This allows a marketer or analyst in APAC to tap in and try to predict what a consumer’s responsiveness might be to a certain campaign in another country with a similar target audience or population base.

Mondelēz, according to Jain, puts a lot of focus and investment on setting up information systems on those benchmarks. Roping in agency partners to establish these benchmarks is also vital since they are often at the forefront of new technologies and work closely with the business. “I may be entering a new market in APAC, but I could look at a similar market in another part of the world and then deviate from those benchmarks. This allows for metathinking which is very important because it gets organisations into a pattern impact where they can see similarities across markets,” she said.

Globalise and democratise Analytics is fair game for all departments especially since data today can come from all aspects of an organisation.

Eudes explained that while personalised tracking and retrieving online information was vital in building up a customer portfolio and understanding the business, the team at Luxola also took to the physical warehouses to get information. “We learnt directly from our own ‘physical’ warehouse, from walkways, and we also looked to our database, connected to our back-end data and vendors and also looked at AdWords, social media, remarketing tools, CRM and others,” he said.

Thus it’s not just the duty of the IT team or marketing team, but rather the entire organisation.

He added the company also wanted everyone to help, to bring ideas and explain the “wrong” anomalies rather than sit around configuring the data.

This was echoed by Jain who explained that companies needed to globalise and democratise data information. Globalising data information allows a brand to create synergies across markets and scale advantage. It is also a cost-efficient method. “But what is the use of all this information if not to democratise it and get people across the various verticals using it?” she asked. “Analytics can come in to find future demand, check physical availability, find more macro trends, listen to consumers, capture appropriate value of decisions and figure out if a company’s portfolio is balanced and supported.”

What are companies doing wrong?

According to Jain, with so much going on, marketers and analytics experts often lose focus.

“Analytics is the unique lever in an organisation that can help all parts of the organisation find focus. Go for the big rocks in the business with your analytical framework and you will find the big rock. At Mondelēz, we have a strategic prioritisation where key metrics tell us which brand is important in which country.

With this we know where to put focus.”

A small change on a big business will make a big impact. Another mistake analytics teams are often making is not finding quick wins.

She added that at times teams have “analysis paralysis” with the overwhelming amount of information out there. In analytics, she explained, it is better to be roughly right then precisely wrong. “It is better to be good and on time rather than perfect and late. The field is one where a direction is necessary and learning on the go is a must so companies need to just dive in and learn by doing.”

Advice?

Convince your higher management to give you a budget and to understand why it is needed, said Jain.

A good team is also vital – even if it is a small one. With the right people and training, the team can go far because it is on the ground.

“Analytics might be based on past behaviour, but we are creatures of habit. Learn from your mistakes. Analytics is the critical enabler to that measurement. What gets measured gets done. And rewarded.”

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THE 10 COMMANDMENTS OF ANALYTICS get will change. If you write a negative review on Amazon, the suggestions you get will also change. That’s closing the loop and using that to drive suggestions,” he said, suggesting that this was a good way for brands to look at holistic data.

The development of analytics as a function is nascent, with the top management of many firms often ignorant about how to implement the data in business. This is why it’s vital to keep certain principles in place. But independent consultant and data and CRM expert Mike Sherman has some tips. He was previously head of L!ving Analytics, under Singtel’s group digital life division, and spoke at the recent Analytics 2015 Singapore event.

1. Be modest.

Making projections can be hard, so be modest when doing so, said Sherman. Showing how people in history have made vastly inadequate predictions, such as then chairman of IBM Thomas Watson predicting in 1943 that there would be a world market for “maybe five computers”, he advised executives in analytics to do so with a touch of humility.

2. Focus on outputs, not tools “One of the things you must remember when doing analysis is that the drill is the tool to get to the hole. The focus is the hole. Us in analytics, we love to talk about the drill.”

“That creates problems. You can have a really great drill that doesn’t create a ripple. You need to think what you are using it for. Start with the intended outputs.”

3.Business significance over statistical significance Sherman summarised the concept of statistical significance, often used in research: “If I repeat an analysis, how likely is it that the difference will be in the same direction as before?” But he posited it was vital that the data needed

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to have business significance over statistical significance. He defined it this way: “I have to make a decision; If I repeat the analysis, how likely is it that I’ll reach the same conclusion about what decision to make?” Focus your analysis on what matters, he advised.

What decision do you have to make? What information will change that decision? Data can help to reduce decision-making risk, he said.

4. Porpoise, don’t boil the ocean Here’s why a researcher is compared to a porpoise – the porpoise comes up to breathe, goes back down to swim and does this repeatedly. This is how researchers should look at data. Don’t look at it as conclusive.

“Start with a hypothesis, go down deep and look at the data, and come back up and see if you’re right,” he said.

5. Correlation is not causality Sharing the example of this Dilbert cartoon to illustrate the point, Sherman also gave an example. While at McKinsey working on a client, he said it had a dilemma. For a supermarket, does shelf space for a brand drive sales or does sales drive shelf space? Everyone thought that it was the former. But it wasn’t the cause.

“Sales drove shelf space, not the other way around, showing a clear misunderstanding of correlation.”

6. Close the loop …

Sherman talked about sites such as Amazon as a perfect example of being able to close the loop. “It knows what you browse, what you buy, and what you review. For instance, if one buys a book on Amazon, the search results you

7. Beware of useless numbers A chart may not mean anything, and the numbers may not mean much. This happens if you’re not asking the question right, said Sherman. Also, there’s a flaw of averages. For example, if you survey both cardiologists and psychologists on what the top drug companies are, and take the average of that, this will be meaningless. Sherman debunked the concept of the “average person” as well. “What is the average person? Is he half male and half female?

This misconception drives a lot of conclusions.”

8. Demographics are better than nothing (but only just) Too much of the targeting today is based on generic demographics and can be misleading.

For instance, we know gamers may be young, but what if you have players like a grandfather who likes to play with his grandchildren?

Sherman asked.

9. Ask the right question Sherman gave instances of wrong ways to question, for example, asking people if they were competitive about pricing. “Who’s going to say no, charge me higher?” But the truth is, few customers know the competitive pricing about certain goods or services.

10. Communicate clearly Finally, one important thing for those in data and analytics is being able to tell a good story.

“For data, you must be able to communicate clearly, think of it as an elevator speech. Think of it that way when communicating to the CEO. You must be able to do it in a few seconds. Do it in a one-page executive summary.”

He told of his experience at McKinsey, where everyone was taught to be able to do an elevator speech of a project.

“If the client is in the lift with you and asks, how’s the project going, you don’t say ‘good’.

You need to be able to say – so here’s what I think you need to do,” he said.

“The key to a good elevator speech – synthesise, not summarise. Don’t give facts, give the meaning behind them.”

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CAREERS

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CAREER PATH Frederic Moraillon Vice-president, marketing, Asia Pacific and Japan Akamai Technologies First job? Managing a newspaper

stand in my hometown of Neuillysur-Seine, France, when I was 17.

First job in advertising/ marketing? I started my

own company with a friend in Singapore that produced lapel pins for dozens of brands in France between 1991 and 1994 where the craze was at its highest (some brands claimed a 30% increase in sales due to those promo items). I also spent a year with Backer Spielvogel Bates as a media planner.

Best job? The best job is to have the freedom to shape the business as I’m able to do in my current role.

Perks of your current job?

Help define the company’s culture and working with clever and fun people who are good sports when we prank each other.

Worst job? When I was with a start-up that lacked teamwork and strategy.

Marketing professionals you admire? The people I admire the

most are entrepreneurs and leaders who include marketing in their brands – Sir Richard Branson, Steve Jobs.

Best career advice you’ve been given? “Go sell

something.” Marketers who have been in sales are better marketers.

Why a career in marketing?

I started out selling in my own business and realised that PR and marketing allowed me to reach out and influence more people.

If you weren’t in marketing, what would you be? Doing

research on orchids or a ski instructor (love the mountains).

How do you wind down?

Parkour and martial arts.

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JOB SHUFFLE Dentsu Singapore appointed the former regional marketing director of Citibank Cecilia Wong as its senior vice-president. Wong will report to Rosalynn Tay, chief executive officer of Dentsu Singapore and Dentsu Aegis Network Singapore.

Wong brings more than 20 years of experience in marketing and advertising to the team at Dentsu Singapore, having worked on agency and client businesses in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Digital consulting agency Deloitte Digital appointed the VP of global digital marketing and brand content for SapientNitro Alan Schulman as its national director of content marketing and creative experience, based in the US. He has more than 30 years of experience in marketing and advertising, particularly in digital marketing. He has served within The Interpublic Group, including creative leadership roles at McCann-Erickson, FutureBrand Worldwide and Foote, Cone & Belding.

McDonald’s has named Silvia Lagnado, who was most recently chief marketing officer of Bacardi, its global CMO. She takes on the role of executive vice-president and global chief marketing officer responsible for all aspects of global brand management, including global marketing, menu and consumer insights.

Joining her in the senior ranks at McDonald’s is Robert Gibbs, the former White House press secretary for president Obama, who joined as global chief communications officer.

Nurun, Publicis Singapore’s digital consultancy, has hired Prentice Porter as head of experience design and Luis Roy as user experience lead. Porter joined Nurun from TBWA’s Digital Arts Network, where he led a team of designers and user experience executives.

Roy is a cross-platform specialist who works across both the retail and digital environments. He worked at Imagination Studios mapping interactive pathways for display screens and exhibitions.

Clear Channel Singapore appointed Linda Tay as commercial director. She assumes overall responsibility of the sales team, as well as commercial and revenue strategies for the company.

Previously from MediaCorp and FOX International Channels, she has a decade of industry experience across different media platforms ranging from radio, print, TV and digital. She has worked with brands such as Johnson & Johnson, Cartier, CK Tang and ION Orchard.

Global research consultancy TNS appointed David Lansanah as global head of innovation and product development, replacing Steve Landis who is retiring at the end of 2015 after seven years with TNS. In his new role, he will lead and develop the firm’s global innovation practice, improving the existing product portfolio and leading a dedicated team of innovation experts to boost TNS’ profile globally.

Ad tech firm AdNear appointed Nandita Pal as its general

manager for the region. She will drive the adoption of AdNear’s mobile data solutions among marketers for consumer insights, targeting and attribution. She has more than 21 years of technology and mobile services experience in launching and selling new services. Her experience encompasses global commercial sales, business development and global product marketing as well as go-to-market in the mobile and location-based services space.

Golin hired Lim Le-Anne as executive director at the agency’s Singapore office to lead and grow the firm’s relationship with key public agency clients. She assumed her role on 2 June and reports to Tarun Deo, managing director of Singapore and Southeast Asia. Lim has worked at the National Arts Council, Republic Polytechnic, Urban Redevelopment Authority, MINDEF and most recently, Competition Commission of Singapore.

Philips ASEAN Pacific appointed Elaine Ng as head of communications to lead internal and external communications across the region. She is based in Singapore. She brings with her almost 13 years of corporate communications and marketing communications experience, starting her career in journalism. Her most recent position was director for corporate relations for Southeast Asia at Visa.

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LAST WORD

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THE TWO KINDS OF EX-AGENCY CLIENTS YOU’LL MEET Former agency folks who have joined the dark side are sometimes on extreme ends of the personality spectrum - brilliant or a pain in the butt. GoodStuph’s Pat Law writes.

Like a PC versus a Mac user. Like a dog versus a cat. Former agency folks who have joined the dark side are sometimes on the extreme ends of the personality spectrum. I have my fair share of brilliance and stupidity. I have my fair share of humility and arrogance. Here’s my list. What’s yours?

ON BRIEFS

ON BUDGETS

ON I-NEED-THIS-YESTERDAY DEADLINES

ON I-KNOW-YOU-ARE-BULLSHITTING-ME

ON FEEDBACK

ON COMPLIMENTS

ON NOSTALGIA

ON MANAGING EXPECTATIONS

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10/7/2015 7:51:54 PM

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8/7/2015 10:28:32 AM

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were considered the language of the gods & to have been created

by Thoth, the God of Knowledge

Some hieroglyphs had a phonetic purpose; others represented whole words

=w or u

Whilst predominantly to chronicle the reign of pharaohs, hieroglyphs were also used by priests to document religious beliefs and rituals Reading direction is indicated by character orientation - in this case the glyphs are read from the right to left

Greek text inscribed under the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone were key to deciphering their meaning

Ptolemaic Period, 196 BC discovered by Napoleon’s army in 1799

Insight Worth Sharing. www.kadence.com/share

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