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ISSUE #267 OCTOBER 2020
popculture
WEEKENDER
MMC Tuesdays coming to you this November
WEEKENDER
popculture
EDITOR'S NOTE
COVER STORY
A day in the life of Ham…
04 14
That’s me. Turkey ham. Not pork ham. I am up early but downstairs late...
Frontier CMOs reclaiming leadership roles
Advertising and Logic My semi-brilliant advertising career taught me a little something about...
07
The 14th Malaysian Media Conference (MMC) was set to take place at the Sime Darby Convention Center on 23 October, which is ...
16
A global study of 1,361 Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) across 12 markets, by media, digital and creative communications agency Dentsu, analyses how CMOs are navigating a new kind of recovery...
MARKETING WEEKENDER is published by Sledgehammer Communications (M) Sdn Bhd 22B, Jalan Tun Mohd Fuad 1, Taman Tun Dr. Ismail 60000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Tel: 603-7726 2588 ham@adoimagazine.com. www.marketingmagazine.com.my © All Rights Reserved By: Sledgehammer Communications (M) Sdn Bhd (289967-W) No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form without prior permission in writing from the publisher. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information in this publication, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions and/ or for any consequences of reliance upon information in this publication. The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the views of the publisher or editor. Advertisements are the sole responsibility of the advertisers.
Pic courtesy of 123RF
WHEN LIFE THROWS YOU A PANDEMIC, YOU GO VIRTUAL!
“ “
THE PROBLEMS WE FACE TODAY ARE THERE BECAUSE THE PEOPLE WHO WORK FOR A LIVING ARE NOW OUTNUMBERED BY THOSE WHO VOTE FOR A LIVING.
”
Anonymous
HALF OF LIFE IS LOST IN CHARMING OTHERS. THE OTHER HALF IS LOST IN GOING THROUGH ANXIETIES CAUSED BY OTHERS. LEAVE THIS PLAY, YOU HAVE PLAYED ENOUGH. Rumi
“”
EVERY DOGMA HAS ITS DAY.
Anthony Burgess, English author of the Malayan Trilogy (Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket, Beds of the East) was a school master at Malay College Kuala Kangsar in the 1950s.
”
4 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER EDITOR’S NOTE
A day in the life of Ham…
That’s me. Turkey ham. Not pork ham. I am up early but downstairs late. First thing in the morning, I try to look up for a while not down. Many of us look down during our morning routine, thanks to our smart phones. But I do look down to check my feet, as I’d successfully attained diabetic-hood earlier this year. That makes me a health risk living in a Red Zone. Perfect. This also means no sugar, no beer, no whisky, no nothing.
5 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER EDITOR’S NOTE
... I must confess I am a content slut; I give new meaning to FOMO as I prostitute my email address to so many sites that my laptop does everything for me when I sign up for alerts... Normally, I just avoid sweet talk (pun intended) especially when my buddies call for a drink….but I do let myself go at times, which is done in secrecy like in the days of prohibition. My light breakfast is some thorny combination of muesli, nut and raisin which I refer to as the “cardboard” breakfast. By this time, I already have about 200 emails in my InBox and 40 in WhatsApp. I must confess I am a content slut; I give new meaning to FOMO as I prostitute my email address to so many sites that my laptop does everything for me when I sign up for alerts. Maybe I am a closet hoarder, a kepoh about everything in our industry….in the content business being a busy body is not a bad thing.
Throughout the day I have meetings (very short ones), connect with my staff, write nonstop and sometimes daydream about how much money Vinod Sekhar or Patrick Grove has. While all this is going on, I post at least four Breaking News on my website daily, including weekends. Basically I am in the business of making people famous. I give them fame and hopefully, they give me fortune (small). Fortunately, I think I am also learned enough to do it in good taste. As for meetings and phone conversations through the day I try to keep them quick, normally all set up on the go. Any exchange more than 10 minutes is a waste of time, for both me and the caller, unless it is a bitching session. So I always request for 3.9 minutes phone appointments, sometimes I even do with 127 seconds. I love using odd numbers. So it is a virtual worklife with all the virtues of selfless servility. Me and my team have been producing the free WEEKENDER every Friday for 6 months now. Our numbers (metrics in mediaspeak) have gone through the
6 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER EDITOR’S NOTE
... The brief is simple: everything is wanted yesterday. They pivot so well, I’d say we pirouette together beautifully... roof (table) with a total reach of 34,000 per issue. As for readership, your own good sense knows better, but any oaf will tell you it is at least double the reach. Just don’t ask the media planners, as they are too busy explaining where the R in ROI disappeared to all their clients. I am blessed to have amazing people working with me (Hamlets) and they know I am brutal when it comes to wasting time. The brief is simple: everything is wanted yesterday. They pivot so well, I’d say we pirouette together beautifully. As my dear friend Michael De Kretser used to say, “There is no I in We.” We just reframed our Malaysian Media Conference with presenting sponsor Omnia into 4 weekly online events
in November. It is FREE, so it doesn’t get better than this: you can eat while you learn. This week I am reminding folks to nominate marketers for the coming Malaysian Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) Awards 2020. It is the only show that recognises the people who provide the bread and butter of agencies – brand, creative, digital, pr and media. So they should know what they are supposed to do I suppose. And if there’s no “Perutusan Khas” for the day, I troll Anwar and Trump. In the evenings I take my dog for a walk, but if I am tired she takes me for a walk. Respectfully,
7 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER COVER STORY
WHEN LIFE THROWS YOU A PANDEMIC, YOU GO VIRTUAL! BY VASUKI RAO
Malaysian Media Conference (MMC) now free and virtual with MMC Tuesdays! The 14th Malaysian Media Conference (MMC) was set to take place at the Sime Darby Convention Center on 23 October, which is just a week from today. However, following the government’s announcement on a statewide CMCO starting October 14, MMC 2020 will no longer be held as a physical conference.
As heartbreaking as it is, we believe our promise for The Great Comeback and to provide an unparalleled platform for creating, shaping and delivering collaborative solutions for the upcoming decade still remains the main objective of our conference. Which is why we’re proud to introduce MMC Tuesdays!
8 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER COVER STORY
MMC Tuesdays is essentially our solution to turning what was supposed to be a one-day physical conference into a 4-part virtual mini-conference, aired Live on our Facebook page every Tuesday in November. The conference content will remain the same, except we decided to divide it across four days so you don’t have to spend eight consecutive hours in front of your screen. What makes this more exciting is MMC Tuesdays will be completely FREE for everyone to tune in. This is because there has never been a year as important as 2020 for stakeholders in our industry to come together and assist each other to bounce back from the unparalleled challenges we’ve been smacked in the face with. COVID-19 has exposed our flaws and vulnerabilities. But as we enter a unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery of our industries, MMC Tuesdays will offer insights from experts to help inspire the media and marketing industries to determine the future state
of Malaysia’s communication landscape. As we move MMC completely online, we look forward to offering you the same vibrant programming and opportunities to reflect and connect over the emerging and salient topics in our field. The virtual conference will include our regular offerings including speaker sessions, panel sessions and a platform to connect with industry. In addition to participating in the live event for free, all attendees will have the opportunity to submit their questions to specific speakers and panelists prior to the event. Questions that are submitted before 23 October will be answered directly by our speakers and panelists! Moving our face-to-face conference to a fully online format presents us with the unique opportunity to spotlight the best of what an online modality affords – a larger pool for collaboration and the ability to reflect and connect with industry players around the country.
9 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER COVER STORY
Here’s what to except every Tuesday in November:
MMC Tuesday I: 3/11/2020 PUNCHING THROUGH BAU Raymond Siva Chief Marketing Officer, MDEC 3:40 PM: A GENERATION OF FUTURE BUYERS: WHO ARE THEY REALLY? Jazz Tan Chief Executive Officer, YouthsToday 4:00 PM: TECHNOLOGY ENABLING ACCESSIBILITY AND INCLUSIVITY: CATALYST TO REBUILDING ECONOMIES Dashika Gnaneswaran Head of Communications, Microsoft
10 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER COVER STORY
MMC Tuesday II: 10/11/2020 3:00 PM: GROWTH TRENDS: HOW LIVE COMMERCE IS TRANSFORMING INFLUENCER MARKETING Ganesh Kumar Bangah Founder and Executive Chairman, Commerce.Asia
3:40 PM: REMOVING THE STUMBLING BLOCKS ‘Removing the Stumbling Blocks,’ features key representatives from three sectors - media owners, marketers and agencies, whose intricate industry linkages to each other form an ecosystem of its own. The goal for this panel is to trigger an open discourse on the “knots” faced by three symbiotic industries and the potential synergies that could be activated by addressing these challenges. While COVID-19 has exposed our flaws and vulnerabilities as an industry, it has created the opportunity for us to have more raw and uncensored discussions on what’s wrong and how to fix it. It’s time for our industry to have that conversation, led by a panel of experts in their own field. Panelists:
Sheila Shanmugam Managing Director, m/SIX Dheeraj Raina Managing Director, Mindshare Santharuban T. Sundaram Chief Executive Officer, Atlas Vending Nicholas Sagau Chief Product Officer, REV Media Group Moderator: Sailesh Wadhwa Chief Strategist, Edelman Malaysia 4:40 PM: IF YOU DON’T GET IT, DON’T GET INTO IT Eugene Lee Regional Director of Marketing, McDonald’s Malaysia
11 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER COVER STORY
MMC TUESDAY III: 17/11/2020 3:00 PM: HOW I USED CONTENT ALGORITHM TO LOSE 10KGS Christopher Wee Chief Strategy Officer, Omnia 3:30 PM: MOVING WALLS (TBC) 4:10 PM: CONTENT FASHIONING FOR THE NEXT DECADE Titled ‘Content Fashioning for the Next Decade,’ this panel sharing session will feature a short presentation from each panelist before they come together for a panel discussion on the different strategies brands and agencies can use when fashioning their content for the next decade. If content is king and social is the future, this panel will discuss what it takes to create original, evergreen content that not only occupies Malaysia’s social feeds but makes viewers crave for more. Haniff Hamzah Content Producer, YOLO Malaysia
Aziemah Azman Manager of IP-Animation, Primework Studios Jaz Lee Creative Director, Ogilvy
Preathvee Asohan Twitter Client Partner & Brand Strategist, Httpool Malaysia Rengeeta Rendava Managing Director, Mad Hat Asia
12 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER COVER STORY
MMC TUESDAY IV: 24/11/2020 3:00 PM: TREAT YOUR MARKETING LIKE A SPORTS TEAM hris Greenough Chief Marketing Officer, Everise 3:30 PM: A CONVERSATION IN-GAME WITH LEE CHOONG KAY, HEAD OF SPORTS, ASTRO Moderator: Vasuki Rao MARKETING Magazine 4:10 PM: Special Guest Speaker Karen Chan Chief Executive Officer, AirAsia.com
We hope that you will join us for this reimagined event, and celebrate our collective resilience and dedication to forging connections without boundaries. We look forward to welcoming you to the MMC Tuesdays in November, and we are here to help you however we can with questions and requests for support.
Please feel free to reach out to us with requests related to OLC Innovate at vasuki@ adoimagazine.com If you’d like to sponsor MMC Tuesdays, please contact sandesh@adoimagazine.com FREE Register Now
13 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER BOBHOFFMAN.COM
Advertising and Logic
My semi-brilliant advertising career taught me a little something about successful business people. Many are very uncomfortable with advertising. Many are terrible at evaluating advertising. I think there is an understandable reason for this. Throughout our education and business training, and all during our careers, the most important skill in our tool kit has been the ability to think logically. The ability to solve a problem is at the core of business success.
Logic helped us be good students and good business people. It is critical if we're in finance or operations or distribution or management. The only function in business in which logic is not essential is the creative component of advertising. This is distressing to a great many very smart people who cannot accept that they can't think their way to advertising success. It goes against everything they've learned.
14 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER BOBHOFFMAN.COM
When it comes to evaluating advertising we put on our analyzing caps and try to apply our well-honed logic skills to figure out what's a good ad and what ain't. Sadly, an ad is not a court case. The best argument doesn't win. Logic is, to a frightening degree, irrelevant. I don't know what makes an ad great, but I do know this - it's not logic. Most of the really good ad people I worked with in my career had a difficult time explaining why they knew an ad was good. They had to invent rational reasons in order to sell good ads to clients, but they were bullshitting and faking it. Mostly they just knew, and didn't know how they knew. Advertising is at the intersection of art and commerce. The commercial aspects of advertising -- budgeting, media decisions, strategy, etc.- require orderly thinking. But the creative (executional) aspect of advertising - the "art" side is frustratingly immune to the benefits of reason. If creating advertising were simply a matter of developing a cogent argument (as many business people seem
to believe) advertising would be easy. One consequence of the bias toward logic is the trendy and mistaken belief that more data will lead us to greater creativity. This has proven to be an illusion. The marketing industry has never had anything approaching the amount of data we currently have. Yet it is a nearly unanimous belief among marketing execs that advertising is substantially less effective and less creative than it has traditionally been. It may very well turn out that advertising success is way stranger and more complicated than logic would have us believe. That's part of what makes it fun. Nothing about advertising is easy... - There are times when logical arguments are effective in ads. One of the things that makes advertising fascinating is that there are no hard truths - just likelihoods and probabilities. - Logical arguments tend to be more effective in direct response (offer-based) advertising than in brand advertising. - Those brilliant creative people who just know when something is good? They can also be wrong. Get used to it.
15 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER CMO SURVEY
Frontier CMOs reclaiming leadership roles
A global study of 1,361 The speed readwith a particular focus on3 Contents Chief Marketing Officers1. Stepping into the product development. 7 unknown (CMOs) across 12 markets, The study finds that the 14 2. Navigating the new frontiers of growth by media, digital and creative number one challenge facing communications agency 3. Marketing’s moment CMOs is understanding21which Dentsu, analyses how CMOs consumer behaviours will change About the survey 30 are navigating a new kind of permanently and which will Acknowledgements 31 recovery. fall away in the post-COVID It show how CMOs are References environment. 32 reclaiming the strategic agenda It raises concerns that half of 2.
dentsu CMO survey 2020
16 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER CMO SURVEY
...In Asia Pacific, nearly half in India, are using ‘completely’ similar strategies to those pursued in past recessions, compared to 17% global average. On the other hand, only 6% in China are using previous strategies...
CMOs concede they are basing their response to the coronavirus crisis on strategies that were pursued during previous recessions. In Asia Pacific, nearly half in India, are using ‘completely’ similar strategies to those pursued in past recessions, compared to 17% global average. On the other hand, only 6% in China are using previous strategies. It also found that despite the general advice that brands should not ‘go dark’ during times of recession, nearly two-
thirds of CMOs recount that their marketing budgets are forecast to decline or remain flat over the coming 12 months. Australia is the second highest market to predict marketing budget to decline and Japan is the third highest market anticipating that budget will stay flat. On the contrary, China is the second highest to predict budget increases in the coming year. Overall, the study recognises that a new style of marketing leadership is emerging. “Frontier CMOs” are well placed to manage the recovery and are doing so by focusing on a handful of key strategies that set them apart from the rest: 1. Hyper-empathy: Developing superior consumer intelligence 2. Hyper-agility: Rapid development of new messaging, products and services 3. Hyper-collaboration: Integration across all elements of the marketing mix 4. Hyper-consolidation: Building resilience across brands and through M&A 5. Hyper-transparency: Ensuring purpose permeates all aspects of the business
17 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER CMO SURVEY
higher levels of accountability across all of these metrics, with the exception of cost reduction. Furthermore, they are significantly more likely to be accountable for digital transformation than other CMOs.
Figure 8: Acquisition of customers remains the top performance metric for CMOs In terms of your role, what metrics are you primarily accountable for? 2020
2019
2020 FRONTIER CMOs 65%
Growth of customer base
61% 56%
Product/service innovation
51% 56%
Short-term sales/revenue growth
47% 53%
Reducing costs (i.e. customer acquisition)
Medium-/long-term brand health
Delivery of digital transformation programmes
45% 52% 44% 48% 39%
67%
61%
57%
52%
57%
58%
Source: dentsu CMO survey 2020 23.
Frontier CMOs are also significantly more likely to be accountable for digital transformation than other CMOs, proving their value and impact to company boards as they navigate the future of their business and industry. Ashish Bhasin, Asia Pacific CEO of Dentsu, shares, “What would have taken five years has now only taken five months; it has pushed and forced us to
dentsu CMO survey 2020
learn. With every disruption comes its own sets of winners and losers. It is crucial for CMOs to keep up with the new skills required in today’s new world to ensure success in the discontinuity.” Into the Unknown CMO survey 2020
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT HERE
18 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER
2020 YTD Malaysia Top 10 wins Creative Agency
Month
Account
Area
VMLY&R
Feb
Intel
VMLY&R
Apr
Telekom Malaysia
Malaysia
Ogilvy
Feb
Hong Kong Tourism Board
Malaysia
FCB
Apr
Berjaya Sompo Insurance
Malaysia
Ogilvy
Jun
Costa Coffee
Malaysia
VMLY&R
Jan
Hong Leong Assurance
Malaysia
Wunderman Thompson
Mar
HSBC
Malaysia
FCB
Mar
Berjaya Sompo Project
Malaysia
FCB
Apr
SP Setia Project
Malaysia
DDB
Apr
Sunsilk - Naturals Launch
Malaysia
Media Agency
Month
Account
Global
Area
PHD
Feb
Diageo
Global
Mindshare
Jul
Oppo
Malaysia
Universal McCann
Jul
Lazada
SE Asia
OMD
Jun
Danone
Malaysia
Zenith
Jul
Disney+
Southeast Asia
PHD
Jan
Warner Bros Pictures Group
Malaysia
Mindshare
Apr
Awesome TV
Malaysia
MediaCom
Feb
SK Magic
Malaysia
Universal McCann
Jan
Emirates Airlines
Mindshare
Feb
Kimberly Clark
Global Malaysia
19 ISSUE267OCTOBER2020 | WEEKENDER SHOWCASE
Wolt, a leader in food delivery in the Baltic States, wanted to make a campaign that shows the positive side of staying at home. To achieve that, they decided to remind people that home is where you feel the most comfortable, and challenged them to feel proud instead of ashamed of their “home fashion�. Client Wolt Agency Bechtle & Milzarajs Country Lithuania