Marketing Magazine SG - Oct 2014 by Marketing Magazine Group

MARKETING MAGAZINE SINGAPORE EDITION

THE ART & SCIENCE OF CONNECTING WITH CONSUMERS

SINGAPORE

OCTOBER 2014

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

Elizabeth Low, Deputy Editor elizabethl@marketing-interactive.com Rezwana Manjur, Senior Journalist rezwanam@marketing-interactive.com Editorial – International Matt Eaton, Editor (Hong Kong) matte@marketing-interactive.com Oliver Bayani, Editor (Philippines) oliverb@marketing-interactive.com Production and Design Shahrom Kamarulzaman, Regional Art Director shahrom@lighthousemedia.com.sg Fauzie Rasid, Senior Designer fauzier@lighthousemedia.com.sg Advertising Sales – Singapore Che Winstrom, Sales Manager chew@marketing-interactive.com Johnathan Tiang, Senior Account Manager johnathant@marketing-interactive.com Trina Choy, Senior Account Manager trinac@marketing-interactive.com Joey Lau, Account Manager joeyl@marketing-interactive.com 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 Marketing June Tan, Regional Marketing Executive junet@lighthousemedia.com.sg Finance Evelyn Wong, Regional Finance Director evelynw@lighthousemedia.com.sg Management Søren Beaulieu, Publisher sorenb@marketing-interactive.com Tony Kelly, Editorial Director tk@marketing-interactive.com Justin Randles, Group Managing Director jr@marketing-interactive.com

Data and its role in the growth of a business isn’t new, but is more pronounced now in the digital era. Many brands we talk to – local and global – tell us they are in the midst of coming up with a proper strategy to harness the data they have. And what’s forcing them to do so is the rapid change in technology which enables brands to reach out to consumers in real-time. While essentially a rear-view mirror of the past, data is now being used to predict the future, a radical shift in the way it is utilised – all thanks to technology. A 2011 McKinsey study said the use of big data would become a key basis of competition and growth for individual firms. From the standpoint of competitiveness and the potential capture of value, all companies needed to take big data seriously. “In most industries, established competitors and new entrants alike will leverage datadriven strategies to innovate, compete, and capture value from deep and up-to-real-time information,” the study said. And now in the last quarter of 2014, we know this for a fact. I attended a recent event in which MasterCard launched its Priceless Engine platform. Priceless Engine is essentially a huge data and analytics centre which allows the brand to provide its bank partners with the deep insights that help them deliver the right offers to their customers at the right time. The Priceless Engine will see MasterCard leverage its depth of analytic capabilities to help its partner banks understand consumer sentiment and trends based on social conversations; track engagement and transactions on campaigns to translate these findings into meaningful feedback; create and share content across borders to increase scale; and finally analyse data in real-time.

Sam Ahmed, senior vice-president and group head of marketing for Asia Pacific at MasterCard, while launching the latest offering, put it aptly saying: “Big data is dead data if not used now.” That’s how vital harnessing data is in the scheme of things for businesses. Some brands have gained much success with their data strategy and are constantly evolving with the times. A section of those brands are joining us in November in a one-day conference titled Big Data Singapore 2014. They will share with you their journey of harnessing data, the challenges it threw and the rewards they reaped as a result of a cohesive strategy. Meanwhile, in this edition see how data has changed a CMOs job and what marketing really is from a CEO’s perspective. Enjoy the edition.

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

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

BIG DATA, BIG CHALLENGES AND EVEN BIGGER REWARDS

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

Rayana Pandey Editor

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CONTENTS FEA TU R ES 16 NEWS ANALYSIS: REASONS TO FIRE YOUR DIGITAL AGENCY “Digital agencies are not well-positioned to leverage the shift towards more performance-based marketing, driven by e-commerce.” Sheji Ho of aCommerce, writes.

22 PROFILE: LUCAS CHOW Known for his various roles in heading key Singapore firms, Lucas Chow gives Elizabeth Low a CEO’s take on good marketing.

28 NEWS ANALYSIS: FIVE THINGS SUCCESSFUL CMOS SHOULD DO CMOs reveal their biggest digital concerns. Here’s what it will take to turn the tide.

38 CONTENT MARKETING MASTER REPORT: Marketing explores content marketing strategies of key brands, as discussed by industry experts.

48 TV BROADCASTERS OF THE YEAR The TV medium has seen its fair share of competition as the digital realm poses new threats to the business, pushing broadcasters to innovate. Here are Singapore’s top broadcasters.

OPINIONS

D E PA RT M E NT S

20 AD WATCH/WEB WATCH

4 NEWS

Ogilvy & Mather Singapore’s Steve Walls applauds Mercedes-Benz’ Experiments, while Mediabrands Singapore’s Jacob Teo thinks AIA’s site shows perfect consistency.

Mercedes-Benz reviews its media agencies across the region; SPH Magazines acquires Luxury-Insider.com; Airbnb appoints Starcom for global media duties; plus Unilever appoints Arcade.

56 MOBILE MARKETING INTERACTIVE

21 DIRECT MAIL CASE STUDY

Top brands and agencies discuss their mobile marketing strategies at this conference. Here’s the best of them.

BackJoy became innovative with its invitation for a media event.

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30 16 KEY TAKEAWAYS: >> Where digital agencies fall short in an e-commerce era. >> CMOs’ biggest digital concerns. >> How marketing can gain clout in the C-suite. W W W .MA R KET ING - INT ERAC TIVE . COM

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ON THE COVER: Art direction: Shahrom Kamarulzaman; Photography: Teck Lim — Lumina (www.animulstudio.com)

Known for taking leadership roles across several key Singapore firms such as MediaCorp, Far East Organisation, SingTel, Health Promotion Board and more, Lucas Chow was also known as a CEO that was particularly vested in marketing. He makes a case for the function and why CEOs need good marketing. Page 22.

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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.

Getting online Retail outlet Watsons is looking to push into the e-commerce space with an online shopping portal. According to The Straits Times, the new site will allow customers to purchase products online and offers 30% to 40% of the store’s product offerings. This number is expected to rise over time. The date of the launch of the site has not been set at the time of print. Online dangers Recent police reports in Singapore showed there has been an increase in online fraud with new statistics indicating the fraud cases in e-commerce grew 425% in the ﬁrst half of this year as compared to the last. This comes as the e-commerce market in Asia Paciﬁc is on track to become one of the largest in the world by the end of 2014.

Game on Microsoft is partnering with StarHub to offer gamers who buy Microsoft’s Xbox One access to StarHub’s content under its console. By using StarHub’s TV Anywhere app on the Xbox One, existing StarHub subscribers can access 89 channels on the app. Meanwhile, non-subscribers will have access to the SuperSports Arena channel. Also just for Xbox One, the StarHub TV Anywhere app recognises voice and gesture commands.

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A win for Havas Worldwide Insurance-related services provider Tokio Marine Asia appointed Havas Worldwide Singapore its communication mandate across Southeast Asia. The agency bagged the account following a pitch. The appointment will see Havas Worldwide Singapore conceptualise and produce Tokio Marine’s ﬁrst ever SEA regional brand campaign. Havas Worldwide will be building from a brand positioning, look and feel that is newly deﬁned by branding agency, Brand Union.

A click away NTUC FairPrice extended its online store with the addition of a new service called Click & Collect. With the Click & Collect service, customers can order their items online and have the option of collecting their purchased items at preferred store locations at a convenient date and time. This comes as FairPrice online registered a year-on-year growth of 15% in sales for the ﬁrst half of this year. Expanding horizons The Singapore Tourism Board called for a pitch for the Indonesia market. It was looking for public relations and social media services agencies in the market. The tender closed on 19 September 2014. The appointment is for a period of two years with an option to extend for another year. The agency will be tasked to provide PR consultancy services for STB’s Indonesia-related marketing communications services.

On the hunt Mercedes-Benz is reviewing its media agencies across nine markets in Asia. Spokespersons for both Mercedes-Benz Malaysia and Singapore conﬁrmed pitches were ongoing in both markets. “We are currently carrying out a pitch in nine Mercedes-Benz markets throughout Asia to pool our media activities,” said a Mercedes-Benz Malaysia spokesperson. Marketing understands the Greater China market is also in the pitch. Kicking an addiction Addiction Advertising bagged duties for Singapore’s National Addictions Awareness Campaign and event for 2014. The campaign is scheduled to kick-off in October and will last until December 2014. The campaign will also culminate to an event on 23 November. The campaign is primarily targeted at youth and its purpose is to create public awareness on the various types of addictions. Heartwarming message OOH company Clear Channel partnered with media agency Initiative Singapore to launch visually interactive panels for Reckitt Benckiser’s new heart supplement, Schiff MegaRed. The creative agency behind the campaign is Havas BKK. These panels feature a LED heartbeat like a healthy heart which is lit up. It sends across a simple message to consumers that Schiff MegaRed is scientiﬁcally proven for a healthy heart.

A luxury pick-up Singapore Press Holdings’ subsidiary SPH Magazines will acquire luxury website LuxuryInsider.com from WhiteWave Media Group (WWMG), a regional luxury media group. LuxuryInsider.com was ﬁrst launched in 2006 by Julian Peh, CEO of WWMG, as Asia’s ﬁrst wholly digital luxury publication. Since its launch, it has steadily built on its position in online luxury publishing to expand its reach regionally. A new look From 1 October 2014, Wing Hang Bank is going to be known as OCBC Wing Hang. The new brand logo incorporates OCBC Bank’s signature Chinese sailing vessel symbol, which is said to be inspired by the enterprising spirit, resourcefulness and resilience of Southeast Asia’s pioneering immigrants. The words “OCBC” and “Wing Hang” are rendered in OCBC’s corporate red, and black.

Expanding options Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) bought a 22% stake in preschool and enrichment provider MindChamps Holdings. SPH paid about SG$12 million in cash for 110,000 shares in MindChamps PreSchool (Worldwide). This is SPH’s ﬁrst investment into the education business. MindChamps started in 2008 and has more than 20 pre-school outlets locally. It recently made an investment into real-time bidding platform Smaato.

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NEWS

Looking for an agency The Singapore Economic Development Board is looking to appoint an integrated marketing agency with a strong production and digital asset development background. The 17-month appointment, with an option to extend the partnership by a year, will be to promote the Precision Engineering industry. The campaign launched will be primarily targeted at “N” level students, and students from the Institute of Technical Education enrolled in selected courses.

Sneak peek Here’s a peek at this year’s Grand Prix trophy. The trophy is said to embody innovation, technology and precision. Incorporating the airline’s iconic logo, the trophy’s three gold stripes represent power, direction and speed, while the clean curves imbue a touch of elegance and beauty. The seven rings on the trophy pay tribute to the longevity of the world’s ﬁrst F1 night race.

A new home The Singapore Flyer ﬁnally found a new owner in Straco Leisure, a subsidiary of Straco Corporation, which bought the local attraction for SG$140 million. Straco Corp runs tourist attractions in China and is known for marketing several successful tourist attractions. A statement on the Singapore Exchange website said the acquisition was in line with the company’s “expansion of the group’s core tourism-related business”.

Poking fun IKEA launched a new ad campaign to counter the notion of the print medium dying. In its latest spot to promote its 2015 catalogue, IKEA positions its book in a way tech devices have often been promoted. The campaign runs in Singapore and Malaysia using the full range of media – from newspaper ads to OOH and more.

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Keeping promises Etiqa, the insurance arm of Maybank Group, has launched a new campaign with the help of local creative agency Blak Labs. The campaign aims to depict the power of promises. The campaign, which runs on OOH, print and radio, has the tag line: “Promises made, promises kept.” Maybank expanded its regional footprint with the launch of Etiqa Life Insurance in Singapore earlier this month.

Seizing the moment Evian kicked off its latest “Live Young Now Starter” campaign, which encouraged Singaporeans to seize the moment. Evian partnered with like-minded brands for the campaign to induce spontaneity by giving away free experiences. The wide range of prizes were dispensed through an Evian “Live Young Now Starter” which was a ﬂoating orb that was activated when consumers engaged in spontaneous activities in front of it.

Time to play Johnson’s Baby Active Fresh and BBDO Singapore partnered to conduct a social experiment to promote outdoor physical playtime for children. Because parents in Singapore focus on educational activities, with limited free time for unstructured play, the “Play Experiment” is designed to show parents how children are becoming conditioned into making choices that keep them sedentary, even when given the opportunity to be active.

An overhaul With the recent opening of its regional headquarters, Philips also launched its digital regional command centre, which promises a major overhaul of how it does marketing. The move will have several key factors to it: a mapped out editorial approach, along with real-time conversations with the public and inﬂuencers, and involve its various agencies working together in-house at the command centre.

Looking sharp Microsoft unveiled a ﬁrst look of the new MSN Today for the Asia Paciﬁc region. The new MSN combines premium content from the world’s leading media outlets with personal productivity tools from hotel booking engines to shopping list generators. Viewers can see the new MSN at preview. msn.com. The new design is aimed at enabling consumers to easily navigate the interface and read content that is most important to them.

Unilever appoints Arcade Following a review, Unilever appointed Arcade to handle digital, social media and activation campaigns for its Fruttare ice Popsicle range in the region. The campaign will be launched in phases across various Southeast Asia markets. Fruttare, also known as Wall’s Buavita in Indonesia, is known for its upbeat, fun brand image which has connected with millennials in recent years.

What’s that smell? Would you like garlic scents spritzed at you from a bus stop ad? We’re not sure we do, but this ad certainly scored points for novelty. This was part of Disney’s integrated publicity campaign for The Hundred-Foot Journey. Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, the campaign ran on Clear Channel’s platform at bus stops, particularly ones close to “food meccas” in Singapore.

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NEWS

Have an adventure Heineken launched its latest campaign, “The Adventure” and the Heineken Cities Festival in Singapore. The Heineken “Cities of the World” is a global campaign aimed at inspiring one to “open your city and perspectives, and live worldly adventures”. The local activation celebrates the launch of the limited city edition Heineken bottles, a social video called “The Adventure” and the Heineken Cities Festival. A fashionable appointment J.P. Morgan and Tesco-funded e-commerce site Lazada Fashion appointed DFW Creative as its public relations agency after a pitch. DFW Creative is partnering with Lazada Fashion to provide lifestyle media relations counsel and to raise awareness of the company’s new-to-market fashion category in the Southeast Asia markets. In 2014, DFW Creative has served lifestyle PR clients such as Italian fashion label Furla and the newly opened Orchard Gateway shopping mall.

Starcom wins account Days after settling its creative account, Airbnb handed its global media buying and planning duties to Starcom. In Asia, Starcom is handling markets such as Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Australia and China. The account is led from the US with the agency working with international ofﬁces to develop locally relevant strategies. Meanwhile, TBWA took home the global creative mandate for Airbnb.

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Getting localised ESPN FC unveiled a brand new Southeast Asian edition of ESPNFC.com. According to Mike Morrison, vice president and general manager of ESPN Asia Paciﬁc, ESPN FC is a “central part of ESPN’s commitment to the coverage of global football into the future” and across media screens globally. The new localised site reﬂects its focus on building global products that can deliver relevant content locally.

A pleasurable experience Unilever’s ice-cream brand Magnum appointed Arcade its regional agency for digital and activation duties in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. The agency is helping the brand work on its 25th anniversary and the campaign promises to celebrate the “pleasure principle”. The agency was appointed without a pitch for a period of four months. Work is being led out of the Singapore ofﬁce.

A bigger piece As Amobee completes the acquisitions of Adconion Direct and Kontera, it plans on diversifying and diving further into the digital sphere. Quoting ﬁgures from eMarketer, Mark Strecker (pictured), CEO of Amobee said this move is a strategic one for the company as worldwide digital ad spend will increase 16.7% in 2014, totaling over US$140 billion and surpassing 25% of all media ad spend.

Getting in the hot seat English general entertainment channel AXN brought popular reality show The Voice to the streets. It branded several SMRT trains with the faces of new celebrity coaches such as Gwen Stefani and Pharrell Williams. As part of the experience, commuters can sit in the iconic “hot seat” and take selﬁes with the four coaches – Gwen Stefani, Pharrell, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton.

Getting future ready NTUC Income is working with BBH Asia Paciﬁc for its brand campaign challenging Singaporeans to be “future ready” before they meet their future “older selves” and realise they have not prepared themselves for old age. The integrated campaign – “Future You” – features creative work telling the story of young people who meet their future selves in good and bad scenarios.

Changing directions Accor shifted its global luxury and upscale marketing operations from Paris to Singapore. This comes as Accor launches several high-end hotels across Asia Pacific such as Sofitel So Singapore, Pullman Shanghai South and Sofitel Sydney. According to the company, the “move signals the growing importance of Asia Pacific in these [luxury] segments with Asian consumers now accounting for almost half of global luxury sales”.

Game on UOB bank launched a campaign to communicate to its consumers that e-statements are now available. This comes as the bank decides to push the idea of “Go Paperless, Go Online”. Through the campaign, the bank wanted to seed the idea that online banking can be fun and rewarding for customers. Hoping to target the younger audience, it launched with a gamiﬁcation approach.

Adding some bite Electronic payments service ACI Worldwide appointed Bite its PR agency in Singapore, India and Australia. Bite is leading an integrated PR and social media campaign to promote ACI Worldwide’s brand proﬁle as the universal payments company in all three markets. Bite is also tasked to establish the company at the forefront of this digital disruption and build its presence surrounding its roadshow, ACI Exchange APAC.

Settling in Singapore Management University settled both its creative and media pitch. The local university appointed Wild Advertising & Marketing as its creative agency of record for two years while ZenithOptimedia bagged its media account. The agencies were both appointed following a pitching process. The creative pitch saw nearly 10 creative agencies vying for the account and a ﬁnal four was short listed.

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NEWS

Going digital After taking over the licence to publish Esquire from South China Media, SCMP group launched the digital platform, EsquireHK. com. It will follow suit with its US counterpart, carrying lifestyle and fashion content, reviews and interviews. The site went live on 1 September. An online campaign, “Are you THE MAN?” preceded the website launch. Pushing the right buttons Twitter is testing its “buy” button so consumers can purchase directly from tweets on its platform. According to global reports, Twitter partnered payments company Stripe Inc allowing it to save a person’s credit card information.

Getting active Japanese creative ﬁrm Hakuhodo has started offering its new tool called Activation-Ad. ActivationAd is a new technology that links consumers’ smartphone apps to real-world ads containing built-in beacons. The tool alerts consumers via an app on their smartphone from ads outdoors, on transit, in store or in the form of direct mail and pushes a message to them just as they notice the ad.

Not so traditional Xiaomi, the rising star of China’s smartphone market, will let its fans do all the talking in the Philippines, skipping a dependence on celebrity endorsers. Hugo Barra, VP of Xiaomi Global said the brand will be relying on social media and e-commerce.

HOW MUCH DOES THAT COST?

FAST AND FURIOUS

PUMA launched its new brand platform, Forever Faster, with a brand promise it was the fastest sports brand in the world. The PUMA team utilised Orchard Station to captivate audiences with ambient advertising combined with an electrifying video. This video also featured some of the world’s fi nest sporting personalities such as Mario Balotelli, Sergio Aguero and Usain Bolt. To increase engagement with the public, commuters were also instantly rewarded when they walked

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through Orchard Media Hub Wall linkway. A special panel with 400 peelable stickers was installed allowing customers to peel off a discount coupon to enjoy instant deals at the PUMA shop in Ion Orchard. The campaign ran from 7 August 2014 to 3 September 2014. The rack rates for the Media Hub Wall and floor stickers were about SG$120,000 for the four-week campaign. Meanwhile, the peelable stickers cost about SG$6,000 for about 800 stickers.

Reduce, reuse, recycle In a recycling move-cum-marketing stunt, Emirates made its huge OOH ad banner into shopping bags. The airline transformed a 208 square metre poster for its Hello Tomorrow campaign into more than 300 quirky and reusable shopping bags. The PVC material of the poster, originally displayed outside Zurich Airport, was repurposed into a limited edition line of “up-cycled” shopping bags. On the GO again Independent PR network GO Communications has formed a partnership with SKPR Asia in Indonesia. In 2010, SKPR Asia became the first Indonesian PR consultancy from East Java to open an office in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, said a release from the agency. The GO Group’s partnership offices in Asia now include Indonesia, China, Japan, Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, India and Sri Lanka.

A team effort One of India’s biggest business conglomerates, Tata Group, appointed JWT as the creative agency for its global brand campaign. The campaign seeks to present three core messages about the Tata brand – it is global, trustworthy and a good corporate citizen. The account was awarded following a pitch with multiple agencies participating. JWT’s London, New York and Mumbai ofﬁces worked together to win the pitch.

Giving confidence Visa launched a new campaign in India to give consumers the confidence to make purchases online with their Visa Debit card. The new campaign, created by BBDO, is targeted towards Visa Debit cardholders who are helping to drive the significant growth of eCommerce in India. The new campaign runs on TV, digital and social media channels to target consumers along their online path to purchase.

A new look Amid declining sales, Abercrombie & Fitch decided to undergo a revamp, stripping its iconic logo off its products. This is a major step for the retailer which is known for its brand being splashed right across its products. CEO Mike Jeffries said in the past quarter, despite the “great progress” made in evolving the fashion component of the company’s assortment, the fashion environment had been challenging.

For the elite Gucci came on board CNN International’s media platform to increase brand awareness and promote its Men’s Tailoring collection during the Milan, Paris, New York and London fashion weeks that took place in September. The new campaign on CNN consisted of a month of 30-second advertising spots, the sponsorship of a theme week of travel features called Elite Escapes and integrated digital elements.

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NEWS

AUDIT WATCH

KEEPING ITS EDGE

Exploring new routes AirAsia launched Redbox, a new low-cost express courier and parcel delivery service. AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes said for the brand to remain “in the forefront of the industry and to continue with its pledge to provide services at the lowest fares and rates”, constant innovation and improvements to the current products services were very important. Currently ancillary income adds about 20% to the brand’s revenue. More on offer Spotify’s marketing platform is launching two new video ad formats that will now be seen globally by its 30 million-plus free user base. These ad formats are titled “Sponsored Sessions” and “Video Takeover”. For now, the video ad formats will only be available in six markets in the fourth quarter: United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Sweden. They will be available globally in 2015.

One and only To reinforce its brand positioning – “The Only True White Coffee in the Market – OldTown White Coffee rolled out an ad campaign spanning social media, mobile, television and below-the-line activities. Developed by Maxus Hong Kong and GroupM Social Hub Hong Kong, the campaign starts with OOH and print advertising, sampling at commercial buildings and a street interview with ofﬁce workers by celebrity DJ Sammy Leung.

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It has been 11 years since its fi rst circulation audit, and The Edge Singapore is still going strong with its audited approach for advertisers. The Edge Singapore was launched in April 2002 and a year later had its fi rst annual audit, managing director Edward Stanislaus told Marketing. In a market where few do official audits, Marketing asked him the benefits of having the publication’s circulation audited. “With an audited circulation, we provide credibility. Our advertisers know exactly how efficiently and effectively their budgets are deployed when they invest in The Edge,” he said. Do these benefits outweigh the cost and trouble of doing it? “Absolutely,” he said. The cost is an acceptable part of doing business as a responsible publisher, he added.

“We fi rmly believe it is our responsibility to our advertisers to provide an audited circulation. The benefit is The Edge is well regarded and, hence, readily included in their media plans.” The latest audit by ABC Singapore was for FY2013 with a circulation of 24,047 comprising both print and digital editions.

A warning sign While investment in programmatic advertising is set to rise, it looks like dollars will be increasingly directed towards independent trading desks and away from agency trading desks. According to a survey by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), the use of agency trading desks declined by 15% year-on-year, while usage of independent trading desks has more than tripled. ASOS appoints agency ASOS appointed global marketing and tech agency DigitasLBi to steer its social media content management and digital campaigns across Chinese social channels Weibo and WeChat. DigitasLBi is tasked to enhance the ASOS brand, converse with customers and promote its range of products. It is also working with ASOS China to enhance customer awareness and engagement through a content and activation launch campaign on Weibo and WeChat. (pictured: Lamy Zhang, managing director, China, DigitasLBi)

A sweet deal Unilever appointed DDB its creative agency to run the full Wall’s icecream brand creatives globally. DDB was already handling the bulk of Wall’s business in Europe and the new assignments sees the agency pick up the brand in Southeast Asia and Latin American (LATAM). The LATAM region was previously managed by Lowe.

A first look WPP’s Y&R Advertising is acquiring the creative and research agency of MCS Holding, one of Mongolia’s largest conglomerates. The deal marks WPP’s first acquisition in Mongolia. In addition, Y&R becomes the first global ad network to establish a majorityowned agency office in the country. This acquisition marks a further step towards WPP’s declared goal of developing its networks in fast-growth markets and sectors.

Game on Amazon.com has acquired all of live video game streaming ﬁrm Twitch’s shares for about US$970 million. “Broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon and Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people who watch billions of minutes of games each month,” said Jeff Bezos (pictured), founder and CEO of Amazon.com. Twitch launched in June 2011 to focus exclusively on live video for gamers. A new addition Social media management platform Hootsuite launched Hootsuite Campaigns with added tools for brands to manage campaigns. The addition comes following the company’s acquisition of Brightkit, an engagement platform for creating customised social marketing campaigns. Hootsuite Campaigns touts more than 13 types of different social contests, sweepstakes and galleries to attract followers. It claims to deliver high-impact and measurable results across embedded microsites, Facebook and mobile devices.

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

1 Campaign Where sport goes boom Brief The campaign aims to create excitement and anticipation around the launch of FOX Sports – delivered through disruptive and high impact activity going beyond traditional media. The job scope covers the launch campaign that includes TV, print, activation and digital for regional markets that includes Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam. Client

FOX Sports

Creative

The Alchemy Partnership

Media

FOX Sports

2 Campaign The state of fun Brief Sentosa Development Corporation (SDC) launched its newest marketing campaign – looking to heavily target locals in the first year of the push. The main thrust of the campaign is aimed at deepening SDC’s emotional connection with guests, and portraying a fun and engaging brand, so as to keep Sentosa top-of-mind among target audiences. The campaign intends to draw locals and foreign guests who have not visited the island in a while. Client

Sentosa Development Corporation

Creative

Grey Singapore

Media

OMD

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3 Campaign Promises Brief Etiqa, the insurance arm of Maybank Group, launched a new campaign to depict the power of promises. The campaign, which runs on OOH, print and radio, aims to help people fulfil the promises they make to themselves and their loved ones. Client

Etiqa

Creative

Blak Labs

Media

ZenithOptimedia

4 Campaign IKEA Catalogue: Experience the power of a book Brief IKEA launched a new ad campaign to counter the notion of the print medium dying. In its latest spot to promote its 2015 catalogue, IKEA positions its book in a way tech devices have often been promoted. The campaign runs in Singapore and Malaysia using the full range of media â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from full page newspaper ads to six-sheet outdoor, radio and cinema to a sleek 3D animated microsite.

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Client

IKANO Retail Asia

Creative

BBH Asia Pacific

Media

OMD Singapore

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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7/10/2014 6:24:09 PM

28 NOVEMBER 2014, 9AM FOUR SEASONS HOTEL SINGAPORE B2B marketing is no longer the ‘poor cousin’ of B2C marketing. Hence, we’re bringing to you our inaugural B2B marketing forum.

You’ll get to hear best practices from the following:

Rashish Pandey Director, marketing, Asia Paciﬁc Cisco

KP Unnikrishnan Marketing director, Asia Paciﬁc & Japan Palo Alto Networks

Eric Chong Senior director channel marketing, APAC Trend Micro

To register, please visit www.marketing-interactive.com/b2b-marketing/sg or contact Carlo Reston at carlor@marketing-interactive.com

EAR IRD

LY B

For sponsorship queries, please contact Che Winstrom at chew@marketing-interactive.com

ES RAT OF

For speaker or agenda queries, please contact Ambrish Bandalkul at ambrishb@marketing-interactive.com or call +65 6423 0329

S$ Y PPL TILL

Brought to you by:

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8/10/2014 3:49:48 PM

NEWS ANALYSIS

PHILIPS OVERHAULS MARKETING APPROACH The most unique version of a content marketing programme existing, says Philips’ Damien Cummings. Elizabeth Low reports. “This is an evolving target, but we expect to have 4000 to 5000 pieces of content per conversation.”

Philips brings its agencies inhouse for the command centre.

With the recent opening of its regional headquarters, Philips has also launched its digital regional command centre, which promises to make a major overhaul of how it does marketing. The command centre will combine social monitoring and content creation around live conversations. The move will have several key factors to it: a mapped out editorial approach, along with real-time conversations with the public and influencers, and will involve its various agencies working together in-house at the command centre. Damien Cummings, chief marketing officer at Philips ASEAN and Pacific, says the model is unique. “Social listening and command centres are not unique. That has been around for a while. Agency co-location – some interesting models are those of Enfatico for Dell or Cheil for Samsung – it has existed before and we are not proposing that. The in-house production studio, yes that has happened before so nothing new there, but the amplification is unique. “So add them all together, as far as we

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know, this is the most unique version of a content marketing programme that exists in the world. It is certainly the biggest in Asia and, as far as we understand it, is the biggest in the world. “This would give us high core measurement from marketing and structure and able to take the guesswork out of marketing.” He said the company had identified five key conversations it wanted to own: Clean air; smart home; look good, feel good; ageing well and connected work spaces. This was for its three main sectors of business: healthcare, consumer living and lighting. “Once we have thought leadership and a clear stake in the ground, we will sell more products,” he said. Content approach In terms of editorial, the brand intends to create three types of content: Longer form content such as research papers and documentaries (for example, on clean air); editorial pieces such as blogs, press releases and articles and lastly, social media posts such as Facebook posts, tweets, etc.

Social monitoring 50% to 70% of the content would be planned, but the other 30% or so would be in real-time response. The company has teamed up with Salesforce and its properties (Radian6 and Buddy Media) to create its own social media monitoring dashboards to allow monitoring of key conversations across social media around the brand. It also uses Traackr, which allows the brand to monitor key influencers for the brand. “For instance, if a user were to wake up and complain about high PSI ratings, the brand could possibly respond to that and perhaps send a link to an infographic on how to make your home a haze shelter. Then it would link back to our view on air purifiers and respiratory illnesses, then how a buyer can link with us,” he said. Aside from its existing branded social media assets, Philips will also be looking at creating unbranded community groups on the topics it wants a voice on. This will also include content from third-party creators. Leveraging existing platforms Aside from looking at marketing content through existing platforms – Philips.com and Philips stores – it is working with LinkedIn to look at all its existing Philips employees who have Linkedin profiles and rewrite their profiles. (11,000 employees have LinkedIn profiles in Asia.) A pilot programme to test it out with the top 10 executives, such as CEO Harjit Gill and president of healthcare Arjen Radder, has already begun. This will be ramped up later in the year. Agency co-creation The command centre will see its agencies FleishmanHillard, Ogilvy & Mather, Carat and Havas working in-house at the unit when it comes to campaign work for Philips – which will allow for easier collaboration. However, all data will stay strictly in-house at Philips. The brand is in the midst of finalising the roles of the various agencies.

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“What’s the magic word?” Remember this question our parents and teachers might have asked when we were kids? The question we would probably ask our own children to get them to say THE magic word. Not abracadabra, please. Thank you. Even before we started school, it was inculcated in us to say ‘thank you’ every time a favour is done for us.

Kia o on g e ra k a Dan d 谢谢 Ευχαριστώ gge

ありがとう

감사합니다 Terim

Merci

In the sea of emails we receive and send out every day, do we remember to say our thanks? Sure, we readily give our thanks when we write to our beloved clients and

a Ka ¢Íº¤Ø³ÁÒ¡ sih

customers. After all, it’s about client retention and building good relationships.

Thank You

lunch or work late so we don’t have to? How often do we stop to give credit to a

Salama Räxmät t äsi

Tenn

The

Power of

Tack Gra cias

Gunalchéesh gadu i r b O G rassie azas r g h c l Дякую Dio ảm ơn ng ala o vobis ag Gratias

ရပါတယ်။

Kiitos

唔該

Quyanaq

т! е хм а Р

But what about the emails we send to our colleagues, the very people who skip designer’s illustrations, a producer’s timeline, a director’s visual input or an editor’s first cut? Do we thank each one for the effort put in first, or do we jump straight into assessing the work? Someone shared with me recently how she was taken aback by her superior’s acknowledgement of her work. For her, it seemed almost a given that her email sent to the team would get no response. Yet, her superior appreciated her time and thoughts invested in the work through a simple email reply, “thanks for the hard work.” This gesture, seemingly insignificant to an outsider, had a gargantuan impact on the receiver. Maybe that’s why working at freeflow is such a joy. We express our appreciation to each other, regardless of positions, personalities and departments. After all, don’t we all need motivational boosts every now and then? By Stacey Leong, a writer at freeflow who thanks you immensely for reading this.

freeflow.com.sg vimeo.com/freeflowproductions facebook.com/freeflowproductions

Kia o on g e ra k a Dan d 谢谢 Ευχαριστώ gge

ありがとう

감사합니다 Terim

Merci

In the sea of emails we receive and send out every day, do we remember to say our thanks? Sure, we readily give our thanks when we write to our beloved clients and

a Ka ¢Íº¤Ø³ÁÒ¡ sih

customers. After all, it’s about client retention and building good relationships.

Thank You

lunch or work late so we don’t have to? How often do we stop to give credit to a

Salama Räxmät t äsi

Tenn

The

Power of

Tack Gra cias

Gunalchéesh gadu i r b O G rassie azas r g h c l Дякую Dio ảm ơn ng ala o vobis ag Gratias

ရပါတယ်။

Kiitos

唔該

Quyanaq

т! е хм а Р

freeflow.com.sg vimeo.com/freeflowproductions facebook.com/freeflowproductions

NEWS ANALYSIS

5 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD FIRE YOUR DIGITAL AGENCY Are digital agencies positioned for a shift towards performance-based marketing, driven by e-commerce?

In e-commerce marketing, the goal is not to spend more, but spend better. Can agencies do that?

The vast majority are not suited for e-commerce. In the Wall Street Journal, Jeff Lanctot wrote, “The days of arbitraging media without adding value are at an end”, and explained why ad agencies must change or else risk being dumped by brands completely. As the CMO for one of Southeast Asia’s only turnkey e-commerce service providers, we see the urgency for evolution is stronger than ever as brands rapidly shift gears towards winning the online retail space. Brands and their agencies need to mobilise quickly in the land grab for the Southeast Asian online market share. And performance marketing is the fastest way to stake the flag. So far, advertising agencies have managed to survive the disruption caused by the internet by forming digital units to capitalise on the

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growth in online advertising. Today, 22% of marketing budgets in the US is spent online with the share expected to grow to 25% by 2015 according to ZenithOptimedia. In response, digital agencies have adapted to provide a wide array of services such as online branding, display, social and search. Within online advertising, the trend has been a shift towards direct response or performance marketing. According to a recent eMarketer study, 22% of online advertising spend in the US is from retail, with nearly two-thirds of this going to direct response marketing channels such as search engine marketing. This doesn’t even include the growing share of direct response marketing in other industries impacted by the shift towards e-commerce. In emerging markets such as Southeast

Asia, we expect the share of performance marketing to be even greater than in the US. This is because of the lack of an entrenched, legacy offline advertising business as well as the fact these markets are leapfrogging desktop internet and jumping straight into mobile. Digital agencies are not well-positioned to leverage this shift towards more performancebased marketing driven by e-commerce. This time around it will be harder for them to catch up with e-commerce. Why? Because in e-commerce marketing, the goal is not to spend more, but spend better. 1. Inefficient marketing spend Selling banners online is not that different from selling print ads or outdoor billboard ads. But doing marketing for e-commerce businesses is fundamentally different and is in principle against

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Communications in Asia is evolving. Are you?

Curious to know how some of the top brands are getting it right in creating, deploying and refining best communications strategies in public relations?

Featured speakers include

Rachael Milford Regional director – Asia Pacific marketing & communications Cushman & Wakeﬁeld

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NEWS ANALYSIS

the DNA of digital agencies, as one of the biggest and most scalable sources of income for them is management fees on media buying. To make more money, the agencies need to convince their clients to spend more money. Usually this means spending money more inefficiently due to diminishing returns in channels such as display advertising and search engine marketing as volume increases and targeting moves from specific to generic audiences. This is called “the law of diminishing returns” or “the law of shitty click-throughs” in internet marketing parlance, where more scale means less qualified customers. But in e-commerce marketing, the goal is not to spend more, but to spend better. This translates into spending less, reasoning in line with the “law of shitty click-throughs”. Adopting this kind of model would mean suicide for digital agencies unless there’s another component of revenue. 2. Tweets, likes and other vanity metrics do not drive revenue. Performance marketing for e-commerce is also different in that it’s very data-driven and technical. People working in this area need to go beyond the usual digital agency vanity metrics such as impressions and clicks and instead think in terms of ROI (return on investment), CLTV (customer lifetime value), CAC (customer acquisition cost), and attribution modelling. All these require working with large data sets and SQL databases (a special programming language for data). Understanding which metrics matter and how to work with data to optimise towards those metrics is a key success factor in e-commerce businesses. 3. Skill sets are completely different According to McKinsey, one of the biggest challenges for organisations in our digital age is finding talent with deep analytical skills and with the know-how of how to work with data. In e-commerce businesses this is even more of an issue because of the vast amount of data available. In this competitive landscape, organisations who put emphasis on developing technical marketing skills on an individual level are more likely to succeed. We’re talking about developing people who know how to pull data from databases via SQL themselves and perform in-depth analysis. Extra value is put on employees who go beyond this and are also capable of writing code to pull data via different APIs. Gone are the days of submitting an IT request or bribing your colleagues in your business intelligence department to take care of your ad hoc analysis. Marketers are expected to be able to pull the data, run the analysis, and run fast executions.

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4. So are the people you need to hire. Don Drapers on the decline. Growth hacking may be becoming a buzz word to many, but the fundamental shift of marketing to technical is here to stay, as is evidenced in this recent Harvard Business Review article on the rise of the chief marketing technologist. The typical roles at digital agencies such as account managers, media planners, creative directors, and “digital strategy directors” are ill-equipped to do marketing for e-commerce. Most of these people have marketing or communications backgrounds. I’d like to propose a “Moneyball” approach to talent and where companies look for a diverse set of people with backgrounds in business, engineering, finance, statistics and accounting for our marketing positions. Two of our recent top hires majored in aeronautical engineering and accounting with no prior digital or marketing experience at all. This is not a new concept – Rocket Internet has been doing this all along across its ventures where they focus on hiring for talent rather than experience with new hires coming from diverse backgrounds. What we’re doing today isn’t marketing (or God forbid – marketing communications) – it is business and finance. Managing different channels such as Google Search, Facebook Ads and Email Marketing isn’t marketing, it’s investment portfolio management. Optimising campaigns isn’t marketing, it’s algorithmic trading. Performance marketing for revenue-share partnerships as well as SEO isn’t marketing, it’s financial arbitrage. Marketing for e-commerce requires a fundamental paradigm shift with more emphasis on people who are comfortable working with data and the latest technologies. Digital agencies who refuse to acknowledge this revolution will end up missing the boat. 5. Misaligned incentive structures As mentioned above, the typical digital agency model is geared towards greater spend on media buying, whose primary measurement of success is the number of clicks or impressions not orders or revenue. While this has salience in brand awareness, it does not convert eyeballs into sales and that’s where effective e-commerce marketing must go the extra mile with campaigns, for example, leveraging dynamic re-targeting on ad networks such as Facebook Ad Exchange or driving campaigns on mobile that focus on product selling. The fault is not necessarily the agencies. Often the brand does not allow the agencies to go deep into the right metrics: acquisition, activation and retention. As a result, agencies are not positioned to see the end-to-end, making the entire incentive structure misaligned.

We realised early on that we would have to shape ourselves to sustain this more ROIbased model of marketing or face internet Darwinism. We weren’t alone in this. Other end-to-end e-commerce service providers such as eBay Enterprise (formerly GSI Commerce) and Singpost SP eCommerce have invested in the whole e-commerce cycle from marketing all the way to fulfillment and delivery because ultimately, these enablers could not depend on the impressions or tweets of their clients’ creative agencies to convert. We care about the order volume, making our incentives aligned with those of our clients and making both parties benefit from better and smarter marketing, not more marketing. A good example of this is the LINE chat sales channel in Thailand that 5.5 million users subscribed to. Rather than push out advertisements through the chat app, LINE partnered with brands (through aCommerce’s marketing initiative) and pushed interesting products for which users could buy directly off the app, of which aCommerce fulfilled on the back end. Another example of this symbiotic partnership is with one of our biggest clients, L’Oréal Thailand, in a revenue-share partnership. Every dollar we make from selling and delivering products gets reinvested back in the partnership in the form of marketing. As long as ROI’s are positive, we keep pushing more marketing. One of the biggest drivers for success for e-commerce marketing in Southeast Asia was ensuring the gains were mutually beneficial. What happens next? Consequently, many e-commerce players and online businesses have deferred to building their own in-house teams so they may leverage the data from the end-to-end process for more targeted marketing. For example, Facebook and Spotify have their own “growth” teams that do all the online marketing and measures the performance and focus on acquisition, activation and retention. A regular digital agency will never be able to fully do that. That doesn’t mean that advertising and digital agencies cannot evolve to meet the new demands of e-commerce marketing. However, it will require an immense infrastructural shift, one that requires reworking of the traditional ad spend revenue model, different KPIs, human resources and an overall understanding of how e-commerce is transforming the consumer landscape. The lines between product awareness and product consumption are blurred. It is up to agencies to adapt or risk being dumped by their brands. The writer is Sheji Ho, group chief marketing officer at aCommerce.

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OPINION: AD WATCH/WEB WATCH

Steve Walls Head of planning Ogilvy & Mather Singapore

AD WATCH HOT: Mercedes-Benz Experiments: Air

NOT: Singapore Cancer Society: No excuse not to screen

It’s easy to get carried away with technology. It’s even easier to go into salivating detail when that technology is attached to a car. And so I applaud BBDO’s “MercedesBenz Experiments” series for introducing technology with a restraint that’s perfectly on brand. Simple, well-shot and well-paced short films bring a new tech feature of the car to life via an equally stripped-back science experiment. No car shots, no mountain roads, no hyperbolic claims, no exclamation marks, no science lessons; just a sense of wonder at what science can do – and a sense of admiration for a brand that can remind me of that. I’ll give this series 4/5, if only for not shouting at me.

I hate hating an ad aimed at reducing the number of breast cancer-related deaths in Singapore but I really do hate this one – mainly because something this important shouldn’t have advertising this weak. The premise of the spot is simple. Too few women go for potentially life-saving early screening. Too many women have ready excuses as to why they don’t. “You make excuses not to screen,” it says. “You must stop,” it commands. It seems to suggest women across the island are saying,“I’d like to, but I’m washing my hair”. The problem is there’s no attempt to understand why women make excuses. What fears lie behind the easy dodges? It shows no understanding of the fact that behaviour change in the face of fear, possible illness and death needs more than a simple, “stop behaving that way (you silly tart)”. It’s lazy advertising in an area that needs real smarts.

Jacob Teo Digital head Mediabrands Singapore

WEB WATCH HOT: aia.com.sg

NOT: axa.com.sg

Who says a website can’t have a balance of form and functionality? In the world of clinical financial transactions, AIA manages to stand above the rest with its clean and crisp consistency that ultimately makes its site work organically harder. Here’s why: Excellent navigation with mouse over drop-down, checked! Succinctly compacted masthead rotator, checked! All the information you’d need within the first fold, checked! Visible social plug-ins, checked! To be sure, it is site architecture and content restraint at its finest without compromising the architecture, while still managing to give all the information at one glance for online audiences known for their notoriously short attention span. The result? Top scores for its natural search result ranking against a highly competitive environment. And the icing on the cake is it managed to break the myth that CMS can be one cold and unimaginative machine wholly reserved as a painless quick fix.

On the flip side, AXA, another of AIA’s competitors in the field, should take note of what it did when pursuing optimised CMS solutions. But top navigation buttons seemed out of sync with its layout, missing hyperlinks on the copy head that would aim to increase easy clickthroughs, disengaged sub-sections that seemed to look like individual microsites, and social plug-ins located at the bottom fold of the home page with the assumption that everyone else that lands on the page would have taken the trouble to scroll. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. It seemed like a decent layout, but where translation seemed to have been lost in the process of actual content population. One can only lament all the missed opportunities of converting beyond a second page, due to its confusing navigation and blink-and-you’ll miss hyperlinks and blue-muted coloured form tabs. It’s important for marketers to regard their online assets as a vital touch-point.

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DIRECT MAIL CASE STUDY

A SPECIAL INVITATION BackJoy became innovative with its invitation for a media event. Here’s what it did. BackJoy was launching its StandRight Footwear collection and wanted to create an eyecatching and fashionable invitation card. Because this was BackJoy’s first footwear collection, a fashion shot featuring a beautiful young model with its new Zen collection was used on the card. A mini BackJoy Posture Plus keychain was hooked onto the card to capture the guest’s curiosity upon receiving the card and to use it as an entry pass to the event venue. It was functional and aesthetically attractive. An intimate high tea media presentation (of about 40 to 50) for the regional and local press and guests was arranged so they could meet the CEO and founder; witness the new StandRight Footwear collection and introduce BackJoy’s other posture-related products. Also invited were local and overseas guests, business associates and VIP customers. The dangling mini BackJoy Posture Plus keychain attached to the invitation card generated a lot of curiosity and caught the eye of many of the invited guests. The invitation cards were hand delivered to the respective media guests and local partners. More than 65 guests from Singapore and the region attended the event at One Altitude. We also received enquiries asking us about what BackJoy does and some members of the media also requested additional mini keychains. Because of the overwhelming response to the BackJoy mini keychain, we decided to use the keychain as a gift with a purchase. Customers who purchased any BackJoy products received the keychain during the promotion period.

THE MAIL Objective: To publicise the launch of BackJoy’s StandRight Footwear collection.

Idea: A fashionable invitation card with a keychain on it as an entry pass to a media event.

Results: More than 65 guests from Singapore and the region attended the event.

Doreen Lee Senior regional manager sales and marketing, APAC BackJoy

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PROFILE

KNOWN FOR HIS VARIOUS ROLES IN HEADING KEY SINGAPORE FIRMS, LUCAS CHOW TELLS ELIZABETH LOW WHY HE IS ONE OF THE MOST MARKETING-SAVVY LEADERS IN TOWN. W W W .MA R KET ING - INT ERAC TIVE . COM

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Art Direction: Shahrom Kamarulzaman; Photography: Teck Lim — Lumina Photography (www.animulstudio.com)

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PROFILE

Lucas Chow recalls how he was first tempted to come to Singapore. As a student in his university days, he recalls seeing a poster of Singapore with beautiful white sand beaches, “looking like Hawaii”. “However, I remember coming over and trying to swim in Changi Beach. A taxi driver said I was crazy,” laughs Chow, as he speaks about his interest in the marketing trade, as well as Singapore. Known by his peers and staff as a charismatic leader, Chow punctuates the interview with anecdotes and metaphors – showing a glimpse of his leadership style. We meet on the first week of his retirement from Far East Organisation as group CEO. Hailing from Hong Kong, Chow has held various roles in many key Singaporean organisations and government agencies: SingTel, MediaCorp, Health Promotion Board and Singapore Tourism Board. This was after he started at Hewlett-Packard Singapore, working there for 20 years (he began as an engineer) before moving up to head the organisation locally. Chow admits he has had an attraction to local companies. “I decided that after working for 20 years and gaining multinational company experience I wanted to share that experience and help Singapore companies become multinational ... I think there are things from a multinational company, in terms of the thinking processes, that they can learn. It’s my way of saying thank you to Singapore and my way of contributing back to the country and society.” Chow has also been highlighted as one CEO that has been particularly vested in marketing. One marketer working under Chow remarked how at meetings, Chow would even know the number of Facebook fans the organisation had at that moment. It is often said that marketing is the unloved child in the C-suite, so I ask Chow why he took a different perspective. IT’S MORE THAN JUST MARKETING “Marketing in some sense is the brain of the entire company. Marketing starts with understanding the market, customers, competitors, your own products. It tells you how you are going to position your product against competition,” Chow says. Other than generating awareness or brand preference, it has to generate leads. “I need to make sure every dollar is generated with some returns. “If you and I had $1000, broken down into $10 components and stood by MRT and handed it out, I’m sure you and I would make tonight’s news. If you can’t generate the awareness, and the leads, then the marketing is not worth it.” Chow says the issue with marketing is most of the time, the function can’t substantiate the contribution it gives to the company, an age-old issue. The marketing function owes it to itself to develop drivers, indexes and indicators to link it directly with the business results. “Especially when you’re working for a company that is very financially disciplined and driven, then the marketing is not getting anything. When there’s any downturn, the first budget they cut is marketing,” he says. But this isn’t the best thing for the company. “When the market is soft or people are not advertising, if you advertise, that would be a better cut through, isn’t it?” He gives the example of how Far East launched a project in Punggol, Watertown. This was a big project, done with Fraser and Neave. “We made a bold decision to launch it during Chinese New Year, and you know during CNY the ads are all about festive greetings. “And we figured that you can only visit your relatives for so many days. If you really wanted to buy a property, you’d be free,” he says. Chow remembers rushing the TVC out in time, overseeing the work with the agency. “During the NY period we were the only ones advertising. And guess

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what? The sales result is one of the highest records in terms of unit sales within a couple of days,” he says. To this point, Chow highlights the importance of having a CMO who can understand the company’s larger objectives, rather than simply focusing on marketing. “It would do a lot of good if the CMO of the company has a wider exposure than just marketing. You need to understand operations, products and what the company represents. A lot of them just come from agencies or purely from marketing and they shy away from the product or ﬁnancial parts of the business. Therefore, the scope of the CMO becomes too narrow.” Talking about his days as VP of consumer marketing at SingTel, Chow says he would make sure to work with his product, network or sales colleagues and pay attention to learning about the product and services. “The marketing role should not just be looking at readership or number of viewers and clicks. These are a given. You need to expand beyond the role of marketing to earn your seat on the table.” Many times in his various jobs, the marketing team would share the same KPIs as the CEO, he adds.

"THE BRAND VALUES ARE IDENTIFIED RIGHT UPFRONT. THEN IT WOULD BE THE QUESTION OF HOW ONE DELIVERS THE BRAND. ALL THESE THINGS HAVE TO BE DECIDED BY THE CEO – WHAT THE BRAND REPRESENTS, THEN HOW YOU ARE GOING TO DEVELOP AND DELIVER THE BRAND VALUE." BRANDING – A CEO’S RESPONSIBILITY On the flip side, CEOs and business leaders need to clearly define the brand as well. “If I use Singapore as an example, a long time ago during the early days of Singapore, the government and PM decided what the Singapore brand would represent – transparency, low corruption, a garden city, etc.” These are the things people today rattle off when you ask about Singapore, he says. “The brand values are identified right upfront. Then it would be the question of how one delivers the brand. All these things have to be decided by the CEO – what the brand represents, then how you are going to develop and deliver the brand value,” he says. Chow talks about the CEO as a brand guardian. “You must have zero tolerance when it comes to defending the brand’s value.” Chow highlighted one of his favourite campaigns, which came from the US. He quotes a McDonald’s McDLT campaign, “Keep the hot side hot, and the cool side cool”. The problem with the burger is that because it has cold parts (the lettuce and tomatoes) and hot (the patty, cheese and buns), the agency came up with a container with two halves – hot on one side and cold on the other, only to be combined when the consumer is about to eat. “That was very clever. It meant the agency understood the product and the customer’s issue,” Chow says. As for Chow, what are his next steps? “I’m taking a break, but I’ll be keeping busy,” he says, talking about possible plans to work on more local projects, such as the Yellow Ribbon project.

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ESPN FC LAUNCH PARTY DATE: 10 September 2014 VENUE: Bianca Supper Club Clarke Quay 1 (From left): Lindy Chan, head of sales, SEA, ESPN Asia Pacific; Kimberley Doo, manager, MEC; Sim Shang Yi, manager, market development, SIA; and Estella Lee, senior market development officer, SIA. 2 (From left): Srihari G Sikhakollu, managing director and head – credit cards and personal financing, CIMB Group; Madeline Tan, head of ad sales, APAC, ESPN; Lynn Yan, AVP – loans and insurance, CIMB Bank; Kelvin Goh, AVP – cross sell and BD, CIMB Bank; and Muraly Balachandran, VP – sales and distribution, CIMB Bank.

3 Jason Dasey, senior editor, ESPN FC and Paul Parker, former Manchester United player, ESPN FC. 4 (From left): Matthew Tham, account executive, PHD; Lindy Chan, head of sales, SEA, ESPN Asia Pacific; Cheri Lim, associate business director, PHD; and Suveea Jinadasa, business manager, PHD.

JOHNNIE WALKER CIRCUIT LOUNGE DATE: 20 September 2014 VENUE: Altimate 1 (From left): Elliott Danker, senior producer presenter, Power 98 FM; Anita Kapoor, international media personality; Vanessa Emily, editorin-chief, Wardrobe Trends Fashion; Adam Choong, artist, The Bedsty Group; and Keagan Kang, actor, Beam Artist. 2 (From left): Howard Lo, owner, Liberty Spirits Asia, Tanuki Raw and Standing Sushi Bar; Yap Hwee Jen, director, AKA Asia; and Mark Tay, editor, TOAST.

3 (From left): Annabel Tan, blogger, itsAnnabel.com; Darius Chia, sales consultant, RealStar Premier Property Consultant; Douglas Khee, creative director, Division Communications; and Jennifer Li, head merchandiser, Headline Seoul. 4 Team Diageo, team Moët Hennessy Diageo and team Just Marketing International.

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SNAPPED

THE MEDIA SHOP 5TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY DATE: 5 September 2014 VENUE: The Merry Men Kitchen + Bar 1 Lee Kun Long, media manager, The Media Shop; and Russ Lim, account director, integrated sales, MediaCorp. 2 Tim Stanford, business manager, Oceania, The Media Shop; and Tony Tan, director, business development, Qi Integrated Solutions. 3 Jessica Toh, co-founder/regional business director, The Media Shop; and Gary Tang, co-founder/media director, The Media Shop.

4 (From left): Yee Chong Moon, director, media, Nielsen; Rebecca Tan, managing director, media, Singapore and Malaysia, Nielsen; and Gary Tang, co-founder/media director, The Media Shop.

TWITTER #TOASTANDTWEET DATE: 28 August, 2014 VENUE: Ku DĂŠ Ta 1 (From left): Julian Corbett, founder and CEO, playTMN; Ken Mandel, managing director, APAC, Hootsuite; and Frederique Covington, international marketing director, APAC, MENA, Canada, Twitter. 2 (From left): Frederique Covington, international marketing director, APAC, MENA, Canada, Twitter; Shailesh Rao, vice-president, APAC, Latin America, Emerging Markets, Twitter; Adam Bain, president, global revenue and partnerships, Twitter; Aliza Knox, managing director, online sales, APAC, Twitter; and Parminder Singh, managing director, SEA, India, MENA, Twitter.

3 Parminder Singh, managing director, SEA, India, MENA, Twitter; and Christel Quek, regional content lead, Asia, MENA, Twitter. 4 (From left): Damien Cummings, vicepresident and chief marketing officer, Philips ASEAN and Pacific; Ken Mandel, managing director, APAC, Hootsuite; and Christel Quek, regional content lead, Asia, MENA, Twitter.

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NEWS ANALYSIS

FIVE THINGS SUCCESSFUL CMOS SHOULD DO CMOs reveal their biggest digital concerns. Rezwana Manjur reports. Accenture recently released a survey titled CMOs: Time for digital transformation. According to the survey, todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s CMOs are so focused on leveraging digital channels they are missing the full potential of the broader digital playing field. With the increasing pace of technology and device innovation, the survey states that one in four CMOs cite a lack of critical technology or

tools as the chief barrier to digital integration. CMOs know a plethora of digital technologies to leverage. Their challenge, however, is to rally around the right ones for their business. Also, despite 77% of marketers saying it is essential or very important to deliver an effective customer experience for their company, only 62% think theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re doing a good job. While the customer experience is the No.1 recipient of

investments among high-growth companies (at 69%), only one-third of high-growth companies report their online and offline analytic capabilities are completely integrated across all functions. Rise of the CDO With the influx of digital comes the birth of roles such as the chief digital officer (CDO). CDOs have recently emerged to fill the gap left in marketing

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

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

Mobile will account for over 50% of the marketing budget

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

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

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

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

Marketing and IT will be merged into a single function

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

We will be known as a digital company

Source: Accenture, Time for digital transformation

28 MARKETING O MAY C TO201 BER42014

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NEWS ANALYSIS

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

Our organization lacks critical technology or tools

2014

Our people lack the required skills

2014

We are not sufficiently integrated with other business functions

2014

We do not have sufficient senior leadership commitment

2014

We have inefficient business practices

2014

We lack the funding

2014

High performers

Stayed the same

13 19

Low performers

Customer experience ranks very highly on the CMO agenda but performance is lagging importance By Sales Growth (%)

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

Increased (>5%)

Stayed the same (0-5%)

58 45

Decreased (<0%)

How successful is your company in delivering effective customer experiences?

32 29

49 28

71 63

13 41

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

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

Business-to-Consumer (B2C)

Importance:

Important

Essential Performance:

Very successful

12 56

82 83

20 17

68 62

Extremely successful

Source: Accenture, Time for digital transformation

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

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Therefore, according to Accenture, here’s what a successful CMO should do: • Lead and transform the marketing role as a digital perspective transforms the enterprise. • Embrace the full omni-channel customer experience. • Integrate channels with real-time analytics and then act on the insights. • Invest in agile technologies and cloud-based services.

•

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

Meanwhile, here are some other fundamental areas of change you can expect if you are in the CMO role (or eyeing it). The survey results are based on the responses of 581 marketers across 11 countries and 10 industries.

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7/10/2014 6:33:43 PM

NEWS ANALYSIS

5 THINGS #APPLELIVE MEANT FOR MARKETING Apple’s product launch has the world talking. Here are five important lessons for the marketing profession from it. Rezwana Manjur reports. While the world remains abuzz with the recent product launches by Apple, the brand unveiled its long-anticipated smartwatch. The watch integrates features of an iPhone onto a smaller screen. Meanwhile, the recently launched iPhone 6 boasts a larger screen than its predecessors, along with the iPhone 6 Plus which has an even bigger 5.5-inch screen. The products also promise to have longer battery life for an additional US$100. On its digital wallet front, Apple has called its new payment system Apple Pay. This will allow consumers to use their phone cameras to capture a photo of their cards and Apple will help verify it and add it to the phone’s Passbook account, it said. While no doubt innovative, what do these products mean for the marketing industry? Industry experts weigh in on some of the lessons we can learn from these products. Here are some key takeaways from the advertising industry: 1. Personalisation is key “While the world marvels at the shiny new toys out now, what stood out to me was a tangible shift from attention to details to attention to personalisation. This future space now is meaningful personalisation for unlimited experiences,” says Joshua Kwah, director of strategy and growth at SMG Singapore. Kwah says “classic Apple behaviour” talks about the purity of its design, with consumers at the heart of everything it creates. This episode shows a dramatic emphasis on enabling consumers to do more that matters to them. He also gave three key tips on how brands can personalise experiences: • Involve consumers in co-creating content, not just consuming content. • Collaborate with opinion leaders in experience design, not just experience amplification. • Talk about examples of personalisation, not just expanding on price tactics. 2. Incite curiosity in consumers Simon Bell, executive director of strategy for Southeast Asia and Pacific at Landor, says that originally these events were designed to update enthusiasts and analysts. However, over time this has shifted and these events

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A push for NFC, data-tracking: Here’s what Apple’s new products could mean for marketing.

now serve to update and inspire a broad range of consumers. “These events have become the ultimate form of branded content. It’s like Super Bowl on steroids with the coverage the brand receives on and offline. This is an interesting perspective and it aims to preload and tease consumers with possible products/new technologies,” Bell says. 3. Always-first mentality not a must Interestingly, adds Bell, Apple usually waits for its competitors to “play their hands” first, then responds. “By example, only now are we seeing Apple’s watches. Samsung and Motorola launched their models some time ago. This approach allows Apple to de-position other products and in a sense make them irrelevant,” Bell says. Kwah also adds while “Apple may appear to critics as laggards in technology” the attention to personalisation and simplicity is definitely a lucrative long-term strategy to entrench and fortify the company for years to come. 4. Data is here to stay Meanwhile, Laurent Thevenet, technology director of Proximity Singapore, says that thanks to Apple’s UX simplicity, this new device could result in a large number of consumers starting to track their health data. Coming full circle to

Kwah’s point on personalisation, he adds data collection will be much easier when consumers can relate to the devices. “We will be able to use the data through Apple’s existing HealthKit to bring an even higher level of personalisation in our work. Apple’s HealthKit, which was announced at the last WWDC in June, centralises and shares health data in between apps.” 5. A push for NFC While the new form and scale of the iPhone 6 is nothing new, Apple’s involvement will provide a good boost to the industry in terms of awareness and adoption, says Prantik Mazumdar of Happy Marketer. “There has been a lot of talk about NFC-based payments for more than a decade, but Apple’s involvement will provide a good boost to the industry in terms of awareness and adoption,” he says. “I am sure other device manufacturers and service providers will enter this space soon.” Also, the Apple Pay mechanisms are expected to give a new lease of life to the Apple brand and open up interesting and scalable revenue streams. For developers and consumers, this will open up a new ecosystem to tap into in the domain of M2M communications, mobile payments as well as the internet of things, adds Mazumdar.

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NEWS ANALYSIS

3 REASONS WHY BRANDS SHOULD EMBRACE THE SELFIE How big brands are smartly cashing in on the selfie frenzy. Jennifer Chan writes. People across the world are obsessed about taking photos of themselves. No matter if you love or hate this trend, it’s hard to get past a day without consuming or taking a selfie. It has given brands the opportunity to better engage digital users and to spread branded content with lower ad budgets. See how Samsung has bagged a hefty response from the Hollywood stars’ selfie at the Oscars. The buzz term has recently been picked up by Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games in China with a new hashtag campaign encouraging athletes to share photos with #yogselfie. Jordan Sun, creative director at Vizz Group, the creative agency behind the campaign, says social media has changed users’ desire for personalisation to aggressive self-expression. “Social media is not about big ideas, it’s about viral power. To get the best viral effect you need to tie content into trending topics such as a selfie,” he says. “The social era has unlocked users’ desire to express themselves, or in another word, to show off to others. They are ready to present themselves, and more than ever, they seem to take the desire to self-express for granted now on social platforms.” While the selfie phenomenon is as popular as it is, it now has more intrinsic value with branded content. Adidas’ #Thisisme campaign is an exemplar. The campaign encourages users to express themselves by posting a #thisisme# portrait on Weibo and WeChat, detailing what makes them so unique and posting images on how they wear adidas products. “Smart brands would apply selfie marketing in a subtle way,” Sun says. “It makes total sense that users would be less willing to share hashtags which contain brand names as they may not want to help promote the brand.” The sports giant even came up with a branded selfie stick with creative agency

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It’s time to give the selfie phenomenon some love guys.

AllRightsReserved, as part of the hashtag-driven campaign to beef up viral power. Brands now need to be extra smart in using hashtags as an incentive to drive users to share content, Sun suggests, and marketers need to have a full understanding of their brands’ value so as to subtly link it to hashtagdriven campaigns. He suggests three advantages where brands can benefit from selfie-driven campaigns. More control on creativity “Brands now need to be able to spot and seize a trending topic and make use of it,” he says. “In the future, brands can rely less on advertising agencies, but to leverage on consumers’ interest in taking a selfie as a means

to share branded content, and give them a free hand in creating their own story.” Better social engagement Marketers scramble to social platforms to tighten relationships with consumers via causal tone and manner and interactive content. But what’s more effective is to let consumers be proactive in participating in brands’ activities and implant the desire to share content from the brands proactively in their mindset, he said. Simple execution “In most cases, selfie-driven campaigns are easily executed. It doesn’t require much planning and research investment in advance, while the key is the right topic and right timing.”

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NEWS ANALYSIS

8 STEPS TO OVERCOME A SOCIAL MEDIA DISASTER A social media crisis is unavoidable - but here’s a checklist to help you through when times get tough. SocialMetric’s Marcus Ho writes. solved immediately. What they want is for you to understand how they feel. Therefore, it is important to reply first before you investigate. By replying, you have to acknowledge their problem, and apologise. Through apologising, you are demonstrating empathy, and 90% of the angry customers just want brands to first empathise with them, and proceed to resolve their problems. By just saying, “I’m sorry you feel this way”, it will be the first step to resolving a huge meltdown.

Social media doesn’t have to be a disaster.

A social media crisis is unavoidable. Social media is used for sharing news and the latest happenings, and it doesn’t restrict negative experiences. The fact is people will share whatever they want on social media, and when they are unhappy with your product or service, there will always be a chance of them posting online. Big brands are not immune to social media disasters. McDonald’s was one that was recently hit with a social media crisis on Instagram. After the recent expired meat scandal in China, McDonald’s was trying to be more engaging on social media in the hope of winning customers back. However, its Instagram posts were met with a powerful backlash from the brand’s followers. Early last year, HMV faced a public Twitter meltdown. A giant music chain for more than 90 years, HMV was conducting a mass firing. An angry intern hijacked into the Twitter account to release the information online. The worst part was the marketing director didn’t know how to use the platform, which was overheard by the hijacker and posted online. The rogue tweets instantly went viral, and by the time HMV regained control of its account, the damage was done.

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Some crises can be avoided with proper management, but others are out of your control In research by Altimeter, of the 50 social media crises that occurred from January 2001 to August 2011, most of them could have been diminished or averted. Therefore it is crucial that when the unavoidable social media crisis happens, you are ready and prepared to resolve it properly. When handled well, damage from a social media crisis can be minimised. Negative feedback is an opportunity to turn your complainers into great brand advocates. The advantage of social media is the ability to connect to your customers, and in this context, to be able to engage them and reassure them in times of a social media crisis. The key thing in a social media crisis is to identify and resolve the issue. Here are eight things to do to survive a social media crisis. 1. Acknowledge About 42% of complainers expect a response within 60 minutes and more than two thirds expect an answer within the day. To businesses, it may seem impossible to do so, as they need to investigate the issue before replying. However, most of them do not expect the issue to be

2. Fight social media fire with social media water It may sound very obvious, but I still have to say it anyway – during a social media crisis, you have to respond first on the platform it occurred. If it started on Facebook, you should reply on Facebook, and if it went viral on YouTube, you should approach the problem on YouTube. Kashi, a brand known for using organic ingredients, was hit with negative feedback on Facebook when someone posted it used artificial or genetically modified ingredients. The post went viral quickly, gaining 11,000 Facebook shares within a short time. However, Kashi did not reply to the feedback on the same platform, but posted a video on YouTube. Its video reply, which consisted of not the director, but a nutritionist reading off a script, was met with a harsh response. The video gained little views as compared to the 11,000 shares and had negative comments. Wherever the social media crisis happens, respond immediately on the same platform. Although it may seem like an obvious point, people still miss out on this and make the elementary mistake. 3. Be sorry When something goes wrong, the fastest way to be forgiven is to be truly sorry. Along the course of the all the drama experienced by Singaporeans, we have forgiven a lot of people. We have forgiven director Jack Neo for his affairs with multiple actresses and models after he came up to face the music and apologise sincerely, while asking for the public’s forgiveness. We have forgiven SBS Transit for when its train service broke down. SBS Transit

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NEWS ANALYSIS

reacted swiftly by setting up a press conference to apologise and offered free bus shuttle services to make up to their customers. The CEO of OCBC sent out an apology personally when OCBC iBanking went down for a few hours. KFC Malaysia was hit with a social media crisis when a video was released of its employee playing and tampering with the food. Customers vented their displeasure on KFC Malaysia’s social media outlets, such as Facebook and YouTube. “On behalf of KFC Malaysia, I am extremely sorry for the distress and concern that may have undermined your trust and support from thousands of customers across Malaysia. Please allow me to take this opportunity to share more with you about the situation and the action that KFC has taken to prevent it from happening again.” Within four hours, the director of operations broadcasted a video to apologise to customers and assured them the company had taken actions to prevent the incident from happening again. Notice that he opened the video with “being extremely sorry” and “undermined your trust”. With the swift actions taken, customers were reassured and public anger was eased. 4. Create a crisis fact sheet A crisis fact sheet is a place to house all the facts and happenings. It can be a microsite where all the information is in real time, so anyone who visits the site can be updated. It is much easier to direct people to a link than to answer every tweet and status update. In light of the recent tragedies on Malaysia Airlines, it would have been easier for the team to have a crisis fact sheet, rather than setting up press conferences every single time there was news. That way, people on social media can find out the latest updates and news without having to wait, which will ease the public’s worry. Crisis FAQ should include: • Acknowledgement of the issue. • Details about the occurrence, including date and time. • Any available photos or videos. • How the company found out. • Who was alerted, and how. • Specific actions taken. • Real or potential effects. • Steps taken to prevent reoccurrence. • Contact information for people at the company. Journalists will be able to access the crisis fact sheet as well, meaning they can get accurate and up-to-date information on the issue, which makes their job easier. Although the damage has been done, it can be minimised with

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Percentage of Google Traffic Page 1

91.5%

Page 2

4.8%

Page 3

1.1%

Page 4

0.4%

Page 5

0.2%

Page 6

0.2%

Page 7

0.1%

Page 8

0.1%

Page 9

0.1%

Page 10

0.1%

Credits: Chitika Insights, June 2013

positive writings from the journalists, therefore it is important to provide good experiences for the journalists. To take it a step further, enable people to subscribe to the crisis updates, via RSS, email or SMS. 5. Build a pressure relief valve Create a venue for your angry complainers to vent their frustrations at; it can just be a simple Facebook post. Although it may seem counter intuitive, it would be better for the rants to be at a venue that you can control. What is the importance of having your own pressure relief valve for your fans and followers? Without your own venue, your stakeholders may take matters into their own hands and create their own platform to vent their anger and go viral. Imagine a site that makes fun of you and your brand, and has a larger following than you. Our local transport company, SMRT had a series of train breakdowns a few years ago. It did not create a platform for its customers to vent their frustrations, hence a joke page was created, SMRT (Feedback). The benefits of having your own platform: • It allows you to keep more of the conversations about the crisis in a single venue. • It is an early warning detection system for new dimensions of the crisis. • It gives your customers an official place to come to your defence, should they want to. 6. Clean up your digital reputation Once a social media crisis sparks, the public will inevitably Google either your employees’ names or your organisation. It is crucial to monitor your digital reputation and manage it well, so as to have a good digital reputation to back you up when people Google your brand name. With good digital reputation management, the increase in good reviews will allow you

to dominate the first page of Google, hence pushing the negative reviews down to the other pages. The first page of Google is extremely valuable, with 91.5% of the users finding their required information on the first page of Google search. 7. Learn your lessons As always, the first step towards preventing the same mistake from happening again is to learn from your mistakes. You can create a crisis portfolio, which documents every element of the crisis (for example, tweets, status updates, YouTube comments, emails received). From the portfolio, analyse the problem and the effectiveness of your methods, and think about how you can improve your crisis management skills further. Some of the things to watch for: • Website traffic patterns. • Search data: Which came first, and when? • How did internal notification work? • How did the response work? • Did specific customers rise to your defence? Thank them. • Were your employees adequately informed? • How did the online and offline intersect? 8. Communicate internally The last step will be to communicate internally as an organisation and allow the knowledge and information to be shared. Make sure everyone under the organisation is aware of how to deal with negative feedback cohesively, meaning no contradicting posts. With these steps in place, you can survive any kind of social media disaster. Crises are unavoidable, but it’s your actions that will determine the extent of the damage. The writer is Marcus Ho, director of social media at SocialMetric.

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9/10/2014 6:56:58 PM

NEWS ANALYSIS

THE UGLY SIDE OF THE BEAUTY INDUSTRY It’s been 10 years since Unilever first launched its Campaign for Real Beauty, but how lasting was that important message? Jennifer Chan investigates.

Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” was one of the marketing industry’s best attempts yet to change the conversation about female beauty. But one decade later, images of unrealistically skinny models with flawless skin continue to give young women a false sense of identity. So was it a failure? In short, no. Dove’s attempt to give female consumers a more realistic view on beauty was a success and should stand as a constant reminder that the industry has a big role to play

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in promoting positive and healthy images of women’s beauty. But lately this recurring problem has been highlighted in many advertisements, particularly from luxury fashion labels and cosmetic brands around the globe, which have been accused to have breached their social responsibility by using unhealthy-looking models to capture a female audience. Two years ago H&M’s Marni collection came under fire for using a deemed “corpselike” model in PR material. One of a seasonal

ad from fashion label YSL has also triggered a petition from a blogger against the YSL CEO to stop using “malnourished models” in ad campaigns. It is the same phenomenon in Hong Kong, where slim figures and fair skin have always been the social standard of beauty. Dettol, for instance, recently rolled out a campaign featuring a local celebrity, for which design experts speculated her arms had been manipulated. The creative agency behind the ad insists

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NEWS ANALYSIS

the image was unedited, and instead, her slim figure was attributed to a work trip to Brazil. Rita Ching, deputy executive director of The Women’s Foundation, believes that ad campaigns, particularly from fitness centres and skincare brands, often send a message not only to promote that slim equals beautiful, but also to suggest slim is the only beauty. “Most ad campaigns from fitness centres are sending unrealistic ideas of what a perfect figure should be to the public. Not only do they imply that slim, or even skinny, equals beautiful, they also say that less skinny models are inferior,” she says. The recent ad campaign from fitness firm Slim Beauty depicting how local actress Kate Tsui beats her less-skinny rivals in a volleyball match, is downright irritating, Ching says. “The ad sends a message that if your standard of beauty deviates from what the ad suggests, then you are ‘the others’. This kind of misleading ads can subtly alter the public’s idea of beauty, and it can even be damaging.” Jean Kilbourne, author, filmmaker and media critic, who have been studying feminism and advertising field for about 40 years, agrees that advertising has gone too far to have “way too much emphasise” on standardised feminist ideal beauty, which appears to be “too narrow”, especially in developed countries. “The ideal images of beauty is giving incredible pressure on woman to achieve a beauty ideal, which has always been impossible. We never see a woman consider beautiful that hasn’t been photoshop to make her absolutely perfect and flawless. “It gives huge pressure on woman, achieving something which is completely unattainable,” says Kilbourne.

Are brands giving beauty a bad image?

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“It’s not even vanity that makes woman to pursue this ideal. It’s because the stake not to follow the beauty standard is really high, that’s why the pressure is enormous.” Noticeably, the ideal image of beauty, which have already influencing most female consumers, is also engulfing the younger generation. “This kind of idealised images have a bad effect prominently on young people, who simply don’t realise the images are artificial,” says Kilbourne. “So they may think if they don’t look like those models in ads, they are failures,” she says. Social association like The Women’s Foundation has been closely in touch with school teens on research projects. Ching reveals that with a lot of school bullying cases in which victims usually are chubby or fat girls. They’re teased as ‘other creatures’ for being a bit fat. “When we ask them where did this idea of ‘slim is beauty’ come from, most of which says they learn from magazines or television. “Celebrity endorsement is one of the culprits of the worsening situation, Ching added. “Hong Kong is a celebrity-driven society and our social mindset is hugely influenced by celebrities. “Audiences are subconsciously being fed with the idea that a skinny figure is king, with a string of identical ad campaigns featuring skinny celebrities in magazines or on television. But quality audiences who have the ability to judge and to filter what they are fed, remains a minority,” she says. Despite TV shows, videos and the celebrity effect, the role of advertising in creating this female-ideal is huge, as Kilbourne believes.

“Advertising is by far, the most powerful aspect in all form of mass media. They are barraging us with these images on a daily basis.” “I am not saying that advertisers are being tempted to create unrealistic images. But this is the side product that they are selling.” Retouched images can be so impactful and deceptive is largely thanks to advanced technology like Photoshop. This objectionable post-production job often filtered down to production houses. Shu Leung, producer at Wow Productions, a production house behind many big labels including Timberland, Shanghai Tang, and Enicar, admitted all advertising they processed have been, on a certain level, retouched. “We tend to keep the original image as much as possible. But when you remove their pimples, for instance, their freckles become too obvious, so that you have to also remove their freckles. Often you almost have to remove every flaws at the end.” Interestingly, one justification on the heavy retouching images is that they’re “left with no alternative”. “Indeed there’s a trend of raw beauty emerging in Western countries,” says Leung. “Fashion houses or cosmetic brands in Hong Kong are interested in following this trend. But the problem is that Hong Kong has a lack of pretty models who have that kind of natural beauty.” Outside Hong Kong, some brands are looking to redefine the beauty standard that seems to be a foregone conclusion. Dove’s Beauty Patch Experiment, for instance, is a social experiment trying to alter how women perceive themselves. A group of women were invited to put a beauty patch named “RB-X” on their arms for two weeks, a product they were told would “enhance the way they perceive their own beauty”. “Some people may criticise these ads as PR strategies that used to stand out from the crowd,” says Kilbourne, “which may be true, but it doesn’t really matter. What matter is that people is getting that message.” While the world is becoming a global market place, more and more about marketing and advertising , it has some impactful side effects, that advertisers should take that into consideration to reduce the harm, she says. “Today’s brands need to seek a unique identity and a valuable brand character for sustainable business development. At the end of the day, the core principle of advertising is to create something new and inspiring, and ultimately, redefining the social norms,” Ching adds. “I hope brands can stop following suit of what others do, or what the majority believe, and to eye more angles to interpret the concept of beauty.”

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In the past few years, content marketing has become the go-to strategy for most brands, with the likes of CocaCola, Microsoft, HSBC, Intel, Great Eastern, GoPro and more. But while many brands are eyeing the move, not all of them have their finger on the pulse. Marketing explores issues and strategies for the content marketing wave.

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In last year’s second annual Adobe APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard, a study released by the CMO Council in partnership with Adobe, it was found that since the Singapore audience prefers to be engaged socially and with compelling content, social optimisation has fast become a top priority for marketers. The study saw a spike in interest in a digital content strategy among marketers in Asia Paciﬁc, with 74% saying they were strengthening their digital marketing content strategy to integrate social engagement. This was a considerable leap forward compared with the 36% of marketers who were focused on content in 2012. “What’s interesting is that content strategy wasn’t even on their radar last year (2012),” Hisamichi Kinomoto, VP of marketing, Japan and Asia Paciﬁc at Adobe Systems, said in an interview with Marketing. “This indicates the evolution of local marketers where they are no

longer only focused on the channel, but rather how to effectively make use of the channel to engage with audiences.” Stephen Hamill, director of digital marketing cloud for Southeast Asia and Hong Kong at Adobe, says marketers are also starting to rethink their strategies on social media content marketing. “Marketers are now looking at the type of content, phrasing of content, time of day and many other factors when pushing out content,” he says, indicating marketers are getting more sophisticated in their content strategy. CONFIDENCE IN DIGITAL When it comes to digital spend, only 14% of marketers in Asia Paciﬁc and 17% in Singapore were spending on par with this global baseline. However, despite APAC digital spend still being below the global average,

Q9. What areas of digital marketing are your top priorities to execute this fiscal year? 74%

Strengthening digital marketing content strategy

58%

Social media optimisation, including boosting community growth, engagement and content

45%

Increasing and improving search and online display advertising

37%

Higher levels of customer engagement (listening, feedback, community, etc.)

37%

Improving functionality of website

32%

Richer, deeper customer profiling and insights

31%

Introducing better measurement and analytics tools

29%

Cross-channel management (integrating traditional marketing activities with digital elements to boost effectiveness)

26%

Integrating social media communities with key customer touch points

25%

Mobile relationship marketing

18%

Mobile application development

14%

Encouraging consumer-inspired content and conversation

12%

Establishing and improving performance of blogging sites

11%

Email and instant messaging services for sales and customer service department

10%

Delivering real-time or streamed online events

Online retailing and merchandising

Online banking and payments

Source: Adobe APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard

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APAC marketers are gaining confidence in their digital abilities, said the study. In 2013, 28% of marketers across APAC rated themselves as “highly evolved and a leader in their field”. The number stood at 23% in 2012. In Singapore alone, 29% of marketers are confident in their abilities, placing them third behind India (42%) and Australia (37%). “Next year (2014) 23% of APAC marketers and 22% in Singapore expect to increase their budgets to align with the global average,” says Liz Miller, VP of marketing programmes and operations for the CMO Council. However she is quick to point out that similar intentions were voiced in 2012. “Marketers need to be able to build a strong positive business case for the investment, demonstrating return on investment. Without the right analytic technologies in place, it’s hard to do this.” Miller also explains that to make a more robust business case, APAC marketers should provide additional insights around cost savings and performance improvement practices, which only a few are doing today. Studies also found that while some countries are advancing with an increased focus on analytics and a competitive advantage leveraging big data, others are struggling with limited budgets and a lack of skill sets to implement analytics. One area of challenge marketers in Singapore and across the region continue to face is in building teams with the right analytic skill sets. Many times, marketers feel they do not have employees with the right skills and expertise and continue to lack the budgets to hire skilled senior staff. They also have difficulty retaining staff. (See chart below).

Q13. What challenges and complexities have you experienced in building in-house and virtual digital marketing teams? 54%

Lack of the right talent, skills and expertise among existing team members

48%

Lack of budget to bring on the right level of senior talent

36%

Difficulty in recruiting qualified talent

34%

Managing different agencies for different elements of the digital marketing strategy adds to the cost and time of execution

30%

Cannot find an agency with the right skill set and expertise to execute the strategy to the expected standard

27%

We have the right team with the right level of experience and skills, but we lack the right trools and technology to take the next step

23%

Difficulty retaining and advancing internal talent

19%

Gaining buy-in from corporate headquarters to add headcount to regional teams

18%

Centralised APAC team cannot manage all the time localisation requirements in the field

Other

Source: Adobe APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard

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Q29. Which statement best describes your agency engagement? 46%

Multiple agencies to manage different elements of the digital marketing mix (e.g. web campaigns, social media and online advertising)

31%

No formalised relations, but instead project work as needed across a broad network of outsourced groups

12%

A lead APAC agency that sets direction and rolls out campaigns to the field

A lead global agency that sets direction and we execute locally

Other

Source: Adobe APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard

AGENCY RELIANCE Hence, they look to their agency partners. In 2013, 19% of marketers in Singapore say they are happy with their relationships with agencies as compared with 5% last year. Kinomoto, however, says that looking to agencies to ﬁll the skills gap is not proving to be a successful strategy because, “companies are using multiple agencies to manage different elements of the digital strategy: web campaigns, social media management and online advertising”. “This adds to the complexity and makes it harder to obtain an integrated view of results.” The study also found that both the 2012 and 2013 results continued to show remarkably low levels of satisfaction with digital agencies. Only 12% of APAC marketers and 11% of Singapore marketers rate their agencies as excellent. The majority of marketers think they deliver mixed results and less than a quarter say the results are poor (APAC 19% and Singapore 13%). “In our view, there is a clear opportunity for savvy APAC agencies to get ahead of the curve and invest in technologies and skills to provide deeper, richer performance metrics to clients who are unable to do it themselves,” Kinomoto said. DATA IS GAINING TRACTION Several countries in the region are now using data as a key competitive differentiator and using analytic insights across the marketing life cycle. But the number remains low. Currently only 7% of Singaporean marketers are taking this approach as compared with 2% last year. In terms of the skill sets to measure and analyse, marketers here feel they are steadily gaining ground, with 51% saying their ability to measure digital marketing investment is getting better. About 38% of marketers feel their digital marketing analysis expertise is improving, but acknowledge they still have some way to go. “It is very positive, indeed, to see Singapore marketers realising the high potential of big data, and taking steps to get ahead of the game,” Miller said. The 2013 Adobe APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard was compiled through qualitative interviews conducted via phone with 23 marketers throughout the region. An online quantitative survey was distributed to the APAC members of the CMO Council. A total of 276 marketers from Australia, Korea, China, India, Hong Kong, Singapore and other countries responded and completed the online survey.

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ADDING THE POWER OF VIDEO TO YOUR MARKETING ARSENAL

“Facts tell, but stories sell.” Perhaps more than any other media in the modern content marketer’s arsenal, video is a strong storytelling medium. It helps marketers cut through the clutter with a differentiated voice, and increases information retention, brand perception and the quality of the message it delivers. Earlier this year, Aberdeen’s research on content marketing and management with Brightcove found that successful brands were more likely to incorporate video into their content marketing mix. In fact, companies using video experienced almost twice the rate an average website did in converting trafﬁc compared with those that didn’t use video.

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VIDEO CAPTURING THE UNDIVIDED ATTENTION New research points to why customers rank video as the trusted and most personable brand marketing experience. Explaining their choice, 44% said video was more appealing, while engaging (28%), authentic (29%) and sharable (10%) were other reasons for trusting video content over other forms of brand communication. Another factor contributing to the rapid adoption of video among brands has been mobile. Not only do 79% of consumers favour digital content over traditional, but more than one in 10 (12%) prefer to consume content from brands on their smartphone, tablet or mobile application.

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Here’s another compelling statistic brands can’t ignore; the average cost per marketing-generated lead is $93 for companies using video compared with $115 for those who don’t. In fact, a company using video only requires 37% fewer unique site visits to generate a marketing lead. LIGHTS, CAMERA AND CALL-TO-ACTION! So how do we set up for video success? A mix of both professional quality and do-it-yourself-style video marketing content – depending on the need – has been what high-performing companies have done. Another report by Aberdeen, Lights, camera, call-to-action: trends in video marketing, says these companies use a combination of sources to develop content that reaches audiences, just like any other forms of content. 68% of them develop video with in-house production capabilities, while 44% outsource it to an agency or freelancer. Some blend in-house and third-party services to develop video assets. Regardless of the means of production, marketers need to develop a set of video marketing competencies that will elevate video from less of a “special event” to more of a regular and integral component of their content marketing calendar. The same research further suggests the adoption of video capabilities has had a positive impact on closing the quality content execution gap. All the extra effort pays off in terms of brand perception and audience engagement, even if creating video content requires more work than other content types. Consider these three recommendations to maximise your success: Be original – if content marketing is going to be a point of differentiation and competitive advantage, brands must remember to deliver a unique voice. While the adoption of video content is generally beneficial, marketers need to develop original and relatable videos. Connect viewers with the broader theme of your content marketing efforts and use video as a key step in your content path when engaging customers. Understanding its flexibility – think about video in the context of a customer’s journey, be it brand awareness, engagement, conversion, purchase and loyalty. Each video must be purposeful in engaging the buyer at each stage of their life cycle. A product or demo video is likely to educate or convince, while TVCs and brand videos should entertain or inspire. Empower the user – add interactive elements within your video – from dynamic hotspots that trigger content such as quizzes, polls, image carousels, shopping carts, in-video contests, and social buttons for sharing across blogs, sites and white-listed for Facebook walls and Twitter cards. TRACKING EFFECTIVENESS As marketers, we’re all naturally obsessed with metrics and video offers several unique benefits in this respect. Being a temporal element, video captures binary viewing metrics (such as the number of times the video was played) and the duration of each play. This provides valuable feedback about effectiveness, since videos viewed all the way through are naturally more compelling than those switched off midway. The data is especially powerful when used in the context of visitor or lead scoring, with duration of views indicating levels of interest. The second benefit is the portability of videos. Videos can be

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distributed across multiple channels, and yet still maintain integrity, in terms of tracking metrics. Static content such as PDFs or infographics lack the ability to report viewership metrics when syndicated. We see this reflected in the superior ability of video users to capture content metrics across all channels – 43% of video users compared with 16% of non-users. ANALYSING THE ROI OF VIDEO MARKETING So how does one measure the impact of video and its conversion? One important metric is website conversion, the alchemy of converting interest in content into a sellable contact. An average website has a conversion rate of 4.8% for video content users. Compare this with 2.9% for non-video users. While the difference might seem small, it becomes very significant when we factor in the average cost per lead. Lastly, investing in a video management solution not only increases the quality of the measurements, but also reduces its complexities. Dedicated video management and marketing solutions support the ability to upload and manage video content across multiple channels, and provide comprehensive reporting and analytics across all channels. BEFORE WE PRESS STOP As consumers become more tech savvy, it’s increasingly important for marketers to understand the influence of video in the marketing mix. Video creates an opportunity for engagement and should be viewed as an integral part of a marketing strategy and not just an add-on. By delivering a high quality, relevant and engaging video experience, marketers can benefit from increased loyalty, higher brand engagement, more content sharing and higher referral rates.

ABOUT BRIGHTCOVE Brightcove Inc. (NASDAQ:BCOV) is a leading global provider of powerful cloud solutions for delivering and monetising video across connected devices. The company offers a full suite of products and services that reduce the cost and complexity associated with publishing, distributing, measuring and monetising video across devices. Brightcove has more than 5,500 customers in over 70 countries that rely on the company’s cloud solutions to successfully publish high-quality video experiences to audiences everywhere. The Brightcove Video Marketing Suite is a comprehensive suite of technologies built for the needs of the modern marketer, combining industry-leading video management, video marketing and analytics to help brands maximise the reach and ROI of their video campaigns with a single solution. For more information, contact us at apac_marketing@brightcove.com or visit brightcove. com/vms

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BUILDING TRUST AND THE REVENUE PIPELINE WITH CONTENT Getting customers used to be a simpler affair. Stick enough ads in people’s faces, and they would notice and buy. But marketers these days face a new challenge. Take Susan, who leads the marketing efforts at a wireless systems vendor. She cooked up the prettiest, smartest ad campaign for her company’s new router, and it grabbed hundreds of eyeballs each minute online and on the street. But sales didn’t leap through the roof. Her ad was just another voice in the crowd. Modern consumers are constantly bombarded by ads that they tend to, subconsciously, condition themselves to ignore them. But this “emotional unsubscription” can be broken through. Most people don’t like being sold to, but everybody likes learning new and useful things. This is the crux of content marketing – earning trust, and ultimately loyalty, by helping customers make smarter decisions. Yet, a mere 32% of enterprise marketers surveyed by the Content Marketing Institute believed their own content marketing efforts were effective. There are several reasons for this. For one, content marketing is often ill-deﬁned. Ads that are nothing more than witty sales pitches can and have been, touted as “content marketing”, which only dilutes the practice. Clever advertising is not content marketing. Good content marketing is: 1. An ongoing initiative, not a one-off effort. 2. Focused on customer’s pain points, not the offering. 3. Not merely entertaining, but also helpful and educational. The lack of any overarching strategy is also a problem. In many cases, companies treat content marketing as a tactical affair, driven by ad-hoc needs: they have a campaign to run, and set out to create content for it. This back-to-front approach results in a highly fragmented content identity. And it gets worse the larger the organisation gets. Individual departments cook up their own ideas, content becomes sporadic and scattered, and no cohesive message emerges. CONTENT STRATEGY: LAYING THE GROUNDWORK Content marketing does not begin with brainstorming what to say. It begins with thinking about why you are saying it, who to say it to, and how to go on saying it. In other words, setting up the framework. A good ﬁrst step is to segment the target audience into personas, and map content to these based on pain points, relevant topics, appropriate channels for syndication, and the different stages of the prospect life cycle – awareness, conversion, engagement or beyond. Then, take stock of existing material such as product literature, data sheets and industry reports. These can serve as the basis for new content – blog posts, e-books, visual explainer videos, video case studies, infographics that distil complex trends into ata-glance views, and more. Content can be: 1. Created from scratch, with help from subject matter experts. 2. Repurposed from old material, with a fresh spin. 3. Curated from external sources, with attribution. CONTENT TONALITY: MAKING IT ABOUT ‘YOU’, NOT ‘ME’ Ideas for content spring from balancing the things you want to tell consumers and the things consumers want to hear. With the idea in hand,

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the next challenge is making it relatable. That means using human language – leaving out vague, overused buzzwords such as next-generation, worldclass, cutting-edge, best-of-breed, and so on. Those only cause readers to space out and lose interest. Content has to also be about their context, and not your product. Modern consumers have highly evolved radars when it comes to informational content; it doesn’t take much to detect that a supposedly “educational” piece is in fact a carefully disguised pitch or advertorial. Which can result in two things: they decide it is not relevant to their needs and move on or they realise they are being herded and hit their emotional unsubscribe button. So avoiding self-promotion may not always be enough. Tie key speciﬁcs in your content to industry trends – the “big picture” – rather than your brand, and avoid trains of logic that lead to your product being the “best” or “ideal” solution. These help establish your organisation as two things: an authority, and a source of impartial, trustworthy information. CONTENT DIRECTION: STRIKING TWO CHORDS WITH PROSPECTS In the bestselling Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath postulate that our thinking and decision-making are driven by two opposing forces: logic and emotion. They paint these as a rider (the rational mind) trying to steer an elephant (the emotional mind). Good content should appeal to both. Appeal to the rider with logical elements, like hard facts and ROI calculations, while motivating the elephant with story driven elements such as case studies. But telling an interesting story around any product is not as simple as it sounds. There are lifestyle products, and then there are products that would make odd conversation topics in polite company. Some brands such as the iPhone or Louis Vuitton get people talking because they are more than products

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as 80% of their purchase decisions may already be made. You can help that decision along by engaging, entertaining and educating them as they research. Will you ignore this opportunity? CONTENT MARKETING IN ACTION: DIMENSION DATA ENTERPRISE CLOUD ASIA Background A leading global provider of ICT solutions, including cloud services, Dimension Data maintains its Asia Pacific presence in more than 60 offices across 13 countries. GetIT supported Dimension Data with building demand and generating leads for its enterprise cloud portfolio, focused around several key themes such as infrastructure-as-a-service and unified communications and collaboration in the cloud.

– they are personal statements. Hence the endless iPhone versus Android debates around the lunch table. But few, if any, are inclined to discuss things that have far greater utility such as their favourite detergent or the newest printer in the office. If it’s hard to talk about a product, talk about its category. Think about where the product fits into a consumer’s particular situation and needs. Take toothpaste: it is an essential product, and certainly more important than fashion, yet not worth conversing over. So instead of talking about toothpaste, talk about an issue it’s closely related to that everyone cares about. Like oral hygiene. CONTENT SYNDICATION: OWNING THE LAND YOU BUILD ON Once the content is developed, distributing or syndicating it seems straightforward. After all, this is the age of social media, and the audience is on social networks such as Facebook. The conversations are happening there. So it makes sense to anchor your content marketing to a Facebook page or Twitter handle. But what happens when Facebook changes its rules of engagement? This is not a what-if scenario. Not too long ago, Facebook jolted the marketing world out of bed with two major policy changes: deflating organic post reach to a measly 2% to 5%, and banning the practice of fan-gating Facebook contests to acquire followers. These underscore the fact that renting a content platform is like being a tenant under a fickle landlord. No matter how well-executed and well-planned, content marketing can still fail if it is based on a platform you have no control over. Invest in a platform you own, like your company’s blog. This is your content hub, the “hub” of the wheel, and social media platforms are the “spokes”. Use social media for content syndication, engaging with readers, and building communities – but it cannot be the centre of a content marketing effort. Content marketing: being a trusted authority Content marketing is not some newfangled fad – it is marketing. Like chefs “giving away” their recipes on cooking shows and in cookbooks, it builds audiences, and earns their loyalty, on the fact that people want useful information instead of hard sells. In a world over-saturated with advertising and brand messaging, this may be the only reliable way to reach prospects – because they are growing smarter, and more informed. They trust only their own research – and by the time they reach out to you, as much

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Solution: an agnostic content hub GetIT helped create a content brand independent of the Dimension Data corporate website – Enterprise Cloud Asia. Enterprisecloudasia.com is a repository of free agnostic content on hosted cloud solutions. These articles and e-books, created through collaboration with cloud experts and re-purposing of existing Dimension Data material, provide vendor-neutral perspectives and insights on key concerns surrounding enterprise cloud services. One example is 7 Demands Enterprise Must Make from Cloud Providers, an e-book designed to educate business prospects on the crucial issues to bear in mind when screening enterprise cloud vendors. This and other Enterprise Cloud Asia content is syndicated through Dimension Data’s existing client databases, as well as partnerships with tech publications such as TechTarget and Questex. Google Ads retargeting is also utilised to attract back visitors that do not fully explore the site before leaving. To gauge content effectiveness, GetIT integrated CMS and marketing automation into Enterprise Cloud Asia. These give visibility into site visitors’ behaviour – which pages they visit, which e-books they download, how much time they spend on articles, and so on. Results The Enterprise Cloud Asia campaign provides Dimension Data with lead generation, constant lead nurturing, measurable content engagement, and interest-based prospect segmentation. Gating of the long-form content captures qualiﬁed leads, while the integrated CMS system tracks metrics such as email open rate, click-throughs, browsing duration and e-book downloads. These give a clear picture of the site’s performance.

ABOUT ANOL AND GETIT For the last 14+ years, Anol Bhattacharya has been consulting B2B technology companies like Cisco Systems, StarHub, G-Technology (HGST), Dimension Data, BT Global Services, HP, Orange Business Services, and CyberSource-Visa on behalf of GetIT (Singapore), in the ﬁeld of B2B marketing, lead & demand generation, lead nurturing, content marketing and social media strategy. He is also editor-in-chief of B2Bento.com , a leading blog about news, views and reviews of the B2B marketing space and social media scene in Asia. Visit GetIT's website at www.getitcomms.com to learn more

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CASE STUDY

THE “PERSONAL” IN TRAINER Online video has been the lynchpin of the Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation (12WBT) programme. Created by Australian personal trainer Michelle Bridges in 2010, the unique 12-week online exercise and mindset programme has since established itself as a household name across Australia as the online portal for exercise and nutritional programmes. Just like the programme for ﬁtness members, online video has reaped amazing results for 12WBT. From members having their “moment in time” to “one-on-one” interactions with Michelle Bridges, video has allowed 12WBT to create personal connections between Michelle and the growing inﬂux of community members with a variety of viewing habits on different screens. “We use so much video content for my 12 Week Body Transformation programme — it really helps me deliver my message. “Video lets me be wherever my members are, and I can share advice about all sorts of things; from emotional habits, all through to their nutritional and exercise programmes. Think about all the different exercises I can show my members on video, as well as actual workouts where they can train with me. I really am their personal trainer,” said Bridges. 12WBT’s video strategy is simple, but effective. Create great content that is focused on the three pillars of the 12WBT programme: exercise, nutrition and mindset. Engaging a loyal number of members active on the site’s forums and in social media, the company uses video to share information, members’ stories and inspiration as a way to communicate within its community. The production approach to each type of video is also determined not just by the content, but also the platform or device the video is most often viewed on. For example, the 45-minute workout videos are watched on tablets or laptops, the 15-second exercise demonstrations

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are viewed most often on smartphones, while the “Mish mindset” chats are most often watched on desktops or tablets. Since launching in 2010, round-to-round sign-ups for 12WBT have grown by 5000%, and its average engagement score increased to 80% through engaging the social community with video. With Brightcove, 12WBT increased reach by seamlessly delivering video to audiences across desktop and mobile, and through social channels such as YouTube and Facebook, as well as on the site. Brightcove Video Cloud platform’s robust set of APIs helped integrate its existing CMS and publishing workﬂow, and gave the team control over its publishing process. Video Cloud also provided the ability for 12WBT to manage multiple channels at any one time, considerably reducing workﬂows and allowing the team to focus on creating great content and delivering Michelle’s distinctive brand of personal training to the 12WBT community.

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Nothing can move a product or drive website conversions the way video can.

is the average website conversion rate for those who use VIDEO

DRIVE DEMAND & CONVERSION How are they doing this?

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...AND FOR THOSE WHO DON’T?

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TV BROADCASTERS OF THE YEAR

4 8 MARKETING O C TO BER 2014

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TV BROADCASTERS OF THE YEAR

METHODOLOGY

Traditionally one of the most resilient mediums, TV has seen its fair share of competition as the digital realm poses new threats to the business, pushing broadcasters to innovate. Here are Singapore’s top broadcasters according to marketers.

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HOW DID WE ACHIEVE THIS? The TV broadcaster rankings were derived from questions in Marketing Research’s annual Media Spend Benchmarking Survey. Marketing Research employed an online questionnaire and surveyed its database of client advertisers and marketing services agency professionals. All answers given by respondents were considered by Marketing when finalising the rankings. QUALITY RECIPIENTS AND RESPONDENTS More than 700 respondents participated in the Media Spend Benchmarking Survey. Genuine advertising decision-makers and influencers across key agency-using industries were well represented as were agency professionals from various marketing services. Nearly 87% of client advertiser-side respondents were manager-level decisionmakers and above, with 10% from the most senior ranks of client advertisers – CEOs, MDs or GMs – and another 18% were VPs or director-level marketers. The majority of the respondents from the agency side were CEOs, MDs or GMs (32%), 16% were marketing personnel, while 23% were sales personnel. The remaining 29% were operations, creative and media personnel. Advertisers from major and local international banks, FMCG companies, property and construction, IT and telecommunication firms, as well as those from travel and tourism companies participated in the survey. Agency professionals across the marketing services spectrum were also well represented.

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TV BROADCASTERS OF THE YEAR

1 MEDIACORP

To no one’s surprise, MediaCorp comes in first place on this list again, proving itself to be consistently relevant in the lives of Singaporeans. With eight TV channels catering to most households, MediaCorp brings to its viewers programmes that are readily available in digital and analogue TV.

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Furthermore, it bears the distinction of being Southeast Asia’s largest producer of English and Chinese content, alongside its engaging Malay and Tamil programmes. The Singaporean media company has gone beyond the mere expansion of its platforms and has chosen to focus on serving its audiences

and commercial partners with creativity and innovation, according to MediaCorp. “MediaCorp’s mission is to engage, entertain and enrich, and delivering the right content to our audiences at the right time is key,” said Jack Lim, MediaCorp’s chief commercial officer. “We are constantly looking for innovative ways to better serve consumers, clients and partners in a highly interactive, multi-platform world.” One example was MediaCorp’s first webto-TV drama, 96 degrees Café, which catered to its audiences’ dynamic lifestyles and viewing preferences. Another example saw the company making further inroads into transmedia with its popular TV drama, The Journey, that translated into radio, print, online extensions, tours and even a comic book. On top of that, Channel NewsAsia was revamped in 2013 – a 24/7 “live” news coverage was introduced alongside a new line-up of content that would better viewers’ understanding of Asia. MediaCorp then opened a news bureau in Myanmar and announced its 14th bureau in Vietnam to complement its network in key Asian cities. As a result, the channel today reaches 55 million households and hotel rooms across 26 territories. Extending beyond television, MediaCorp’s “TV of the future” Toggle has about 480,000 subscribers who watch what they want, when they want and on any device.

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MediaCorp’s integrated portfolio of diverse and

innovative platforms helps clients tell their brand stories in powerful and creative ways.

– Chloe Neo, Managing Partner, OMD

engaging content With a range of

MediaCorp remains the preferred choice for us when we seek effective ways to increase our reach and visibility.

– Gina Tay, Managing Director, Lion Corporation (S) Pte Ltd

partnership

The Singapore Memory Project’s

with MediaCorp allowed us to share stories of Singapore and its people with a large pool of target audience who are unfamiliar with the project, and deliver our campaign messages across effectively. – Wan Wee Pin, Deputy Director, Engagement, National Library Singapore

Accolades are significant. But what our partners say is more important. MediaCorp. Winner, TV Broadcaster Of The Year 2014.

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TV BROADCASTERS OF THE YEAR

2 BBC WORLDWIDE CHANNELS ASIA BBC Worldwide Channels Asia inches up one spot this year to second, which could be attributed to the company’s several initiatives within the region. First, it launched BBC Knowledge HD in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. BBC Worldwide has also licensed more BBC dramas in China such as Orphan Black to meet with the growing demand. In January, the new series of the BBC hit drama Sherlock was launched on Youku, less than 24 hours following the UK telecast, becoming one of the first countries to do so. Aside from Sherlock, Hidden Kingdoms, a co-production with CCTV, also premiered on 13 August. In India, Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa – the Hindi version of the BBC Worldwide format Dancing with the Stars – was a huge hit. With an average

local audience of 19 million, the series won “Best Entertainment Show” at the 13th Indian Telly Awards this September. BBC News’ content has also been made available on the smartphone instant messaging platform LINE, making it the first international news organisation to have an official account on the app. As part of the BBC’s efforts to maintain a strong brand connection with Indonesian viewers, a three-month campaign was launched on BBC Knowledge on Indovision, where viewers had the chance to win an all-expenses paid trip to the Sydney Top Gear Festival. BBC World News and BBC.com also jointly presented the annual Pub Quiz Challenge for media agencies – in partnership with Marketing – in Hong Kong and Singapore.

BBC added new advertisers to its repertoire, including Allianz, Maldives Tsm and IBM. Noteworthy changes within management included David Weiland (pictured) taking up the role as EVP of Asia in April, following his successful tenure as EVP of Western Europe.

3 DISCOVERY NETWORKS ASIA-PACIFIC Moving up two spots, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific (DNAP) is a commendable third this year. It celebrated a significant milestone in 2014, marking 20 years since Discovery Channel was launched in the region. Today, the network’s portfolio of 16 channels reaches 624 million cumulative subscribers across the Asia Pacific region in 36 countries and territories, with content across 48 feeds and 15 languages. Headlining its anniversary celebrations, Discovery Channel conducted a “River Monsters Live In Asia” tour with resident extreme angler Jeremy Wade, who travelled across Southeast Asia to interact with viewers, fans and media at special events in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Joel Lambert, from Manhunt, also visited

the region, where the organised activities won a silver in Best Programme Promotion at the 2014 Spark Awards. In May, a new brand campaign, “How On Earth?”, was launched for Discovery Channel. The campaign focused on both the insatiable thirst for knowledge among audiences and the network’s role in fuelling curiosity. During the

eventful year, DNAP also launched two new channels. DMAX was introduced in July – a new factual entertainment channel for daredevils – for a predominantly male target audience, with a wide range of content from fast cars and combat to extreme antics and enterprise. In August, Eve was launched, the region’s first factual entertainment channel for women.

On a global scale, CNN Go There, a worldwide branding initiative, was also executed. For Turner’s Cartoon Network, the company has focused on original animation productions that included Monster Beach, set to premiere on 31 Oct 2014, and Exchange Student Zero,

slated for a mid-2015 release. In conjunction with the channel, Turner carried out several activities throughout the APAC region such as an Adventure Time exhibition in Taiwan; a local talent VO show in Malaysia in association with Uncle Grandpa; and even a Cartoon Network Amazone water park that opened in Thailand in July. Within the APAC arm of Turner, there has been significant internal change as well. Clément Schwebig joined Turner Asia from RTL as the president, while Ricky Ow has been appointed SVP of business development. New advertisers have come onboard to partner with Turner, namely Prudential, Gucci and Natixis. The company continues to work with several key advertisers such as Hyundai, Nikon, Samsung and Omega.

4 TURNER BROADCASTING Turner Broadcasting jumps two spots to fourth this year, which is no surprise considering the company’s concerted efforts in Asia over the past 12 months. It launched Warner TV in Asia with flagship programming that included the Batman prequel crime-drama, Gotham, and the popular US summer drama series The Last Ship. Turner Broadcasting carried out an extensive campaign to promote Gotham through activities such as the “Gotham Villain Hunt” that was a regional scavenger hunt for content across four Asian cities. On top of that, the company undertook an integrated social media campaign that ran on radio, out-of-home, online, print and TV advertising. Turner Broadcasting System Asia Pacific and PT Trans Media Corporation also announced a strategic partnership to launch CNN Indonesia.

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TV BROADCASTERS OF THE YEAR

5 FOX INTERNATIONAL CHANNELS FOX International Channels (FIC) drops one spot to fifth on the rankings this year. Since the launch of the FOX Sports network in Asia in 2013, FOX has implemented a number of initiatives to upgrade its sports channels to ensure its fans enjoy the best possible sports viewing experience. The company has built multiple operation hubs across the region, offering commentary in more local languages such as Cantonese and Bahasa Indonesia, in addition to English. Furthermore, it has expanded its roster of on-air presenters to better represent Asia’s diversity. Over the past year, the network has also secured or renewed broadcast rights to even more top leagues across Asia’s more popular sports. These efforts culminated in a

massive rebrand initiative – “FOX Sports – where sports goes boom!” – in August this year, which saw the FOX Sports network being relaunched as a trio of HD channels – FOX Sports, FOX Sports 2 and FOX Sports 3, each catering to differing types of sports fans. Chinese entertainment also continues to be

a strong portion of FIC’s channel portfolio. Its leading Chinese movies channel SCM launched the “GO LOCAL” initiative with Emperor Motion Pictures, which was a means to nurture upand-coming talent and the HK film industry as a whole. SCM now has more than 10 projects underway and has a dedicated Southeast Asian feed with eight feeds globally, and entry into Malaysia just this month. In April, a reshuffle in the FIC Asia Pacific and Middle East senior management team saw the elevation of veteran executives Joon Lee (pictured left) and Simeon Dawes (right) who took on expanded dual roles. In terms of advertising, F1 advertised directly on FOX Sports, while Rolex advertised on TV and digitally. Tourism Australia worked with StarWorld for the Restaurant Australia campaign.

6 SONY PICTURES TELEVISION NETWORKS ASIA Sony Pictures Television Networks Asia climbs two spots and clinches sixth position in this year’s rankings. AXN, under Sony Asia, and home to English general entertainment, has commissioned Asia’s Got Talent, a panregional edition of FremantleMedia and Syco Entertainment’s global hit, Got Talent. For the second year running, ONE, the channel showcasing South Korean dramas, organised a ticketed fans meeting with the stars of urban action hit variety show Running Man. Five out of the seven-member cast, including the only female, Song Ji Hyo, performed for fans in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. For its Singapore leg, 3000 people gathered for the fan-meet, while 4000 attended the autograph session attended by both the stars and media.

Sony Entertainment Television – skewed towards women – was rebranded to Sony Channel to bring the biggest and best in Hollywood entertainment to Asian viewers. New titles include Shonda Rhimes’ romantic comedy series How to Get Away with Murder and White House drama Madam Secretary. To promote AXN’s The Voice Season 7, Sony featured a themed MRT train in Singapore, while the iconic red chair was brought to key locations in Singapore and Malaysia for the ultimate, The Voice experience. To celebrate Animax’s anime programming, Animax Carnival Malaysia was held in March for the third year running. Guest stars, Japanese band angela, performed its hit anime songs which attracted a record turnout of 22,000.

7 UNIVERSAL NETWORKS INTERNATIONAL Universal Networks International (UNI) drops five spots and comes in seventh this year. NBCUniversal has committed itself to increasing investment in three main areas: express programming, original productions and fresh franchises or partnerships. Priding itself on bringing new content to Asian audiences as soon as possible from the US, UNI launched a new campaign, “Express from Hollywood”, in March 2014. E! viewers can now catch up with 90% of their favourite pop culture programmes such as the Kardashians’ franchise and E! Entertainment specials within 48 hours of their US debut. Additionally, E! News is aired the same day as the US. New original productions have also been introduced. DIVA is set to premiere its Supermodelme: Sirens season, part of its original

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supermodel series, on 24 November. Another is the E! News Asia specials – they will be featuring new personalities such as sensational Filipino actor Piolo Pascual and up-and-coming Malaysian singer-songwriter Yuna. Hot franchises on NBCUniversal’s channel portfolio include reality royalty, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, with its new spin-off Kourtney and Khloé Take the Hamptons. Syfy’s highly buzzed Sharknado film franchise has also been renewed for the third instalment for a 2015 summer premiere. One standout campaign this year is with TRESemmé – a leading female haircare brand – that has engaged with the company via an APAC sponsorship package on E!, covering the Philippines, Australia and Indonesia. The package includes bespoke content created for broadcast with “what’s hot” on New York

runways, with the latest trends and styles. In February, UNI announced the appointment of Scott Mackenzie as vice-president of Channels, Asia. He reports to Christine Fellowes, managing director at UNI (APAC) and will lead the optimisation of Universal Channel, E!, Diva and Syfy to drive overall growth.

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TV BROADCASTERS OF THE YEAR

8 CNBC ASIA PACIFIC

CNBC Asia Pacific drops one spot to eighth in this year’s rankings, but its efforts continue to impress. Over the past year, the company has launched a dynamic new programming line-up in Asia Pacific. Apart from two new shows – The Rundown and Street Signs – and a fresh presenter line-up with the addition of Pauline Chiou to its team of anchors, CNBC has also unveiled a redesigned

studio in Hong Kong, home to the network’s flagship morning programme, Squawk Box. The network will also be premiering a new monthly travel and lifestyle programme – First Class – on 26 September, enhancing the weekend offering. The company also saw some new senior hires and promotions with John Armah appointed head of digital for international in June 2014, and Junji Sumitani promoted to the new position of vice-president of international business development in November 2013. In conjunction with the new programming launch, CNBC ran an outdoor advertising campaign, New Look, New Programming, New Experiences, that featured the fresh presenter line-up. It appeared online, on TV ads across the network, along with print ads in daily newspapers

such as the South China Morning Post and The Wall Street Journal Asia. The creative also featured prominently on Hong Kong’s trams and bus shelters and on Singapore’s main train lines that ran through the CBD area. Recently, CNBC also announced the launch of the newly redesigned CNBC iOS Universal app for the iPhone and iPad. The app enables easier access to both authenticated live and on-demand network programming, integrated alongside real-time market data, award-winning business news coverage and comprehensive interactive charts. A broad range of advertisers actively engage with the networks – from Singapore Airlines in the travel sector to corporate companies such as DBS and Hitachi.

of MTV’s social media team for the event, along with an engagement fee of US$10,000. The second was the “Dare To Be An MTV VJ For A Day” campaign, part of Acuvue’s Dare

To Be campaign. Four winners from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand took on the challenge to be present at the MTV World Stage Malaysia alongside MTV VJs, following a five-day course with professional voice and stage coaches on grooming, presentation and stage etiquette. In collaboration with Singtel mio TV, Nickelodeon Slime Cup was held for the second year running, attracting more than 8000 people over a weekend at the United Square Shopping Mall, the main partner. A whopping 10,000 litres of the signature green slime was produced for this year’s slimiest integrated sports festival in Singapore. Comedy Central Asia also launched Comedy Central HD on HyppTV – Telecom Malaysia Berhad’s award-winning IPTV service – which went on-air on 1 September in Malaysia.

awareness for the upcoming Canon Photo Marathon. Notably, A+E has adopted the sameday telecast as US programming to remain competitive. This was done with season two of the family saga drama, Vikings, alongside ongoing active campaigns such as the “Raid To Reveal” digital campaign for the show’s premiere and an off-air marketing partnership with “Crab in da Bag” and the River Hongbao Festival.

For the HISTORY channel, A+E also conducted comprehensive and insightful research on Asian men, aptly called Dude-ology, where the men interviewed were aged between 18 and 49 and were within the pay-TV subscriber universe. To promote this research, A+E hosted a road show for clients and media agencies in Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines to show how HISTORY is relevant to male trends today.

9 VIACOM INTERNATIONAL Viacom International holds on strongly to its ninth spot in the rankings. Viacom has seen a change in its line-up within the company. Mark Whitehead, who joined VIMN Asia in August, has been appointed executive vice-president and managing director of the company’s operations in Asia. In March, Paras Sharma was also appointed the vice-president of MTV Brand, Comedy Central and Digital Media Asia. This year, MTV World Stage, the global series started in 2009 that brings multi-genre talent with global relevance, was brought to Malaysia. Within this show, two key marketing campaigns were run. First, the MTV World Stage Insider was run for the second year, rewarding a worthy candidate with the day job to be part

10 A+E NETWORKS A+E Networks makes its debut appearance in the rankings this year in a laudable 10th place. Bio will rebrand to FYI on 6 October this year. A+E has also made the effort to ramp up local productions. Lifetime premiered its first Asian production, Mom’s Time Out, in August. HISTORY has also begun its first reality competition series, Photo Face-Off, that premiered recently on 23 September. Five photographers from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam competed for an all-expenses paid trip to New York City to photograph some of the world’s biggest stars, along with a trip to Canon’s Photo Clinic in Japan. To promote this, A+E conducted affiliate contests, road shows and press events across key markets and conscientiously raised

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

MOBILE – MUCH MORE THAN A SIMPLE STRATEGY “YOU DON’T NEED A MOBILE MARKETING STRATEGY FOR YOUR COMPANY OR A BRAND,” SAYS TBWA’S HEAD OF DIGITAL, TUOMAS PELTONIEMI. PELTONIEMI.

Why? “Because mobile is not just another addition to your marketing strategy. It needs to be much more than that. Mobile should be at the heart of every aspect of your marketing strategy. It is not just a device for brand-building for businesses,” he explained, at Marketing’s Mobile Marketing Interactive conference. In a recent finding by Google Singapore, it was reported 96% of consumers search for local information on their mobile. Meanwhile, 87% of the respondents claimed to research products via their smartphones and 44% claim to have made a purchase. No doubt, mobile is here to stay. Yet with the proliferation of platforms, it can often be overwhelming for marketers to see mobile as another medium to be understood

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and conquered. Hence, marketers need to see mobile as a means to amplify the potential of their existing mediums, explained Peltoniemi. Here’s how mobile can be integrated into the heart of any marketing strategy. Email marketing Have you considered how mobile impacts email campaigns? Probably not. According to Litmus’ research email analytics and Jacobs & Clevenger, today 49% of emails are opened on mobile devices, but 90% of email newsletters or campaigns sent out today do not consider mobile. This results in nearly 80% of users deleting emails that don’t fit their screen. Yet if marketers could make tweaks to mobile and

optimise these email campaigns, conversion rates would likely jump by 10% to 20%, explained Peltoniemi. “Once a brand starts considering mobile, not only does it optimise conversion rates, but it is also tapping into something most marketers aren’t. Mobile needs to be a key part of any email activity that you do,” he said. Search marketing According to Google, by December this year, mobile search on Google will most likely surpass PC search. Mobile search is also now a key decision tool with 45% of mobile search done by a consumer being goal oriented. At the same time, 73% of mobile search triggers additional action right away and a conversion. However,

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marketers need to be mindful that in a study by The Google Mobile Playbook, 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business that has a poor mobile experience. Ease of use and convenience on the search page will, however, draw a consumer to head to a brand’s website. Website user experience Be it search, social media or banner ads – at the end of the day, there are a lot of trigger points marketers place to drive people to their brand websites. Here’s where user experience and responsive web design comes into play. Responsive web design is vital and a must today. A business’s web design needs to be optimised for all devices be it mobile, PC or a tablet. It is also important to note that today 41% of users see mobile as their primary or exclusive means of going online. Social media marketing Socia.l networking is all about mobile. According to a study by Adobe late last year, 71% of people

access social media through their phones. According to Facebook, 52% of contentsharing is now also done through mobile and not desktop. It is, thus, vital how marketers customise content to fit into mobile on social media. “When marketers run social media ads they need to be mindful that the ads are actually competing against real people’s lives. A brand’s paid messaging needs to be really relevant to people’s lives and you need to produce content that will resonate with them.” Barriers to mobile marketing On the topic of optimising mobile advertising, Ashwin Malshe, assistant professor of marketing at the ESSEC Business School, says while mobile and web advertising have reinforcing effects on each other, there are three big barriers to mobile. These include:

•

Consumer behaviour Consumers are largely inconsistent and marketers are still trying to work out a

•

balance in how much information they can or should collect without coming off creepy, says Malshe. Economic challenges Proving ROI is not only a moving target in marketing, but also a major burden because of the time required to accurately report results. Globally, 75% of marketers face a problem when trying to calculate ROI and a common issue is connecting marketing activities to specific earnings generated. These are the findings of a study by Teradata’s Data-Driven Marketing Survey 2013. Technology 80% of the time large corporations are spending time sifting though the data. Only 20% of the time do marketers actually get to utilise the data and use it to target their audience. Meanwhile, existing trust issues by consumers and internal co-ordination in a company are also needed to overcome the tech barrier present.

11 THINGS TO AVOID IN MOBILE MARKETING PONDERING OVER YOUR MOBILE STRATEGY? PHIL WHITTAKER, WHITTAKER, CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER AT THEMED ATTRACTIONS AND RESORTS, GIVES SOME TIPS BEFORE REVEALING THE COMPANY’S MOBILE STRATEGY FOR ITS VARIOUS ATTRACTIONS, INCLUDING KIDZANIA, LEGOLAND AND SEA WORLD. Here are the 11 traps to avoid: 1. Having no clear reason or objective for going mobile and failing to think like a mobile user. 2. Insufficient budget consideration. 3. Shrinking an online creative and hoping to derive similar results. 4. Failing to realise that people use mobile differently over different devices. 5. Not having a localised approach. 6. Having content that is not sharable. 7. Failing to integrate a mobile campaign into events that are ongoing. 8. Failing to optimise the website. 9. Content is not engaging and interactive. 10. Unclear call to action. 11. Failing to segment the market. Whittaker talked about the company’s use of its mobile app for the Sea World theme park. The app allows park visitors to book a place in ride

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queues, pick up discounts, play interactive games and check real-time events going on at the park.

With the advent of big data comes permission-based marketing, and how marketers can work with this is making sure that your mobile apps give users incentives to download them, he says. Providing location-based services or information also increases the app’s usefulness. And while coupons, special deals and offers can all be conveyed via mobile, it is important this is not overused. “Creative incentives that encourage the customer’s mobile interaction throughout the whole experience, that is, through a retail store or theme park, keeps them buying directly from you,” he says. Offline prompts and signage will also contribute to immediate call-to-action. Mobile Marketing Interactive 2014 was sponsored by SingTel and Millennial Media and partnered by ThoughtBuzz.

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WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO PROMOTE A MOBILE APP SUCCESSFULLY? MAKING YOUR BRAND’S APP SUCCESSFUL CAN OFTEN REQUIRE SIGNIFICANT INVESTMENT IN PROMOTING IT. HERE’S HOW UOB MADE A SUCCESS OF ITS APP.

If you’re going to create an app for your brand, you can’t just depend on downloads to happen organically. They won’t. (Or at least not enough to justify your investment.) Further, you have to make sure your app is more than just a catalogue for your brand. The world is full of such apps, and the sad truth is that nobody cares about them. To give our readers an idea of what it really takes for a brand to create a successful mobile application, we spoke to Stanley Toh, first vicepresident of internet and digital marketing at UOB. UOB’s mobile application offerings were featured in its gold-winning entry for Best User Experience at Marketing magazine’s Mob-Ex awards 2014. In a market crowded with banking apps with high utility value for its users, it takes flair to stand out. UOB distinguished its mobile application by providing features that complements its users’ lifestyle. “The UOB mobile banking app delivers to our customers something new which will add value in their daily lives. Besides booking movie

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tickets, customers can also book event tickets under SISTIC. Coupled with unique banking features such as mobile cash, we aim to deliver a superior user experience to our customers,” Toh says. “We wanted to give customers a ‘concierge in their hands’.” To promote these features, the bank invested in an eight-month advertising campaign split into two phases. The first phase – 17 May to 14 July 2013 – promoted its mobile cash feature. The second phase – 1 October to 31 December 2013 – promoted its mobile ticketing app. Mobile cash UOB’s mobile cash person-to-person feature allows users to transfer cash securely via their mobile numbers instead of their bank accounts. The cash can be withdrawn from ATM machines without needing an ATM card, credited into a UOB account or used to top up a NETS FlashPay or NETS Cash Card. UOB’s mobile banking app was the first local app to include this service, well before the likes of DBS PayLah! were launched.

To promote the app, UOB invested in an integrated media campaign aimed at driving app downloads and usage. “We were promoting a mobile feature, so a more mobile and online savvy customer base was the natural audience. However, even the most digital-savvy customer does consume conventional media too and would benefit from the service. Further, conventional media allowed us to reach customers who weren’t necessarily digitally savvy, but would be interested to look into using the app nonetheless,” Toh said. “So a 360-degree marketing plan, including several creative executions both online and offline, was put in place.” UOB’s mobile cash media campaign utilised a combination of internally owned channels and paid channels that complemented the lifestyle habits of its consumers. Owned channels used included electronic mailers, mobile messaging, ATMs and its own website, among others. Paid channels included advertisements in XinMSN, Google and The Straits Times website; OOH advertisements placed through Clear Channel; and mobile banners displayed through apps such as Facebook and Google. Through the campaign, UOB achieved 102% of its mobile app download target. During the campaign period, UOB saw a year-on-year growth of 33% in mobile cash transactions, 35% in mobile cash transaction amounts and 14% in active mobile banking users. Mobile ticketing UOB’s mobile ticketing app allows users to browse and buy tickets to movies in Cathay Cineplexes’ outlets. Users can also use the feature to book event tickets through SISTIC. Further, UOB rewarded app users with chances to win red carpet gala premiere tickets to The Hunger Games: Catching Fire in London and Los Angeles, and exclusive entry to Singapore’s premiere screening of the movie. The bank used various high-reach, affinity driven paid channels and owned channels to promote these benefits, as well as utilising the channels of sponsorship partners to encourage app downloads. Its press and mobile advertisements directed users to the app download page on iTunes and Google Play. Ads were placed through Cathay Cineleisure’s owned channels, including standees, life stickers and web banners among others; as well as MediaCorp’s channels, Average app downloads during the campaign period were seven times higher than when there were no campaigns running; further, the bank saw a six times month-on-month increase in both the app downloads and transaction volume for mobile ticketing.

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MOBILE AND BIG DATA: FROM HYPE TO HANDS-ON

understanding, delighting, connecting with, and serving customers.” In the quest to serve this need for an obsession with customers, mobile devices are key. They are consumers’ most personal devices, always on, and through the technology that they carry are able to capture much more (and much more relevant) data than any of their cord-donning relatives.

BIG DATA AND MOBILE ARE A POWERFUL ENABLERS OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS, SAYS OGILVYONE’S DAAN VAN ROSSUM.

While leveraging mobile to generate big data sounds more like a big undertaking than a quick exercise, it doesn’t have to be all that complicated, thanks to these three relatively straightforward steps: 1. Map out your customers journey. Don’t just focus on what’s relevant to your brand. Try to truly understand customers’ ups, downs, wants and needs. If they’re a financial trader, what does their day look like? If they’re a mum-to-be, what do they go through from the moment they find out they’re pregnant? 2. Spot engagement opportunities along the journey. Is the mum-to-be looking for a name for her baby and overwhelmed by the many articles and websites promising her just that? Is the investor manually searching for financial news based on his portfolio? Now overlay that with the data you’re looking to extract from your customers and determine the overlap. 3. Create value for both you and your customer. This is where it gets fun. Dream up a worthwhile value exchange between your customer and you. In return for a baby name based on a clever algorithm, would the mum-to-be offer up access to loyalty cards stored on her phone? Would the trader occasionally give up his whereabouts in return for a personalised financial news service?

The big hype around big data is over. That’s the good news that Gartner’s 2014 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies research report delivered. After dominating headlines for years, it has passed the “peak of inflated expectations” and is slowly making its way down the “trough of disillusionment”. In simpler terms: it’s time to get real about big data. Meaning that yes, there’s a lot of data, and that yes, it’s volatile, but in the end it’s still data: pieces of intelligence that businesses can harness to drive better business results. Mobile went through a very similar trajectory. Let’s be honest, how many times

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have we heard pundits say – “this is the year of mobile”? Finally though, the overexposure is dying down as companies truly embrace mobile as a powerful enabler of building and maintaining stronger relationships. And that’s exactly where big data and mobile come together. Obsessed with customers Savvy marketers are leveraging data to compete in competitive markets such as finance, retail and telecommunications. They do so because they need to be, as Forrester noted in its 2013 paper on the future of CRM, “obsessed with

Even though we’re talking mobile here, please don’t fall for the “mobile for brands means branded apps” trap. Broaden your thinking and explore options such as partnering with an already successful third-party app. Think about beacons that promise hyper-location in stores. Think about wearables or connected cars that are constantly recording streams of valuable data. If you can do this, you will triumph, as you’re banking on existing user behaviour to build better relationships that are profitable both for you and your customer. Now who was talking about disillusionment again? The author is Daan van Rossum, strategy director at OgilvyOne Singapore.

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internet access purely on mobile devices. In the rest of Southeast Asia, we are having to change our way of thinking as quickly as possible. Marketers and agencies alike agree to the need to adapt to this ever-changing environment and ensure their communications plans are mobile-enabled. In fact, some are going much further than this and are pushing the majority of their efforts into mobile communications. Based on this, both parties should also be looking to adapt to mobile commerce much more effectively rather than seeing it as a barrier to success. Look for the opportunities within your marketing, step into your target audience’s shoes for a small while and consider how they may use their mobile phones on a day to day basis – it’ll probably be just the same way that you or I use them – and then realise this is a platform which cannot be ignored any further.

MOBILE MARKETING - TAKING THE NEXT STEPS FORWARD FOUR TOPICS WERE DISCUSSED AT THE MOBILE MARKETING INTERACTIVE CONFERENCE’S ROUNDTABLE SESSIONS. HERE ARE WHAT OUR ROUNDTABLE HOSTS CAME AWAY WITH. Mobile commerce in Southeast Asia While we have the technological expertise and an understanding of the potential for mobile commerce in the market, there is still a hesitancy to utilise mobile commerce to its full effect. Research shows that mobile can play an integral part in the e-commerce process by aiding awareness, driving demand and providing a platform for research, based on the fact that by the end of this year mobile search will have overtaken search on PCs. And while this is all acknowledged, only 35% of marketers in Singapore have admitted to making an effort to implement mobile “friendly” websites – whether those are mobile-optimised or have responsive design. Providing consumers with that last step in the purchasing cycle – being able to easily (and I stress easily, as UX is a predominant barrier

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to successful mobile commerce) purchase through their phones – is a simple process. Even if consumers in Singapore are hesitant to purchase high-value ticket items through their phones as yet, we should still be providing them with that opportunity. Giving them the ability to place an item in the basket, and then purchase through their PC or laptop later on, is one step in the educational process and we saw during Mobile Marketing Interactive that a number of retailers are starting to do this to great effect. Lower value ticket items will sell through mobiles easily, just as people are becoming used to making in-app purchases on a regular basis. But outside of Singapore we need to take into account that markets are different. Smartphones and 4G are only just taking off in Indonesia, where we shall see a rapid growth in

Giles Henderson, director, media and channels, VML Qais Small data is the key Phil Whittaker, the CMO of Themed Attractions Malaysia, set the stage with one powerful sentiment: when it comes to mobile and data, bigger is not always better. Big data may get the fame, but “small data” is the key to simultaneously improving the customer experience and business results. Small data helps you build the story about who your customers are and what they need. Sea World, Whittaker explained, provides an excellent example of how to enhance visitors’ experiences by capturing and leveraging small data. The attraction invites visitors to use a mobile app to skip lines and make in-park purchases right from their phones. This data capture process alone can vastly improve the overall park experience. At the same time, the insights this app provides on movement patterns and customer needs are invaluable to the business. The conversations the many attendees of the mobile event had after that keynote made this marketer and topic host’s heart jump for joy. Sure, the level of maturity in terms of leveraging data ranged from the very early stages to incredibly advanced, but everyone seemed to agree the outcome should always be to improve the user’s experiences. Whether insights gleaned from data improve actual products, fuel the innovation pipeline, optimise a store layout or help tailor messaging based on individual preferences, everything should be customer-centric. Operation scale and maturity do not matter

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when it comes to leveraging mobile data to deliver value. Organisations of all backgrounds can benefit from the opportunities that mobile and data provide. It’s all about putting the customer first and designing your solutions around that. Of course, a number of obstacles were repeatedly mentioned. After all, the marketer’s dream is not always the organisation’s priority. So how do you make the case for the incredible opportunity provided by data sourced from mobile (and beyond)? Attendees seemed to agree it has to – again – start small. You have a much better case in proposing a pilot for testing some of your hypotheses than you do in proposing a complete business overhaul. And what if you don’t have access to customer data at all, as is the situation for a fairly large group of participants? What if you’re in the business of selling consumer goods, but your retailers hold the key to all the sales data? Or if you sell products directly, but can’t access the data around how your customer uses it after the purchase? The consensus was that you would have to reach out directly to the end customer – through mobile and digital engagements such as textto-wins, surveys, apps, useful pieces of content and tools – to capture a true representation of their experience as a shopper and end user. Data possibilities keep mobile marketers up at night. Bringing these peers together to listen to keynotes related to the topic and to discuss case studies and questions proved to be the perfect conference format for inspiring answers and innovation. Empowered by all these new insights, it will be exciting to see what’s next for data and mobile in Singapore. Our “little red dot” may be small, but the ambitions to use data to serve customers are nothing but big. Daan van Rossum, strategy director, OgilvyOne Singapore Mobile creativity Creativity in mobile devices is often only considered in campaigns. The world is full of campaign apps that are downloaded less than 1000 times. Our roundtables focused on “thinking outside the campaign app”. Most of the questions from roundtable participants were around the comparison between mobile applications and the mobile web. Key questions included which of the approaches brands should take when designing their mobile experiences, and how creativity can be used to design services for their businesses. The answers to these questions are not always clear cut. There are very successful global brands, which have built their business around a mobile application in a creative way. An example of this is Uber,

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which has focused on user experience and created a competitive advantage over taxi applications in multiple markets globally.On the other hand, financial brands such as Simple have used mobile creativity to disrupt the banking industry. Another example of this is payments brand Square, which has made it possible for small and medium-sized businesses to accept payments using their own mobile devices.As with the previous examples, when considering mobile creativity, brands can offer people two things: utility value or entertainment value. There are brands where the utility value is more apparent. Typically, travel and financial industries fall into this category. Utility applications and mobile web services have plenty to do in the arena of creativity, and creativity should be applied in designing seamless user experiences that keep customers coming back frequently. The entertainment value category is more evident for gaming and content brands, but more mainstream businesses such as MINI have been successful in mobile entertainment. The MINI Getaway campaign that took Stockholm by storm in 2010, was one of the most awardwinning mobile campaign applications in history. In this campaign, the entire city was turned into a real-time board game where people were trying to hold onto a virtual MINI using their mobile phones. Other creative examples discussed were McDonald’s with its alarm clock that would provide people breakfast promotions, and the use of tablets as creative business-to-business

sales tools. A brilliant example of mobile creativity from one of the roundtables was NEXT Hotel in Brisbane, which is recreating its customer experience completely around mobile. Customers can not only search for available rooms and book via the mobile application, but also check in, receive the room number, unlock the room door, as well as control everything from air conditioning to the room TV, using the NEXT app. This creates a seamless end-to-end experience, which talks to its target audience in a clever way. Mobile creativity is not just for campaigns and marketing. Creativity should be used in user experience, utility, entertainment and even business models. Many brands, such as Uber, Simple, and Square, have proven the value of mobile creativity in building successful businesses and disrupting existing category conventions. Businesses across categories can create a competitive advantage by applying creativity to the mobile experiences they provide to their customers. Tuomas Peltoniemi, head of digital, Digital Arts Network Overcoming mobile’s biggest challenges During my roundtable discussions, it seemed the topic of mobile marketing was quite new to a number of the people I spoke to. A fair number didn’t use mobile as an advertising platform, making it hard to discuss the challenges faced by marketers. For those who did invest a lot in mobile marketing, the problem of ROI kept coming up. Attribution is a problem for mobile: it’s hard to find out the success of a mobile campaign. Unlike in the world of TV advertising, there are no credible sources which will help brand managers judge ROI – there isn’t a comScore for the mobile world. This means that while a lot of marketers can claim their apps have millions of users, without a credible external source it’s really hard to judge download figures and thus decide on mobile advertising investments. Further, brands face problems with screen size: brands are worried about how noticeable mobile banners actually are. Complicating this is the problem of balancing visibility with a good consumer experience. Brands are concerned about ensuring they get their message across without irritating their audience. Finally, a lack of education about mobile is the biggest challenge. Marketers know what the medium is – it’s hard to know where to start. This means that while brands are investing in it, mobile marketing is not a high priority in their budgets. Meru Shantharam, sales manager, Millennial Media

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CAREERS

CAREER PATH Audrey Chia

Assistant marketing manager Nissin Foods (Asia) Singapore First job? My first job was sales and marketing in the financial services industry. It served as a great experience for me because I met people from all walks of life and expanded my horizons. First job in advertising/ marketing? My role with Nissin

Foods (Asia) marks the beginning of a fully fledged marketing career. Prior experiences were partial marketing. Best job? In all honesty, I

absolutely love my current job. The best indication that I’m enjoying my work is that time seems to fly by so quickly. Perks of your current job?

This role allows me to execute on anyone’s wish list of flavours! Managing the making of a new product from its research stages to development and then to launch brings with it a great sense of fulfilment. Worst job? To me, a “worst job”

could just be something that falls out of your circle of interest which means it’s time to move. Marketing professionals you admire? I admire Ben Lilley for

his works thus far. I believe his background in economics and psychology complement each other and plays a major role in the strategies he executes. Best career advice you’ve been given? A dedicated job

requires up to 80% of your time and energy. You want to make sure this 80% is spent doing happy things. Why a career in marketing?

Every day is a day for something interesting to happen. I enjoy the competitive nature of marketing. If you weren’t in marketing, what would you be? At home,

taking care of a dozen kids, maybe? How do you wind down? Music,

travelling and long walks.

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JOB SHUFFLE Leo Burnett announced some big changes to its Asia operations with Eddie Booth, regional chairman and CEO of Greater China, retiring from the agency after 15 years. Jarek Ziebinski, president of Leo Burnett Asia Pacific, took over as chairman and CEO for the consolidated operation, including China, from September. Ziebinski will continue to report directly to Tom Bernardin, chairman and CEO of Leo Burnett Worldwide. MediaCorp appointed Jack Lim as chief commercial officer. He reports to Shaun Seow, its chief executive officer. In the newly created role, Lim oversees all commercial relationships and fulfilment, including advertising sales, go-to-market partnerships and creative services. He’s in charge of developing a marketing strategy to integrate the company’s products across several platforms, including TV and radio, press, magazines, OOH and digital properties. Eunice Yap was appointed chief marketing officer for The Esplanade. Yap came on board earlier this month and reports to CEO Benson Puah. She was last vice-chairman/ executive director of The Good Life. The Good Life’s mission is to provide quality healthcare for value and to partner with reputed medical professionals to create programmes that make healthy living desirable. WPP’s Jean-Michel Wu joined McCann Worldgroup Asia Pacific as its chief talent officer. He starts on 20 October 2014. He

will be based in Singapore. Working closely with the global management team, headed by Joe Kelly in New York and Charles Cadell, Wu will be responsible for building on McCann Worldgroup’s extensive talent capabilities across the network. Young & Rubicam Singapore appointed Wedad Sunny as client services director. Sunny has more than 18 years of integrated marketing, advertising and public relations experience across multiple markets. She was previously with The Gate Worldwide as client services director. At the agency, she was responsible for building capabilities in digital marketing strategy, digital advertising and media strategy, planning and buying. Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, has now stepped down as a board member. Ballmer (pictured) in a letter to current CEO Satya Nadella said it would be impractical for him to continue to serve on the board given the multitude of new commitments he is undertaking. Nadella thanked Ballmer for his 34-year contribution. VML Qais appointed Preethi Sanjeevi chief marketing officer, a role newly created in line with the agency’s continued expansion. She takes on responsibility for the marketing function across the region, including strategic partnerships

and alliances, agency visibility, leveraging Generation Asia research and others. She will also support the VML Qais India team as it continues to strengthen. Rachel Norager, previously Golin’s executive director and head of its healthcare practice in Singapore, has left the company. She will be taking on the role of communication and public affairs director of Asia Pacific at Janssen, Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson. She first joined Golin in February 2013 to work on the agency’s pharmaceutical clients and with its Virgo Health brand. Global retail and brand consultancy FITCH appointed Danny Lye general manager of the FITCH Singapore office. In his new role, Lye will be responsible for managing the overall business profitability and growth of FITCH’s operations for Singapore. This is a newly created role. Lye (pictured) joined FITCH as client director in 2013 to manage its key clients, including Dell and Van Heusen. Shannon Cullum is now CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore and Malaysia. He replaces Paul Roebuck who took on the role of the EVP worldwide senior business director at BBDO looking over the agency’s Johnson & Johnson consumer business. Meanwhile, Cullum adds his new responsibilities to his existing portfolio as CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Indonesia and chief growth officer of Saatchi & Saatchi APAC.

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SENIOR APPOINTMENTS

ABOUT AMBITION

Ambition is a leading global boutique recruitment business with coverage across Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and United Kingdom. Founded and listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 1999, the company has grown to become a prominent specialist player within marketing recruitment. For more information, please visit www.ambition.com.sg.

REGIONAL AD OPERATIONS MANAGER F Regional Opportunity F MNC With Broad Global Reach F $100,000 - $130,000 SGD + Bonus Our client is a Search MNC with broad global reach, is currently recruiting for a Regional Ad Operations , %#0 5&- '1 j#6' *# 2- !-0.-0 2# 0#/3'0#+#,2A #12 *'1&#1 0- 312 , *72'! * 1)'**1A !-,!#.23 *'8#1 prospects to accessible, actionable market place visions, and who has a strong desire to support customers and partners. #.-02',% 2- 2&# # " -$ .#0 2'-,1 1#" ', ',% .-0#A 7-3 5'** .0-4'"# -.#0 2'-, * .0-i!'#,!7 by driving overall vision and programmatic strategy for keyword search programs for the APAC online ads business. Your role will also include development and maintenance of customer and partner involvement through collaborating with cross functional teams to manage procedure and facilitate platform competencies. You are also expected to project manage and plan for keyword search initiatives focused on the ASEAN region. To qualify, individuals must possess: F a bachelor degree holder F an operations and programs savvy skillset F -,*',# ," "'1.* 7 "4#02'1',% ,"G-0 . '" 1# 0!& .0-i!'#,!7 F j3#,!7 ', ," 0',A 1.-)#, ," 50'22#, H2- $-!31 -, 2&# 0# 2#0 &', 0)#2J F experience in the APAC market F excellent communication skills Contact Diane Barraquio on (65) 6854 5629 or email diane.barraquio@ambition.com.sg quoting reference number DGB28647.

COUNTRY MANAGER F Based in Jakarta Indonesia F High Growth Regional Organisation F Competitive Remuneration

Our client is an established and high growth retail organisation with a market leading presence in Asia. It is now looking to hire a Country Manager to lead the Indonesia business and ensure the appropriate structures and processes are in place during this period of high growth. Reporting to the Asia CEO, you will be responsible for overseeing all aspects of the Indonesia business and have full P&L responsibility. The functions reporting into this role include Sales, Marketing, Operations, Finance, Customer Service and Logistics (over 80 employees). A highly strategic role, you will develop operational strategy to enable the company to achieve its growth objectives. The business has gone through a recent period of change and this is likely to continue for the short term. Hence effective experience of driving change in an organisation and process improvement is critical. You will also be commercially focused and identify business opportunities through the acquisition of new partners and the expansion of the product portfolio. To qualify, individuals must possess: F a strong track record in a general management capacity F experience managing large teams across multiple functions F experience within retail, or a high volume transactional industry F e-Commerce experience F demonstrable experience in driving effective change F excellent leadership skills with the ability to liaise at all levels Contact Diane Barraquio on (65) 6854 5629 or email diane.barraquio@ambition.com.sg quoting reference number DGB28756.

Data provided is for recruitment purposes only Business Licence Number: 200611680D. Licence Number: 10C5117.

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LAST WORD

A CLIENT’S CHEAT SHEET FOR BETTER WORK OUT OF AGENCIES It’s not that hard to get along with your agency partners. Here are six simple questions to make life easier, writes McCann Singapore’s Ali Grayeli.

Read this - Save yourself and your agency partners some sweat and tears.

Boooya! It’s time. Time to make that magical call to your agency and have a kick-off. You have everything you need: No time. No money. Impatient superiors. Inattentive audience. And someone said, “make it viral”. As someone on the receiving end of these kick-offs, let me start by saying you’re not alone. In fact, this is now the new norm. Taking a moment to concisely articulate a problem has become a thing of legend. But what if you took a minute to concisely answer six questions before making the call? Let’s call it “focus”. Focus guides the agency with precision and intent. (We’re busy too!) Focus also helps you manage internal issues with clarity. Focus is as simple as answering these questions: 1. What are you doing? 2. Why are you doing it? 3. Why don’t people believe it? 4. How much risk will you take? 5. Who has the ﬁnal word? 6. What does success look like? Now you’re sitting back thinking to yourself … “That’s it?” That’s it. Agencies need an objective. A direction. We need a problem to solve with purpose. Once we get there the rest comes into play. You see, creative ideas solve problems ﬁrst and foremost. They’re not just art or poetry or apps or ‘likes’ … they’re business solutions for marketing needs. If they don’t solve a problem you’re probably about to

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make new problems by launching aimless work. Your agency (if it’s good) shouldn’t be jumping to a creative solution unless you can answer these questions ﬁrst. Questions save you time. They save us creative time and spring forth ideas such as a graceful forest stream, not an out-of-control garden hose. For example, in the past 20 years I’ve lost count of how many times the question, “What are we doing?” has awkwardly derailed a meeting of intelligent people. “We’re selling units right?” “No, no we’re raising brand awareness.” “It’s a sampling campaign, isn’t it?” “You sure? I thought it was a one-time event?” “But we still need an app right?” “Doesn’t matter, just put it on Facebook, we’ll get ‘likes’. ” Even the most hardened advertising professional can produce aimless work and, frankly speaking, there is a lot of it out there so let’s cut it down a bit. Focus ﬁrst and cover the basics. Your success will sky rocket. Your agency will love you. Your sex will be better. And the work will rock. Let me know how it goes. PS – I can’t promise the third point! The writer is Ali Grayeli, executive creative director at McCann Singapore.

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