Marketing Featured Southeast Asia

Head of new Grey SEA commerce unit: ‘Commerce is borderless, and so are we’

by MARKETECH APAC

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November 11, 2020

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Singapore – Global marketing and advertising firm Grey has recently launched a new division – Grey Commerce Collective SEA – where worldwide retail and commerce units from the group have been merged to specifically serve Southeast Asia brands.

Previous lead of Grey Singapore’s Shopper marketing arm, and now head of the SEA collective following its consolidation, Richa Kapse, said, “Commerce is borderless, and so are we.”

Kapse refers to the holistic arrangement of the Commerce Collective, which brings some highly specialized agencies such as retail interactivity expert Vinyl-I in Seoul as well as Grey’s social and data experts in Singapore to benefit brands.

“The name Collective was chosen by design because this is truly about collaboration across our Grey network,” said Kapse.

Shortened to bear the nickname GreyCoCo, Kapse shared what has prompted the birth of the collective.

“Over the past year, we have seen a growing demand from our clients to coordinate the in-store design and communication with complimentary social media assets. Increasingly, we see shoppers expecting brands to have the same storyline across social, e-commerce, and physical retail channels. Similar to bricks and mortar, the millennial and Gen Z shoppers are expecting to be wowed and immersed in a brand experience online.”

For GreyCoCo, Kapse will be reporting to Grey Singapore CEO Konstantin Popovic.

Popovic said, “What makes Grey CoCo unique is that it is embedded in an end-to-end agency, so we are uniquely positioned to deliver ideas that connect content to commerce.”

The most recent campaign by Grey is for Olay and its exclusive partnership with Shopee on its Brand Day in October. The campaign titled “Adult Fearlessly” targeted millennial women across key SEA markets, using bite-sized content spread out like a mini-series.

“A simple price promotion on a well laid-out brand shelf is no longer enough to drown out the competition. GREY brings the famously effective creative approach to tackle our clients’ commerce business problems,” added Kapse.