Singapore – Media company Verizon Media has recently announced the promotion of Paul Sigaloff, former managing director of ANZ, to now assume the role of vice president of Verizon Media ANZ and INSEA.

Sigaloff brings with him over 10 years of experience in the media industry across the United Kingdom and Australia. He joined the company as the commercial director in 2014, and thereafter, worked as the managing director in 2018, where he led Verizon Media’s portfolio of dynamic digital media and technology brands including Yahoo across ANZ.

In his new role, Sigaloff will be responsible for leading the media company’s teams in Australia, New Zealand, and India, as well as the whole Southeast Asia region. The current sales team headed by Carol Tay, the senior director of sales of Verizon Media SEA, will now report to Sigaloff.

According to the company, the promotion is recognition for Sigaloff’s leadership during a record year of growth for Verizon Media ANZ. In 2020 Monthly Active Users (MAUs) across Yahoo’s editorial brands grew 11%, with double-digit revenue growth despite the headwinds in the wider market.

Furthermore, the company said that Sigaloff’s leadership philosophy and success in ANZ is grounded on the principles of media and advertising acting as forces for good in the world. This approach has leveraged product developments including greater privacy controls for users, and internally through a phenomenal corporate social responsibility program which saw the company donate more than AU$1M in time and value to charitable causes in 2020.

Commenting on his promotion, Sigaloff said that he is fortunate to be building on strong foundations in Singapore with the SEA region being a vibrant and important market for Verizon Media.

“My priority is to take the time to learn from the successful initiatives in those markets and take a strategic approach to apply the most appropriate lessons from our ANZ success story to create meaningful impact here in South East Asia,” said Sigaloff.

Rico Chan, the head of sales of Verizon Media APAC, commented that Sigaloff deserves the promotion coming from an inspirational leadership in ANZ.

“I look forward to working with him going forward to replicate this success across Southeast Asia and India. Southeast Asia is an important market for our business and this new structure enables us to take full advantage of key growth areas in 5G, e-commerce, and responsible business within these regions,” said Chan.

Australia – In-game advertising platform Frameplay has partnered with Livewire, the global game technology, entertainment, and marketing company, to provide in-game inventory to marketers across the APAC region.

The partnership will see Livewire offering Frameplay’s advertising inventory to the market at a preferred partner rate, helping brands expand their audience through buying strategic in-game advertising, which is an effective cookieless alternative. It will also enable advanced insights into diverse gaming communities at scale. 

Livewire will be offering the exclusive inventory to advertisers in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia, as well as the Philippines, and India, among others, allowing brand exposure to targeted geographic or global audiences. Furthermore, the partnership with Frameplay enables Livewire clients to have access to over 190 million daily impressions and premium game inventory across millions of mobile, PC, and console devices.

According to Scott Linzer, the senior vice president of business development at Frameplay, the platform’s product launching in 2020 allowed several global brands like Pizza Hut and Energizer to experience their brand lift benefits.

“We are excited to bring this same opportunity to APAC advertisers through our strategic partnership with Livewire, which is a leading global gaming marketing company for brands,” said Linzer.

Indy Khabra, the co-founder and CEO at Livewire, commented that they are thrilled to add Frameplay as an exclusive partner to their growing gaming client base and extend Livewire’s APAC footprint as a leading game technology company. 

“The region is a very important market strategically, especially for mobile gaming and it’s great to be launching with the premium game inventory. The partnership with Frameplay works side by side with Livewire’s vision to meet the growing demand for inventory that is brand safe, viewable, and unintrusive to the next generation of consumers, while still being highly measurable for brands and marketers,” said Khabra.

USA – New York-headquartered global financial services giant Citigroup has recently announced that it will be pursuing exits from its consumer franchises in 13 markets, where 10 come from the Asia Pacific region. 

In its latest financial results for the first quarter of the year, Citigroup revealed that as part of its strategic actions for its global consumer banking, it has now decided to direct its focus to just four markets in Asia and EMEA, namely, Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE, and London. As a result of this, it is marking the end of its consumer business in all the other markets in the two regions which include APAC units in Australia, China, India, and Indonesia as well as Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and in Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Meanwhile, in EMEA, it will be exiting Bahrain, Poland, and Russia. 

Citigroup said that while this is the case, its Institutional Clients Group will continue to serve clients in the said markets, which remain important to Citi’s global network. The company said the move will allow Citi to direct investments and resources to businesses where it has the greatest scale and growth potential.

Its CEO, Jane Fraser, said that the ongoing refresh of the company’s strategy pushes them to double down on wealth. The markets it retained, she continued, positions the company to capture strong growth and attractive returns the wealth management business offers through the four important hubs.

“While the other 13 markets have excellent businesses, we don’t have the scale we need to compete. We believe our capital, investment dollars, and other resources are better deployed against higher returning opportunities in wealth management and our institutional businesses in Asia,” said Fraser. 

For the first quarter of 2021, Citigroup reported a net income of $7.9B, a jump compared to its net income of $2.5B in the same period in 2020.

“It’s been a better than expected start to the year, and we are optimistic about the macro environment. We are committed to serving our clients through the recovery and positioning the bank for a period of sustained growth,” said Fraser. 

Singapore – Isentia, an APAC-based media intelligence and insights company, has adopted the speech-to-text technology of tech giant Google in order to provide real-time services to its business clients.

Through the integration, Isentia enables communications and media relations teams and organizations, relying on its range of AI-powered media intelligence products and capability, to manage reputations and opportunities in real-time. 

The technology feature automates the conversion of broadcasters’ speech to text. It matches words in text transcripts to the video player’s content, even during the prime time television news bulletins and current affairs shows, where the demand peaks ten times.

The broadcast results can be analyzed using the following features as well:

  • A boundary detection service that uses AI to identify when one news story ends, and the next begins, isolating relevant media items and giving clients immediate access to news segments relevant to them 
  • An ad filtering service that uses AI to identify and remove advertisements from automated broadcast monitoring 
  • A music filtering service that uses AI to remove the music that plays before or after many broadcast news items 

“Our monitoring goes far beyond cataloging mentions of brands or executive team members, to the supply of information about what people are saying about a business, industry, or interests in near real-time. That is extremely important because the value many of our clients gain is the ability to understand a trend or an event and respond quickly,” said Paul Russell, chief technology officer at Isentia.

With Google Cloud, Isentia deployed this new TV and radio broadcast solution within three months and planned to expand it to other languages, such as Chinese dialects, Malay, and Tagalog. 

“Isentia is delighted to be able to showcase world-class AI-driven improvements to our client deliveries courtesy of Google API’s and applications. The technology that sits behind the Isentia offer contains to lead the way in the industry,” said James Merritt, chief executive for Asia at Isentia.

He added, “The transition to Google Workplace was perfectly timed and saw a seamless transition. This helped Isentia to quickly and effectively adapt to the ways of working required to thrive during the pandemic and opened up new opportunities for productivity and collaboration.”

Singapore – Food and grocery delivery platform foodpanda has announced that it will be rolling its vaccination awareness campaign across its key markets in Asia, which lines up with the upcoming World Health Organisation’s World Immunization Week from 24 to 30 April 2021.

The campaign focuses on a series of content which will be shared through digital and social media channels that provides useful information and resources on local vaccination programs, tips on identifying vaccination misinformation and reminders on COVID-19 safeguards. Foodpanda is also supporting local vaccination programs in Singapore, Cambodia and the Philippines. 

In the Philippines, foodpanda will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Department of Health in April 2021 to combat vaccine misinformation by creating correct information materials targeted for riders, consumers and partner vendors. Foodpanda Philippines is also supporting the ‘IngatAngat’ vaccine information awareness campaign by the local T3 Task Force, composed of government and private sector members to encourage vaccinations.

Meanwhile, foodpanda Cambodia, throughout the month of April, is supporting and showing appreciation to frontliners, by donating food and drinks to four major hospitals and vaccination centres. Foodpanda Cambodia is also working with local authorities to get employees and delivery riders vaccinated. 

In Singapore, foodpanda is working with the Ministry of Health to ensure that its rider partners are vaccinated, while exploring collaborations with local authorities on initiatives to help raise public awareness about vaccines.

Other initiatives include virtual onboarding, fee waivers, and support initiatives for merchants to join the platform quickly and seamlessly. Foodpanda has also allowed more riders to join the network and making food, groceries, and daily essentials available for safe and convenient doorstep delivery, made contactless by default to minimize direct contact and protect the health and safety of customers, riders and merchants

According to Jakob Angele, CEO of foodpanda, the campaign is the company’s objective in spreading the message of being vigilant on keeping our ecosystem safe.

“Leveraging existing channels with our network of riders, merchants, employees and customers, we can raise greater awareness around fighting misinformation and share information around local vaccination programmes, so that our entire delivery ecosystem can be informed and mobilised. We will continuously explore ways to play a part in the fight against COVID-19,” Angele said.

The new campaign comes after foodpanda has recently revamped their brand identity across Asia.

Foodpanda’s campaign will be rolled out in phases across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Japan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Philippines.

Singapore – Flash Coffee, a Singapore-based coffee chain backed by venture capital Rocket Internet, has secured US$15M in its recently concluded Series A funding to drive APAC expansion in 10 markets. The funding round was participated by venture capitals White Star Capital, DX Ventures, Global Founders Capital, and Conny & Co.

Flash Coffee which was launched in January 2020, aims to use the new funding to open three new outlets per week, an already ambitious pace that will be tripled to 10 store launches per week in order to open 300 additional stores across the region by end of this year. 

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The company is founded by CEO David Brunier and COO as well as CFO Sebastian Hannecker to make premium coffee accessible to Asia’s rising middle class. Through Brunier’s experience as foodpanda CMO and Hannecker’s Bain Consulting pedigree, Flash Coffee’s grab-and-go business model was created, allowing for significant cost savings to be passed on to customers.

“Strong investor support for our Series A round enables us to harness untapped potential in the region and replicate our success in seven new markets this year: Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam,” Brunier stated.

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He added, “We will also build a regional headquarters in Singapore and expand our regional tech hub in Jakarta to 50 people to support our vision of fully leveraging technology to improve customer experience, proactively drive growth and significantly increase operational efficiency.”

In addition, the company aims to digitize today’s offline-dominated coffee industry with a newly launched consumer app that boasts a streamlined pick-up feature, sophisticated loyalty program, personalized promotions, and interactive challenges. Its dedicated barista app improves the operational efficiency of its stores and enables performance-based incentives for its baristas, ensuring an unparalleled customer experience.

Auckland, New Zealand – Experiential marketing solutions provider Limelight Platform has appointed Leon Hudson as its new managing director for the APAC region.

The appointment will see Hudson enabling the Canada-based marketing agency to support its growth in APAC, beginning with Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore.

Hudson brings with him more than 20 years of experience in sales and marketing strategy. He has previously worked as the strategic advisor for content marketing agency IMMedia Content, general manager for technology solutions company Re-Hub, and group head of revenue for advertising technology company CtrlShift.

Hudson said, “There has long been a disconnect between online and offline marketing; Limelight helps bridge the gap. With a contactless consumer journey, personalized communication, and numerous safety-related features, the platform’s latest version is ready for the post-lockdown rebound.” 

Meanwhile, Terry Foster, the chief executive officer of Limelight Platform, shared that the decision to appoint a managing director in the region arose from the agency’s strategic planning sessions in early 2021. The chosen strategy aligns with the needs of its long-standing global client base. 

“Hudson is a 20-year Martech veteran with a track record of success, including over 15 years in leadership roles across the Asia Pacific region. His experience will be invaluable supporting our global client base which is rapidly growing in the region,” said Foster.

Limelight Platform works for experiential marketing return on investment, live event data, and insights. The platform enables marketers to create, manage and measure experiential marketing campaigns and live events; crucial as the economy continues to reopen and the appetite for safe and secure human connection.

Singapore – Food and grocery delivery platform foodpanda has announced a revamp to its brand identity across Asia, spanning 400 cities and 12 markets.

The brand identity revamp accentuates foodpanda’s brand color pink across its visual designs, which is also enhanced alongside the prominence of the signature panda logo.

The same visual approach applies to foodpanda’s marketing initiatives both online and offline, for instance with rider- and partner-related branding, foodpanda retains its bold, instantly identifiable ‘fun pink’, but expands its palette to include more complementary colors.

According to Reinald Chee, head of creative at foodpanda, the emphasis on the color pink is rooted in the company’s desire to keep the brand color recognizable by millions of customers across Asia. Furthermore, Chee added that the brand revamp highlights the various personalities of the brand: “friendly, caring, smart, and that little bit rebellious – not afraid to change the status quo or take risks.”

“Our aim has been to create a design language that’s as seamless as our transaction process. At the end of the day, brand identity is all about making a more enjoyable experience for everyone,” Chee stated.

Meanwhile, Idan Haim, vice president of growth and marketing at foodpanda hopes that the brand revamp will help build a solid foundation of the company in terms of customer experience.

“Foodpanda’s refreshed identity reconsiders all customer touchpoints with the brand, connecting the technology behind our app and website with our millions of users’ everyday experiences, from our iconic rider bags and jackets to packaging, marketing campaigns and the app itself,” Haim stated.

Foodpanda-Brand-Identity-Revamp-Asia-2

Aside from the brand identity, foodpanda has also revamped its user interface homescreen, dubbed the ‘bento’. The new interface allows users to seamlessly choose the foodpanda service they need – food delivery, self pick-up, shops or pandamart – while making it easier to explore top restaurants and promotions available in their location.

The brand refresh comes at a time when foodpanda continues to expand its business verticals beyond food delivery, into quick commerce (q-commerce), including grocery delivery via pandamart cloud stores, and through partnerships with leading shops and convenience stores.

“We analyzed every touchpoint with our service, from the app to the rider box. Using thorough insights about the user journey, we envisioned a design direction that could bridge the gap between our tech and the real-life experience of millions of customers,” Chee added.

Foodpanda’s brand refresh will be progressively introduced across all online and offline platforms from April 2021. The refresh has started in Singapore, Bangladesh and Cambodia, and will be launching in Hong Kong, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand in the coming weeks.