Tag: APAC

Singapore – To celebrate the International Museum Day on 18 May, TikTok will be live-streaming its first-ever ‘#MuseumMoment Live’, an all-day global live stream event brings together some of the world’s most iconic arts and culture institutions.

The live stream will see 23 museums across 12 different countries giving virtual tours of each of their institutions, taking them on a one-of-a-kind cultural journey. For the APAC region, Singapore and Japan are the countries that will be joining. Japan will be taking viewers to its Mori Art Museum while Singapore will be giving a tour of its National Gallery Singapore. Other countries include Brazil, Spain, and Netherlands, as well as Germany, and Italy, among others

The ‘#MuseumMoment Live’ will be kicking off with National Gallery Singapore on 18 May at 3:00 pm SGT, and will be finishing off on 19 May at 9:00 pm SGT. It will be streamed live via TikTok for Good and TikTok’s global social impact content hub.

For the Singapore leg of ‘#MuseumMoment Live’, viewers will be treated to a surprising tour of the gallery, enabling them to view Singapore and Southeast Asian artworks up close, including pieces such as Raden Saleh’s painting Forest Fire and Matthew Ngui’s installation Chair. They will also get to experience the Gallery’s signature art event – the Light to Night Festival, and marvel at its iconic architecture.

TikTok Singapore’s User and Content Operations Manager, Doreen Tan, shared that with TikTok’s ‘#MuseumMoment Live’, they are proud to be a place where museums and galleries can open their doors digitally and connect with audiences all over the world with their exciting content.

“Starting with Singapore’s very own National Gallery, we can’t wait to see what’s behind the scenes of some of the most iconic institutions in the world and provide a platform for viewers to be immersed in culture from all around the world,” said Tan.

Meanwhile, Chris Lee, the chief marketing officer at National Gallery Singapore, commented that they are honored to represent Singapore in TikTok’s new live event and bring the best of Singapore and Southeast Asian art to TikTok’s global audience.

“Audiences can look forward to enjoying novel and surprising art experiences on the tour, and learning about the unique heritage and culture of Singapore and Southeast Asia through art. Through this innovative collaboration, we hope more audiences will come to know of the Gallery’s multi-faceted offerings, and experience it for themselves in person when they visit Singapore,” said Lee.

Viewers will be getting an exciting look at the United Kingdom’s Black Country Museum, Germany’s Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and Netherlands’ Rijksmuseum, as well as the United States’ Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.

Singapore – Despite the critical importance of data in businesses, nearly all of business leaders in Asia Pacific admit to be challenged in using them to their advantage in creating significant business decisions, new data from a survey from data integration company Talend.

According to the global survey, 96% of APAC respondents admit to such practice, while 76% of APAC respondents admit to using it everyday, and 35% of APAC respondents admit to not using data for their business decisions.

Such practice of data usage is best manifested in the behavior of the respondents in dealing with creating data deliverables based on the saturation of data, as 45% of APAC respondents are able to create timely deliverables. For Tabled, there is a stark difference between data-saturated and data-driven. Companies have more access to data than ever before, but there’s very little way to make sense of it. Data management companies have been offering to solve these problems for years — but they’re focused on the mechanics of data like moving it and storing it.

Christal Bemont, CEO at Talend, notes that most business leaders’ relationships are deemed ‘unhealthy’, considering the fact that only 45% of APAC business leaders trust the data they are working with, and 35% of APAC respondents say that they are still making decisions based on gut instincts.

“The reality of data is falling well short of the industry’s vision. Data management, which largely focuses on moving and storing data, doesn’t take into account the overall health of data. Therefore, in trying to manage data, all companies are creating digital landfills of corporate information. This has to change. Our vision of data health is the future because it recognizes the fundamental standards that are critical for corporate survival,” Bemont explains.

In terms of data health, Talend also revealed that 13% of APAC respondents do not think that their company’s investments in data management is worth it, and 40% of APAC respondents report that there are no standards for data quality at their company.

Despite the negative light, 75% of APAC respondents state that they would like to make the majority of their decisions based on data.

Meanwhile, in terms of corporate objective, factors such as decreasing operation cost (40% of APAC respondents), monitoring performance (71% of APAC respondents), customer experience improvement (76% of APAC respondents) and increasing revenue (53% of APAC respondents) are driving forces to push APAC business leaders into utilizing significant data.

To drive such data use among APAC executives, factors such as ensuring data quality (56% of APAC respondents), making data available to the right person (47% of APAC respondents), ample skilled resources (52% of APAC respondents), and meeting security and compliance standards (49% of APAC respondents) must be met to ensure smooth process of data utilization.

Around 97% of APAC respondents agree to a certain extent that there should be cross-industry standard metrics to assess the quality of all enterprise data.

Interestingly, Talend noted that globally, sales and marketing teams are the least data-driven departments, as nearly half of sales and marketing executives (48%) make the majority of their decisions without data. Meanwhile, the finance department follows closely with 44% of finance executives reporting that they make the majority of their decisions without relying on data.

Singapore – Data and artificial intelligence (AI) company ADA has announced that it has received a new strategic investment from Japanese multinational conglomerate SoftBank, amounting to US$60m in funding.

ADA aims that with this investment, they can continue on the development of AI models, with primary focus on precision targeting for the marketing industry; invest in content analytics and automation of content creation; and also create data platforms to deliver consumer insights, predict consumer mindset, and help business decisioning.

The strategic investment will entitle SoftBank to a 23.07% shareholding of ADA, establishing ADA’s valuation at US$260m.

“The post-COVID-19 norm is a ‘digital-first’ economy, which ADA has been successfully building towards. We are very excited to welcome SoftBank Corp. as a valuable partner in our next phase of growth. The capital and business alliance with SoftBank Corp. will further propel ADA’s analytics, data, and AI digital marketing solutions for the benefit of our customers across the region,” according to Srinivas Gattamneni, CEO at ADA.

Meanwhile, Daichi Nozaki, vice president and head of the enterprise business unit’s global business division at SoftBank believes that their investment in ADA will help reshape the digital marketing and data landscape in the Asia-Pacific region.

“This move is part of our ‘Beyond Carrier’ growth strategy as we seek to expand beyond the traditional telecommunications business; and by combining our diversified solutions and technologies with ADA’s expertise in the area of analytics, data, and AI digital marketing, we expect we can both generate significant synergies,” Nozaki said.

ADA has recently been expanding its data and AI-oriented services across Asia Pacific, such as launching its martech service, an end-to-end e-commerce service, and its partnership with Insider for data-led enterprise marketing endeavors.

“We welcome the investments by SoftBank Corp., which brings tremendous growth opportunities for ADA. It also marks a significant milestone, especially with Southeast Asia’s digital market poised to potentially become one of the world’s top five digital economies. The investment from SoftBank Corp. is recognition of ADA as the vehicle to capture the ensuing growth,” Mohd Khairil Abdullah, chairman at ADA, concluded.

Singapore – Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA), a US-based global business events platform that has been around since the 50’s, is launching a Digital Event Strategist (DES) Course, specifically for APAC executives. 

The current DES course is a re-launch of the highly successful DES course and now the program has been enhanced to cater to APAC business events and marketing professionals for those planning a hybrid or digital meeting. The course offers a comprehensive toolkit that will help business events and marketing professionals effectively plan, produce and measure results of digital events. 

The firm has appointed a group of experts to lead the new DES program. This includes Mayvin Global’s Managing Director and Founder Deanna Varga, HK Initiative’s Founder and Managing Partner Darren Chuckry, and Creative Technology Hong Kong’s Managing Director Justin Choy, as well as Sinclair’s Senior Manager of Digital Jayson Chau, and Bank of America’s Asia Pacific Head of Event Marketing Deborah Caldwell.

The APAC experts will provide ‘expert hours’ which include opportunities for mentoring, discussion, and conversation on the business events challenges.

According to Karen Bolinger, the managing director of PCMA APAC, the APAC experts are a vital addition to the already popular course, as they will help guide the industry forward.

“We know hybrid and digital events aren’t going anywhere; the DES course is an essential certification covering six modules from business planning and technology to marketing and measurement. Not only do you get the benefits of expanding your knowledge, but you also get support from the experts and the opportunity to network with peers. DES alumni become an important professional community,” said Bolinger.

Meanwhile, Varga said that she is looking forward to helping shape the business events industry as a DES APAC expert for ‘Business Planning and Monetisation’ and help participants implement sustainable commercial strategies to drive revenue, profit, and visitor engagement. 

“I believe these skills are more important than ever before as we navigate the post-COVID environment. Knowing I’ll be able to answer questions for those who are reskilling and upskilling in our industry, especially as we face significant workforce hurdles, is important to me. I’m looking forward to working through some of the APAC challenges in the expert hours,” added Varga.

DES is a six-week course of self-paced materials, with weekly expert hours. Upon successfully completing the course, participants will remain certified for two years.

Singapore – Collab Asia, a content studio and talent network, has announced that it has signed a deal with Nintendo to allow its vast network of content creators to monetize their gameplays based from Nintendo Game Content, which in turn accelerates support for the production, distribution, and monetization of live game videos.

Through the monetization deal, Collab Asia content creators can monetize their Nintendo gameplay through streaming channels such as Facebook Game Streamer, Niconico Channel, OPENREC Creators Program, and Twitch Affiliate Program and Twitch Partner Program, as well as YouTube Partner Program, among others.

“As the premier digital media partner for creators, brands, and media platforms in Asia, we understand that people are consuming more content and creating more content than ever before across Asia. As part of this, we look forward to enabling our creators to responsibly create content using Nintendo’s unparalleled intellectual property, storied titles, and legendary characters,” said Eugene Choi, CEO and co-founder of Collab Asia.

The recently-inked deal follows after Collab Asia has recently opened its first office in Shenzhen, China. To date, the studio manages 4,000 video channels and social media accounts with 270 million loyal subscribers across leading platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Facebook.

Collab Asia has existing markets in Asia Pacific such as in Korea, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong SAR, and Singapore.

India – The Group Chief Strategy Officer of MullenLowe Lintas Group in India, S. Subramanyeswar (Subbu), has been elevated to now assume the same position for the whole APAC division of the company. Subbu will now take both roles as he continues to lead the strategy for brands at the India team. 

Subbu joined Lowe Lintas in 2011 as a national planning director. Since then, he has led major strategic thoughts or shifts for multiple brands across the clients that the group works on in India. The most notable is his thought-leading and breakthrough ‘Brands to Stands’ philosophy, methodology and frameworks that have been adopted by many of the brands that the agency steers in India. 

James Fox, the global chief strategy officer for the whole MullenLowe Group, is confident of the elevation, describing the new APAC CSO as one of the finest marketing minds in the region. 

“He is a true leader for his team and his clients, helping them achieve new heights professionally and commercially. I am very proud to have Subbu as part of the global planning council, leading MullenLowe Group’s strategic charge across Asia Pacific countries,” said Fox. 

Meanwhile, Virat Tandon, the group CEO of MullenLowe Lintas Group, shared that in the 10 years of having worked together, Subbu has played a huge role in not just improving and innovating the planning product, but also in forging strong partnerships with colleagues at the agency, clients and academia. 

“Having worked very closely with him over the last 10 years, I have to say that he is clearly one of the top brand strategists in the world. I am extremely happy that Subbu will take his amazing brand of strategic planning beyond South Asia and into all of Asia Pacific,” commented Tandon.

Subbu has spent over two decades in advertising and marketing, having worked at Wipro, Publics, Rediffusion Y&R, and Saatchi & Saatchi in the markets of India, US, and UK. He has authored and won 131 awards at prestigious award-giving bodies such as India Effies, APAC Effies, Global Effies, as well as Asian Marketing Effectiveness, WARC, and the globally distinguished Jay Chiat by 4A’s. Aside from being on the receiving end, he has also been a jury of each of the mentioned organizations. 

Subbu is also a regular columnist and passionate academic, being a visiting faculty at top business schools IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore in India and the renowned Kellogg School of Management, Illinois and MIT Sloan, Boston in the US.

On the new appointment, Subbu himself commented, “I’m honored, humbled and fired up. It’s a huge opportunity and that’s very exciting. At the same time, I’m also grounded on the challenges that lie ahead. And it is that trip and the constraint that also brings out the passion and fierce obsession in me, to do great culture-leading work. I’ll take the rich learning that I had in my ten years at MullenLowe Lintas Group – India, an ecosystem or the fulcrum of marketing, forward.”

Subbu will be based in Mumbai, India, as he takes up the Asia Pacific charge with immediate effect.

MullenLowe Lintas Group in India is among the largest country operations of the global MullenLowe Group that has agencies and presence in 65 markets. The India unit has two creative agencies under its management – Lowe Lintas and Mullen Lintas.

Hong Kong – Asia news company South China Morning Post (SCMP) has announced that its ‘Advertising and Marketing Solutions Team’ will be rebranded as ‘SCMP Advertising’, which brings a greater focus on the company’s emphasis and strength in focus on digital innovation to help drive impact for brands and partners.

Through the identity revamp, SCMP positions itself as an insight-driven brand partner committed to driving client success across APAC, after being the first news publisher in Asia to launch a first-party data platform in SCMP Lighthouse and brand suitability tool in SCMP Signal. These digital tools have garnered positive feedback from clients who can look forward to new and updated features when SCMP launches their next iteration this year. 

SCMP Advertising aims to help brands and partners to make an impact with readers seeking to understand global issues from an Asian perspective. The news company’s expanding international audience has allowed advertisers new opportunities to connect with globally-minded readers, with a reach of nearly 51 million monthly readers globally. 

Furthermore, SCMP Advertising connects thought-leading editorial content with brands across print and digital media platforms and develops leading digital marketing solutions, and runs campaigns that deliver results.

“SCMP Advertising’s rebranding reinforces our legacy as a trusted partner that works with brands to make an impact with readers. This is a significant step in our evolution that showcases our commitment to industry innovations that drives performance and our commitment to our clients,” said Elsie Cheung, chief operating officer at SCMP.

In addition to the aforementioned objectives, SCMP Advertising offers a comprehensive portfolio of integrated offerings with 360-degree multiplatform coverage and campaign effectiveness. In addition to its first-party data platform, SCMP Lighthouse, to support its clients with purposeful intelligence that delivers more effective and efficient campaigns to highly-targeted audiences. 

At the same time, SCMP holds brand safety as a top priority and has developed the publisher-built brand suitability tool SCMP Signal to ensure partners’ messages are placed in the optimal context. SCMP Advertising’s offerings includes its brand-storytelling team Morning Studio which continues to give leading clients across APAC a voice through bespoke content marketing solutions.

The SCMP Advertising revamp follows the recent appointment of Darryl Choo as the new company’s regional sales director for APAC, which entails him to identify new business opportunities, and define strategies to generate new growth opportunities.

Singapore – Essence, a global data and measurement-driven media agency, has announced the launch of Essence Impact, a pro bono initiative that helps non-profit organizations raise greater awareness, attract more donations and recruit new volunteers via their websites to support their causes and effect accelerated change.

Essence Impact was launched in the mid of the COVID-19 pandemic to aid non-profit organizations in their digital transformation, as many historically depended on tentpole physical fundraising events for their operational needs.

Included in the initiative is eligibility for charities for Google Ad Grants which provides up to US$10,000 per month of in-kind search advertising. The agency will also help the organizations in setting up, managing, and optimizing their advertising campaigns to drive traffic to their websites. The Essence team comprises diverse employees who volunteer and contribute to the initiative in roles including business development, client services, marketing, media activation and project management.

Essence-Impact-Digital-Transformation-APAC-Non-Profit-Persons
(Left) Matt Holland, Associate Vice President, Client Services, APAC at Essence; (Right) Monica Bhatia, Senior Vice President, Client Partner, APAC and Managing Director, Singapore at Essence

For Monica Bhatia, senior vice President and client partner for APAC and managing director for Singapore at Essence, they believe in using their abilities for social good and that we have a responsibility to make the world a better place, which falls under Essence’s mission to make brands more valuable to the world.

“With Google Ad Grants and Essence Impact, we are delighted to help non-profits transform and accelerate their efforts in the pandemic and beyond, while providing our teams with opportunities to learn new skills and give back to society,” Bhatia stated.

Meanwhile, Matt Holland, associate vice president of client services for APAC at Essence, who leads Essence Impact in the region, said, “It has been challenging times for charities amid COVID-19 and its resulting lockdown restrictions, as the organizations have not been able to carry out their usual fundraising events. Essence Impact is supporting charities to help drive increased awareness, donors and volunteers online, as the organizations pivot their activities to be more digitally-led.”

Essence aims to roll out Essence Impact across APAC and globally via its network of offices.

Singapore – Dentsu, a media and communications powerhouse with over 11,000 employees in 17 markets in its APAC division, has launched a new initiative called ‘Common Ground’ in the goal to unite its internal expansive network.

The launch is in line with this year’s Diversity Month. The ‘Common Ground’ is a way for employees at dentsu to make connections in other markets and regions based on their common interests, such as food, sports, music, and travel, as well as books, and film. The fellowship is simple: any dentsu employee is able to participate through a matching form, and will then be matched with a ‘dentsu twin’ for a surprise 30-minute phone call. 

“By using common interests as a way to reflect diversity, the company believes its people will shine through,” said dentsu. 

The company said that the team for the initiative, which was led by Dentsu’s DEI lead in APAC, Merlee Jayme, and Gautam Reghunath, CEO of dentsu webchutney, was finding a way to make out something better off the over year-long virtual set up of the workforce, and thought that maybe virtual meetings were an opportunity to bring its people together across APAC, and that the virtual environment can actually become the most unfiltered way to strike a conversation beyond work. 

To find out, the team piloted the program with eight volunteers and had incredible outcomes, deciding then to scale it to the rest of the region.

“We’re thrilled with ‘Common Ground’ volunteers in Japan, Thailand, India, the Philippines, and Australia exchanging Instagram handles and making travel plans to countries already. ‘Common Ground’ has something for everyone at dentsu, and we’re proud to launch during diversity month. I can’t wait to see how it brings people together in new ways across our network,” commented Jayme. 

Meanwhile, Ashish Bhasin, the CEO of dentsu APAC, said that its talents are as ingenious as they are diverse, and that the company has always bet on the serendipitous connections across regions, believing that it’s the kind of organic engagement that’s gonna take it to places.

“In a data-rich world, I’m proud all the pairings will happen based on actual interests and actual people. The team has asked me to be patient before I get to meet my dentsu twin,” commented Bhasin.

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.