Tag: Marketech Apac

Singapore – MARKETECH APAC, in partnership with Vase.ai, recently gathered marketing leaders in the region to shed light on how brands can refine and fortify their brand and consumer insights strategy.

On July 27, brand and agency heads from Accenture Song, BigPay, Popeyes, and Vase.ai shared a space in the webinar ‘Consumer Insights Power-Up 2022’ to discuss how they are best leveraging consumer insights to deliver marketing and advertising that cuts across consumers. 

In the keynote presentation, CEO of Vase.ai, Julie Ng, revealed the ‘magic formula’ that materialises consumer insights into smart business actions. She also shared how to identify ‘signal’ from ‘noise’ in a goldmine of data that is available today, as well as the key ways to effectively gather these ‘signals’. 

Moderated by MARKETECH APAC’s Regional Editor Shaina Teope, the Country Marketing Head of BigPay, Jia Nina, and the Marketing Lead of Popeyes for APAC, Tanushri Rastogi, delved into a panel discussion in which each shared how their brands are uniquely building up and implementing their brand insights structure. In this panel, audience learnt how brands from fintech and F&B breathe life into marketing intel and realising it into campaigns that not only persuade consumers into action but also into products that elevate consumer experience.

To cap off the fruitful discussion, the webinar saw a fireside chat between Vase.ai’s Julie Ng and Neeraj Gulati, partner at Accenture Song. The two talked about how to develop an insight-driven marketing campaign, and how targeted and strategic consumer insights, in the end, help to ensure ROI. 

The webinar drew 153 marketing professionals out of 424 registrations. The attendees came from a variety of industries, including consumer products, telecommunications, tech, retail, banking, transportation, and consulting, and most hailed from the markets of Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore. Those who took part were from companies Astro, Beiersdorf, Boost Holdings, Globe Telecom, Heineken, J&J, L’Oréal, PETRONAS, Porsche Singapore, redONE Network, Rustan Commercial Corporation, Smartfren, Smartone, U Mobile and many more.

Shaina Teope, regional editor of MARKETECH APAC and also moderator of the panel, commented, “Marketers are in a continuous challenge of transforming an intangible but crucial asset as marketing data and shaping that up into something that would be deemed beneficial for consumers and revenue-generating for brands. This industry discussion is important because expert minds from the brand and agency side are given the platform to share tried-and-tested methods in doing just that so that brands need not start from the ground up.” 

Julie Ng, CEO of Vase.ai, remarked, “Many marketers know that consumer insights are important to drive growth, but not many know where to begin and how to elicit tangible and relevant results from consumer research with minimal resources. I hope my presentation not only answered these questions, but also inspired a growth and agile mindset: build a consumer insights system, not a consumer insights project because a system is something we will keep using, iterating, repeating and improving for our competitive advantage.”

Meanwhile, on the partnership with MARKETECH APAC, Ng commented, “Honestly, this is the first stress-free webinar I have partnered up with. I could focus entirely on preparing my presentation without worrying about everything else – project management, advertising and promotion, ensuring quality webinar attendance, and most importantly, transparent communication – because I trusted MARKETECH APAC would deliver. And deliver they did.” 

On-demand access to the webinar is now available. Get your access HERE.

Singapore – One of the boons of the digital age is the wealth of data we’re able to obtain in our hands. In the marketing world, data is the air by which campaigns breathe, but now that insights collection is not as difficult as it was before, the constant matter that baffles us is – how do we actually make sense of all this information? 

This is the focus of MARKETECH APAC’s upcoming industry discussion – ‘Consumer Insights Power-Up 2022’. In partnership with Vase.ai, the webinar aims to help marketers and brands in Southeast Asia effectively translate their marketing intel into smart campaign actions and strategies.

Together with some of the brilliant leaders in marketing in the region, we will be delving into a discussion that puts the doubt and uncertainty we’ve been harbouring to the fore when it comes to our consumer insights business in the aim to provide appropriate solutions. Get answers to questions like how do you mobilise marketing insights? How do we turn them into agile marketing? How do we build a brand insights structure that would weather unforeseen crises? 

To be held virtually on 27 July 2022 at 2 pm SGT, the marketing experts that will be joining us are Jia Nina, the country marketing head of BigPay for Malaysia; Neeraj Gulati, partner at Entropia; Elya Eusoff, GM of MSL Malaysia; and Tanushri Rastogi, the marketing Lead of Popeyes for APAC. Each of them will be sharing their insights into every crucial part of insights mining in marketing such as transforming the data at hand into actionable insights and developing an information structure that would help weather any crisis, may it be brand-related or economic.

“Data is overflowing, but how do we extract the most vital insights and make sense of it all? Having a gold mine of data is one thing, but knowing how to use it to the best of our marketing campaigns is an entirely new challenge. Let this industry gathering of leaders from SEA help you jump into a clear path,” said Shaina Teope, regional editor of MARKETECH APAC. 

Meanwhile, Julie Ng, Vase.ai’s CEO and co-founder, commented, “It goes without saying that the pandemic has underscored one thing: marketers need to be nimble, confident, AND effective enough in responding to ever-changing consumer expectations – even if it means letting go of your previous plans to pivot. What better way to do this than to ask consumers directly what they want whenever you want?”

Ng adds, “I’m excited to share how you can harness the power of on-demand consumer insights to drive your marketing efforts for the second half of the year.”

Join us this 27 July at ‘Consumer Insights Power-Up 2022’. Register HERE to secure your spot. 

As we enter the post-pandemic period, we are now dealing with an entirely new consumer – desires, needs, and motivations that have transformed to adapt to the new phase of the ‘new normal’.

Last April 20, MARKETECH APAC, in partnership with Braze, gathered marketing leaders from brands Astro Malaysia, BigPay, bolttech, Hmlet, Philippines AirAsia, ShopBack, Zeemart, and Zenius. to discover how brands are implementing their customer acquisition and retention strategies in this period of unprecedented changes as well as how they are building a culture of experimentation and optimisation in each of their organisations.

Watch the highlights from the roundtable that roped in marketing leaders from brands Astro Malaysia, BigPay, bolttech, Hmlet, Philippines AirAsia, ShopBack, Zeemart, and Zenius.

Hybrid experiences to deliver high customer engagement 

When during the height of the pandemic, consumers and businesses were thrust to interact entirely in a virtual manner, the less restricted post-pandemic meant that brands now must take into consideration the dynamics of the engagement brought by the physical experience and integrating that with the uncovered powers of the virtual space.

Allenie Caccam, head of marketing of Philippines AirAsia, shared that in order to bring cohesiveness to your customer engagement, it doesn’t stop with what is done in the brand’s app or website, but almost always culminates with an on-ground activation or face-to-face interaction “to personify the brand as a lifestyle.”

“We do drive cross channel customer engagement by identifying the critical points of engagement and addressing it through hyper-personalisation and experiential marketing,” said Caccam. 

Priyanka Nadkarni, marketing lead of insurtech bolttech, echoes this and says that it is important to follow your consumers offline, as in their case, the discovery process for insurance products doesn’t stop within digital bounds. 

“We need to remember that we’re not only digital anymore…for us, it’s really about where [do these] insurance and protection products really make real sense for the customer, and it’s not always online,” said Nadkarni.

Meanwhile, fintech BigPay also agrees with the same marketing direction. Jia Nina, country marketing lead of the brand, said that they don’t rely on the app alone, and remarked that marketing also goes beyond the app.

Raymond Muliadi, head of product at edtech Zenius, shared, “Offline will always be there. And we will not be able to dismiss online or offline. So we want to make sure that we build an ecosystem where the learning is complementing online and offline.”

Tapping into the fundamentals to effectively retain customers

During the roundtable, industry leaders were in unison about how it is to effectively retain customers in this period and that is to bank on the powers of the fundamentals – knowing your consumers inside out, and activating marketing that genuinely aligns what they want and value.

BigPay’s Jia Nina also shared her insights on this and said, “We really listen to customers… effective marketing is always a conversation, it’s not just you talking to people.”

Meanwhile, Astro’s Norsiah Juriani Johari, its VP for product marketing, believes that to keep customers coming back to your product, you have to be able to deliver authentic value exchange. 

She says that we now live in a world of transparency and that customers “can see right through you” and will know when a brand isn’t upfront about what it promised to deliver.

“Listening to the customers and really holding true to our core values at these challenging times has really helped us a great deal as a business and as a brand,” she said. 

Personalisation also came out as a top strategy among marketers for customer retention. 

Edward Tan, the associate director for growth marketing at co-living space provider Hmlet, says that personalised engagement is what is able to draw customers back to the product. 

“One thing we learned when it comes to customer retention, for locals especially, is to shift from purely selling them the co-living experience to the need for consistent and personalised engagement,” said Tan. 

When driving that cross channel customer engagement, he says, “The most important factor to us when it comes to cross-channel engagement is definitely reaching the right customers via the right channel at the right time with the right messages.”

Shopping and rewards platform ShopBack, which is currently an adopter of Braze’s consumer engagement platform, also shared to employ the same strategy, which is leveraging the best channel for customer needs and then finding the right timing and triggers for your communications. 

Its Head of CRM Scott Tan said, “For us, it’s creating a meaningful cross-channel engagement. It’s really about setting up your platform to make sure that you can (1) anticipate user needs, (2) [have] the right channel, and (3) find appropriate triggers and timing.”

Building a culture of experimentation and testing

Now that consumers have increasingly become more nuanced and that the staying power of trends is going away at lightning speed, these have put down greater importance on brands’ practices in experimentation and testing. 

For Zeemart, an F&B procurement platform, and a pre-series A startup, it’s about encouraging a positive attitude toward ‘failing forward’.

“I think the advantage of being a startup is that you’re always building, learning and iterating,” said Tan.

“Develop this attitude of failing forward, because no one really knows the answers…facilitating feedback, gathering results and going out and fixing it, and testing it again,” he added.

Meanwhile, bolttech’s Priyanka Nadkarni summed it up briefly on the topic, “To be a pioneer, own it, link together and think outside in.”

As we move towards the post-pandemic period, virtual and digital are here to stay–but only better. Consumer experiences are set to become even more ingenious and innovative now that the period has enabled us to once again bring back physical engagement and interaction.

Among the insights the industry leaders shared, non-negotiable principles of marketing stood out, agreeing that no matter what the changes, marketing will always be and should remain experimental. We don’t get to the bottom of the ‘AHA’ moment if we stick to what has already been successful or what is deemed to be the best at present, as the future ahead will only become unpredictable and challenging for marketers but also groundbreaking with the emergence of unimaginable digital interactivity. 

Watch the highlights from the roundtable that roped in marketing leaders from brands AirAsia Philippines, Astro Malaysia, BigPay, bolttech, Hmlet, ShopBack, Zeemart, and Zenius.

Take a look at Braze’s latest marketing report, ‘2022 Global Customer Engagement Review’ which shares the top three trends that are shaping customer engagement in 2022 as well as opportunities companies can seize for growth by industry and region. The report is free to download here.

Singapore – MARKETECH APAC, the digital media for the marketing and advertising industry in APAC, is launching a new content brand that aims to amplify the power of videos in bringing engaging stories to the audience. To be called MARKETECH APAC Reels, the staple feature will be presenting industry deep dives on leading news and trends in marketing and tech through exclusive video content.

For the pilot feature, MARKETECH APAC Reels will be presenting an all-embracing view of the brands and companies in various industries that have decided to take action in line with the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. The feature will comprehensively lay out how entities in the marketing and advertising industry, and even those of the biggest consumer brands, have taken a stand in the middle of the heightening hostilities in Europe.

MARKETECH APAC Reels is also taking the spotlight on the growing space of the metaverse, roping in marketing and industry leaders to shed light on how brands can navigate this brand new virtual environment and leverage the space to deliver groundbreaking marketing campaigns. 

To be rolled out in a series of 3 episodes, the feature will be discussing piece by piece top questions of brands concerning the metaverse which include entering the space, and thereafter, becoming an official player in the metaverse. 

On the launch, Shaina Teope, MARKETECH APAC’s regional editor, said, “MARKETECH APAC continues to grow its channels, and as a digital-first media, now’s the time to take our features up a notch, leveraging the ingenuity of videos in delivering stories and conversations that are most pertinent to the community. We are excited as we tackle the most relevant news and trends through distinctive and innovative production.” 

All videos under MARKETECH APAC Reels can be viewed on MARKETECH APAC’s YouTube channel. Subscribe to get updated on the newest and latest content. 

As MARKETECH APAC launches MARKETECH APAC Reels, it is inviting all brands and companies to reach out for any interesting story they would like to share and collaborate with.

They can email MARKETECH APAC at [email protected].

Singapore – Last April 28, MARKETECH APAC, in partnership with Oracle, gathered marketing leaders from the Southeast Asia region in the webinar, ‘The Future of Marketing: Loyalty-led strategies in a cookie-less world’, to discuss and uncover how loyalty-led strategies can help brands thrive in digital advertising amidst the elimination of third-party cookies. 

Lisa Collins, director of strategy, Oracle Customer Experience, through a keynote presentation, shared how web 3.0 will transform the way consumers interact and engage with brands and the implications on data collection in this new world. She further explained how loyalty marketing seamlessly fits into the picture as a viable alternative to obtaining quality data sans third-party cookies. 

Collins shared how the present evolution in digital advertising presents opportunities for loyalty programs to be transformed as a key to achieving healthy data exchange. Where loyalty only used to mean rewards and points at best, Collins shared the different innovative ways that brands can deliver them now amidst the increasing popularity of NFTs and cryptocurrency.

Meanwhile, the topic was further delved into with a panel discussion that was participated by marketing heads from Malaysia and the Philippines. Together with Collins; Norsiah Juriani Johari, vice president for product marketing at Astro Malaysia, and Anvey Factora, head of marketing communications, e-commerce and retail at Canon Philippines, shared their expert views and insights into implementing first-party data strategies and data’s role in developing loyalty marketing for the future.

Each of the panellists also highlighted the trends they believe will have the biggest impact on performance and loyalty marketing in 2-3 years, resulting in an insightful discussion about NFTs, ‘revenge’ travel, and the ‘revolution’ of e-commerce. 

The webinar drew 153 marketing professionals from a variety of industries, including retail and e-commerce, media and entertainment and CPG. Most attendees hailed from the markets of the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia, and those who took part were from companies Bosch, Estee Lauder, Hmlet, Loob Holding, Mastercard, Sanofi, Sunway Malls, The Ascott Limited, True Digital Group, and Xendit. 

On the webinar, Collins commented, “Providing delightful contextual customer journeys [is] critical to customer acquisition, retention and loyalty. As marketers, we’ve always relied on a rich array of data signals to inform these journeys. However, with the imminent demise of third party cookies, a key ingredient for consistent personalised targeting hangs in the balance.”

“But let’s take a step back to understand the root cause of this issue: Consumers are fed up with giving over their personal and behavioural data with their only reward being more personalised advertising. This was arguably what led to a raft of privacy changes and also why the web3 ethos is resonating so strongly: people want to feel meaningfully rewarded for consuming content, for engagement, and for their own creative contribution,” Collins added. 

Meanwhile, Shaina Teope, regional editor of MARKETECH APAC, and also moderator of the panel, remarked, “With the rapid changes in digital, we made sure that with this webinar, we covered good ground on such developments, so it’s not just about discussing cookies, but how these privacy changes will affect brands as we enter a more decentralised internet.” 

“With the combined presence of our marketing leaders, we were able to get into what the future looks like in digital advertising, web 3.0, and loyalty marketing. We’re confident that with this discussion, we’ve become more ready to sail uncharted waters,” added Teope. 

On-demand access to the webinar is now available. Get your access HERE.

This April, we have a new payments feature, a fresh creative leadership as well as an empowering campaign on gender inclusivity coming out as our top stories.

For the first time, a story from New Zealand enters the list – a web code developed by a telco and shared through a moving creative campaign. 

A rewards and discovery platform in Singapore has also launched a new payment feature that offers something new through its fresh payment process. 

Meanwhile, the Indian arm of a global communications network has named a new creative leader.

Top 3: Spark to make the internet more inclusive with launch of web code campaign

Spark releases new web code to urge all websites to ‘see all genders’

To kick off this month’s Top Stories is a unique proposition to ‘see all genders’ online: a web code released by New Zealand telco Spark, with creative campaign done by Colenso BBDO. 

With our society being more open and inclusive, there is stronger call for every part of our daily lives to align with this inclusivity. One of those areas is the gender selection on forms online, where traditionally, they are fixated on the choices of male and female. 

Speaking about the campaign, Frith Wilson-Hughes, brand lead partner at Spark New Zealand, said that their campaign direction has been inspired by their company’s motive to use data in a much more healthy way, which will benefit New Zealanders in general, including promoting diversity and inclusion.

“It does seem to be like a simple thing, but one of the things that we have made clear on our [campaign] site is that it’s not just about changing the code, it’s about looking at how you treat people with different genders holistically,” she said.

She also noted that their campaign site featured resources that companies and organisations can use to integrate the code into their website. This is aimed at educating them on the importance of diversity and inclusion and not overwhelming them.

Top 2: dentsu India names new creative leaders for Isobar and Taproot Dentsu

Dentsu India unveils two new appointments in creative leadership

Coming out on our top stories is the fresh appointment of Aalap Desai and Titus Upputuru as its new chief creative officer and national creative director respectively for Taproot Dentsu. Desai, who will carry the role for both Taproot Dentsu and Isobar, sat down with MARKETECH APAC and shared what he thinks has been the biggest change in brands over the pandemic. 

Without a doubt, Desai said it’s them going digital. 

“In the past 2 years, I think COVID has expedited the interaction element in every brand. Because everyone is at home, we had to shift to digital, and that’s the biggest change in the brand narrative that I’ve seen,” said Desai. 

He shared that the good thing is, over at dentsu, ‘digital’ has been an ongoing conversation. Brands are now more open to exploring, however, Desai points that their understanding can be limited. 

“We’ve also started upselling things, and brands have also started buying them. For example, [something] like a legacy Indian brand getting into a metaverse conversation,” he shared. 

Top 1: ShopBack launches new ShopBack Pay

ShopBack unveils new payment feature in Singapore

Landing on the Top 1 is the recent launch of ShopBack’s cashless payment feature Shopback Pay, which at its core, eliminates the process of topping up funds, instead enables to directly pay in the ShopBack app with only the linked payment method.

In an interview with Julian Foo, head of payments at ShopBack, he shared that the main idea behind Shopback Pay is primarily overcoming the adversities that consumers and merchants faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“I think in terms of what we saw, in our user base and surveys, it was that consumers actually had quite a fair bit of cashback, right, in the shop bank account. On average, we see about like, $200 worth of cash in every customer’s account, which is actually not doing anything at this point in time. So then we ask ourselves, hey, what can we do to help the users actually use their cashback? And for us, it was quite simple. What if we developed a payment method that allowed users to burn the cashback that they had earned online,” Foo said.

He added, “With this product innovation, I think it really allowed users to see an additional use case of earning cashback on shopping, where they can now use their cashback to burn at the merchants.”

Foo also shared that their primary goal has always been making the consumer experience convenient and rewarding.

Watch our exclusive interviews with the brands themselves on the latest episode of MARKETECH APAC Top Stories, now live on our YouTube channel.

Rankings are based on Google Analytics from the period of 16 March to 15 April.

Singapore – Last April 6, MARKETECH APAC, in partnership with Smartly.io, launched a webinar to discuss the current state of social advertising in APAC. The industry discussion, ‘Social Advertising Trends in APAC 2022’, gathered marketing leaders from brands like HappyFresh, KFC Malaysia, and Unilever Indonesia to draw their expert insights on the best strategies for social advertising today. 

Stewart Hunter, the director for customer success of Smartly.io for APAC, delivered the keynote presentation and shared why a multiplatform strategy stands to be the best plan of action for brands in this new period of social media. 

According to Hunter, a Smartly.io-led report showed that APAC brands are truly becoming social media-first where over 84% of brands in the region are spending over 50% of their advertising budget on social media advertising, which is the highest percentage globally compared to their North American and European counterparts. Of where they wish to direct this ad spend in 2022, the top social media platforms eyed were Facebook, followed by Instagram, YouTube, and then Twitter. 

Hunter said that 2022 is the year for brands to truly go multiplatform. 

“Your customers are already there, [and] are already across social media platforms; now the brands, the CMOs are really looking to make sure they are truly following their consumers and potential consumers,” said Hunter.

While there used to be fewer social media platforms for advertisers to focus on previously, now that more users have gone multiplatform, so should brands and advertisers.

In addition, in order to deliver effective social advertising today, Hunter said that brands must harness the human and tech resources needed for today’s social media landscape. As they adopt new multiplatform and multiformat strategies, social media advertising creation and delivery that still involve manual processes will prove to be cumbersome. 

As more brands and advertisers focus on social media advertising, they will need to attract talent, amid the growing competition for skilled employees. Hence it is key to harness the power of automation to drive campaigns across various platforms and generate the greatest results.

When it comes to talent, Hunter said this doesn’t necessarily mean removing talent, but rather, unleashing the creativity of their people to add additional value to the brand. 

“Within this year, how are people going to use automation to blend a range of processes [is important] so they can achieve creativity at scale,” added Hunter. 

On-demand access to the webinar, Social Advertising Trends in APAC 2022, is now available here.

Singapore – Held on April 6, 2022, MARKETECH APAC, in partnership with Smartly.io, roped in top APAC marketing leaders to discuss and uncover the present key opportunities and challenges in social advertising today in the webinar ‘Social Advertising Trends in APAC 2022’. 

Stewart Hunter, the director for customer success of Smartly.io for APAC, presented the key trends in social advertising which included the different platforms where marketers are currently investing their social media advertising spend, and other platforms they are looking to increase spending, as well as the biggest external and internal challenges for marketers when it comes to the social advertising process. 

Most importantly, Hunter talked about the rise of multiplatform advertising – how such a strategy is becoming imperative as brands need to meet where their consumers are, who are now on various platforms. 

Meanwhile, joining the panel discussion are David Lim, the vice president for marketing at HappyFresh; May Ling Chan, the CMO of KFC Malaysia; and Jappy Posadas, the U-Studio lead of Unilever Indonesia. The said marketing leaders shared what each of their unique challenges are in social advertising and the strategies they employ to make sure they keep winning in the space. 

HappyFresh’s Lim shared about pain points and key solutions being in the grocery space, while KFC’s Chan discussed how a local brand anchored to a global branding is managing the social advertising process to be relevant in a region. Meanwhile, Unilever’s Posadas shared his expert insights on branding and the key ingredients that would make up an ‘unmissable’ social advertising strategy. 

Overall, there were a total of 169 marketing professionals who graced the webinar, with the majority of marketers representing the retail & e-commerce industry, followed by financial services and travel & hospitality. Participants included brands like Affin Bank, AirAsia, Fave, Four Points by Sheraton, Hong Leong Bank, Lamudi, Shopee, SM Retail, Sun Life, and Traveloka, among others. 

Meanwhile, region-wise, the webinar was attended by marketers representing a diverse set of markets, with attendees hailing from the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. 

“Social media has become more than just what it was made originally for. We now do everything on this platform, and this industry discussion is important to have us pulled back and see how brands can continue their social advertising efforts that would truly resonate with and reach where consumers are,” said Shaina Teope, the regional editor of MARKETECH APAC.

Meanwhile, Khush Karai, APAC marketing lead of Smartly.io, commented, “Partnering up with MARKETECH APAC for this webinar was a pleasant experience and the overall process was smooth. The team also delivered regular updates and tracking leading up to the webinar date as they promised.”

On-demand access to the webinar is now available. Get your access HERE.

Singapore – Ever since tech juggernauts such as Google and Apple have announced that they are putting down an iron fist on privacy, the world of digital advertising has been shaken with brands and marketers suddenly thrust to the challenge of uncompromised campaigns even with the absence of what have been their cornerstone – third-party cookies. 

Due to this looming challenge, conversations around viable solutions spurred, but the industry, looking ahead to being crippled by an end of an era, would need more definitive answers to break down the perplexity of a cookie-less world.

This is why MARKETECH APAC, the digital media for the marketing and advertising industry in APAC, in partnership with Oracle, is taking the wheel to steer the discussion into what presents to be a top effective strategy for this dilemma – loyalty marketing. Happening on April 28, 2022, the webinar ‘The Future of Marketing: Loyalty-led strategies in a cookie-less world’, aims to unravel the practicability and sensibility of loyalty-focused solutions on keeping the quality of brands’ marketing intact amid a more privacy-driven digital landscape. 

We have gathered marketing leaders in the region from the industries of media, imaging, and technology, to help shine light on how loyalty, put at the heart of our marketing arsenal, can help us thrive in this entirely new environment. 

Joining the industry discussion are Norsiah Juriani Johari, the vice president of product marketing at Astro Malaysia; Anvey Factora, the head of marketing communications, e-commerce and retail of Canon Philippines; and Lisa Collins, the director of customer experience strategy at Oracle. 

Each of them will be sharing their expert views on why loyalty is never dead, and why it matters in a cookie-less world as well as the personalisation strategies that work best to boost brand loyalty in Southeast Asia markets. Furthermore, they will also be discussing the role of data in creating future-ready loyalty marketing. 

Shaina Teope, the regional editor of MARKETECH APAC, commented, “I believe that as we put an end to what has been a fixture in our marketing gameplans, we are called to be overprepared and be more than ready for such tricky independence. This is the worthy price to pay for a much safer digital landscape, and we’re here to show you how loyalty marketing can warrant an answer.” 

The webinar, ‘The Future of Marketing: Loyalty-led strategies in a cookie-less world’, will be held on April 28, 2022, 2:30 pm SGT. Secure your spot at the webinar HERE.

This month of March, we had a lot of great developments in marketing, tech, and commerce in the region that made it to the headlines. 

A social commerce startup co-founded by a fixture in the business sector in the Philippines has recently secured funding to move to q-commerce. Meanwhile, in Malaysia, a startup that is an AI-powered self-service platform for marketing insights has also bagged considerable funding.

In the area of communications, one of the leading PR agencies in the region has just named a new creative chief that would take the charge of the Taiwan, Thailand, and Hong Kong markets. Meanwhile, an AI and data company in Asia has just named the leader that would helm its operations in the Philippines. 

Learn more about them here.

Top 4: Malaysian consumer research startup Vase.ai bags 7-figure RM funding

Malaysian consumer research startup Vase.ai secures 7-figure RM funding

To kick off our Top Stories for the month, we have Vase Technologies or Vase.ai in Malaysia announcing their seven-figure Ringgit investment from a funding round spearheaded by Indelible Ventures. The newly-secured capital will be used to jumpstart their 2022 expansion.

In an interview with MARKETECH APAC, Julie Ng, CEO and co-founder of Vase.ai, shared her insights on which area of marketing it’s crucial for brands to have good market research, saying that there are two particular areas.

“We usually advise to look into [these] two areas first. Number one, look into their brand. We have smaller companies come to us and say – I don’t really have a brand. That’s not true. Every company has a brand. If you are a smaller brand, you have to build it into a bigger brand. First thing you have to do is to know where your brand currently is. What’s its status and how many people are aware of the brand,” Ng said.

On the second thing, advertisements. 

“Second [thing], we usually let the client choose, they should either look into their advertisement, and to research whether their advertisement is working because [it] is basically the way for us to get into new customers,” Ng adds.

Top 3: ADVANCE.AI names Michael Calma as country manager for PH 

ADVANCE-AI-Michael-Calma

ADVANCE.AI, the big data and AI company in Asia, has recently named its country manager for the Philippines, industry veteran Michael Calma.

In an interview with Calma, he shared that the company aims to focus on the financial services industry which includes banks, crypto, and even non-banking financial institutions. 

“We looked at the typical customer journey, and identified the friction points, and [also] identified the points there might be security breaches, and then we built our solutions to address those points,” said Calma.

Calma shared that as a fundamental step, they have trained their AI to recognize the slew of Philippines IDs used when consumers apply for banking services. 

He also shared his insights on the growing space of cryptocurrency in the market, which he said is able to have mass adoption through two things: utility and security. 

“Utility means that normal people will have an actual use of that cryptocurrency, and we’ve seen that in play-to-earn…crypto needs to be secure, the channels that offer you access to crypto need to be secure for it to have mass adoption,” said Calma. 

Top 2: Former Ogilvy exec John Koay joins Edelman as regional ECD

Edelman-John-Koay

Landing on Top 2 is the appointment of John Koay, formerly of Ogilvy, as the new regional executive creative director (ECD) in Edelman for Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Thailand. 

MARKETECH APAC conversed with Koay who admits his confidence in assuming the new leadership role. 

“When it comes to this responsibility of leading the creative charge of three cities, it really doesn’t feel unfamiliar to me. Although these countries speak different languages, it is important to know that there is a universal language of creativity,” he said in the interview.

As a piece of advice, Koay also shared that brands must continue to look at themselves – are they only selling ‘stuff’ or being more responsible in terms of how consumers consume their messages. 

“With the rise of metaverse and NFTs, people started interacting differently. They are meeting up in metaverse, and that is the new kind of thing we are part of. Changing times of the world [need] new ways of communicating. Technology opened up more avenues given the restrictions we had,” said Koay.

Koay also believes that above all, brands must simply strive to stay relevant

“Even as a brand or agency, you need to understand what your audience is going through because you want to give them a reason to give you their attention,” he said.

Top 1: PH social commerce startup SariSuki moves to q-commerce with latest US$7.1m funding

SariSuki bags US$7.1m funding, to expand to quick commerce

In a bid to further improve and amplify the local quick commerce scene in the Philippines, local social commerce startup SariSuki has managed to raise US$7.1m in its latest funding. 

The company is led by Brian Cu who is ex-Grab country head. 

In an interview with MARKETECH APAC, Cu shared about the startup’s two different business models that aim to serve two different consumer groups: one that looks for value and the other convenience.

“It’s all built on the foundations of a single supply chain in a single logistics [and] warehousing infrastructure. The reason why we decided to present the two different business models on top of that foundation is because you have certain individuals in the market that look for convenience, and an agent model will not deliver that convenience. At the same time, we also have a group of users that are looking for value, and they’re okay to forego that convenience. But they will purchase in larger amounts if the price-quality ratio is correct,” Cu explained.

He also added that the agent-based model allows them to offer products at lower prices in a sustainable way.

“We believe in a community agent model [which] allows us to do next-day delivery for products that have lower-than-supermarket prices in a sustainable way,” Cu added.

When asked about what lies ahead for the future of q-commerce, he said, “I do think quick commerce is here to stay as a general trend. As long as you can keep pricing and things in quality at the very fresh and acceptable standards, [as well as] speed that just adds value to the whole experience,” he stated.

Rankings‌ ‌are‌ ‌based‌ ‌on‌ ‌Google‌ ‌Analytics‌ ‌from‌ ‌the‌ ‌period‌ ‌of‌ ‌16th‌ ‌February to 15th‌ ‌March.

Watch our exclusive interviews with the brands themselves on the latest episode of MARKETECH APAC Top Stories, now live on our YouTube channel.