Tag: Marketing

Malaysia – Puratos Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei have recently engaged Aforemention by FOREFRONT to handle their 2024 social media content and performance marketing reach.

The contract was signed following the formal launch of the new brand identity for Belcolade, Puratos’ premium Belgian chocolate brand. This program offered an afternoon of culinary exploration across continents.

Aforemention by FOREFRONT’s main function will be to find global insights that the local market may relate to. They will also create performance plans and materials with the goal of raising awareness and bolstering Puratos’ premium positioning.

Belcolade creates goods that bring customer satisfaction and guarantee a sustainable future for future generations by fusing sensory knowledge with sustainability principles. Decades of research discoveries form the foundation of these endeavours.

Sandy Shiek, marketing director, Puratos Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, said, “While taste remains the primary purchasing criterion for consumers, the sustainability of the chocolate is a key consideration factor for their purchase decisions – with 68% of respondents interested in food products coming from sustainable farming methods. The Cacao-Trace Sustainable Programme is a testament to our commitment towards taste and sustainability.” 

She added, “Tapping into Aforemention’s key strength in digital storytelling, we immediately saw an opportunity to deploy a multi-screen, multi-moment communication framework that helps us to better deliver our messages to address the pain points of our users and decision makers.”

Meanwhile, Sylvester Hiew, chief marketing officer, FOREFRONT, expressed, “We are excited to find out how we can help a premium brand like Puratos communicate effectively in an emerging market like Malaysia. Staying true to our mission of igniting brands, we make it our business to understand consumer behaviours across different industries, and we have been successful in helping many clients tell their brand stories for almost two decades now.”

Singapore – The Carousell Group, a multi-category secondhand goods marketplace in Greater Southeast Asia, has completed the acquisition of LuxLexicon, a Singapore-based luxury bag reseller and accredited luxury consignment platform. This effort intends to strengthen the group’s luxury category by pursuing an omnichannel approach and expanding its premium luxury goods. 

The Carousell Group has purchased LuxLexicon’s company and assets in order to add LuxLexicon’s brand, large inventory of premium luxury bags for consignment and resale, and knowledge of offline retail to its portfolio. With this acquisition, LuxLexicon will be able to take advantage of Carousell Group’s expertise in international expansion and online recommerce, which will lead to further growth. Under Florence Low’s direction, LuxLexicon will continue to exist as a stand-alone business, keeping its name, staff, and retail location.

To encourage more consumers to use secondhand choices, the group launched initiatives in 2023 to improve convenience and trust in the purchase and sale of authenticated luxury bags. Carousell Certified Luxury is one such program that gives customers the assurance to buy verified luxury handbags. Since its launch, leads from the Sell to Carousell Luxury program—which allows users to sell or consign their bags directly to Carousell—have increased , more than doubling. 

Speaking about the acquisition, Marcus Tan, co-founder of Carousell Group, expressed, “We are excited to partner with Florence and the LuxLexicon team to accelerate our ambition of creating the largest managed marketplace for authenticated second hand luxury bags where users can buy and sell with trust and convenience. We originally met Florence to partner with LuxLexicon for our Carousell Certified Luxury programme. After conversations, we realised that we had a similar vision, and by joining forces with LuxLexicon’s expertise, we could help each other supercharge our luxury bag business in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan over the next few years.” 

He added, “We have been strengthening our recommerce foundations to drive our multi-category approach on our top growth categories. Part of these efforts were acquisitions for fashion, mobiles and autos over the years, and we are thankful to have these founders not only continue to partner with us to drive our mission, but also lend their expertise to the wider Carousell Group’s businesses over the years. Beyond growing organically as a top priority, we will continue to seek acquisition opportunities with the right partners across our focus categories and markets to accelerate the future of secondhand in Greater Southeast Asia.”

Meanwhile, Florence Low, founder of LuxLexicon, said, “LuxLexicon and Carousell Group share a common goal of providing a trusted and accessible platform for buying and selling authenticated luxury bags. Additionally, we both see similar strong consumer demand for popular brands such as Hermès, CHANEL and Louis Vuitton. This acquisition allows us to offer more variety of bags and recommend interested consumers to each other. I am excited to further grow the brand with Carousell Group’s scale, investment and regional expertise in the coming years and beyond.”

Australia – Full-service integrated agency Think HQ, alongside its multicultural communications arm, CultureVerse, has announced its new strategic positioning as ‘The Positive Change Agency’, which cements the agency’s core purpose.

Along with the positioning, Think HQ has unveiled a refreshed brand and visual identity designed and implemented by Think HQ’s in-house creative, design, production, and technology teams.

Talking about the refresh, Jen Sharpe, managing director and founder of Think HQ, said, “This refresh tells our story and shows our dedication to actively listening and involving the community in all of our work. It also means we are not defined by one particular service offering. We have spent years building up our in-house integrated capabilities, so rather than the market thinking of us as a creative, PR, events, multicultural, language services, First Nations, technology, or production agency, we have defined ourselves by what brings it all together – positive social change.”

“This is a significant step change for the agency as we enter our next phase—it perfectly captures Think HQ and CultureVerse and reflects our dynamic, diverse, and authentic people who are the driving force of everything we do. We know that while competitors will flirt with the idea of ‘purpose’ or social impact, no one else in the market comes close to who we are and what we do,” she added.
 
Meanwhile, Andy Lima, chief creative officer at Think HQ, added, “The refreshed Think HQ and CultureVerse brands reflect our unwavering vision of delivering communications that support the change needed to create a more equitable, healthy, and sustainable future for everybody. The brief was simple yet challenging to realise: We required ease of application by the whole group while representing our diverse service offerings.”

United Kingdom – The commissioning team at BBC Studios Social is inviting independent producers of all sizes and backgrounds to propose unique short-form proposals. These concepts strive to broaden and improve existing intellectual properties (IP), captivate devoted fans, and capture the attention of new audiences across digital channels. 

The available production opportunities currently span multiple key brands in the BBC Studios Social portfolio and are available online. Regarding Kids & Family, commissioners are actively looking for fun activity-based material for the hit show Hey Duggee, as well as engaging concepts focused around cuisine and family-oriented entertainment for the internationally recognized Bluey franchise. Furthermore, suggestions targeting a younger demographic are welcomed for the digital-only humour program Funny Parts and the automotive Top Gear.

Regarding factual and unscripted programming, BBC Earth is actively looking for ideas that capture the wonders of nature in appealing ways that work for its new vertical channels. For BBC Earth Science, a wide range of concepts covering subjects including sustainability, space exploration, and the complexities of the human body are also being sought out. 

Chris Allen, director, digital content development at BBC, said, “In an increasingly competitive and fast maturing digital-first market, BBC Studios Social are committed to finding, developing, and partnering with the best independent producers and new talent globally. We love our world-class brands, and we’re super excited to share them with you to deliver new formats, new talent, and new ideas that are critical and commercial successes. Whether silly comedy sketches, or a mind-bending science documentary, we hope this will be the start of some beautiful creative partnerships.”

Australia – Amplify, the creator economy agency, is expanding its Australian staff. They have promoted Sonja Stindl to the new position of general manager and appointed Ben Somers as partnerships director, among other new personnel. 

In order to further the goal within the Australian team, Stindl will work closely with co-founders Alex Reid and Tom Maynard to supervise people, finances, and legal matters.

After holding the role of head of talent, Stindl is now general manager for Australia. She joins Amplify with three years of experience, having held senior talent management positions at MaxConnectors before.

Somers will now oversee the newly formed partnerships division, focusing on generating new business prospects and building strong relationships with clients across many business teams. 

Somers, who was briefly employed at TikTok, has returned to Amplify in the role of partnerships director. He brings with him previous campaign team knowledge from his stint at Amplify. 

To further strengthen the expanding Australian office, Jess Hill, a longtime Universal Music employee who formerly worked across Jean Paul Gaultier and Carolina Herrera at Puig, has joined as senior campaign manager. Ryan Paturzo, a Buzzfeed employee of six years, has been named account director for the production group. The last of the recent hires, Jyothi Krithivasan, assumes the position of coordinator for partnerships and marketing. 

Speaking about her appointment, Stindl expressed, “It’s truly an exciting time to be part of the creator industry, and Amplify is leading the charge with the best content creators and clients in the business as well as our passionate team driving it all behind the scenes. I look forward to working with Alex and Tom to solidify our offering in Australia and prepare for our next growth phase.”

Meanwhile, Somers stated, “Returning to Amplify and leading this new Partnerships division is a really exciting move for me. As a business we’re growing from strength to strength and the aim of this new team is to drive connections – internally and externally – to meet the needs of our clients beyond traditional campaign structures.”

Furthermore, Alex Reid, co-founder of Amplify, said, “It’s taken a while, but we are starting to see mass adoption of creators into existing marketing mixes, using creators’ audiences to connect with relevant brands and their messages. With that comes the need for a bigger team and our approach has always been to hire people smarter than us, which hasn’t been difficult.” 

He added, “Amplify’s growth is also demonstrated with our expanding talent pool. We’ve grown from having eight creators and producing live shows when we started the business in 2015, to having a roster of 50 creators and a team of over 80 across Australia, Southeast Asia and all the way north to Japan and Korea. We’re proud of the business’s growth and our ability to promote internally. Cultivating a thriving culture and fostering growth are important to us as business owners and we strive to ensure that our team feels this positive impact, even if we’ve run out of desks in the office.”

Hong Kong – Sheung Yan Lo, most recently the chief creative officer for Asia-Pacific at Wunderman Thompson, has announced that he is leaving the marketing industry after over three decades of service. In his announcement, he notes that in the next chapter, he plans to spend more time with his family, while continuing to explore his creative passions, including writing for musical theatre and studying.

Lo, aptly named ‘Ma Yan’ by his colleagues, started his career in 1996, joining China’s advertising industry as a copywriter for JWT Shanghai. An illustrious career saw him quickly shooting up the ranks, eventually becoming the Chairman of JWT’s Asia-Pacific Creative Council in 2013, before being appointed chief creative officer for APAC for Wunderman Thompson in 2019.

A well-rounded creative, Ma Yan has also more than 15 years’ experience writing, directing and acting in stage plays, and writing lyrics for Asian pop songs and musicals, as an active member of the Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong. In 2009 the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce also honoured him as one of the Outstanding Hong Kong People in Shanghai.

Speaking on this move, he said, “As I retire from this thrilling 36-year journey, I reflect with profound gratitude on all my years of creativity, growth, and camaraderie. I am reminded of the wise words of Mao Zedong “The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours.” To the fearless, passionate souls who now carry the torch, I offer my sincerest blessings.”

Meanwhile, Audrey Kuah, co-CEO for APAC at VML, commented, “Today, we bid farewell to a creative visionary whose impact on the APAC advertising industry is immeasurable. Ma Yan’s innovative spirit, dedication, and unwavering passion have left an indelible mark on us and the entire industry. As he embarks on this new exciting chapter, we wish him a retirement as vibrant and inspiring as his career has been.”

Philippines – Oyie Pingol has announced that she has been appointed by the Jollibee Group of Companies as their new global media head. In an exclusive interview with MARKETECH APAC, Pingol stated that she will spearhead the evolution and implementation of media planning strategies within the Jollibee Group, encompassing diverse global markets and regions.

Specifically, her mandate encompasses crafting future-ready media frameworks, policies, guidelines, and controls to meticulously orchestrate media campaigns and ensure their success.

“In this capacity, I am entrusted with the strategic development of media recommendations that not only elevate our competitive edge but also remain agile and responsive to dynamic market landscapes. By staying attuned to shifting consumer behaviours and industry trends, I will lead the charge in devising forward-thinking strategies that propel the Jollibee Group and shape the future of media in the QSR industry,” Pingol told MARKETECH APAC. 

For this role, Pingol will be prioritising foundational skills whilst advancing their digital capabilities through audience targeting and personalization through data analytics, ensuring the creation of high-quality and relevant content with seamless integration across diverse channels. 

She will also be focusing on the exploration of innovative technologies like AI, testing and learning new technologies to maximise the use of their measurement and analytics tools, maintaining agility and adaptability to swiftly respond to market dynamics.

“By focusing on these strategic pillars, we aim to deliver cohesive and impactful campaigns that deeply resonate with our audience, drive engagement, and ultimately propel our brand’s success in an ever-evolving media landscape,” Pingol stated.

Prior to her appointment, Pingol worked with GroupM’s Wavemaker for over four years, wherein she cultivated a proactive and innovative growth mindset, constantly seeking out new opportunities, and embracing calculated risks to drive growth and success.

“This entrepreneurial approach, coupled with my experience in media planning, positions me well to contribute effectively to the dynamic environment of Jollibee Group. Additionally, their emphasis on digital transformation has equipped me with a strong foundation in navigating and leveraging digital media platforms and strategies,” shared Pingol.

When asked about what’s to come in terms of challenges and opportunities for the fast-food industry this year, Pingol mentioned that they will be facing a multitude of marketing challenges and opportunities in the current landscape.

One significant challenge is navigating the shifting consumer preferences and behaviours brought about by the pandemic. Consumers’ palates have expanded as they discovered new food options and neighbourhood food shops during lockdowns and restrictions, leading to increased demand for variety and quality in fast-food offerings. However, amidst these challenges lie opportunities for QSRs to leverage this trend by introducing new menu items, collaborating with local eateries, and emphasising freshness and quality in their offerings.

Moreover, the power of word-of-mouth marketing has never been stronger, with social media amplifying consumer voices that can either make or break brands. Authenticity, transparency, and responsiveness to feedback are crucial for brands to cultivate positive relationships with their audience and mitigate potential reputational risks.

Additionally, reaching and engaging Gen Z, known for its digital savviness and high expectations, presents both a challenge and an opportunity for fast-food brands to innovate in their marketing strategies and offerings.

Last but not least, with the growing awareness of nutrition and sustainability, fast-food brands must adapt their offerings to cater to these preferences while still maintaining convenience and taste.

Talking about what’s next for the fast-food industry, as well as Jollibee’s plans along these changes, Pingol concluded, “In addition to above, by staying agile, responsive to consumer needs, and leveraging its diverse portfolio of brands, the Jollibee Group is posed to further expand and improve in line with the evolving landscape of the QSR and casual dining industry.”

India – 22feet Tribal Worldwide appointed Axon Alex as head of strategy to lead the agency’s strategic planning. In addition, Shikha Davessar has been promoted to EVP and head of client business. Both individuals will report directly to Vanaja Pillai, president of 22feet Tribal Worldwide. 

Alex, a MICA alumnus, began his advertising career with DDB Tribal and has worked there for almost 16 years. Throughout his professional career, he held crucial positions, including as strategy director at BBH India and managing partner at Jack in the Box Worldwide, where he contributed to the agency’s growth. Axon has built a portfolio, working with companies such as McDonald’s, Vi (Vodafone Idea), Mars Petcare, and ITC Hotels. 

Davessar, who has worked with DDB Mudra Group for nearly a decade, provides expertise working with companies like Fortune 500 global brands including Britannia, Battlegrounds Mobile India, Diageo, Flipkart, LG, and Mars Petcare. 

Speaking about the appointments, Vanaja Pillai, president, 22feet Tribal Worldwide, said, “I am delighted with these developments at 22feetTribal Worldwide, building off the success we experienced over the last year. Axon joins us at a perfect time, with an enviable roster of clients and exciting business challenges ahead. He brings a wealth of experience from his 16 years in the industry, including key roles at esteemed agencies and a strong portfolio with marquee brands. His expertise will undoubtedly enrich our strategic capabilities and propel our agency’s further growth.” 

Pillai added, “We’ve made great strides in new business and creative wins, and Shikha’s contributions have been significant in making this happen. Her journey within our agency exemplifies our commitment to nurturing and recognizing internal talent, and her elevation is a well- deserved recognition. We can’t wait for the amazing journey we have ahead at 22feetTribal WW!” 

Meanwhile, Alex commented, “This agency in its previous avatar was where it all started for me, and I made the promise to come back someday. I’ve come back not on the back of the promise I made but the promise 22Feet holds. The teams have built a reputation in being in the consideration set when you think about the top agencies in the country. Strategy is simply the process of charting the way forward and I hope I’ll play a part in our growth story through the work for our clients and the thinking behind it.” 

Singapore – Interpublic group agency Golin welcomes Ian Willoughby as director within the agency’s healthcare practice, Golin Health in Singapore.

Located in Singapore, Willoughby will work across Golin branded agencies, and will be responsible for building the healthcare offering.

With healthcare communications expertise over 25 years, Willoughby has worked within major pharmaceutical companies, communications and medical education businesses in Singapore, the UK and Australia.

He was previously a general manager at McCann Health in Singapore, possessing an experience across a wide range of specialist, general practice and consumer health areas that led the development of award-winning and highly effective campaigns.

Willoughby’s industry experience has also seen him serve as chairman of the Healthcare Communications Council in Australia, helping to provide leadership in effective healthcare advertising and communications.

Speaking on his appointment, Willoughby said, “I’m very happy to be part of the Golin team, adding to their experience across APAC, and globally. Creating impactful, purposeful programmes around health and wellness is vitally important to enhance community understanding and create change, ultimately improving health outcomes. This is what we will be helping all our clients to achieve.”

Meanwhile, Darren Burns, president of Golin APAC, commented, “We are so glad to have Ian at the helm of Golin Health in Singapore. He brings a unique insight into the opportunities and challenges faced by healthcare brands, catalysing new thinking into how we propel positive change for our clients”.