Tag: Media agency

Shanghai, China – UM, the media agency arm of media marketing network Mediabrands, has appointed Lawrence Wan, former managing director, team intel, and head of integrated solutions and growth at Dentsu International China, to be its new chief executive officer (CEO) for China.

The new appointment will see Wan leading the China team to drive digital transformation and growth, and to provide clients with best-in-class offerings across data, strategy and analytics, performance, and planning, as well as to help them navigate the evolving media ecosystem, and future-proof their business. Starting April 2021, Wan will report directly to Chris Chen, the CEO of Mediabrands China, and Kasper Aakerlund, the regional president of UM APAC.

Wan brings with him 20 years of experience in marketing and digital media across the greater China region, working with companies such as dentsu, media investment company GroupM, and media network Omnicom Media Group. He specializes in productizing, operationalizing, and evangelizing, as well as integrating new digital media innovations into global brands’ marketing strategies. He has been exploring digital transformation from the internet boom to ad tech to data-driven AI. 

Commenting on the new appointment, Aakerlund said, “I am very excited to welcome Lawrence to UM China. Lawrence has the qualities that matter to our clients – entrepreneurial spirit, focus on growth, and passion for driving digital transformation. I have no doubt that Lawrence will make great strides for UM China and I look forward to working with him to future-proof our clients’ business.”

Meanwhile, Chen said that as digital transforms the business landscape and the pandemic accelerates that transformation, UM believes the future is now, and embracing change is the only way to drive growth. 

“As a digital transformation pioneer with a growth mindset, I believe Lawrence is a great fit with UM’s Futureproof philosophy and he is the ‘future’ talent we are looking for to lead the UM China business to new heights,” added Chen.

Global – Global media company dentsu international has officially launched anew iProspect, a game-changing digital-first end-to-end media agency.

As part of the improved iProspect, the agency will adopt the ‘Brands Accelerated’ tagline with a reimagined logo coinciding with a new brand identity and website, which was designed with “diversity, equity, and inclusion in mind,” according to the company. 

The new agency will fuse existing capabilities, such as brand building, strategic planning, business intelligence, marketing activation, and performance optimization, as well as the capabilities of scaled services within dentsu international.

The teams for the new iProspect in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, in partnership with over 90 other markets, will be the first agency to offer performance-driven brand building at a global scale.

The company said the new iProspect will focus on how consumers behave in the digital world and apply strategies to real-world scenarios “through a highly connected and creative use of media.” 

The agency’s evolved capabilities will see the merged efforts of 8,000 specialists, operating across borders and in 93 markets worldwide.

Amanda Morrissey, global president of iProspect, commented that they are a new force in the industry, one that draws on decades of expertise carefully brought together to create an agile, scaled, digital-first organization built for the future and delivering today.

“With precision and pace, the new iProspect is able to learn, flex and scale its output to transform a brands’ performance and provide effective business growth; immediately and in the future,” added Morrissey.

Meanwhile, Prerna Mehrotra, CEO of dentsu Media APAC and managing director of Media Group, dentsu Singapore, said that iProspect combines the science behind performance marketing with the art of brand building, saying that growth today lies at the intersection of brand and performance, these two areas are no longer mutually exclusive in the digital era but instead, a necessity. 

“This unrivaled perspective, grounded in deep digital specialism and married with brand-building strategy, gives us the firepower to accelerate brand growth in the short and long term at scale. Having been part of this development, we know that the new iProspect proposition, one that is digital-first end-to-end that offers performance-driven brand building at a global scale, is one that will accelerate growth for our clients in the Asia Pacific region,” said Mehrotra.

Delhi, India – The Indian arm of dentsu’s media agency Carat has appointed Ashish Singh to take charge as Carat India’s new vice president for planning.

Singh will be leading the agency’s digital mandate for North and East. Through his new role, he will be responsible for developing and leading client relationships for Carat in addition to helping the agency deliver enhanced digital solutions to clients.

Prior to his new position, Singh was with Mindshare India where he held the position of Partner for Digital. During his seven-year-stint with Mindshare, Ashish was responsible for driving revenue growth for the network agency. He has been instrumental in leading several client relationships at Mindshare and has actively lead pitches for businesses.

With more than 15 years of experience, Ashish has liaised with numerous clients across multiple categories to build the roadmap to numerous path-breaking digital strategies.

Commenting on his appointment, Singh said, “With continuous change in the media ecosystem, digital is the battleground for all types of businesses where consumers are accustomed to connectedness. Carat is known for its integrated communication planning backed by some of the cutting-edge analytical tools in the industry.” 

He added, “I am delighted to join Carat – the first specialist agency in the country and the world’s first media agency – to contribute my experience to create a meaningful connection for brands in the digital ecosystem for business outcomes. I look forward to this journey where together we focus on growth, expansion, and nurture talent.”

He will report to Anita Kotwani, CEO of Carat India.  

“I have had the pleasure of working with many digital professionals and Ashish Singh clearly stands out as one amongst the best. Ashish will add immense value as part of my core team and help shape the Carat Digital offering. He comes in with the mandate to drive the larger North and East offices for Carat India and help drive value for our key global clients like Microsoft, Mastercard, Phillips and local clients like Havells, DS group, and others,” Kotwani stated.

She added, “With his domain expertise across the changing digital ecosystem and his love for being a lifelong learner, I am confident that our clients will see the best of data, creative and technology amalgamation under his leadership to help drive their business outcomes.”

Auckland, New Zealand – The New Zealand arm of media investment company GroupM has announced that it is now launching INCA, GroupM’s influencer marketing platform, in the country as part of INCA’s ongoing expansion in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

INCA works as a brand-safe influencer marketing network that gives advertisers access to a data-driven brand engagement tool that connects them with trustworthy and relevant influencers at scale.

Through the expansion, New Zealand advertisers can now leverage INCA’s artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technology to partner with a vast network of relevant and authentic creators to plan, execute, and measure content-driven campaigns that bring their brand stories to life and deliver results. 

Furthermore, the launch solidifies the company’s efforts to uphold brand safety in the industry as more brands are allocating budgets to influencer marketing to drive brand engagement across social platforms. 

“New Zealand is such an exceptional market for creators. We feel very privileged to be able to connect our brands with the best creators through this new platform. Our people, technology, and partnerships put us in a unique position to sit across the intersection of creativity, media, data, and commerce and we’re excited to bring this value to our brands and strengthen the influencer eco-system in New Zealand,” said Nick Henderson, head of product and solutions at GroupM New Zealand.

INCA also deploys other features in the platform, including INCAtech, which provides unique creator and audience insights, workflow tools, content amplification, and detailed campaign reporting dashboards; and Genuity Score, which enables brands to check the proportion of real versus fake audience on a creators profile, which drives authenticity and effectiveness.

“Advertisers are faced with the challenge of connecting more deeply with consumers in social media platforms. INCA allows us to access thousands of authentic and relevant content creators in a highly cost effective way. This technology has simply changed the game in terms of how we can now plan, implement and measure our influencer content campaigns for clients,” said Chris Riley, chief executive officer at GroupM New Zealand.

INCA in New Zealand will be available to clients from all GroupM agencies which include media agency Mindshare, marketing and advertising company MediaCom, media company Wavemaker, and others.

Let me start with an anecdote.

10 years ago, when I was working for a big network agency and leading some big accounts, my boss came to see me and asked me to put an important media platform on the plans. I wasn’t really sure why he was asking me to include this specific media platform on my campaigns’ media plans whereas, the target audiences on any of my campaigns, were not consuming this specific media platform.

This didn’t make any sense from a media planning perspective.

It was early December and annual deals between media owners and agencies were about to close. It means that agencies committed to spend annually a certain amount of budget with each media owners, in exchange for rebates, cash, impressions, clicks that will be given exclusively to the agencies, and we were not close to the amount my agency promised to this specific media platform. Now it made all sense but it started to trigger lots of questions.

Just for the story I had to put this specific media platform on the plans and convince the clients that it was a good idea. I played team work but this changed me.

This is when I realized that the Media Planning in agencies was not neutral anymore, actually it was influenced by extra revenues that agencies could make through deals with media owners and would keep for themselves in order to increase their overall revenues.

Today, nothing has changed, these deals still exist and actually they are even more present than 10 years ago.

As an agency we witness it regularly when new media owners present to us their platform and at the end of the meeting, they inform us how much additional money we could make thanks to the referrals we would receive. This is an extra push to convince agencies to put a platform on the plan. And the more an agency invest in a platform, the more the referrals become.

Are media owners to blame for offering this extra source of revenue? No, I do not think so. It is more those who say yes to it that are fueling this.

Now, let me ask this question: Is it not the role of agencies to recommend to their clients the best media platforms to put on a plan based on certain criteria, like target audience’s media consumption, media objectives and performance?

How can this be achieved if agencies are recommending the ‘best’ platforms based on the extra revenues they are going to make? Media planning neutrality is gone!

Agencies must recommend the best plan and stay unbiased but this is far from reality nowadays. Agencies have lost their media planning neutrality.

One of the reasons for these ‘deals’ to flourish nowadays is that agencies’ remunerations have reduced across the years and they are trying to keep with the same level of revenues thanks to the referrals, free impressions, free clicks given by media owners at the end of the year. However, agencies should not walk this path and should stick to what makes them media agencies: expert at planning the best channels to deliver against campaigns’ objectives.

Now that I have founded my own digital media agency, JOLT Digital in Singapore, I make it a point that our system welcomes all referrals, rebates, and free clicks and free impressions we can receive by media owners, so we can pass them to clients. With rebates, we pass a hundred percent to them.

We do this so we can maintain planning that is neutral, free from influences in media recommendations. With JOLT Digital, where we live by the vision of ‘Game-changing is in our DNA’, I aim to direct my team in implementing disruptive practices, which are not just meant to be innovative, but most especially, beneficial with the client’s best interest at heart.

It is essential that as media and marketing professionals that we retain our integrity. What must reign supreme at all times is the campaign results to be delivered. We are ex-clients and we can truly put ourselves into the clients’ shoes, putting faith in media partners, trusting we will all together deliver to the objectives with full commitment and passion.

The author is Sebastien Lepez, CEO and founder of JOLT Digital.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Carat, the media and content agency arm of dentsu, has won the account of Malaysia-based property and investment group S P Setia after a competitive pitch across multiple agencies. 

Dentsu has built an integrated team and services capability for Setia group under its agency brand Carat and will be responsible for strategic media planning, integrated media buying, and investment strategy for the group’s brand and marketing and all the business units.

S P Setia has been rampant in the past in developing infrastructure projects in various Malaysian states like Selangor, Penang, Johor, and Kota Kinabalu and also has expanded its reach beyond Malaysian shores to Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, China, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The appointment of Carat is inked for 2 years. 

“We are delighted with Setia Group’s decision to appoint us as their media agency partner. The consumer journey in this industry has tremendously evolved over the last year or so. We are excited to be building an audience experience approach that drives not just brand love and imagery but also growth for the business,” said Dheeraj Raina, CEO of dentsu Media brands in Malaysia.

Meanwhile, Adelene Wong, head of group branding and communications at S P Setia said, “Setia group is at the forefront of providing superior customer service and satisfying customer needs through a culture of excellence, and the mechanism of delivering that is extremely digital and data-driven especially during this COVID-19 pandemic. We needed an agency partner that could work with us on that digital acceleration path and enhance the brand experience for our customers in process.”

Singapore – Media company Clozette and online marketplace Sift & Pick have announced a new partnership to allow Japanese merchants enter the Southeast Asian e-commerce scene through a one-stop e-commerce solution.

Entailed within the collaboration is the leverage of discovery shopping platform Shoppin’guu, which is operated by Cool/JP, another Clozette partnership with Cool Japan Fund, that is supported by Japan’s Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry. Cool Japan Fund is a private equity fund focused on funding enterprises focusing on promoting Japanese products globally.

Along with Cool/JP’s growing editorial authority and Clozette’s rising number of partner influencers and creators, Clozette integrates its knowledge of content consumption behavior among millennial & Generation Z consumers to create a curated global e-commerce marketplace and physical retail store at Changi Airport in Singapore, alongside Sift & Pick’s e-commerce solutions, logistics experience,  and payment infrastructure development.

“Our special partnership with Sift & Pick allows us to offer merchants in Japan exciting market entry opportunities in SEA that were previously not possible. COVID-19 heightened global demand for increased digital touchpoints through social engagement solutions such as influencer marketing, snackable videos and livestream selling,” said Roger Yuen, founder  and chief executive officer at Clozette.

“As a pioneer in the social commerce space, we are uniquely placed to address the needs of today’s consumers given our proven proficiency in social storytelling, our extensive network and rich insights into the Southeast Asian market, having worked with over 300 global, international, and local brands over the past decade.” 

Roger Yuen, founder  and chief executive officer at Clozette

The new partnership between the two companies will see a close collaboration on  category development, supply chain, and fulfilment as well as data and influencer marketing, and social commerce, which seeks to help Japanese brands and sellers, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), gain collective resources and expertise of the alliance to face challenges specific to online retail in SEA.

“We are delighted to partner with Clozette to bring more Japanese brands into Southeast Asia. Adding to our carefully curated selection of fashion, beauty, lifestyle, and home and living products will provide our diverse customer base with a richer shopping experience. Shoppin’guu’s blend of storytelling is very well-suited to drawing out the heritage, high quality, and uniqueness of many Japanese brands that are often neglected, and we look forward to seeing how our collaboration will further delight shoppers with new brand discoveries on our marketplace,” added Cavin Poh, general manager at Sift & Pick.

Sydney, Australia – Tech giant Microsoft recently signed an exclusive deal with Australia-based immersive media company Imagine Room to launch the first Mixed Reality Capture studio in the country.

With features that include 106 cameras to capture holographic and 3D-video performance, the studio establishes immersive experiences for virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and spatial computing. Furthermore, the studio’s capabilities also host applications that are suitable for modern capture of human performance, which can be used for brand marketing applications.

For Paul Wiley, chief operating officer at Imagine Room Group, the recent collaboration means solving the issue of providing more authentic human experiences in terms of storytelling and virtual engagements.

“Our Microsoft-powered stage will move the needle in terms of how Australian producers think about shooting content and storytelling. COVID-19 made virtual engagements and platforms ubiquitous and Volumetric Capture solves many long-standing problems associated with adding authentic human performance into these environments. We are currently collaborating with cross-sector businesses and taking pre-bookings ahead of the studio’s launch at the end of year,” Wiley said.

David Whitaker, executive chair of Imagine Room Group added, “This agreement with Microsoft opens up significant opportunities for partnerships from enterprise training to film production and content marketing. We see massive growth potential across mixed and virtual reality headsets, mobile-first activations, 5G-powered browser AR, and immersive media production. Our unique studio will be a massive boon for the Australian content sector.”

First launched in 2018, Imagine Room aims to provide interactive media partnerships across Australia by means of their AR/VR immersive content and platforms.

https://youtu.be/ykwL0RoZM_8

“We are delighted to partner with Imagine Room to bring this technology to the Australian market. Paul and his team really impressed us with their vision for the future of content production. We share their passion for volumetric content and immersive experiences as a means to engage and connect people more deeply,” Steve Sullivan, general manager of Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture Studios stated.