Melbourne, Australia – Following a robust pitch process, Initiative has been appointed as Cricket Australia’s media agency of record, effective immediately.

Initiative’s remit covers all media strategy, planning and buying – including contra activities for offline, online display, performance and addressable – with a clear brief to amplify fan engagement across Cricket Australia’s product portfolio including International, Big Bash Leagues, and Participation.

Sam Geer, national managing director of Initiative, said cricket has iconic status in Australia’s sporting landscape and pop culture and the partnership represents an exciting opportunity to increase the visibility and reach of the nationally loved sport across various media platforms.

“I believe there are no bigger icons in Australian sporting culture than our cricket teams. CA set out to find a partner that had a proven history of delivering successful and innovative media campaigns and could demonstrate a clear strategic approach to cut through and engage its broad fan base, including multicultural audiences. Initiative is perfectly placed to meet that brief – and more – and we can’t wait to share our ‘smarts’ and get started,” said Geer.

Sarah James, MD of Initiative Melbourne, commented, “Sometimes an agency experiences a pivotal moment in its journey: partnering with Cricket Australia is one of those “gotcha” moments. I never knew we had so many cricket devotees among the team, and we are stoked to be driving the account out of Melbourne, drawing on the skills and capabilities of Initiative’s national team wherever necessary.”

She continued, “Cricket is an integral part of Australia’s sporting culture, and we are excited to have the opportunity to help CA achieve its ambitious growth objectives, connect with fans… both new and the die-hards …and bring the excitement of the game to new audiences by leveraging our extensive network of media partners. Our partnership marks a significant milestone in both organisations’ next growth phase and underscores our shared commitment to delivering excellence in sports media and communications.”

Teresa Basile, head of brand and marketing of Cricket Australia, said, “We are very excited to partner with Initiative and applaud their leadership in cultural insight, alongside data and analytical solutions that deliver real-world tangible results. Initiative’s team brings energy and passion and their pursuit and delivery of excellence clearly stood out. We’re looking forward to a strong partnership.”

Work begins immediately with the first campaign expected in the market ahead of the summer cricket season.

Australia – 3Forward, a media intelligence and activation company, has been appointed by the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) to manage its media planning and buying.  

Through the AICD mandate, 3Forward will be in control of the institute’s end-to-end media planning and buying, encompassing various conventional and digital media platforms. These include direct advertising, programmatic advertising, social media platforms, and search engine marketing.

The independent Sydney-based company will now be assigned to manage media buying campaigns for the AICD brand, succeeding the former incumbent, Havas. This includes their main educational endeavours, such as their programs and courses, and also their initiatives to boost affiliation.

Jo Beat, head of marketing and online product at AICD, said, “3Forward demonstrated strong strategic and design thinking, combined with a deep understanding of our brand. We wanted an agency with specialist skills in digital advertising, adtech and data analytics and 3Forward has a proven track record in marketing-led digital transformation. Having worked with them for a number of years, we look forward to expanding our relationship with the team as the AICD continues to drive membership and advocate for best practice governance.”

Meanwhile, 3Forward’s managing director Matea Adamec, commented, “We have a rich association with AICD having consulted with them on a number of tech related projects. The expansion into media strategy, planning and buying, recognises our data-led approach, transparency and access to embedded technologists who work alongside our media team to efficiently and rapidly react to the ongoing challenges faced by marketers today.”

With a substantial membership base of 50,000 professionals, involving corporate directors and senior leaders from an array of sectors, including business, government, and non-profit organisations, the AICD is one of the largest director membership organisations in the world.

Vietnam – L’Oréal Groupe Vietnam has decided to renew its agreement with Publicis Groupe Vietnam. The Publicis Groupe Vietnam mandate includes digital, commerce, on-site, off-site, D2C activation, and brand-building media services. 

When Starcom won the media mandate previously held by GroupM, Publicis Groupe’s tailored solution, ONEL’ORÉAL powered by Starcom, commenced its relationship with L’Oréal Groupe in 2020. 

The partnership between Publicis Groupe, Vietnam, and L’Oréal Groupe will last three years.

Pierre-Olivier Guy, the chief digital and marketing officer for L’Oréal Groupe Vietnam, said, “We would like to thank agencies taking part in the process. After recently assessing the media agency landscape in Vietnam, it is an honour for L’Oréal Groupe, Vietnam to extend our partnership with Starcom. We were impressed by the level of commitment, passion, and enthusiasm shown throughout the selection process.” 

He added, “This award also recognises the great work done by our respective teams in recent years. Our collaboration delivers superior and award-winning work that helps us connect with our consumers and build a competitive edge in the high-velocity and complex digital landscape of Vietnam.” 

Starcom’s partnership with L’Oréal Groupe, Vietnam has evolved over time, from a media-focused mandate to a comprehensive on-site and off-site workforce dedicated to generating results across several markets. Starcom has served as a strategic accelerator for L’Oréal Groupe, Vietnam, setting up innovative initiatives such as becoming one of the first firms in Vietnam to open a TikTok shop for its products.

Meanwhile, Vineeth Dhruvan, CEO of Publicis Media in Vietnam, stated, “This win is especially dear to us because, as an incumbent, the challenge is often to outweigh, outperform, outsmart oneself. We treated ourselves as the biggest competitive threat to beat, and we are delighted that L’Oréal Groupe has once again placed their trust in us.

Sydney, Australia – Despite privacy becoming a crucial part of the business in the marketing and advertising industry, new data from programmatic advertising partner Blis shows that 50% of media planners in Australia are still not seeing privacy-first solutions as a key priority during 2022.

This is despite 33% of the respondent media planners citing privacy-first solutions as one of their biggest challenges this year. According to the data, media planners are still skeptical, or even confused, about how to tackle this challenge.

In terms of media planners’ views about current privacy-first solutions in the market, just one in three media planners feels they have good privacy-first solutions in place to reach their audiences. 

For specifics, 36% of media agencies are considering a mixture of contextual targeting, unique identifier (UID) 2.0 and FloC. In-house planners seem to be more skeptical, with 36% of them still saying they wouldn’t consider any of the current solutions as ideal to overcome privacy concerns.

The data also noted that CTV gained planners’ attention during the pandemic and will continue to do so in 2022, with 52% of media agency planners expecting to spend more than 50% of their overall digital media campaigns on CTV. Similarly, in-house media planners expect to spend 33% of their budget on CTV, a much lower but still significant part of their budgets.

In addition, media planners are also preparing to increase in-app advertising budgets as in-app spending is expected to account for 44% of total media spending by 2026. 

For Aaron McKee, CTO at Blis, the new data shows his research highlights on some key areas that media planners, and the industry as a whole, need to be aware of and plan for, if they’re not already.

“Many media planners are already missing half their web audience and 80% of their most valuable in-app audience and challenges around reach, relevance and measurement will only get worse with the Chrome third-party cookie changes coming shortly. This is the year to try new approaches to reaching wide audiences in a way that demonstrably performs,” McKee said.

He added, “The approaches that stand the test of time will be rooted in privacy and respect for personal data. Finding trusted privacy-first partners will help make their lives much easier – and their campaigns more effective – in the long run.”

Shanghai, China – Carat, the media agency under dentsu, has won once again the account of dairy company Mengniu Group as its strategic media planning agency in China. Carat has long worked with Mengniu Group since 2017 where the group used its data-driven solutions and consumer-centric strategy and planning for Mengniu’s brand growth.

Mengniu is dedicated to supplying healthy, nutritious and delicious dairy products to consumers in China and overseas. The company is one of the leading in the market of premium milk, yoghurt, fresh milk and cheese, and aims to expand its global reach.

Ami Qian, chief executive officer at Carat China, said, “We are thrilled to be continuing this cornerstone partnership. This renewal comes as our relationship with Mengniu enters its 5th year and is a testament to Carat’s growth-driving, results-based approach. We are proud of our track record helping this ever-expanding portfolio of brands reach new audiences in China and around the world.”

She added, “Mengniu is a leading and innovative brand in China, and our strategic approach emphasizes placing greater insights and capabilities at the heart of communications planning. Carat’s market-leading data-driven approach delivers the deep knowledge and insight required to strategize for this complex portfolio of products across multiple consumer segments within this highly competitive category. We are looking forward to another glorious year with Mengniu.”

Sydney, Australia – Following a competitive pitch, media strategy specialist Slingshot has acquired the media strategy, planning and buying duties of Australian gin brand, Four Pillars Gin. 

The Yarra Valley-based distillery was established in 2013. Four Pillars Gin has been named ‘International Gin Producer of the Year’ for two consecutive years, the latest in 2020’s International Wine and Spirits Competition.

This win for Slingshot comes hot on the heels of other client wins including Masterpet, Endeavour Consumer Health, and Ayam. 

Slingshot CIO and Partner Simon Corbett said winning the Four Pillars Gin business is a dream come true. 

“Our agency aspires to work with brands and individuals who stretch and challenge us, so we are loving working with the Four Pillars team. A world-leading brand and a collection of super smart individuals is a great cocktail for us,” Corbett said.

Jemma Blanch, director of marketing, events and activations at Four Pillars, added, “We intuitively have a strong sense of who our customers are but we wanted an agency that would question our assumptions and get us thinking in some fresh ways, Slingshot [has] definitely done that and we have really welcomed their creative thinking. We are excited about our upcoming summer campaign.”

The appointment by the gin producer is with immediate effect.

This month’s top stories are all about game-changing old practices and breaking stereotypes in the industry. A new agency has just launched a new proprietary tech that aims to bring more science to the practice of media planning, while a popular short-video platform moves beyond its popularized brand of entertainment to launch a pilot educational series. 

Meanwhile, the world of gaming makes another comeback. Two companies have recently partnered to offer brands an inventory of a new type of advertising in the gaming world. An AI and data company has also offered a new solution to a marketplace that is of surging demand today – e-commerce; while this month also saw the appointment and elevation of one veteran in the area of loyalty marketing in APAC.

Rankings were sourced from Google Analytics from the period of 16 March to 15 April. Take a look. 

Top 5: Global platforms Anzu and Eskimi partner to offer in-game advertising to brands 

More brands will be able to better engage with gamers around the world and get their hands on a relatively new type of brand placement in games – in-game advertising – as two platforms have partnered to offer the said type of inventory to advertisers in Africa, Asia, and CIS, as well as Europe, and MENA.

Anzu.io is a global in-game advertising platform, while Eskimi is a full-stack programmatic and data platform. What Anzu offers are real-life advertisements that fit natively into games, and Yaniv Rozencweig, the director of business operations at Anzu, said that it is looking for a demand-side platform (DSP) like Eskimi that has a strong and agile tech team that is able to “make adjustments” in order to tap into its supply. 

MARKETECH APAC spoke to both Rozencweig and Monika Poškutė, the head of marketing at Eskimi, where both said that the partnership ultimately aims to solve the long-standing problem of intrusive ads. 

“Our mindset is very similar [and] basically the same, we believe that ads should not be intrusive, and they should not be a big distraction in your life. You’re supposed to have your activities online for the game that you’re playing on your mobile phone, and it is the game that you’re enjoying, it’s entertainment, [so] suddenly receiving like a pop-up [ad] is a distraction, it’s intrusive,” said Poškutė. 

They also said that the tie-up will be offering foremost the education to clients and brands on how to work around this unique type of advertising and how to best harness it to better connect to gamers which had already reached about 3 billion around the world. 

“You can find various user segments in this big gamer audience in a non-intrusive way, and we believe that by educating our clients about this new opportunity, we are able to offer new channels, [and] new engagement rates, and I could even say probably more loyal user segments,” added Poškutė. 

Top 4: JOLT Digital brings science to media planning through J-CAL 

Singapore-based digital agency JOLT Digital has recently unveiled its new tech for media planning J-CAL, or which stands for J-Calculator, which aims to turn the practice of media planning on its head by bringing more science to advertisers’ processes through econometric modeling. 

MARKETECH APAC spoke to the agency’s founder Sebastien Lepez, where he said that throughout his own experience in media planning, he found that most executives allocate media budget based on gut feel.

Lepez, a marketing veteran with over 13 years of experience in both the agency and client sides, shared that media planners usually use media metrics or the rate of likes, impressions, and views, and while, effective in its own way, still doesn’t integrate sales in the process. 

“We allocate the optimal media budget to the channels we have selected. Our tool is able to tell us exactly how many percent should be invested into each of the channels,” he said. 

In the development of J-CAL, five years’ worth of data across Southeast Asia was used to build econometric curves or what the agency calls response curves for each of the channels that are present on digital. 

“J-CAL has taken nine months to develop and I think we have created a technology that is very unique and very robust. A lot of data, efforts, and thinking has gone into it. We truly believe that it is going to game-change media planning,” Lepez stated.

He further said, “Our industry is in need for a change and it’s been requested by clients for many years. After years [of] working at agencies and clients, I had time to observe the gaps and now I am able with JOLT and with J-CAL to fill these gaps.”

Top 3: TikTok Singapore launches first-ever educational series

While TikTok is most popularly known as an entertainment platform, TikTok in Singapore aims to showcase that such is definitely the case and that the platform is far more reaching than just exciting dances and singing. With this, it launched last 31 March to 6 April its first educational series which has its pilot theme on careers on tech. 

The first-ever #JobTok educational live stream series is a lineup of shows that aims to equip the youth aspiring for tech careers with knowledge of the jobs and skillsets of the future in the industry to help them to make more informed career decisions in life.

“We recognize the need to dispel the uncertainty among today’s job seekers and equip them with the relevant skills to be future-ready, so with that idea in mind, we decided to launch the first-ever ‘JobTok’ educational live series to equip all the users in the platform with the knowledge and the skill set of the future to allow them to make more informed career decisions,” said Doreen Tan, user & content operations manager at TikTok Singapore, in an interview with MARKETECH APAC

The platform has roped in women leaders in tech, tech executives from the government, and even its own engineers to shed light on some of the most burning questions of tech enthusiasts. Segments presented were ‘Adulting Advice from Young GovTechies’, ‘The Faces Behind TikTok live’, and ‘Women Leadership in Tech’. 

‘Ultimately, what we are trying to do here is providing an insider look into the tech industry and to just spark greater interest among Singaporeans to enter this fast-growing industry,” added Tan.  

Top 2: Wyndham Hotels & Resorts names new senior director for marketing and loyalty in APAC

Just recently, hospitality giant Wyndham Hotels & Resorts has consolidated and rebranded its Southeast Asia Pacific Rim (SEAPR) unit to now represent the whole Asia Pacific, and with this, it has elevated its former director for marketing and loyalty in SEAPR Lynn Poh to now take the lead as the senior director for the hotel’s rewards program, Wyndham Rewards, in APAC.

MARKETECH APAC conversed with Poh to know more about what her first order of business will be as she takes on the role.

“My first order of business is integrating the marketing and loyalty teams in Asia Pacific, and plus, developing a strategic marketing plan for both digital and loyalty that will support the needs of our hotels across the region,” said Poh. 

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts is one of the biggest hospitality chains in the world with brands across upscale, midscale, and value segments. The APAC leg currently comprises over 1,500 hotels, and within the running quarter of the year alone, the region has announced new additions to its portfolio with a new property in India state Gujarat, and inaugural entries in Nepal and Cambodia.

With tight travel restrictions in the region still in place, how does Lynn plan to keep the rewards program on its feet when such depends on recurring bookings? She said it’s about leveraging digital channels and employing social media strategies that will keep the brand on consumers’ radar. 

“We have seen positive news of travel bubbles coming out of certain destinations, so while we’re still very focused on integrated campaigns, we are also taking a sub-regional approach that’s tailored to market needs,” she shared. 

“So I agree that bookings have not reached historic levels, but throughout the pandemic, Wyndham had been really present in social media and digital channels, and we’ve been driving this message of dreaming to travel again, reconnecting with family and friends, so really driving that top-of-mind awareness through our social media platforms,” she added. 

Top 1: ADA launches new end-to-end e-commerce solution in APAC

Nabbing the top spot for this month of April is ADA, a company that uses deep data and AI capabilities to provide brands in Asia actionable marketing insights and brand and communication strategies. ADA garnered the highest readership for the month for its new e-commerce solution, which is an end-to-end offering for brands.

Speaking with MARKETECH APAC, Anurag Gupta, chief operating officer and chief of agency at ADA, said that what the company found was that while e-commerce is a booming industry in Southeast Asia, companies’ current solutions for online brands are very siloed. 

“There are companies who are driving traffic to the e-commerce platforms or marketplace, then there are companies helping brands optimize the customer journey, then there are companies helping them do fulfillment, but nobody’s linking everything together,” Gupta said. 

Hence, its launch of the new solution. The service is aimed at clients seeking comprehensive solutions to drive traffic, manage customer experience, optimize conversions throughout the funnel, and create engaging content on digital marketplaces as well as owned e-commerce sites.

Gupta said that even amid the increase in adoption of e-commerce, it is still seen as vanity and supplemental channel, where about 90% of sales are still dependent on offline purchases. With the new solution, ADA also aims to help companies understand that with the right direction and strategies, it can be a major channel for a brand. 

Gupta cites one of the pitfalls for brands on the customer journey, taking into example cosmetics brands, where most of the time, customers will come searching on the internet to look for different types, for example, of lipsticks. If brands don’t take the difference of keywords in search seriously, a seemingly small detail would be a big problem on online presence, he said. 

“[E-commerce] is a major part of the digital ecosystem. We see that companies are going to accelerate their e-commerce investments, it is going to be a much bigger channel in their portfolio, and hence, we want to prepare companies how to manage this,” stated Gupta. 

Watch our live interviews with the newsmakers themselves on the latest episode of MARKETECH APAC Reports, live on our YouTube channel.

This is in collaboration with Malaysia-based media company The Full Frontal.

Singapore – Digital media agency JOLT Digital has announced the launch of its new media planning technology J-CAL, which allows marketers to create more effectiveness to their campaigns through calculated budget spend and expected return of ad spend (ROAS).

J-CAL is customizable to each client’s specificities and works for any size budget. It has been built using thousands of data points from campaigns over the past five years in Asia. Furthermore, J-CAL is not only focusing on campaigns that have a performance objective but also on branding campaigns. It is undeniable that branding is critical as it not only helps grow brand health metrics but also sales. 

“At JOLT, we think that allocating thousands of dollars deserves a scientific approach and that’s why we have created a technology, J-CAL, that predicts the most optimal budget allocation to each channel, as well as campaign’s return of ad spend (ROAS),” the company said in a press statement.

For Sebastien Lepez, founder and CEO of JOLT Digital, part of the reason why J-CAL was launched was due to the fact that most planners only rely on ‘gut feeling’ on how much a campaign should spend in order to be effective.

“After using J-CAL for some of our clients, we realized that something was missing. A campaign’s objective is not always focusing on performance. Most often there is also an objective of Brand building. That’s why we have incorporated a brand building dimension in J-CAL and in the calculation of the return of ad spend (ROAS),” Lepez explained. 

He also cited the recent news of Airbnb shifting their campaigns’ objective to brand building rather than performance as one of the inspirations for the media planning technology launch.

“J-CAL has taken nine months to develop and I think we have created a technology that is very unique and very robust. A lot of data, efforts and thinking has gone into it. We truly believe that it is going to game-change media planning,” Lepez stated.

He added, “Our industry is in need for a change and it’s been requested by clients for many years. After years working at agencies and clients, I had time to observe the gaps and now I am able with JOLT and with J-CAL to fill these gaps. J-CAL is going to game-change media planning and bring a more scientific approach to it.”

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 – Natural bottled water brand, Spritzer, has appointed Trapper as its media partner, effective this month. The agency will be responsible for integrated media duties for all Spritzer brands.  

Spritzer said in a press statement that it looks to strengthen its market leadership and drive exciting new segments for business growth. Spritzer brands include Spritzer Natural Mineral Water, Spritzer Tinge, Spritzer So Tinge!, Spritzer Sparkling, and Acilis by Spritzer. 

Elaine Ho, Spritzer’s group marketing manager, shared that the partnership aims to double down on brand awareness as well as top-of mind recall among Malaysians.

“We are excited to kick-start our journey with Trapper to innovate our media strategies. We hope to reach our customers at the right touch points and connect with them meaningfully through a precise understanding of their journey. We look forward to a great partnership with Trapper, working together to elevate our brands,” she said.

Meanwhile, Chief Executive of Trapper Sue-Anne Lim, commented, “Sharp targeting means maximizing channel potential and using meaningful data to help drive both retail and e-commerce sales, which is critical to Spritzer’s strategy. We are well-prepared to be agile and responsive to sudden market changes.”

Chief Executive of Trapper Interactive, Trapper Media Group’s digital marketing division, Kenneth Wong added, “We believe that we are well-positioned to unleash Spritzer’s untapped potential as it seeks to bring 100% natural rainforest water to all Malaysian homes”.