Tag: Partnership

Singapore – Interpublic Group (IPG) has announced that its bespoke solution, Team Dynamic, has been named the regional production and operations partner for luxury vehicle company BMW Group.

Team Dynamic integrates production and operations resources on a responsive, data-driven technology platform. It incorporates both onshore and offshore production solutions, delivering quality outputs in a streamlined, efficient way. 

The new partnership consolidates remit across 11 markets with IPG, following Team Dynamic’s appointment as a production partner in Japan and India in early 2021. The new markets include Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand, as well as the Middle East, and South Africa. 

Through the new partnership, Team Dynamic will be handling content production for both BMW and MINI’s media requirements, including digital and offline production, website management and maintenance, marketing campaign services, and after-sales and financial services marketing support.

Mish Fletcher, IPG’s chief growth officer for APAC, commented that they are thrilled to extend their partnership with the BMW Group in the Asia Pacific, Middle East and South Africa through their proven Team Dynamic production model. 

“Our connected technology solution allows for real-time optimization, consistency, and flexibility while ensuring unbeatable content production quality at speed and scale,” said Fletcher.

Singapore – ZALORA, Asian e-commerce fashion brand, announced its partnership with Google to launch Google Ads with ZALORA, a marketing solution that provides brands with a simpler way to drive online sales and performance.

Google Ads with ZALORA will help in the brand growth of businesses by providing sophisticated campaign support connecting them with customers while delivering tools that measure and optimize marketing campaigns.

Tejas Kirodiwal, head of growth at ZALORA, commented on the collaboration, saying that this partnership with Google aligns with ZALORA’s commitment to driving the growth of Asia’s e-commerce industry as it aims to boost brand promotion and success in a competitive online retail landscape.

“As e-commerce becomes increasingly important, Google Ads with ZALORA will work in conjunction with our in-depth industry expertise and other platform service offerings, such as retail intelligence and analytics solution TRENDER, a Data by GFG product, to run targeted and data-driven campaigns that meet business objectives,” Kirodiwal said.

The partnership comes after a string of successful pilot tests conducted during the second half of 2021. 

According to ZALORA, global fashion brand H&M ran shopping campaigns over a 7-week period within Malaysia and showed that Google Ads with ZALORA was effective in driving greater discoverability and traffic for H&M products on ZALORA’s e-commerce site, resulting in a strong return on advertising spend of 6.1x.

Jerome Hamlin, head of industry E-Commerce at Google, commented on the partnership, saying, “This extends on the ongoing efforts between Google and ZALORA to drive digitalisation in businesses. Southeast Asia is entering its ‘digital decade’ with the internet playing an integral part in people’s everyday lives. We’re excited to launch Google Ads with ZALORA to help accelerate e-commerce growth across the region and support brands to tap into the growing pool of digital shoppers.”

This January, ZALORA Malaysia announced their collaboration with conversational AI company Bray Leino Splash to enhance the customer experience of their Community Influencer Program.

Australia – In-game advertising platform Anzu has partnered with global gametech company Livewire to help APAC advertisers reach Roblox players through blended in-game ad placements.

Roblox is a global metaverse where players gather to create, share, and play together in immersive worlds. Currently, the platform has over 40 million games covering every genre imaginable.

The partnership will allow advertisers to run non-disruptive ads within many of Roblox’s most popular titles, namely All Star Tower Defense, Speed Run 4, Wacky Wizards, and Weight Lifting Simulator. Advertisers working with Anzu also benefit from guaranteed viewable impressions, brand safety, detailed campaign reporting, and brand lift measurement. 

According to Top Down Games, the studio behind Roblox hit ‘All Star Tower Defense’ which is one of Roblox’s most-played titles, Anzu’s solution allows brands to become part of the game, with their ads appearing on in-game objects that naturally feel part of the gameplay. At the same time, they can reach millions of players within an environment where they are fully engaged and feel comfortable.

Indy Khabra and Brad Manuel, Livewire’s co-founders, commented that they are thrilled to partner with Anzu and extremely excited to bring the Roblox platform exclusively to marketers and agencies in APAC. 

“Livewire’s vision to be the leading gaming marketing and gametech company takes another leap forward with the immersive virtual world of Roblox. The platform is also fully GDPR and COPPA compliant highlighting their dedication to kidsafe gaming,” said Khabra and Manuel. 

Itamar Benedy, Anzu’s co-founder and CEO, noted that some of the world’s biggest brands are using Roblox’s popularity and global reach to access previously hard-to-reach audiences, who are increasingly spending more time on the platform. 

“Thanks to our exclusive partnership with Livewire, advertisers in APAC can now reach an engaged and diverse audience through our non-disruptive in-game ads that add to the gameplay, making experiences more realistic,” said Benedy.

Toronto, Canada – Customer experience (CX) management and customer insights platform, Alida, has partnered with Blackhawk Network’s digital rewards provider Rybbon, with the aim to enhance its TXM platform to provide clients with the ability to grow engagement through incorporating incentives as part of their Voice of Customer (VoC) and Voice of Employee (VoE) programs.

With the integration of Rybbon’s PointsJoy solution, Alida will be streamlining points-to-rewards programs by allowing clients to preset the number of points to award for a completed survey. This solution includes Rybbon’s AutoRewards feature which enables organizations to set a predetermined points threshold. When respondents meet or exceed this threshold, a reward email will be automatically sent to the respondent, enabling them to redeem their points for a desired digital reward from a curated reward catalogue.

Jignesh Shah, Blackhawk’s head of global integrated incentives, believes that continued survey respondent participation is a necessity to truly understand the voice of the customer.

“By combining their powerful rewards program with Alida’s leading customer experience management platform, Alida clients will be able to boost engagement and retention rates by providing respondents with points that can be accumulated and redeemed for digital rewards,” said Shah.

Meanwhile, Riaz Raihan, Alida’s president of products and engineering, shared that their priority is to help clients improve experiences for their customers and employees, driving loyalty and retention.

“With the new Rybbon integration, rewarding customers for continuous engagement with your organization is now easier than ever. With a myriad of global incentive options, companies can now offer their customers and employees incentive choices that matter most to them,” said Raihan.

To learn more about boosting customer experience engagement in 2022, businesses may register for Rybbon’s upcoming webinar on its website.

In November 2021, Alida has also partnered with growth company GrowthOps, to deliver elevated CX and insights to organizations in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia.

Mumbai, India — Organic Tattva has awarded its full-funnel digital and performance mandate duties to FoxyMoron, the performance agency and full-service creative under media company Zoo Media Network following a multi-agency pitch. 

The agency’s duties include handling the brands’ strategic content and design across all social media platforms and performance marketing. The responsibility is given to FoxyMoron’s Gurgaon office.

India-based Organic Tattva offers a portfolio that includes certified organic food options, non-use of chemicals and pesticides, while also ensuring sustainable farming practices. 

Prachi Bali, national head partnerships and business head of FoxyMoron for North, shared her thoughts on the new responsibility for the agency.

“The organic food and beverages category, while increasing in demand, has been riddled with unclear messaging and perception challenges. With Organic Tattva, we aim to create communication that will truly build brand trust and also a community of people who enjoy consuming organic food,’’ Bali said.

Meanwhile, Kriti Mehrotra, marketing director at Organic Tattva, commented on the partnership, saying that the company is excited to collaborate with FoxyMoron for its digital marketing and media mandate. 

“Organic Tattva and FoxyMoron will work on delivering influential campaigns and raising awareness about the organic farm to fork process and our company’s commitment to integrity, authenticity, and quality,” Mehrotra said.

This January, FoxyMoron also won the full-funnel performance digital duties of Henkel Beauty Care’s Beauty Brand Schwarzkopf Professional.

Philippines – Aimazing, the retail data platform for mall management, has partnered Philippines’ IT consulting and O2O marketing company, M2Cash, aimed at enabling malls and retailers in the Philippines to digitalize shopper campaigns and create seamless engaging shopping experiences in physical retail stores.

The partnership will provide malls and large retail chains an enhanced user experience for consumer campaigns, as well as streamline their back-end operations and provide clear visibility of campaign performance and ROI. It will also allow them to leverage automation technologies and run a multitude of promotional campaigns concurrently, delivering a new user experience while significantly lowering costs and raising efficiency.

According to Aimazing, retailers are looking for ways to future-proof their systems with the rapidly changing retail landscape as they used to face fragmented POS and manual systems for vouchers, draws, and validation combined with high vulnerability to human error and fraud. 

With Aimazing, the retail automation will simplify the manual processes and allow physical retail to operate with real-time intelligence, as well as run campaigns such as live shopping events. It also creates seamless customer experiences, such as instant earn-and-burn for mall loyalty points and instant carpark redemption. In addition, the simple plug-and-play solution allows Philippines malls and retailers to easily track their offline transaction data and run their own promotional campaigns.

Jun Ting, Aimazing’s CEO, shared that as the retail experience continues to evolve, automation at scale has been proven in powering sales with a high gross merchandise value and bringing about proven cost savings.

“Our partnership with M2Cash marks another major milestone for Aimazing as we continue to push the arc in providing solutions for retailers, brands and shoppers through a highly personalised shopping experience in the Philippines,” said Ting.

Meanwhile, Chris Fong, M2Cash’s CEO Chris Fong, said, “We want to offer a compelling omnichannel experience – this joint partnership with Aimazing will take shopper engagement to the next level and build a strong digital ecosystem where both retailers and consumers can maximize their engagement.”

In December 2021, Aimazing has also partnered with local upper-scale mall destination in Manila, Power Plant Mall, to launch a digital raffle campaign that offers customers opportunities to earn rewards in real-time for their purchases at stores across the entire mall.

Hong Kong – Independent programmatic digital out-of-home (DOOH) adtech Hivestack has been tapped by Hong Kong-based healthcare DOOH media network Alfaxmedia to offer brands, agencies and omnichannel demand side platform (DSP’s) the opportunity to purchase and activate Alfaxmedia’s DOOH inventory programmatically across Hong Kong. This will be done exclusively via the Hivestack supply side platform (SSP) platform.

Through the partnership, advertisers seeking to reach targeted audiences visiting or in the vicinity of healthcare facilities will be able to leverage Hivestack’s suite of planning, targeting and measurement capabilities to effectively deliver their campaigns and truly connect with their audiences.

Said partnership comes after Alfaxmedia’s plans to grow its network coverage by 20% in 2022, and make its healthcare media available exclusively via the Hivestack SSP.

For Lydia Yang, founder and managing director at Alfaxmedia, they believe that with Hivestack’s technology, its solution can offer significant value enhancements for both publishers and advertisers.

“Programmatic digital out of home (pDOOH) is undoubtedly the next big step in the evolution of the OOH media industry, as there is an increasing urgency to meet the demands of advertisers who seek data-driven ad solutions. We are very excited to be part of this game-changing development in the pDOOH industry by partnering with Hivestack, the global leader and pioneer in pDOOH,” Yang stated.

Meanwhile, Troy Yang, managing director for North Asia at Hivestack, commented, “We are thrilled to partner with Alfaxmedia who will exclusively use the Hivestack SSP to connect to our worldwide network of advertisers, especially within China, to drive new revenue from their DOOH inventory. Brands inside and outside of Hong Kong will now be able to use the Hivestack DSP to advertise their campaigns across Alfaxmedia’s premium healthcare screens.”

Tel Aviv, Israel – In-game advertising platform Anzu and video gaming giant Ubisoft have extended their partnership following the success of dynamic ads being integrated to Ubisoft’s games, namely racing title Trackmania and sandbox MMO Growtopia.

The in-game advertising integration by Ubisoft started out in 2021, which blended into the gaming environment, appearing on 3D objects like roadside billboards and banners. Since then, Anzu has brought several big-name brands into the titles, including Samsung, Microsoft, American Eagle, and Vodafone.

Said integration premiered as part of the DIGI1 by Gamevention online gaming convention. During a 30-minute live stream, four streamers participated in the first-ever worldwide multiplayer streaming session of the yet-to-be-released, new version of Trackmania, complete with the blended in-game Vodafone banner ads powered by Anzu technology.

Itamar Benedy, CEO at Anzu, said that they are thrilled about extending their partnership, adding that they look forward to bringing their blended in-game ads to more of Ubisoft’s premium titles.

“We’ve been on an incredible journey with Ubisoft. They were one of the first big studios to work with us on our PC offering after identifying an opportunity to offer Trackmania fans a popular title, with in-game ads that not only compliment the gameplay but make it more realistic,” Benedy said.

Anzu has worked with several entities in the past year to extend their in-game advertising offering, including Saber Interactive, Roblox, and Eskimi.

Singapore – Recommendation platform Outbrain has announced an agreement with global technology company Vivo, to power Vivo’s browser newsfeed with native content.

Through the agreement, Vivo will utilize Outbrain’s OB News feature, which relies on content from Outbrain’s premium publisher network and allows partners to tap into a stream of editorial content from these sites at no extra cost alongside trusted native monetization.

Said news and native advertising format allows Outbrain’s partners to choose from a range of categories to match their users’ interests and will specifically help Vivo’s daily active users across Southeast Asia discover leading editorial content in new ways and in new places.

Bob Xu, business development director at Vivo, said, “The easy integration of OB News into our platform allowed us to already see a marked improvement in our user engagement and monetization strategy. Outbrain’s recommendation technology is second-to-none in terms of editorial content and brand-safe environment.”

Meanwhile, Stephanie Himoff, VP of publishers at Outbrain, commented, “We continue to work with top-tier OEMs to be the premier business partner in the industry. Utilizing our best-in-class recommendation technology, such as OB News, to help partners optimize their engagement and monetization journey is something we continue to pride ourselves in as we work with Vivo to put our recommendations in front of audiences across the world.”

Singapore – TransitLink, a service provider in Singapore’s public transport sector, and Stellar Lifestyle’s media and digital arm, Stellar Ace, have joined forces for a two-year marketing partnership, aimed at promoting TransitLink’s TL SimplyGo app and Stellar Ace’s WINK+ app.

TL SimplyGo mobile app allows commuters to make contactless fare payments on buses and trains with their bank cards, while WINK+ app is an engagement platform that rewards users with points for active engagements within the WINK+ ecosystem. 

The move follows the successful execution of their current ‘Unleash The Gates’ campaign, which showcased the WINK+ app’s gamification and rewards capability and resulted in a significant uplift of new TL SimplyGo app users. 

As part of the partnership, TransitLink will be adopting the WINK+ app as a customer loyalty platform for the redemption of rewards such as public transport fare rebates that may be offered under any acquisition campaign to drive usage of the TL SimplyGo app and WINK+ app. 

Furthermore, TransitLink has exclusively appointed Stellar Ace as the sales and marketing representative for all its available offline and online advertising assets such as the TL SimplyGo app and its transit ticketing machine, the TransitLink Kiosk, which is located at major bus interchanges and integrated transport hubs. The addition of these new advertising assets will expand Stellar Ace’s Home-Travel-Eat-Shop-Play (HTESP) Daily Touchpoint Ecosystem.

Yuen Hee Lee, TransitLink’s chief executive officer, said, “It is also a step towards opening up opportunities with partners and advertisers to expand the range of benefits that our users can enjoy on top of the services that we are currently offering.”

Meanwhile, Jeslyn Tan, Stellar Ace’s managing director, shared that the multi-prong alliance created exciting engagement milestones for both apps and reinforces an even stronger and targeted reach of their consumers utilizing public transport daily. 

“The understanding of the transit audience travel pattern will help us synergize transport-related activities through SimplyGo and a consumer loyalty program with the WINK+ app. For Advertisers, coming on board Stellar Ace will mean reaching out to a connected and seamless Offline to Online (O2O) audience with a continuous recall of your brand message with accountable ROIs,” said Tan.