Tag: R3

New York, USA – Global independent marketing consultancy, R3, has launched a new suite of digital tracking services to help marketers assess how their social, influencer, search, and e-commerce marketing measures up against others in their industry. 

The new services, namely SocialTrack, InfluencerTrack, eCommTrack, and SearchTrack, have been developed to deliver business-relevant metrics that help marketers improve performance across four key areas of marketing. Each digital tracking service uses bespoke audits available on a quarterly or annual basis to deliver in-depth reports with customised, strategic, and tactical recommendations.

SocialTrack identifies performance gaps, including which markets are overexposing ads or under leveraging paid ads on social media, while InfluencerTrack analyses influencer quality, competitor performance, and influencer effectiveness on a quarterly basis.

Meanwhile, eCommTrack delivers a quarterly or annual evaluation of brand and competitor experience, product ratings and reviews, SEO visibility, and share-of-shelf, amongst others. And lastly, SearchTrack produces a quarterly report on Search Performance, looking at always-on and tactical search campaigns at a keyword level.

Greg Paull, co-founder and principal at R3, noted that R3’s new suite of digital tracking services presents decision-makers with strong supporting data that supports strategy and investment, and provides insight into key implications for their brand.

“Our approach is different from other evaluations on the market in that they go beyond numbers. Each service delivers quantitative benchmarking of key metrics, success factors for the channel, best practice guidelines, and insight into creative and innovative strategies used by competitors across a variety of digital channels,” said Paull.

Singapore – Independent marketing consultancy R3 has announced the acquisition of advertising intelligence platform Adbrands. Under the R3 brand, Adbrands will continue to operate a ‘freemium’ model, with premium data and analysis available to clients and subscribers.

R3 will maintain Adbrands’ ‘Company Profiles’ which examines the business records, geographic strength, and comparative performance of holding companies and key agencies. Profiles include strengths, weaknesses, history, up-to-date news and top-line financial information. R3 will also manage the ‘Account Assignments’ database, which tracks new business wins worldwide.

The acquisition marks a continuation in R3’s investment in the analysis of the marketing landscape and tracking of client-agency partnerships, which the company has done through its global, China and Asia-Pacific Agency family trees, New Business League, and M&A League.

Greg Paull, co-founder and principal at R3, said, “We’ve always admired the depth of work that has gone into Adbrands and welcome 24 years of data and insight to the work that we do. Our ambition for Adbrands is to enhance its current library of information with expert analysis and make it the marketing knowledge resource for marketers and procurement professionals.”

Meanwhile, Simon Tesler, founder and publisher at Adbrands, commented, “The advertising landscape has transformed exponentially since Adbrands first launched more than two decades ago. There are more agencies, and more clients with more markets. Under R3’s stewardship, I am confident that Adbrands will be able to expand its unique offering and continue to be a valued source of industry knowledge.”

Singapore – Despite diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) being prominent across media and marketing, about 40% of ad agencies based in the Southeast Asia region admit to never checking client specification on DE&I before creating creative work for them, insights from independent global marketing consultancy R3 note.

According to the consultancy’s latest report spanning 300 video advertisements broadcast in the region, there are lapses in regards to gender representation in these advertisements. About 33% of the sample ads have shown negative stereotypes on body image, 38% have portrayed negative stereotypes of gender characteristics, and 44% have portrayed negative stereotypes of gender roles.

For Shufen Goh, co-founder and principal at R3, there should be a greater need for more people from diverse backgrounds in control of storytelling and production or we risk telling stories that are one-dimensional, adding that with 60% of agencies reported not having a formal process to ensure that diversity is addressed in client advertising is already considered a ‘red flag’.

“Marketers can play a positive role and encourage greater change in the narratives being developed by requiring diversity among creative directors and producers and demanding more inclusive organizational design,” Goh stated.

Despite the negative connotations, there are still brands who have persisted in creating campaigns that respect gender representation.

Based on the review, Kotex, Avon, Colgate, Apple, and Nike were five brands with the best gender representation in advertising in Southeast Asia. All brands scored positively in areas of avoiding objectification, positive body image portrayals, and positive portrayal of gender roles and characteristics. The best performing advertising addressed female empowerment, body positivity, ethnic and economic diversity, and sexual orientation.

In addition, female empowerment has been the focus of diversity initiatives across agencies in the region, though most activities reported were limited to educational and culture building exercises.

“If we look at progress through a regional lens, change is being made. There is greater representation across gender and ethnicity in the workforce, and more equality in agency leadership positions. Now it’s time for marketers and agencies to come together and shift the topic of diversity from one of corporate culture and optional participation to tangible process and policy,” Goh concluded.

Singapore – Independent global marketing consultancy R3 has named its country director for Indonesia, veteran in the advertising industry Anne Ridwan. 

R3 is a global, regional and local marketing consultancy group. It has presence in the US, Asia, EMEA, and LATAM regions, with over 100 people in its network. Ridwan will be working closely with R3 co-founders Shufen Goh and Greg Paull to grow the consultancy’s presence in Indonesia and develop R3’s existing relationships with global brands and local clients like telco giant in Indonesia Telkomsel.

Ridwan is well-known in Indonesia’s advertising industry, serving in CEO, management, and advisory roles at Ogilvy Group, Publicis Groupe, Leo Burnett, DDB, FAB, and previously J. Walter Thompson. 

Ridwan was also a valuable contributor to the industry as co-chairwoman and head of judging coordinator in Citra Pariwara, Indonesia’s prestigious festival of creativity, for 7 years. Prior to R3, Ridwan also worked for Gojek, leading its commercial and agency partnerships, and on top of these, she also became the CEO of the genetic interpretation company InofitBio.

Ridwan shared that she isn’t a stranger to R3, having been acquainted with Goh and R3 back in her agency days. She believes that right now, with Indonesia’s market dynamics, there is room for R3 to deliver a positive impact. 

“The pandemic has expedited digitalization, and brands are demanding more real measurement and ROI,” she said. 

Ridwan continues, “Brands are reformulating their success metrics, and this is where R3 adds value. R3’s tools, benchmark studies, and expert consultants worldwide can help the journey of such transformation for brands in Indonesia. Hence, there is no better time to join R3 and be part of the engine that helps brands and agencies evolve to their new propositions.” 

Meanwhile, Goh commented, “Changes from a new economy driven by technology present many exciting opportunities and challenges for Indonesia’s marketers. A connected population and increasing mobility mean that digital transformation is top-of-mind for many brands, and ensuring best practice is built from a place of local knowledge is imperative for R3. Anne’s industry experience and reputation in Indonesia’s marketing community is incomparable, and we’re incredibly fortunate to have her leading our consultancy in Indonesia.”

Bangkok, Thailand – Global enterprise software firm R3 has launched Conclave, a confidential computing platform that secures sensitive business data while being used. 

The platform allows firms to securely aggregate their datasets to solve shared business problems for their customers and across markets, without revealing the actual data to anyone. It paves the way for a new generation of trusted services that can detect fraud, reduce cost, build high-value multi-party analytics, and more, where the owners of the data control how it is processed.

Furthermore, the platform is built to be developer- and business-friendly. It has a high-level, intuitive API allowing users to easily write applications on any operating system, as well as code in their language of choice.

For David E. Rutter, CEO at R3, the recently-developed platform responds to a greater need in protecting proprietary data, which is key for a greater commercial opportunity, yet seldomly sent out due to issues of privacy and mistrust.

“R3’s Conclave is uniquely designed to solve this problem of trust through the promise of technologies such as confidential computing and Intel SGX. Conclave offers best-in-class technology, backed by the rich experience of our developers and business team, to empower customers to bring about a new era of privacy in data sharing, processing and analysis,” Rutter stated.

Conclave is powered by Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX), to which Anand Pashupathy, general manager of security system software at Intel, said will “help improve the privacy and integrity of data and algorithms in multiparty systems.”

“The developer-friendly capabilities delivered in R3’s Conclave can help expand the use of Intel SGX for enterprise applications,” he added.

Conclave is currently available as a stand-alone platform and is compatible with R3’s flagship blockchain platform Corda Enterprise. Full integration between Corda Enterprise and Conclave is forthcoming.