The issue of sustainability as seen from the lens of corporate purpose has been growing through the last few years. More and more stakeholders are realizing that corporations and brands need to go beyond just brand promise but, more so, should reflect their own values and their missions. For 2022, we predict that this is further going to evolve.
One of the predictions in Red Havas Global’s 2022 Red Sky Predictions is the evolution of corporate purpose as it evolves from changing stakeholder expectations in the last year or so. For 2022, experts predict that corporate purpose must now be delivered with clear and measurable action.
As communications practitioners, we know the primary key to effective communication is authenticity. For 2022, actions designed to drive and emphasize corporate purpose should show that they can effect change. This stems from the growing realization among stakeholders that many companies and brands are riding on the ‘Sustainability’ bandwagon because it’s considered current and a trend. They create activities and product content to highlight their efforts but for most, it is superficial. It has no real connection to the vision and mission of the company or the purpose of the brand. There’s a term they use for this – greenwashing. This is when a company or brand spends time and effort to market themselves as environmentally friendly or have embraced sustainability – but it’s only just for show, only devised to follow trends.
Sustainability efforts and the commitment to provide meaningful actions and messages should not be skin deep. It should reside from a place of sincere authenticity. Only then can these actions become powerful enough to build and strengthen corporate purpose.
According to Havas Group’s 2021 Meaningful Brand study, there was a marked shift in how people view brands. About 71 per cent of people surveyed showed that they have little faith that brands will deliver on their promise and that only 34 per cent are transparent about their commitments. This clearly shows that audiences are now more cynical when it comes to how they view brands, companies, and businesses.
But despite this cynicism, brand expectation has markedly grown. An amazing piece of data is that 73 per cent of the respondents believe brands must act as soon as possible for the good of society and the planet. More significantly than this, though is that 64 per cent of people have now taken their own concrete steps to more affirmative action – they have signified that they will only buy from companies that have shown that they are not just out for profit but have a sincere desire to effect change and have taken concrete steps towards it.
In other words, consumers of today will take their business to companies and brands that are aligned to their own beliefs and those that are doing something to change the world for the better. It will be interesting to add that these consumers have even signified that they are willing to pay more just to support these brands.
This article is written by Mel Panabi, the business director of Red Havas inthe Philippines.
The article is published as part of MARKETECH APAC’s thought leadership series What’s NEXT.This features marketing leaders sharing their marketing insights and predictions for the upcoming year. The series aims to equip marketers with actionable insights to future-ready their marketing strategies.
If you are a marketing leader and have insights that you’d like to share with regards to the upcoming trends and practices in marketing, please reach out to [email protected] for an opportunity to have your thought-leadership published on the platform.
Sydney, Australia – Seasoned political and strategic communications advisor Jacqui Munro has officially joined the team at PR and brand experience agency Red Havas as its new senior account director, as well as second in-charge to head of public affairs Lawrence Muskitta.
The recent appointment comes after Red Havas has won new business accounts, as well as strengthened its newly-created public affairs service offering.
Munro will deliver crisis and issues management, corporate social responsibility and public advocacy campaigns for Havas Village clients and other organisations and brands seeking to manage external change and take a leading role in shaping public debate.
Prior to joining Red Havas, Munro came from boutique public relations agency Agenda C, where she has experience working with clients across banking, economic policy and education.
In addition, she has worked for former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, former NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and former Federal Member of Parliament and President of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Kerryn Phelps. She has also worked on national public advocacy projects, including as a media adviser for the successful 2017 Marriage Equality campaign.
Speaking about her appointment, she said that she welcomes the opportunity to leverage her expertise to help clients build and manage long-term stakeholder relationships, navigate institutions and government and constructively engage in policy discussion.
“Developing a new public affairs offering with Lawrence and Red Havas presents the best of both worlds: The excitement of a fresh venture with limitless possibilities backed in by the strength of a respected industry player and a huge amount of talent to draw on,” Munro said.
Meanwhile, Lawrence said Munro’s experience in public policy and media relations brought invaluable political perspectives and experience to the agency’s public affairs offering.
“Diversity of thought is critical to finding innovative solutions to the challenges our clients face. With Jacqui on board, we bridge the political divide, bringing creativity and new ideas to the public discussion,” he said.
We can’t believe we are now down to the last roundup of top stories for 2021! It has been a great year recognizing the most well-loved brands and stories in marketing and tech for the year.
Our monthly deep dive and conversation with the top brands resulted in the much-awaited regular MARKETECH APAC Reports, and this month of December is no less an exciting list of one-of-a-kind campaigns, inspiring new leadership appointments, and fresh product launches.
This month, we saw a food delivery platform moving into an entirely new vertical of consumer electronics. This period, a philippine arm of a global communications agency also announced a new business director, while, a content marketing agency with a presence in APAC unveiled an expansive roster of new hires in the region within its client servicing, creative production, and editorial teams.
For the month, a very interesting campaign from a BNPL service in Singapore has also entered the list for bringing back audiences to the golden age of advertising in the 80s. Meanwhile, our MARKETECH Spotlight episode on a digital agency in Malaysia also came out on top for walking us through behind the scenes of incorporating AR and VR in marketing campaigns.
Learn more about the top stories that will be closing off our 2021 with a bang:
For our Top 5 story, we have the MARKETECH Spotlight episode of Unicom Interactive Digital, a fast-leading digital agency in Malaysia.
In an interview with its COO Jareth Eng, we learn more about how brands are incorporating the tech of AR and VR in their marketing campaigns, and the best ways to deliver such that would effectively engage audiences at the same time push brands be top-of-mind.
Having helped numerous brands develop immersive campaigns since the start of the pandemic, Eng shared the agency observed that content remains to be the top determinant of a success of a campaign.
He says content must above all be personalized and authentic.
“More and more, let’s be honest, we start to get bored of the same stuff, and we start to look for authenticity in content, because there are so much paid advertisements today [and] so much paid endorsements, and we reach a point where we do not know what is being said is real or not,” said Eng in the interview.
Eng also shared his thoughts on the role of digital moving forward in the pandemic, “The perks of adding digital elements to campaigns have proven themselves during the past year. Even as we head back to a norm that we were used to, digital elements will still play a part.”
Havas Group’s media and communications agency in the Philippines, Havas Ortega, has appointedMel Panabi, former vice president of marketing communications at energy tech business WeGen Distributed Energy Philippines, as the new business director of its global public relations, social and experiential agency micro-network.
Through his new role, Panabi will be developing new products and services that will further strengthen Red Havas’ position in the country’s public relations and brands landscape.
MARKETECH APAC spoke with Panabi to know more about the area he is looking to prioritize in the role.
“I will be prioritizing promoting the ‘meaningful brands’ concepts of the agency. The global Red Havas Media Group actually made a study called ‘Meaningful Brands’, and it showed that people are now looking at the collective benefits provided by a brand, and its role in society,” said Panabi in the interview.
He adds that he is eager to start Red Havas’ sustainability and thoughtful corporate responsibility conversation.
“One other thing is that the United Nations’ sustainable development goal is something that the brands need a lot, which is a space we want to occupy. We want to be associated with that kind of ‘meaningful brands’ and sustainability conversation,” he said.
Buy Now Pay Later service Pace in Singapore enters our top stories for bringing a very refreshing and unique creative campaign that brought people back to the vibrant pop culture of the 80’s.
Armed with a video and an OOH ad, audiences saw VHS effect shorts complete with authentic 80s fashion, while decals on platform doors at train stations were reminiscent of the classic shopping advertisements from the period.
Speaking with MARKETECH APAC,Daren Goh, Pace’s head of growth, said that while BNPL is an inspiring tool for people to be financially responsible, payments could be something boring and pedestrian, hence, the push for the one-of-a-kind creative.
“We thought 80’s was great because it’s something that any generation can relate to whether you’re [a baby boomer], even to Gen Z folks who are interested [in] how it is like [in the] 90s and 80s,” said Goh.
He also shared that stimulating the feeling of Nostalgia was the goal.
“[80’s] seem like simple times and just really great times. So I guess we could tap into so many different feelings and people also see that no matter what age they are from,” said Goh.
The leading food delivery platform in Asia, foodpanda, will now move to offer a wide range of consumer electronics and appliances for on-demand deliveries in Singapore and Thailand.
Partnering with Chinese tech giant Xiaomi, foodpanda will be offering Xiaomi’s products ranging from smart devices, audio, and mobile accessories, to household appliances, and will be delivered to homes within 30 minutes.
Speaking to MARKETECH APAC, Christian Urban, foodpanda’s head of marketplace of new verticals for APAC, shared, “Xiaomi is one of the great new vendors coming on board recently, and of course, a very popular brand and we are super happy about that. They are on board with hundreds of their products from their flagship stores across Singapore and Thailand.”
Regarding the platform’s new partnerships and offerings in 2022, Urban said that they want to enable more and more vendors to join their marketplace, helping them to digitize and get their goods delivered within 30 minutes.
“Our goal is to serve a large portion of essential and non-essential goods, and there is actually a strong demand for it. Hence, strategically, the goal is to go deeper and offer more of those goods to our customers,” he added.
For this month’s #1 story, we take a look at the expansive company hire move by content marketing agency Green Park Content for the Asia-Pacific region.
The hires, which were made in November, span across three major work categories: the client servicing team, creative production team, and the editorial team. In addition to these new hires, GPC also announced the promotions of some of its senior leaders, including Que Ramli to the role of global social media lead, Martin Niens as head of operations, and Fe Husaint who was recently promoted to the role of creative and global brand head.
Speaking to MARKETECH APAC, Marcelo Bittencourt, managing director for APAC at GPC, shared that ever since GPC started out in APAC four and a half years ago with only two hires, they have tested the waters of the business in the region and have since grown to provide various services such as search engine optimization and editorial content.
“The goal for GPC in APAC is [trying] to answer to our global FMCG clients on how we can be more localized, how can we have content that is meaningful for the local countries, because we are seeing a shift from budgets being centralized, and we are seeing how important it is, and how empowered are the local marketers are in the countries. So [we] want to be there with them because we are a part of a global [and] regional work lines and as close to their local operations we can be,” Bittencourt stated.
On his insights on content development, he said, “Content is about connection, content is about building a bond with the audience. You cannot do this if you are not ‘there’, if you’re not using slang, if you’re not understanding what is the environment that you have. This is the biggest goal for us: to be able to grow our local expertise in the countries in APAC, to be able to be that partner to our global clients., and be able to answer their strategies to deliver their brand purpose with quality and with trust.”
Watch our exclusive interviews with the brands themselves on the latest episode of MARKETECH APAC Reports, now live on our YouTube channel.
This is in collaboration with Malaysia-based media company The Full Frontal.
Manila, Philippines – Havas Ortega, the media and communications group of the global Havas group in the Philippines, has appointed Mel Panabi, former vice president of marketing communications at energy tech business WeGen Distributed Energy Philippines, to be the new business director of its global public relations, social and experiential agency micro-network.
Panabi has more than 25 years of experience in public relations, corporate communication, stakeholder relations, and crisis management, as well as political communications, and marketing. He has worked on accounts and brands across industries like fintech, real estate, telecommunications, and entertainment, as well as renewables.
In his new role, Panabi will now be responsible for developing new products and services that will further strengthen Red Havas’ position in the country’s public relations and brands landscape.
Panabi believes that PR is building a relationship across different touchpoints in the customer journey. He shared that it is not just a campaign but a conversation with brands that consumers can trust.
“I am particularly looking forward to the new direction we’re going to take – highlighting sustainability as a centerpiece communication strategy as we partner with brands. I am also excited by our plans for 2022, as we align our efforts here in the Philippines with the standards and industry-leading initiatives of the global Red Havas brand,” said Panabi.
Jos Ortega, Havas Ortega’s chairman and CEO, noted that meaningful messages aligned to authentic values are what stakeholders look for, and that the new appointment is great support in achieving this.
“Mel Panabi brings with him a wealth of experience that will help Red Havas navigate through the new role of PR and corporate communication—one that is informed by thoughtful corporate responsibility and governance,” said Ortega.
Today, Red Havas in Australia has also announced the appointment of Lawrence Muskitta to be the head of the agency’s new public affairs offering in the market. The new division spans government relations, stakeholder engagement, patient and consumer advocacy, and public behavior change campaigns, as well as policy monitoring and intelligence gathering, crisis management, and strategic partnerships.
Sydney, Australia – Public relations and brand experience agency Red Havas has announced the appointment of Lawrence Muskitta to be the head of the agency’s new public affairs offering. Said division spans government relations, stakeholder engagement, patient and consumer advocacy, public behavior change campaigns, as well as policy monitoring and intelligence gathering, crisis management and strategic partnerships.
Muskitta joins the agency from Facebook, where he held the role of public policy manager, for stakeholder engagement of EU Affairs, and was formerly based in Brussels. Prior to that, he spent two years at BCW Global in roles including head of marketing. During this stint, he has managed digital campaigns for major clients including the Australian Greens and the Australian Medical Association.
Speaking about his appointment, he commented that he is proud to join the agency in launching this new offering, stating that as the industry and governments grapple with issues such as geopolitics and climate change, public affairs will become essential to not only corporate reputation, but businesses’ bottom line.
“Our public affairs offering gives our clients a competitive advantage by helping them manage external change and take a leading role in shaping public debate. As this debate moves increasingly online, our team takes a digital-first approach to public affairs, seeing digital communities as central, not just an add-on to the political and media conversation,” Muskitta said.
Meanwhile, Simone Gupta, CEO at Havas PR Australia, commented that they are thrilled to have Muskitta launch the Red Havas public affairs offering, adding that his international experience in tech, sustainability and health policy, and his ability to identify trends that are shaping today’s world is a natural extension to Red Havas’ corporate communications expertise.
“The weakening in trust in government, the rapidly shifting global environment, combined with the power of technology and social media means that organisations and corporations need to support traditional stakeholder relations with peer to peer, citizen and community dialogue. Lawrence’s experience combined with Red Havas’ strong social media strategy expertise means we can provide this integrated digital approach to clients,” Gupta said.
He added, “He is already adding immense value to new and existing clients, guiding them through complex issues such as Senate inquiries, ACCC investigations and upcoming proposed regulations.” Muskitta’s appointment follows the agency’s latest expansion to other markets globally, including China.
Australia – Global public relations agency Red Havas has announced its further international expansion to locations Spain, Germany, China, and Italy, as well as France, aimed at bringing these teams together with Red Havas offices across the US, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, UK, and the Philippines, as well as Indonesia, and Dubai.
The move aims to give clients access to best-in-class thinking and the opportunity for seamless, integrated programs across four continents. Through the expansion, Red Havas also expects strengthened capabilities with the backing of the health network Havas Health & You under CEO Donna Murphy, and the global footprint and expertise of Havas Creative Group under its Global CEO Chris Hirst.
The consolidation of these assets will allow the network to operate in a unified way across its seven disciplines around the world, namely health and wellness, corporate PR and reputation management, technology and e-commerce, consumer and lifestyle, and automotive and mobility, as well as travel and hospitality, and internal communications.
Red Havas said that there is a further expansion to be realized throughout 2021 to 2022, where it will be partnering with the other Havas Group specialized PR assets to address client needs.
James Wright, the global CEO of Red Havas and the global chairman of Havas PR Global Collective, shared that the combination of a global pandemic along with the political and social atmosphere of the last two years not only left a dramatic imprint on global society but has dramatically and permanently changed the way people around the world consume media and content.
“We are now living in an era where consumption is more global, more diversified, more simultaneous, and at higher volumes than ever before across platforms. In response to this, brand demand for seamless and integrated communications across multiple platforms and regions continues to grow at an exponential rate. This expansion better positions us to bring the future of PR and communications to our clients anywhere and everywhere,” said Wright.
In September this year, Red Havas in Australia has also announced the appointment of Alexandra Bryant, former managing partner and creative principle of creative communications and content company Finchco Agency, to assume the newly created role of executive director for the Sydney office, tasking her to oversee the team’s performance, growth, and operations, including driving people and culture initiatives.
Australia – Public relations agency Red Havas in Australia has appointed Alexandra Bryant, former managing partner and creative principle creative communications and content company Finchco Agency, to assume the newly created role of executive director for the Sydney office.
Bryant brings with her extensive agency and client-side experience. Prior to joining Red Havas, she has worked with various clients including Westpac, Menulog, and Fujifilm Instax, as well as Mad Mex, and Repurpose it. Bryant has also worked in-house in a range of marketing, communications, and HR-based roles for the likes of Westpac and Colgate-Palmolive.
As the new executive director of the Sydney team, Bryant will be responsible for overseeing the team’s performance, growth, and operations, including driving people and culture initiatives. She will also be leading new business and providing senior client counsel across the agency’s consumer, B2B, and tech portfolios.
Commenting on her appointment, Bryant said that it is such an exciting time to join the business and continue to grow the clients’ brands and strong culture with that signature Red flair.
“Red Havas has long had a reputation for working with some of Australia’s best and biggest brands and brightest minds. The people-first approach, strong national leadership team, and brave clients who strive to be meaningful in a sea of sameness were evident throughout the process,” said Bryant.
Simone Gupta, the CEO of Havas PR Australia, and is responsible for Red Havas, commented that Bryant is a smart, fair, and empathetic leader who is passionate about leading a people-first culture, and has a strong track record of successfully integrated client work.
“Alex completes an exceptionally strong lineup across the Red Havas national leadership team in what is set to be a year of significant growth,” said Gupta.
Red Havas has recently announced the appointment of Haylie Marchant to the role of executive director for the Brisbane office, driving growth in the market.
Australia – Public relations agency Red Havas in Australia has just announced the leadership appointment of Haylie Marchant as its new executive director for the Brisbane office.
Red Havas is part of the Havas PR Global Collective, a team of 1,300 consultants across 40 offices, including Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, and London, as well as New York, and Singapore.
Marchant brings with her 15 years of experience in building and running agencies across Australia and the United States. Prior to joining Red Havas, she has previously worked as the principal at M2 Communications, where she provided PR and communications services and strategic consulting to clients in the technology, healthcare, and transport, as well as consulting industries. In addition, Marchant has spent 10 years at Haystac, where she established and grew the Brisbane office before taking on the role of national head of strategy in 2018.
As Red Havas’ new executive director for Brisbane, Marchant will be responsible for driving growth in the Brisbane market. She will also be joining the agency’s national senior management team.
Commenting on her new role, Marchant said that she is looking forward to working closely with the entire agency to build on its impressive foundations and further grow Red Havas Brisbane.
“I knew from the very first meeting that I wanted to join Red Havas. There was a complete alignment of values and business philosophies, underpinned by a genuine commitment to driving a people-led culture, which has never been more important than in today’s landscape,” said Marchant.
Meanwhile, Steve Fontanot, Red Havas and Havas Blvd’s managing director, commented that after an extensive search, they are excited to welcome Marchant to the leadership team.
“When meeting Haylie, it was easy to see that we have a shared belief in a people-led culture, along with a strong point of view on the future of our industry. Her wealth of experience will deliver significant benefits to our clients in Queensland, as well as on a national level, through her contributions to the senior leadership team,” said Fontanot.
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