Singapore – Redhill, the Singapore-headquartered public relations and communications agency, has recently won the account for the launch of Kimpton Kitalay Samui, the first resort in Thailand under IHG Hotels & Resorts’ luxury boutique brand, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants.
The remit entails the agency to plan and execute a full launch strategy. This is the second Kimpton hotel in Thailand following the brand’s debut in October 2020 of Kimpton Maa-Lai Bangkok, which Redhill also managed the launch of.
“We are thrilled to be working with the Kimpton brand once again to further its distinctive hospitality concept in Thailand,” said Tavy Cussinel, managing director of Redhill.
“Redhill and Kimpton Kitalay Samui have a shared interest in communicating a differentiated stay experience driven by the power of human connection,” added Cussinel.
The resort’s name is derived from two Thai words, which are ‘kita’, meaning ‘song’ or ‘singing’, and ‘lay’, which translates to ‘sea’ and which tries to encapsulate the spirit of the local community. ‘Kitalay’, thus, is meant to stand for ‘a joyous ode’ by Kimpton celebrating the ‘siren song’ of the sea as well as ‘the warmth’ of human connection and community in an ‘idyllic escape’. This branding, the agency said, is woven into every aspect of the resort.
The 138-key luxury boutique beachfront property on Choengmon Beach will open later this year. The resort features luxury pool villas with direct access to the beach and guestrooms with private access to the pool or the views over the Gulf of Thailand.
This luxury boutique resort aims to conjure the romance of a village that is ‘intimately’ connected to the sea through a combination of contemporary design and traditional accents.
Michael Janssen, general manager of Kimpton Kitalay Samui, said, “Kimpton Kitalay Samui will be our take on the return of the Samui way of life, and celebrate adventure as well as a taste of village living through the resort experiences, four restaurants, and bars.”
On the new partnership, Janssen commented, “It was absolutely vital to us that we work with an agency that fully understands our dedication to thoughtful curation and meaningful, unscripted, and ridiculously personal guest experiences.”
In an exclusive interview, the agency’s CEO and Founder Jacob Puthenparambil shared how Redhill has always eyed for the global name despite starting out as a boutique agency.
“We knew from day one that we didn’t want to be a boutique agency. We’re going to fight the big boys,” said Puthenparambil.
Established in 2014, the agency is embedded in Southeast Asia, with a reach that extends to Northern Asia, Europe, Australia, UAE, and the US. The agency is currently present in 17 countries.
This month’s top stories which were sourced from Google Analytics from the 16th of May to the 15th of June were a combination of local and global stories.
First off, Malaysia is taking the spotlight where two come from the market – a leading agency unveiling new leadership appointments, and also a platform’s rundown of top Hari Raya ads in the country.
Southeast Asia country Philippines also made it to the top with an esports company and a media giant partnering in the country to change the game in advertising in esports.
Two global ad tech companies have also joined forces to provide marketers a new way to measure their campaigns, while a global communications agency has also announced new managing directors.
Together with our exclusive interviews with the brand spokespeople, read on to find out which stories made noise this month.
Tier One Entertainment, the Philippines-born esports talent agency for Southeast Asia, has partnered with media and communications giant GroupM to achieve a common goal: to bring in more mainstream brands in the advertising landscape in esports.
Advertising in esports remains to be an exclusive arena for endemic brands, and Tier One, which has been in operations for four years now, has always eyed to be an agent in bridging the gap between gaming and mainstream.
In an exclusive conversation with Joanne Llavore, the CCO of Tier One, she shared that as the audience penetration in esports continues to grow, the company has always been cognizant that the time will come when the standardization of media advertising metrics will become a requisite among clients.
GroupM being the leader in the industry, it is but inherent to seek out and forge this partnership as we work together with them to bring esports and gaming in the forefront of media advertising.
Joanne Llavore, CCO, Tier One Entertainment
Llavore adds, “It’s a blue ocean of non-endemic brands out there. And we know the potential is really huge to be able to scale the business.”
Aside from its headquarters, Tier One currently has offices in Myanmar, Japan, and Vietnam and had just opened an office in Malaysia.
Media and communications network dentsu in Malaysia has announced new leaders within its Media division. Asha Nair will become the new managing director of media investment and platforms, Jing-Wen Foo has been appointed as the new e-commerce director, while Hemanth Jayaraman has been unveiled as the new partner and agency brand lead of DentsuX.
Dheeraj Raina, CEO of Media at dentsu malaysia, said that the new hires go under dentsu’s continuous transformation journey which started last year when it was announced that dentsu will now be organized into three main business lines including Media.
Raina, who himself, has also been recently appointed as the inaugural CEO of Media in January, said that it has been an “intense 6 months”, looking at simplifying internal structures and how they create solutions for clients. It has also been, Raina bared, quite a year of subsequent pitches.
The new lineup that you’re seeing of the leaders [is] primarily [for] creating capability centers of excellence within the organization so that as the agency partners with our clients, we are in the best position of solving their marketing challenges.
Raina said in a MARKETECH APAC interview
Raina also shared that the division will be more product-focused as an agency, such as into its e-commerce practice, where the vision is to provide clients beyond the performance marketing aspect of it but to be an end-to-end e-commerce service that touches on strategic consulting as well as on-site and off-site optimization, among others.
“Obviously, it’s been a very, very challenging one and a half year for everybody in terms of forecasting and looking at how the future will be, and therefore, [being] an agency partner for us [means] to be able to then deliver really integrated growth solutions for our clients [which] is going to be very, very critical; and for that, I think, we need to have a very strong product focus, and that’s where I think is we are going to be spending a lot of our time as an organization in the next coming few quarters,” said Raina.
Raina also remarks, “And obviously, e-commerce is one of the key products that is no more [treated as a] luxury [for brands].”
Singapore-headquartered global communications agency Redhill has unveiled two new managing directors, Marienelle Castelino and Tavy Cussinel.
Both Castelino and Cussinel have been homegrown executives of Redhill, being part of the company for a long time, even during the time it was operating out of its headquarters in Singapore, in an attic-like office with no windows, as CEO and founder Jacob Puthenparambil describes it.
Puthenparambil, in a MARKETECH APAC interview,sharedwhy it’s important to build and stick with its people for a long time.
It’s extremely vital for our growth that we have people who stay with us for a very long time because it’s a people-based industry, especially PR. A lot of the company culture is based on the long-term people that we have. You can’t write those things down or learn from a textbook.
Jacob Puthenparambil, CEO and Founder, Redhill
Through their new roles, Marienelle will deepen her focus on brand leadership and corporate mandates in markets across Asia Pacific, specifically Singapore, Indonesia, India, and Cambodia, while Tavy will focus on growing the agency’s education, healthcare, luxury, and lifestyle portfolios.
The communications firm started in 2014 as a boutique agency and in the interview, Puthenparambil shared how at the beginning, they had always been firm in their goal that they wanted to grow into being more than that.
“We knew from day one that we didn’t want to be a boutique agency. We’re going to fight the big boys,” he said.
He shared that along the way, they found that a boutique agency’s lifeline is mostly dependent and stuck to how long its founder is active or relevant to the market and that in the end, said agencies aren’t able to hold on to the talent or to the clients.
“So that’s what pushed us to establish this presence in all these countries, even if it’s one [to three] people; [we] just go plant the flag there and start doing work,” he said.
Redhill currently has a global presence in 17 markets.
Global marketing cloud InMobi has announced a new partnership with global technology company The Trade Desk to integrate InMobi’s mobile-first consumer intelligence platform – InMobi Pulse – into the latter’s demand-side platform (DSP).
As more and more brands seek to find additional and effective ways to measure their brand campaigns across all digital media, the two ad tech platforms come together to offer in-app brand lift surveys to be delivered programmatically, enabling brands to measure metrics such as brand awareness, favorability, intent to purchase and other metrics that determine campaign effectiveness.
Speaking to MARKETECH APAC, Vasuta Agarwal, managing director of InMobi for the Asia Pacific, said, “This partnership is a first of its kind between InMobi and The Trade Desk, and it provides brands and marketers the ability to deterministically measure the incremental brand impact of their campaigns across digital media by web, desktop, and in-app.”
It allows them to deliver in-app surveys, both to an exposed group and a controlled group of users which are users who have seen the ad and have not seen the ad, and then measure the difference in the brand lift metrics between these two groups.
Agarwal explaining how the integration works
She adds that the metric is deterministic because brands can use mobile ad identifiers to identify the end-user who’s seen the ad or not seen the ad.
Agarwal also shared another benefit, “And any advertiser using the [The Trade Desk’s DSP] while running their campaigns, can do a lot of [other] stuff like in-flight optimization, and change in brand messaging, [among others].”
Finally concluding the Hari Raya, or the celebration of the end of Ramadan in Malaysia, YouTube, through its ads leaderboard, has rounded up the top 10 ads on the platform that came in celebration of the festivity. This is MARKETECH APAC’s top story for June.
The list included a mix of international and local brands in Malaysia. Some of the local names on the list are Tenaga Nasional, Petronas, and RHB Group. Meanwhile, Asia retailer Watsons also made it as a top ad, with leading e-commerce platforms Lazada and Shopee also entering YouTube’s picks.
YouTube’s ads leaderboard is usually based on metrics such as organic and paid views, watch time, and audience retention, but we spoke with Lars Anthonisen, Google’s head of marketing for Malaysia, to give us an insider on what other factors said Malaysian brands were able to hit right to get into audiences’ radar.
Anthonisen said there are three key themes: brands that stood out stayed in tune with the values of Hari Raya, showed empathy, and took a stand on societal norms.
More Malaysians, unfortunately, are unable to celebrate with their loved ones. I think ads that stood out were from brands who leaned heavily to the core Hari Raya values [such as] family, compassion, and hope, providing Malaysians the Hari Raya spirit.
Anthonisen on brands showing the values of Hari Raya
With Empathy meanwhile, he said that brands are starting to recognize the importance of acknowledging the struggles people and communities are facing.
“Brands have realized the need to engage the audience on a deeper level by leveraging real stories and also [to] add [the] human element and build this deeper connection,” he said.
And finally, Anothisen’s insight on brands challenging societal norms: “It can be daunting, I know, for a lot of brands to take a difficult topic on and turn it into something of value, but I think brands who were there to do it really got the support and the engagement from audiences.”
And of course, he himself has a favorite from the list, and this is what he had to say, “The one that stood out for me was the one from Petronas. First of all, they used animation to tell the story a bit differently, but I think also the whole campaign centered around how many Malaysians missed home during Hari Raya, and I think that was a really lovely story.”
Watch our live interviews with the newsmaker 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 – Redhill, a global communications agency based in Singapore, has announced its new managing directors namely Marienelle Castelino and Tavy Cussinel, in response to their growing clientele base in the Asia Pacific.
Through their new roles, Marienelle will deepen her focus on brand leadership and corporate mandates in markets across Asia-Pacific, specifically Singapore, Indonesia, India, and Cambodia, while Tavy will focus on growing the agency’s education, healthcare, luxury, and lifestyle portfolios.
Marienelle joined Redhill as regional director of strategy in November 2017 and brings over 13 years of experience in brand communications and corporate reputation to the agency. Prior to Redhill, she held client leadership roles for marquee brands like McDonald’s, Pepsi, Mondelez, Coca-Cola and P&G.
Meanwhile, Tavy became Redhill’s director of strategic communications and rose quickly through the ranks. She has spent over two decades working with household names such as Calvin Klein Cosmetics (UK), Parfums International (Europe), Unilever Cosmetics International (Europe), Coty, Rimmel, and Adidas. Previously, she founded and scaled a public relations agency in London, which she sold in 2011 to focus on raising her family.
“I am excited to see the additional growth that Marienelle and Tavy will achieve for Redhill as they build on the excellent work that they have done during their years with us. Despite the pandemic, Redhill has continued to expand and we are ready to push ourselves even further – both in markets and in verticals,” said Jacob Puthenparambil, CEO and founder of Redhill.
He added, “I have full faith in our leadership team to steer the wider Redhill family to greater heights as we focus on our end goal – to become the DBS or Singapore Airlines of the communications world.”
To add to the recent appointments, Redhill has announced the promotions of several Redhill executives namely Marion Ang and Jaslin Tan as senior account managers; Dipti Jaiswal and Clara Tan as account managers; Joseph Ng, Ruth Tan and Septy Wulandari as senior account executives; and Adriana Abidin, Junyi Kuo and Angelica Muk as account executives.
“At Redhill, we are committed to the development of our employees and building a strong culture of internal growth. Each of these individuals has shown dedication and commitment to the success of their clients and the agency, and I congratulate them on their well-deserved promotions. An agency is only as strong as its team, and as I look at our fantastic Redhill family, I am confident of our success,” Puthenparambil added.
Redhill’s recent promotions aims to bolster their existing clientele base, including recently of circular fashion Style Theory, where they were appointed as public relations partner for the brand in Singapore.
Singapore – Style Theory, a Southeast Asia-centric circular fashion platform, has recently appointed public relations and communications agency Redhill to be its strategic public relations (PR) partner in Singapore.
Style Theory is centered on changing the fashion scene by offering rental, resale, consignment and restoration services for designer apparel and bags, which fosters a mindful and responsible consumption while creating a community for like-minded individuals who share positive sentiments on sustainability.
Furthermore, customers gain access to an infinite wardrobe in the cloud and can re-use and re-incorporate fashion items – solving the conundrum that many consumers have of constantly purchasing new clothes but having nothing to wear.
Through the appointment, Redhill will plan and execute a communications strategy for the brand, driving awareness of Style Theory’s offerings and supporting the brand’s upcoming launches, business extensions and market expansions from Singapore.
According to Tavy Cussinel, interim managing director at Redhill, the agency is beyond thrilled to work with Style Theory, as they explore in bringing the revolutionary vision of sustainable fashion to life.
“Sustainability has always been deeply rooted in our agency’s values and beliefs – and we are both excited and honoured to have the opportunity to tell the story of a company bringing continuous disruption to the fashion industry, and making a positive impact on the way people consume fashion,” Cussinel stated.
Meanwhile, Raena Lim, co-founder and COO at Style Theory, commented that the platform’s mission since day one has always been fixated in creating a platform that allows consumers to eliminate the buy-and-throw culture, and integrate sustainable style into their daily lives.
“It was vital for us to work with an agency that really understood our dedication to reinventing the future of fashion and one that would go the extra mile to convey that sentiment. We are excited to embark on this journey together, and look forward to a long and fruitful partnership,” Lim said.
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