Tag: Southeast Asia

Singapore – Media company Mediacorp and Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) have strengthened their longstanding history of collaboration through the forging of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), paving the way for the potential establishment of a new centre of excellence for omnichannel marketing to support SMEs. This new centre aims to train SMEs and assist them in planning, creating, and driving omnichannel marketing campaigns by engaging NYP students and tapping on the creative talents and expertise of Mediacorp.

With the new MOU, which will be in place for a period of three years, more NYP students can look forward to an extensive range of programmes to prepare them for prospective careers in the media industry. These include opportunities to work on a wide variety of industry projects, which will reinforce what the students learn in the classroom, help them acquire industry-relevant skills, and allow them to be mentored by seasoned media practitioners from Mediacorp. At the same time, the students develop a portfolio of work which will smoothen their entry into the workforce upon graduation.

Moreover, internships with Mediacorp are also included, where they will be able to apply the knowledge learnt in the classroom, acquire practical skills, and gain real-life exposure to the media industry. And lastly, sharing sessions and career planning, where Mediacorp will be providing student cohorts with customised sharing sessions and learning journeys tailored to the students’ respective specialisations. On a broader level, careers talks and recruitment roadshows by Mediacorp will also offer graduating students career planning advice and information.

The partnership builds on an earlier MOU signed in 2019 to broaden the scope of collaboration to jointly develop a range of initiatives involving more schools, departments, and entities across both organisations, with the aim of nurturing the growth of the creative economy and talent in Singapore. It will also enable NYP’s academic staff to be up to date with the latest industry know-how and practices through staff attachments at Mediacorp.

Tham Loke Kheng, CEO of Mediacorp, said, “Mediacorp is pleased to further build on the solid foundations of our relationship with Nanyang Polytechnic. Through this renewed agreement, we affirm our commitment to leverage our strengths in content creation and production to groom the next generation of media professionals and ready them for exciting and fulfilling careers in this industry.”

Meanwhile, Jeanne Liew, principal and CEO at Nanyang Polytechnic, said that the creative and media industry in Singapore has shown rapid growth in recent years, and businesses are increasingly turning to digital platforms for better reach, and the media landscape is constantly evolving with the latest technology and trends. 

“Through this partnership, we hope to enable our learners to harness their skills and build their portfolios – be it in marketing campaigns or content creation and production for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises. Possessing such valuable hands-on experience will also allow learners to gain a competitive advantage when they enter the workforce or pursue further studies after graduating,” said Liew. 

Bangkok, Thailand – Thailand’s food delivery app and all-in-one travel service platform, Robinhood, has partnered with Accenture to drive advertising creativity and enhance brand experiences for advertisers on the platform.

Led by Accenture Song (formerly Accenture Interactive), the multi-year strategic collaboration accelerates Robinhood’s business transformation across various aspects of the company, positioning the platform as one of Thailand’s most compelling apps, enhancing its product management and strategy, and creating rewarding customer experiences. Key to this effort is an ad-suite platform powered by data insights and analytics technologies to support advertisers in multiple areas of digital marketing optimisation.

Moreover, the collaboration is a significant part of Robinhood’s new roadmap for sustainable growth, focused on helping businesses and communities thrive amidst disruption. It also furthers the platform’s ambitions to grow into a super app that provides services beyond food delivery, including travel, mart, parcel delivery, and ride-hailing in Thailand.

Thomas Mouritzen, Accenture Song’s SEA lead, said, “Robinhood is an important purpose-led company, offering pivotal support to the community. Our creativity, technology and intelligence will support Robinhood’s next phase of growth in Southeast Asia, adding more relevant experiences to their ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, Srihanath Lamsam, CEO at Purple Ventures Co., Ltd. (Robinhood), shared that the platform has now over 225,000 stores, over three million registered users, over 30,000 food delivery riders, an average of 180,000 daily orders, and over 16,000 hotels already listed. 

“Our collaboration with Accenture Song will extend this important work, paving the way for Robinhood to continue to deliver the best experience for our users,” said Lamsam. 

Patama Chantaruck, country managing director at Accenture Thailand, noted, “Accenture has been helping businesses in Thailand drive mission-critical transformational change. Our work with Robinhood continues this commitment as we support businesses looking for new ways to grow into the future.” 

Robinhood Advertising has started empowering early adopters across various industries such as fast-food restaurant Texas Chicken, furniture retailer Index Living Mall, electric vehicle lifestyle platform EVMe, vitamin-fortified beverage Vitza, and video streaming provider Viu, to take charge of their business and marketing goals through the tech-driven ad suite platform for greater brand awareness. Soon, merchants on the platform can look forward to growing their visibility through self-service advertising tools, allowing greater autonomy and management of ad inventory. 

Sarun Chinsuvapala, head of marketing at Purple Ventures Co., Ltd. (Robinhood), said that Robinhood Advertising gives them an edge to support their merchants, riders and high-value customers better. 

“Accenture Song’s experienced team support and its data-driven capabilities allow us to provide customised products and services for our diverse users. To reach more advertisers locally, Robinhood Advertising will be represented by GroupM, dentsu international Thailand, and Entravision MediaDonuts. Together, we are laying the foundation to redefine platform advertising,” added Chinsuvapala.

This collaboration follows the recent announcement of Accenture Song, a brand evolution that symbolises the company’s focus on helping clients accelerate growth through relevance.

Singapore – Global sports brand ASICS has launched a regional campaign alongside creative agency MillStirling to communicate the theme of sports as a way to uplift minds. The campaign is rolled out across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, and Vietnam.

The campaign features athletes from the aforementioned countries, where they documented Aby Marano, volleyball captain of the Philippines’ national team; triathlon gold medalist Lam Quang Nhat from Vietnam; veteran marathoner Muhaizar Bin Mohamad from Malaysia; rising tennis star Kasidit Samrej from Thailand; and Chantalle Ng from Singapore.

Prior to the campaign’s release, MillStirling interviewed the athletes from each of the countries involved, in an attempt to discover their personal stories behind how the brand mantra ‘LiveUplifted’ as their mantra can influence their sporting performances and their outlook on life.

Daniel Wee, creative director at MillStirling, said, “Southeast Asia has a unique heartbeat, the sounds of the hustle and the bustle and the busy rush hour crowds can be somewhat overwhelming, All these distractions and stress, fades away to just the sounds of running footsteps, a tennis ball being hit, a volleyball being smashed, an aero bike gliding pass or your heavy breathing because you let sport uplift you. This is the heart of what our films want to tell audiences.”

ASICS appointed MillStirling as its creative agency in March this year to develop its 2022 regional brand campaign. The agency believes that the power of sport can uplift spirits, rejuvenate one’s mood and change our outlook on the world for the better. With this new campaign, they hope to remind audiences that sport goes beyond just a competition- it can inspire and transform each individual.

Singapore – Research institute Earth Observatory Singapore (EOS) has partnered with creative and technology digital marketing agency Bray Leino Splash (BLS) to launch its revamped website, which used essential sustainability principles. This move aims to push forward the commitment of the two companies to promoting decarbonisation. 

Dedicated to conducting research on natural hazards and climate change in and around SEA to help create safer and more sustainable societies, EOS at Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU Singapore) has engaged BLS to redevelop its website, enhance the user experience, and make it more sustainable and in-line with the organisation’s ethos.

After an in-depth analysis of the existing website, BLS has re-engineered the site from the ground up, using default dark mode, efficient typography, and streamlining dynamic content and media optimisation of video files to lower data consumption. This revamped website allows visitors to access content smoothly without compromising user experience.

Joshua Lee, managing director at BLS, commented, “We are tremendously proud and extremely excited at the possibilities of using our expertise and know-how to help reduce the carbon footprint of our clients’ websites and promote a greener way to do business”.

Meanwhile, Andrew Krupa, CPO and director of advancement at EOS, said, “We’re very proud of the new website and feel it is a fantastic representation of the work we undertake here at the Earth Observatory of Singapore. I would like to thank the team at Bray Leino Splash for their dedication in partnering with us for this project.”

Malaysia – End-to-end creative commerce agency VMLY&R COMMERCE in Malaysia has announced the appointment of two new senior hires to solidify its end-to-end capabilities. The appointees are Voon Tai, the new head of commerce/strategy, effective June 2022, and Victoria Chu, the new head of client engagement, effective July 2022. Both will report directly to Kenni Loh, CEO of VMLY&R COMMERCE Malaysia.

The move will see Tai driving connected commerce, closing the loop of brand experience (BX) and customer experience (CX) to deliver effective growth results, while Chu will be looking at business growth and injecting her experience in media and digital marketing within the connection strategy and applying them to the agency’s proprietary planning tool – the infinity loop.

Tai, who is the former channel strategy and commerce director at VMLY&R COMMERCE Indonesia, will also be leading this region’s shopper and experiential hub. She is a specialist in identifying insights across a wider set of disciplines (retail or trade, channels, shoppers, and B2B), weaving O2O planning and matching with data to elevate the agency’s new offerings.

Meanwhile, former general manager at Invictusblue Group, which was previously known as Zenith Media, Chu will be co-managing, building, strengthening, and growing existing and new businesses. She is also tasked with strengthening end-to-end creative commerce strategy by applying her deep knowledge of the media channel connection strategy. This in turn provides an enriched integrated perspective to the agency’s work.

Commenting on the appointment, Tai said, “The Malaysia office has always done great work for VMLY&R COMMERCE in the region. The people, energy and agency are in a constant state of innovation. I am very much looking forward to working with our clients and our extraordinary team to deliver meaningful experiences to both consumers and brands.”

Chu also commented, “I am excited with this opportunity as it allows me to contribute my knowledge & experience to a dynamic agency such as VMLY&R COMMERCE. Being part of this diverse team of specialists will help me grow my capabilities and together I look forward to enhancing the products and services we can offer to our clients.”

Meanwhile, Loh shared that they are excited to be welcoming the two talents to their ever-growing commerce operation, as Tai’s eager nature to explore marketing innovations and creativity will elevate their unique creative commerce positioning, while Chu is a well-rounded breed with strong capabilities in both media and digital marketing.

“Specifically, we need like-minded talents to constantly push for innovation and technology to level up ideas that drive commercial growth. Everything we do now is to feed, build and strengthen the end-to-end offering of our ‘infinity loop’ of BX and, CX with Commerce in the heart. We are at the stage of not just being able to complete the loop offering but also to provide extra enrichment and value such as Media strategy, BX and CX capabilities elevating from local to regional coverage. Not forgetting our hyper localised intel and data generated from our Intel lab and Muslim intel lab,” said Loh.

These new roles at VMLY&R COMMERCE Malaysia are strategically aligned with the appointment earlier this year of Nick Pan, the new chief commerce and strategy officer at VMLY&R Asia. He now leads VMLY&R Asia’s strategic thrust in combining commerce and strategy, leveraging BX and CX to drive business growth and commercial outcomes for brands, in a customer-centric world that is challenged by fragmented channels and touchpoints.

Singapore – E-commerce enabler in SEA, Synagie, has unveiled its regional TikTok Shop Incubation Programme, which has been established with the aim of helping brands to accelerate their digitalisation and to jump-start their social commerce journey by onboarding onto TikTok’s latest commerce solution.

The programme will be immediately available to the 600 brands Synagie manages and to incoming brands looking to expand onto TikTok’s dynamic content channel. As part of the programme, the company will be waiving platform management fees for brands and sellers for up to six months or until a predetermined level of sales is achieved, whichever comes first. Other initiatives such as training sessions and workshops organised in collaboration with TikTok will also be part of the programme and Synagie’s offerings to brands.

Since 2021, TikTok Shop, which enables merchants to integrate their e-commerce infrastructure with Open API and sell their products across the TikTok ecosystem, has been progressively rolled out across SEA and is now available in six countries, namely Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, as well as Thailand.

Pei Gy Wong, Synagie’s vice president for channel development and store management, shared that they have worked closely with TikTok Shop teams across the region since the pilot to integrate their backend systems, and they now offer brands and sellers a seamless and secure way to onboard and manage this channel with their existing digital commerce touchpoints. 

“With the extended platform management fee waiver, we aim to nurture the spirit of partnership as we explore this new digital frontier together. Further, with the rise of social commerce in the region, we felt it would be important to help our brand partners explore this avenue to enhance their digital commerce strategies,” said Wong.

As a TikTok Shop Partner (TSP) and content agency partner within its multi-channel network, Synagie offerings are able to address TikTok commerce’s challenges of fulfilment and logistics. The integration of Synagie backend with TikTok Shop will provide end-to-end ecosystem support for brands and sellers, similar to its services across other digital commerce platforms.

Moreover, with video content being a requisite for TikTok Shop, Synagie’s curated content packages are available to brands looking for additional support. Synagie maintains a database of close to 6,000 nano and micro-content creators across SEA who will be able to help brands curate content. It is currently retained by brands such as Nike, Kiehl’s, Shiseido Group, KOSE and Philosophy to create video content and produce live stream shows regularly.

Singapore – Global business-to-business media company Ascential has acquired regional e-commerce and digital solutions provider Intrepid. This drives Ascential’s expansion, further establishing the company as a truly global leader in e-commerce optimization by providing a strategic entry point into the high-growth South-East Asian market.

For Intrepid, the acquisition will provide access to a wider network of resources and knowledge, which will allow it to cement its position as a technology leader in South-East Asia, further accelerating its growth.

In addition, Intrepid will become part of Ascential’s Digital Commerce division, which enables consumer product companies to maximise their sales, share, and profitability across the world’s leading consumer marketplaces.

Duncan Painter, CEO of Ascential, said, “We are delighted to welcome Intrepid to the Ascential team. Intrepid’s strong presence in South East Asia and proven expertise operating across the major marketplaces in this important region further enhances the capabilities and global reach of our Digital Commerce business.”

Meanwhile, Jasper Knoben, CEO of Intrepid, said that the acquisition is a natural strategic fit for the continued success of both Intrepid and Ascential. 

“Our vision, strategy and cultures are very well aligned and we look forward to working closely with the Ascential team. Joining Ascential offers Intrepid a strong platform for future growth, full of exciting opportunities to accelerate our business and leverage global best practices for our analytics and marketing technology to deliver truly cutting-edge service and tools for our clients across our e-commerce, marketing and insights business units,” Knoben commented.

Singapore – The downloads of food and drink apps globally have hit 1.7 billion during the last year, ending March 2022, up nearly 10% year-over-year (YoY). In terms of the app downloads in SEA, Indonesia saw the largest growth with a nearly 88% YoY increase as compared to the other three countries, which are the Philippines with over 48%, Singapore with more than 10%, and Thailand with over 25%, according to a report by global data AI company, data.ai.

The report also found that time spent on food and drinks apps has grown 65% YoY globally in the last year. In Indonesia, the time spent on food and drinks jumped nearly fivefold to 423 million hours as compared to the past year. Besides Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines have also taken the sixth and seventh spots when it comes to the total time spent on food and drink apps across the globe, up 70% and 180% respectively.

Moreover, Malaysia with over 130%, Vietnam with more than 150%, and Singapore with over 145% have also made it to the list of top 25 global markets by time spent, signalling growth opportunities for the region as more Southeast Asians take their food and drinks ‘more seriously’.

The same report revealed the emergence and expansion of new local players and overseas competitors such as Grab, foodpanda, and McDonald’s, amongst others in the region, which allow consumers to easily access their favourite food and drinks stores. 

“Growth in Food & Drink downloads indicates the market is ripe for user acquisition, but competition is heating up. Growth in total sessions highlights that consumers are forming habits and relying on these apps more than ever to access appetizing food — restaurant-quality or home cooking ready — at the tap of an app,” said Lexi Sydow, head of insights at data.ai.

Jakarta, Indonesia – Southeast Asia’s e-commerce merchant services technology platform, Ginee, has partnered with fashion e-retailer ZALORA to help merchants drive traffic and maximise revenue on their product-level pages on Ginee. This collaboration is part of Ginee’s mission to integrate with multiple marketplaces and e-commerce platforms to help businesses grow sales and manage their stores efficiently.

Ginee provides a SaaS Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform to help online sellers easily manage day-to-day operations and customer relationship management via multiple marketplaces, as well as offering warehouse management services (WMS).

Meanwhile, ZALORA is an e-commerce platform focused on fashion, beauty and lifestyle, carrying products from over 3,000 international and local brands. It has established a presence throughout the region, particularly in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Sely Adelina, brand acquisition associate manager at ZALORA, noted that their easy API integration with Ginee will accelerate digitalisation and e-commerce growth in Indonesia and across SEA, especially post-pandemic. 

“As a leading fashion and lifestyle e-commerce pioneer in the region, we’re excited to help online sellers on Ginee tap into this growing pool of digital, mobile-first shoppers who are looking to buy not just daily necessities but also online fashion, beauty and lifestyle products,” she said.

Meanwhile, Evelyin Wu, Ginee’s head of SEA, commented they are very excited about this partnership with ZALORA, the leading fashion e-commerce pioneer in this region. 

“Through our integration with ZALORA, we enable thousands of online sellers on our Ginee ERP (Enterprise Resource Platform) platform to run and manage their business easily and efficiently through a single platform, from CRM and order/inventory management to sales reports and accounting and even to warehouse management and last-mile delivery,” said Wu.

Just recently, Ginee has also partnered with TikTok Shop to provide a new online shopping experience for brands and merchants to reach their consumers through TikTok Shop, an exclusive and innovative marketplace where entertainment meets commerce that is fully integrated into TikTok, bringing together online sellers, buyers, and creators.

Singapore – Southeast Asia’s small-and-medium enterprise (SME) digital financing platform, Funding Societies, has acquired CardUp, Singapore-based payments solution. Through the move, the company will acquire CardUp’s payments capabilities such as card payments to non-card accepting recipients (domestic and cross-border), online payments acceptance, invoice automation tools, and its licenses and integrations with renowned third-party business software. 

The acquisition will see CardUp’s payment services complementing Funding Societies’ lending products, to offer a unified financial experience for SMEs across SEA, enabling SMEs to manage and pay expenses, receive payments, and borrow funds all within one seamless digital platform.

This move comes off the back of Funding Societies’ recent Series C+ raise of US$294m in February 2022, of which US$144m was raised in equity, and its recent investment into Bank Index in Indonesia, the launch of business virtual card Elevate in Singapore, and entry into Vietnam, strengthening the company’s suite of financial services for SMEs.

Kelvin Teo, co-founder and group CEO of Funding Societies-Modalku, shared, “CardUp has a great cultural and strategic fit. Acquiring CardUp enables us to leapfrog and accelerate our market leadership in the regional FinTech space, integrating payments capabilities, enhanced user experience and local licenses to our digital lending experience across key markets. We are excited to work with the CardUp team and are honoured to join forces with them.”

Meanwhile, Nicki Ramsay, founder and CEO of CardUp, noted that they have long recognised Funding Societies as the regional leader in SME financing and a complementary counterpart to their expertise in payments. 

“This acquisition reflects strong strategic and cultural synergy with both parties aligned on the mission to help SMEs improve the way they operate their business and manage cash flow. We are confident that CardUp and our employees are in good hands with Kelvin and his team and are excited to work together on this next chapter of growth,” said Ramsay.

Funding Societies said that once the acquisition is finalised and approved by the regulators, it will be welcoming Ramsay into its management team to lead its payments business while retaining all CardUp’s employees across Asia. CardUp will continue to operate its consumer and business services and maintain its long-standing relationships with card networks, issuers, and media partners. Both will be tapping into strong synergies in the form of complementary talent, technologies, as well as bank and technology partnerships to further empower SMEs in SEA.