Tag: Southeast Asia

Manila, Philippines – Current head of media at Unilever Philippines Dennis Perez has extended his leadership role as he is appointed as the digital marketing, media and commerce head for beauty and wellbeing for Southeast Asia at Unilever. 

Through the expanded role, Perez will be responsible for driving broader end-to-end digital, media, and commerce strategies across SEA. At the same time, Perez will create deeper category digital expertise in the beauty (hair care, skin care) and wellbeing (vitamins, minerals and supplements) categories.

He has handled some of the world’s biggest brands in the personal care, foods and refreshments, and home care categories, with many of them scoring metal at local and international award shows. In addition, he has served two terms as president of the Internet & Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP), co-chairman of the Digital Measurement Board (DMB), and as a board member of the Ad Standards Council (ASC).

Perez is also focused on using his new position to drive singular consumer and customer experiences, while creating next-generation marketing and sales practices for beauty and well-being brands.

Speaking on his added role, he said, “Unilever is always at the frontline of digital transformation. We are moving along the pandemic with people using digital differently, and so we need to adapt. With the collapse of the marketing funnel, the ascent of Web 3.0 and the rise of the experience economy, I’m excited to take on this new challenge of driving an integrated marketing approach in Unilever that puts people first and drives value to our brands.”

Singapore – One of the boons of the digital age is the wealth of data we’re able to obtain in our hands. In the marketing world, data is the air by which campaigns breathe, but now that insights collection is not as difficult as it was before, the constant matter that baffles us is – how do we actually make sense of all this information? 

This is the focus of MARKETECH APAC’s upcoming industry discussion – ‘Consumer Insights Power-Up 2022’. In partnership with Vase.ai, the webinar aims to help marketers and brands in Southeast Asia effectively translate their marketing intel into smart campaign actions and strategies.

Together with some of the brilliant leaders in marketing in the region, we will be delving into a discussion that puts the doubt and uncertainty we’ve been harbouring to the fore when it comes to our consumer insights business in the aim to provide appropriate solutions. Get answers to questions like how do you mobilise marketing insights? How do we turn them into agile marketing? How do we build a brand insights structure that would weather unforeseen crises? 

To be held virtually on 27 July 2022 at 2 pm SGT, the marketing experts that will be joining us are Jia Nina, the country marketing head of BigPay for Malaysia; Neeraj Gulati, partner at Entropia; Elya Eusoff, GM of MSL Malaysia; and Tanushri Rastogi, the marketing Lead of Popeyes for APAC. Each of them will be sharing their insights into every crucial part of insights mining in marketing such as transforming the data at hand into actionable insights and developing an information structure that would help weather any crisis, may it be brand-related or economic.

“Data is overflowing, but how do we extract the most vital insights and make sense of it all? Having a gold mine of data is one thing, but knowing how to use it to the best of our marketing campaigns is an entirely new challenge. Let this industry gathering of leaders from SEA help you jump into a clear path,” said Shaina Teope, regional editor of MARKETECH APAC. 

Meanwhile, Julie Ng, Vase.ai’s CEO and co-founder, commented, “It goes without saying that the pandemic has underscored one thing: marketers need to be nimble, confident, AND effective enough in responding to ever-changing consumer expectations – even if it means letting go of your previous plans to pivot. What better way to do this than to ask consumers directly what they want whenever you want?”

Ng adds, “I’m excited to share how you can harness the power of on-demand consumer insights to drive your marketing efforts for the second half of the year.”

Join us this 27 July at ‘Consumer Insights Power-Up 2022’. Register HERE to secure your spot. 

Singapore – Southeast Asia’s superapp, Grab, has announced five industry leaders who will join the team to further its advertising capabilities and strengthen the technology, product, marketing, partnership and operational capabilities of its GrabAds offerings. The executives will play a key role in growing and developing GrabAds, which connects advertisers large and small with millions of consumers across the region.

The appointees include Jennie Johnson as the new head of marketing for GrabAds, Kaia Lai as the new head of product for search and personalisation technology, and Christina Lin as the new product marketing lead for ads and personalisation technology, as well as Kareen Mendoza as the new regional financial services partnership lead at GrabAds, and Yi Ling Wong as the new head of sales operations at GrabAds.

As the new head of marketing for GrabAds, Johnson, who brings 15 years of experience in marketing and communications, will be leading brand building and demand generation to accelerate growth, while Lai, the new head of product for search and personalisation technology of Grab, will be leading company-wide efforts to build a unified search strategy and platform for Grab, deepening the superapp’s personalisation capabilities to delight end users.

Meanwhile, Lin will be responsible for driving the adoption of GrabAds’ full-funnel advertising solutions as product marketing lead for ads and personalisation technology, and will be working closely with product development to build solutions to help businesses of all sizes to harness the Grab ecosystem. 

Mendoza, the new regional financial services partnership lead, will also be driving efforts to support financial services advertisers in harnessing the power of GrabAds to create meaningful engagements with high-value audiences. And lastly, Wong, the new head of sales operations at Grab, will be responsible for driving sales operational efficiencies for the team and advertisers.

In May, Grab has announced its commitment to increasing the percentage of women in leadership roles as part of its annual Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) report. This is to ensure that the company has diverse voices in management positions and considers a variety of views in crafting and implementing policies and decisions.

“We continue to build technology that connects advertisers with the millions of consumers who use Grab to commute, eat and shop every day. I’m thrilled to welcome these leaders, who will be instrumental in furthering the GrabAds mission: helping merchants and advertisers build their brand while driving real-world sales impact using Southeast Asia’s leading superapp,” said Ken Mandel, Grab’s regional managing director and head of GrabAds and Brand Insights.

Bangkok, Thailand – Thailand’s hotel operator, Centara Hotels & Resorts, has partnered with airline Thai Vietjet Air, to bolster its growing airline partnership network, which already includes Thai Airways and Singapore Airlines.

The new marketing partnership offers Thai Vietjet Air passengers a great way to travel, with an exclusive 19% off the lowest publicly available online rates at all participating Centara Hotels & Resorts. 

Travellers have a choice of 13 beach and urban destinations across Thailand, including Phuket, Krabi, Samui, Hua Hin, Pattaya, Trat, Koh Chang, and Udon Thani, as well as Hat Yai, and Bangkok, amongst others. Guests can also enjoy a tropical escape to an overwater villa in the Maldives or take a family holiday at a themed resort with water parks and playgrounds park in Dubai or Southern Vietnam, as well as a choice of staying at participating hotels in Qatar Oman and Sri Lanka.

Moreover, under the Centara and Thai Vietjet Air promotion, guests will receive over 19% discount when logged in as a CentaraThe1 member. This is lower than any publicly available rate and exclusive to airline customers. Travellers who are not yet members of Centara’s loyalty programme can sign up for free in less than a minute, and immediately start enjoying benefits and earning points.

Tom Thrussell, Centara Hotels & Resorts’ vice president of brand, marketing, and digital, commented that as more passengers return to the air, they are excited to partner with Thai Vietjet to welcome travellers back to Centara, The Place to Be.

“With six distinct brands ranging from luxury beachfront retreats to family resorts and affordable lifestyle hotels, we are able to meet and exceed the needs of travellers of every age and lifestyle, and we are delighted to offer exciting benefits to Thai Vietjet’s customers through their communications network,” said Thrussell.

Meanwhile, Pinyot Pibulsonggram, director of commercial at Thai Vietjet Air, said, “With the uplifting of travel restrictions in many countries, Thai Vietjet is more than ready to welcome our passengers back to the skies, with the latest establishment of the partnership with Centara, offering extra benefits and special deals exclusively for Thai Vietjet’s passengers to travel and discover the ultimate beauty of various destinations in the region.”

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – The airasia Super App has launched a brand new feature, airasia pocket, which is an e-wallet within the super app that enables users to reload and make payments for all the products and services on the app while being rewarded at the same time. 

The airasia pocket is currently available to all airasia Super App users in Malaysia in the Ringgit Malaysia currency. It is easily accessible through the super app by setting up an airasia pocket account with a few simple steps. Two types of airasia pocket accounts are available – the Lite and Pro. The Lite account is recommended for everyday use with a wallet size limit of RM500, while the Pro account is designed for higher value transactions with a wallet size of up to RM4,999.

Users of airasia pocket will be able to earn airasia points upon activation, apart from enjoying an extra 10% off all AirAsia flight bookings and 10x airasia points with every airasia food order on weekends. 

The airasia pocket’s features are developed by Fasspay, a white-label e-wallet player and an approved e-money provider by Bank Negara Malaysia. This platform is designed to allow its partners to build and innovate on Fasspay’s full-stack payments platform and offer various payment and financial services to their customers.

Mohamad Hafidz Mohd Fadzil, airasia Super App’s chief fintech officer, shared that as fintech and neobanks continue to reshape the financial landscape in Malaysia and across ASEAN, airasia Super App is continuing to be an industry disruptor and expand its fintech services by launching airasia pocket, which enables the app users to make payment for all products and services faster within the Super App ecosystem. 

“This includes payments for flights and hotel bookings, as well as on airasia food, airasia grocer, airasia xpress, or when booking a ride through airasia ride. This aligns with our fintech strategy to drive a seamless user experience and make online payments’ invisible’. By working with our partner Fasspay, users can have peace of mind as this new feature is completely secure, fully compliant, and licensed by Bank Negara Malaysia,” said Fadzil.

Meanwhile, Amanda Woo, CEO of airasia Super App, said, “airasia pocket is the more accessible, faster, and more rewarding way to pay for anything within the airasia ecosystem and will facilitate a better user experience. Having airasia pocket also provides more significant insights into customer behaviour which will assist us in giving better value and more quality services to all our app users.

Chris Leong, CEO of Fasspay, commented, “We are honoured to be a partner in airasia Super App’s fintech journey and will continue to support its aspiration to grow regionally and globally. Fasspay’s mission is to enable our partners, such as airasia Super App, to realise their vision by using this wallet-as-a-service to extend their financial services. This partnership is just the beginning for Fasspay as our ultimate aim is to avail this full-stack payments platform to other customers both small and large globally.”

The top-ups for airasia pocket are currently available via Online Banking (FPX), with more options to be added in the future.

Jakarta, Indonesia – Froyo Story, an agency under digital holding ALVA, has been appointed as digital agency partner by Indonesian banking and financial services company OCBC NISP. The mandate will be for a 12-month period.

Amir Widjaya, OCBC NISP’s head of marketing and lifestyle business division, said, “The appointment was made to assist the bank in achieving its purpose – to encourage Millennials and Generation Z to be more financially fit through fresher, more creative, and more relevant approach.”

The mandate will see OCBC NISP and Froyo Story creating a plan with a digital manoeuvre strategy that applies a creative, novel concept. This creative approach will be a key to achieving the bank’s grand mission. The digital campaign is about to involve Millennials and Generation Z through various social media channels by means of a number of creative and distinctive digital activities.

Zehrina Riskyankeiko, director of Froyo, commented, “We are pleased to welcome the second quarter of the year by signing a partnership agreement with one of the largest banks in Indonesia, OCBC NISP.”

Singapore – Super app Grab in Singapore has bought and relaunched the country’s well-loved food site HungryGoWhere and its accompanying social media channels. This revamped HungryGoWhere brand aims to address the growing interest of diners to reconnect with the local food scene in much deeper ways.

HungryGoWhere aims to spotlight up-and-coming personalities and the origins of popular foods that are not often told. The site will act as a one-stop platform that explores the highways and byways of the local food scene through food reviews and recommendations, profile interviews, and a behind-the-scenes look at the food.

To ensure its curation of content constantly addresses what consumers are looking for, HungryGoWhere will also leverage rich insights derived from Grab’s superapp data, such as popular food trends and frequently visited places in Singapore, amongst a spectrum of other interests and preferences.

Moreover, it will provide F&B businesses with another channel for expanding their reach and growing their business. To help featured brands gain as much visibility as possible, relevant stories on HungryGoWhere will also be shared with Grab’s wide base of highly engaged users via the Grab app and on Grab’s marketing channels.

Cifer Ong, Grab Singapore’s managing director of strategy and partnerships, shared that HungryGoWhere is a brand that many Singaporeans have grown to love since its inception more than a decade ago and many were sad to see it go, and they feel privileged and excited to be bringing back its longstanding legacy, while aiming to take it to the next level with this rebrand. 

“Eventually, we want to establish Grab and our associated brands as the go-to source for diners seeking the best food recommendations and F&B brands looking to grow their business. We believe that our deep relationships with merchants and key learnings from the food sector, coupled with our extensive superapp insights, will help us achieve this. We look forward to the continued support of the F&B community and diners, and trust that the new HungryGoWhere will continue to serve them well,” said Ong.

The revamped brand retains its name and iconic red hue, in a nod to its longstanding legacy as a trusted food discovery platform in the F&B scene. It also sports a trendy and approachable new look that reflects its commitment to engaging with consumers through new and exciting content. Amongst its offerings is a brand-new 20 Questions With interview series with the who’s who of the F&B sector. Co-founders of popular bagel chain Two Men Bagel House, Jereborne Lam and Jerome Lam, will kick off the series with a candid interview, in which they touched on everything from their favourite bagels to their guilty indulgences.

The new site will also feature From Scratch, a series exploring the origins of popular foods and the work that goes into making them. In the first instalment, Kim Guan Guan Coffee Trading, a Singapore coffee roaster with a rich history, takes readers through the various steps of brewing a fragrant cup of local coffee.

Aside from HungryGoWhere.com, diners can also connect with HungryGoWhere on its Facebook, Instagram and YouTube pages, as well as HungryGoWhere’s Telegram channel.

Jakarta, Indonesia – Indonesia’s consumer payments platform Flip has secured a Series B funding round led by Tencent, with participation from Block, Inc. (formerly Square, Inc.) and existing investor Insight Partners.

This new funding brings Flip’s total Series B to more than $100 million and follows on the heels of Flip’s first Series B round in December 2021, which was co-led by Sequoia Capital India, Insight Partners, and Insignia Ventures Partners. 

With the newly secured funding, Flip will be ramping up its workforce with a focus on engineering and product teams, investing in new product and technology development to provide a higher quality of service, and further accelerating its business expansion.

Flip aims to be the world’s most customer-centric financial technology company by enabling individuals and businesses to conduct fair, low-cost financial transactions from anywhere to anyone on a digital platform. Its products include online P2P (peer-to-peer) payments with interbank transfers to more than 100 domestic banks, international remittances, e-wallet top-ups, and business solution products.

Rafi Putra Arriyan, Flip’s co-founder and CEO, shared that they are laser-focused on helping millions of Indonesians, both individuals and businesses, execute various money transactions at a low cost through their platform. 

“We believe in the vast potential of P2P (peer-to-peer) payment because it is customary in Indonesia to send money via transfer for both personal, family, or household purposes. Despite many others trying and failing, we have succeeded in capturing the market because of our customer-focused understanding,” said Arriyan.

Meanwhile, Gita Prihanto, Flip’s chief operating officer, commented that they are thrilled to welcome Tencent and Block, who share the same purpose of making fintech accessible to everyone in Indonesia. 

“The knowledge and expertise from our strong partners, both renowned global firms and angel investors, will help us to grow our business amid the challenging times facing today’s global market and tech landscape. This investment phase invigorates our aspiration to have an even greater positive impact on society by continuing to expand our fintech solutions and by promoting the digital economy ecosystem in Indonesia,” said Prihanto.

Indonesia – Global confectionery company Cadbury has launched a new TVC for its Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate brand, reinforcing the brand’s ethos of ‘generosity’ and brand platform of ‘goodness in everyone’ to consumers and markets in the SEA region.

The TVC, which was created in collaboration with creative agency Ogilvy, was developed with the objective to demonstrate the Cadbury goodness or the ‘Rasakan Lembutnya Kebaikan’, which in English translates to ‘Taste/Feel the softness of goodness’. Its story is anchored in the universal truth of not judging a book by its cover, to go beyond snap judgment and allowing softness in action and reaction, which manifests into a little more goodness around us. 

Cadbury said that the authentic tone of the brand and the storytelling which has the duality of ‘goodness in us’, as well as the product, is captured in the story and also breaks ad stereotypes in the region.

Nikhil Nicholas, Cadbury’s chocolate category lead for SEA, commented, “We fell in love with the script and it’s amazing to see it come to life on screen. Rasakan Lembutnya Kebaikan is our way of marrying both product and purpose for Cadbury Dairy Milk by showing how softness leads to goodness which speaks to the heart of this piece of communication.”

Meanwhile, Nicolas Courant, chief creative officer at Ogilvy Singapore, said that their teams in SEA came together and undertook a massive strategic and creative exploration process across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, over a 6-month period to bring this story to life. 

“It was a true reflection of our commitment to borderless creativity and to Cadbury as a brand. In some markets our relationship with Cadbury stretches over 50 years, so we could tap into an immense amount of knowledge and experience across the network,” added Courant.

The TVC is now available in Indonesia and Malaysia, and is set to launch in the Philippines in July.

Vietnam – Vietnamese MSMEs with B2C e-commerce export value are forecast to grow from US$3.3b in 2021 to US$11.1b by 2026, according to a report by the e-commerce exports program Amazon Global Selling.

The newly released report found that if ‘B2C e-commerce’ were an export category, it could be the fifth-largest export category in Vietnam in five years. It also discovered that 88% of surveyed MSMEs in the country feel that e-commerce is critical for their ability to export, while some of them anticipated greater sales growth prospects overseas with 42% more than in their home country with 11%. 

Moreover, the survey has revealed that key challenges can be narrowed down to three categories, namely barriers in cost, regulation, and information and capabilities.

Meanwhile, more than 80% of surveyed local MSMEs yet admitted that they lack information on relevant regulations overseas, while 85% believe they lack the ability to compete with other sellers globally, and 81% admitted that they are unsure of foreign consumers’ demands and preferences. 

Gijae Seong, Amazon Global Selling’s head for Vietnam, noted, “Local businesses of any size can benefit from the report on Vietnam e-commerce export trends to update about export potential, the perspective of local MSMEs, and best practices to achieve that potential.”