Tag: Taiwan

Taiwan – BBDO Taiwan has appointed Shih-Yen Lee as its new chief creative officer, which took effect on October 3 this year.

Prior to BBDO, he also worked as creative director of Wunderman Thompson, DDB Shanghai executive creative director, and Unisurf Digital Marketing executive creative director in Taiwan.

Since joining in 2008, he has held top creative positions at leading ad firms in both China and Taiwan, covering multiple brands and categories. His works have received numerous awards, including the Effies, London International Advertising Awards, New York Advertising Awards, Clio Awards, The One Show, Spikes Asia and Cannes Lions. 

Speaking on his appointment, he said, “It’s an honour to join BBDO. I can see there is a commitment to creativity, as well as a passion for creating creative work that not only enhances the brand image but also increases sales and revenue for the client. As a final say, for now, I’d like to borrow the term “brainstorm” from BBDO co-founder Alex Faickney Osborn – I look forward to storming creative problems with the team and creating more amazing work that will truly blow clients away.”

Alan Hung, managing director at BBDO Taiwan, said, “I’m thrilled to have Shih-Yen join us as our new Chief Creative Officer. Aside from his 24 years of experience working abroad and also in Taiwan, he has an outstanding collection of awards under his belt ranging from LIA, the New York Advertising, Clio and two Cannes Lions. Shih Yen is an exceptional storyteller, and I’m looking forward to working with him on BBDO’s next chapters.”

Meanwhile, Wai Foong Leong, chairman and CCO of BBDO Greater China, commented, “It’s been ten years since I got to know Shih-Yen. I’ve watched Shih-Yen win clients and awards one after another in different battlefields, wondering when I’ll be able to collaborate with him. That dream has now finally come true! I’m confident that with Shih Yen, BBDO Taiwan will shine even brighter in the years to come. Exciting times ahead for sure.”

Hong Kong – Edelman has strengthened its leadership team in Hong Kong and Taiwan, having elevated leaders across its corporate, brand and technology offerings and expanded its creative team. The appointments come shortly after Delicia Tan’s arrival as CEO of Hong Kong and Greater Bay Area.

From her previous director role in the agency, Sofia Yip is appointed as head of brand across Hong Kong and Taiwan. Edelman said that with brands operating at the intersection of “culture, purpose, and society” to succeed, Sofia’s fluency in brand management, strong track record of leading integrated global and regional accounts and deep local cultural understanding will help its clients’ brands reset and reimagine amidst today’s rapid changes. 

Meanwhile, Oliver Davis has come onboard from Ogilvy as the firm’s new creative director across Hong Kong and Taiwan. Davis brings more than 9 years of experience in creative, having played a critical role in award-winning brand campaigns, activations, product launches and customer communications for brands including Pizza Hut, Huawei, and Coca-Cola. Davis will report to Executive Creative Director, John Koay, who joined the firm earlier this year. 

Alongside the new heads for creative and brand, Edelman has also elevated leaders to lead the team anew in the corporate and technology departments. 

Tasked with diversifying Edelman’s corporate communications offering, Angela Hui has been elevated to head of corporate for Hong Kong and Taiwan. Meanwhile, Simon Chan will serve as head of technology for the Greater Bay Area. Chan joined the team from Edelman London in November 2018. In his new role, he will partner with Edelman’s APAC Tech Sector Lead, John Kerr, overseeing the development of a regional Centre of Excellence based out of Hong Kong, providing regional clients with solutions in the areas of Web 3.0 and the Metaverse.

Delicia Tan, CEO of Edelman Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area, commented, “Clients today demand borderless digital-first integrated communications that drives impact. Working together as onE Edelman team across Hong Kong, Taipei and the Great Bay Area will enable us to create compelling new touchpoints for their stakeholders, while building engaged communities through digital storytelling and immersive experiences. This will enable them to stand out, build engagement and ultimately, drive real action.”

Hong Kong – Mediabrands, the media and marketing solutions division of Interpublic Group, has unveiled three executive leadership promotions, which are in line with the agency’s growth plans for the Greater China network.

The appointees include Joanne Tong, the new managing director for Hong Kong, Penny Chow, the new managing director for Taiwan, and Man Leung, the new head of Reprise and Initiative for Hong Kong.

Promoted from her prior position as head of strategy at Mediabrands Hong Kong and Taiwan, Tong will be charged with the growth leadership of the Mediabrands Hong Kong agency network, drawing upon her 20 years of specialised marketing and advertising industry experience across renowned 4A’s agencies and corporate behemoths.

Meanwhile, adding to her previous remit leading Mediabrands Content Studio (MBCS) for Hong Kong and Taiwan, Chow will be extending her role to include managing director of the Mediabrands agency network in Taiwan. His 20-year career in media and advertising has encompassed celebrated collaborations with numerous brand giants including Disney and Coca-Cola.

And lastly, from his prior role as head of business development for Hong Kong and Taiwan, Leung has been promoted to a broader leadership role as head of Reprise and Initiative at Hong Kong, where he will utilise his over 19 years of industry experience specialising in building the digital infrastructure for data-driven marketing solutions, to drive the transformational, digital, and performance media growth across the Reprise and Initiative agencies in the Hong Kong market.

Melinda Po, CEO of Mediabrands for Greater China, shared that this newly embedded local market leadership is a testament to the growth and diversification of their agency network offering across the greater China region. 

“It has been extremely gratifying to find exactly the right leadership talent we needed to drive this growth from within our own agency network, not only providing the development opportunity for our own people to grow and assume broader leadership responsibilities but also utilising their deep expertise and understanding of our product offering, our culture, in addition to the local market growth opportunities,” added Po.

Taipei, Taiwan – Local digital marketing agency cacaFly and Google Cloud have partnered up to launch Cloud AI+ Solution Center in Taiwan. This will help enterprises accelerate their digital transformation by offering Google Cloud Platform services for AI applications, data analysis, and cloud technology. 

Since 2011, cacaFly has partnered with Google to offer digital advertising solutions for industries such as retail, e-commerce, finance, technology, games, and media. This partnership has been taken to another level in 2022 with the establishment of the new Cloud AI+ Solution Center, which will integrate data analytics, market-leading cloud technology, and Google Cloud Platform AI services and consulting.

The agency envisions this expansion into cloud services through the Google Cloud AI+ Solution Center will help give customers reduce costs, accelerate business decision-making, and anticipate market demands and unforeseen opportunities.

In addition, the partnership with Google Cloud will be the foundation of a marketing and enterprise ecosystem that incorporates marketing, data analytics, and cloud technology. In order to realise this vision, the company is actively recruiting related talents, including cloud architects, cloud engineers, cloud data consultants, and cloud project managers.

Nathan Chiu, CEO of cacaFly, said, “cacaFly has the utmost confidence to lead Taiwan’s talent and forge a complete marketing and enterprise ecosystem, which together with our partners, can go beyond Taiwan’s borders and be competitive on the global stage.”

Meanwhile, Tony Hsieh, country director for Google Cloud in Taiwan, commented, “Companies on their digital transformation journey need to strive for competitive advantages in digital marketing. The Google Cloud platform’s data analysis, AI, and machine learning solutions are necessary tools to help corporations realise their digital transformation, accelerate business decision-making and become more agile and adaptable.”

He added, “I am overjoyed cacaFly is partnering with Google Cloud in the establishment of the Cloud AI+ Solution Center. We are looking forward to providing cacaFly customers with complete solutions that will aid their 360-degree digital transformation.”

Taipei, Taiwan – Automotive brand BMW in Taiwan has partnered with SaaS company Appier and creative agency Bremen Digital Creative to create joint efforts in raising BMW Taiwan’s brand awareness and further foster its customer loyalty.

Through the partnership, BMW Taiwan aims to engage both potential buyers and existing BMW car enthusiasts on social media channels. With this, Bremen Digital Creative has developed a campaign around a cherished Lunar New Year tradition where the first person to burn incense in the temple after midnight is blessed with good luck. 

Meanwhile, Appier’s BotBonnie conversational marketing solution has been implemented, allowing BMW Taiwan better utilise Meta’s Recurring Notifications feature and successfully connect with its community on Facebook to achieve four times more engagements than it did in previous years with a 78% opt-in rate and 99% read rate. Moreover, with BotBonnie’s comment auto-reply feature, the brand will now be able to immediately respond to users and create a longer duration of engagement with each of them.

Brian Chen, Bremen Digital Creative’s account manager, said that with the directions pre-discussed with BMW Taiwan, they designed the social campaign for the Lunar New Year holiday, hoping to increase the number of engagements that BMW Taiwan could have for Facebook campaigns.

“With BotBonnie’s expertise in conversational marketing, we not only hit the target but also greatly exceeded expectations in several key results,” added Chen.

Meanwhile, Li Chiang, digital marketing specialist at BMW Taiwan, shared that during the whole campaign process, Appier’s BotBonnie solution provided the users with 24/7 support, and with the conversational marketing solution, they could respond to users immediately and create longer and more engaging journeys.

“Importantly, in order to broaden the community of BMW fans and potential customers, we implemented Recurring Notifications which helped the company gain 1,500 subscriptions and 2,500+ participants in three days,” said Chiang.

Samuel Chiang, Appier’s assistant manager of customer success, noted, “With the Lunar New Year campaign, BMW Taiwan saw a tenfold improvement in customer participation over previous online campaigns, and we can attribute that success to Recurring Notifications, powered by Appier’s conversational marketing solution BotBonnie, Meta’s authorised partner.”

Taipei, Taiwan – Dentsu International has announced key appointments in its branch in Taiwan namely Tomonori Inasaka as chief transformation officer and Taku Ozaki as chief client officer for Japanese business. 

The new appointments are part of its business operations transformation to strategise and streamline its teaming platforms for client services and future innovative business model solutions.

With 25-years’ experience in media and communication, Inasaka joined Dentsu Inc. in 2012 where he helped drive the growth in product development for dentsu X. Prior to joining dentsu Taiwan, he was the representative officer at Dentsu Group Inc. London office since August 2017, where he was responsible for business development opportunities and client servicing between dentsu Japan and dentsu International at EMEA and global level.

Speaking on his appointment, he said, “Taiwan is always recognized as one of the focused key markets in the dentsu group. I am incredibly honoured for the opportunity to be part of this big family. As part of the business transformation, I will be working with the management team closely to develop various business initiatives with upcoming projects in the pipeline and leverage on my cross-regional experiences in Japan, APAC and EMEA to meet with the growing business needs in the Taiwanese market.”

Meanwhile, with over 20 years in the business development and account management for both International and Japanese clients, Ozaki joined dentsu Inc. in 2004 where he was responsible for the dentsu client network expansion across Japan and its overseas account servicing division. He was also a former general manager for the client servicing team in the business producers division for Dentsu Inc.

“Japanese enterprises have always placed a priority on the Taiwanese market, and with my extensive experience in business development and client servicing, I hope to develop more strategic partnerships and continue to expand our footprint in the market,” Ozaki said regarding his appointment.

Jennifer Tang, CEO of dentsu Taiwan, commented “Dentsu is constantly striving for breakthroughs in transformation and leading the industry forward. We are actively recruiting experts in the field and cultivating talents both locally and globally to implement the dentsu client-centric model while developing the areas of sustainability, Metaverse and CXM. With the addition of Mr Inasaka and Mr Ozaki to the dentsu Taiwan leadership team, I am confident that we will be able to continue to build on our organisational transformation to deliver operational excellence and business performance.”

Taipei, Taiwan – Local based video marketing technology company OneAd has partnered up with global visual marketing SaaS company Wootag to scale visual marketing in Taiwan by integrating Wootag’s visual interactivity solution into OneAd’s in-stream advertising platform SuperView.

Through the partnership, advertisers will be able to drive more interactive and in-visual engagement from understanding audience’s preference, developing actionable insights to increase the conversion rate through in-stream advertising.

By using Wootag’s technology, in-video interactions can be generated at various points of the video without leaving the video ad, including purchases, sign-ups, participation in polls, receive promotions, view product catalogues, make bookings, view store locations, among others.

Li Suzhen, CEO at OneAD, said, “Consumers’ reading habits have changed from articles to short posts, then to visuals and videos, and now short-form videos within 15 seconds are popular; this trend shows that brands need to have more sophisticated interactive participation capabilities. Only in this way can we bridge the gap between discovery and purchase to deliver a seamless and personalised experience that exceeds customer expectations.”

Suzhen added, “OneAD’s partnership with Wootag is an important step to unlock further potential of In-stream advertising, providing advertisers with a more complete high-engagement advertising solution.”

Meanwhile, Raj Sunder, CEO at Wootag, commented, “Wootag is committed to empower brands in utilising the power of human curiosity to integrate interactive elements, insight and understanding of audience behaviour into its videos. Working with a forward-thinking company like OneAd, brands can leverage our solution through OneAD’s platform to engage with customers, collecting valuable audience behaviour data from multiple perspectives to generate unique insights for the brand. We’re looking forward to boosting our growth in Taiwan with OneAd on in-stream advertising.”

Taipei, Taiwan – Digital signage operator and digital out-of-home (DOOH) media provider PilotTV Media has partnered with adtech Hivestack. Through this partnership, PilotTV will integrate their premium DOOH inventory into the Hivestack supply side platform (SSP). 

PilotTV Media’s digital place-based media inventory will be available programmatically to both local and global advertisers via Open Exchange deals and Private Marketplace (PMP) buys. Advertisers will initially have access to six large LED digital screens located in the popular Kaohsiung Metro Stations in Taiwan. 

In addition, brands, agencies and omnichannel DSPs both within Taiwan and globally will be able to purchase and run data-driven and highly impactful programmatic DOOH campaigns in the country.

Troy Yang, managing director for North Asia at Hivestack, said, “We are excited to build on the momentum we have already created in North Asia and continue our expansion in Taiwan through this new partnership with PilotTV Media. Our partnership with PilotTV is instrumental in our vision of building up the largest local DOOH marketplace in Taiwan, just like all the other markets we operate in, so buyers can precisely target their audience throughout their path to purchase journey.”

Meanwhile, YF Juan, VP for international operations and infrastructure services at PilotTV, commented, “Hivestack is the natural partner for us in Taiwan given their position as a world leading programmatic DOOH adtech company. Leveraging our existing technical infrastructure, we are excited to partner with a pioneer for programmatic trading to drive growth through DOOH advertising campaigns across our increasingly large network of inventory in Taiwan.”

Recently, Hivestack has announced a partnership with KanBan Culture, a privately owned programmatic DOOH media owner in Taiwan.

Taipei, Taiwan – Small businesses in Taiwan are most likely to unlock hidden growth opportunities, while wreaking havoc on others during the pandemic. In a new data from CPA Australia, it shows that half of Taiwan’s small businesses grew in 2021, while 63 per cent expect to expand this year. Both results are the highest among the advanced economies included in the regional survey. 

Of the markets surveyed, includes 4,252 small business owners or senior managers across 11 Asia-Pacific markets, including 310 from Taiwan. The survey was conducted from November to December 2021, was designed to understand local business conditions, challenges and confidence. 

Based on the characteristics of high-growth small businesses from the survey, CPA Australia recommends that small businesses in Taiwan consider the following actions: increase their focus on online sales and digital transformation, seek professional advice to improve the profitability of their technology investments, and explore opportunities to innovate through new products, services or processes.

Elic Lam, FCPA (Aust.), honorary Taiwan adviser to CPA Australia, said that COVID-19 is a double-edged sword for Taiwan. Fifty-two per cent of small businesses nominated COVID-19 as a major negative factor in 2021, up from 45 per cent in 2020. However, 38 per cent also said it was a major positive influence on their business. For the second consecutive year, COVID-19 was nominated as both the top positive and negative influence on local small businesses.

“This is not a coincidence. Taiwanese small businesses in export-oriented and technology sectors such as manufacturing, transportation and information technology continue to benefit from surging global demand,” Lam explained. 

Lam added, “The rise of the Otaku (“stay‑at‑home”) economy in Taiwan has boosted domestic demand for computer and internet-related devices, delivery services and gaming. Many small businesses have grasped these opportunities, even under strict social restrictions. However, tourism-related industries such as retail and hospitality registered relatively weaker performance due to a drop in local consumption and overseas travellers.” 

In response to COVID-19 last year, Taiwanese small businesses were most likely to reduce capital expenditure to 27 per cent, followed by seeking government support and subsidies 22 per cent. 

The government’s relief measures aided many small businesses to overcome major COVID-related challenges last year. However, with small businesses facing a new COVID-19 outbreak, increasing costs and the possible end of government support in June, they should be proactive in transforming their business model, especially increasing their focus on digitalisation.

Last year, several Taiwanese small businesses improved their digital capabilities. In 2021, 45% of businesses reported receiving more than 10% of their revenues through new digital payment technologies, a new high for Taiwan. Another 45% reported that online sales accounted for more than 10% of their revenue last year, which is a new high for Taiwan. These rates, however, were still well below the survey averages of 65 and 61 percent, respectively.

Aside from digitalisation, the survey findings indicate that high-growth small businesses in the Asia-Pacific were more likely to focus on innovation. It’s pleasing to see expectations to innovate in Taiwan this year rose to a record high of 67 per cent.This is further evidence that COVID-19 has caused many businesses to look for hidden growth opportunities. 

Lam emphasised, “Stimulus voucher programs such as the ‘5000 Quintuple Stimulus Voucher Program’ were successful initiatives that not only helped to stimulate the local economy but also accelerated the adoption of digital payments. The government may consider introducing similar stimulus measures to continue encouraging adoption of technology and to boost Taiwan’s digital economy. 

Taipei, Taiwan – Mass media company Discovery and video on demand (VOD) platform TaiwanPlus have announced an online contest for filmmakers in making stories that are related to the beauty and tourism in Taiwan. The competition kicks off on 25 April, and three filmmakers will be chosen to receive a grant of US$35k each that can go into the production of their short films.

The chosen filmmakers will have the opportunity to work with one of Discovery channel’s producers and have their films shown on-air across Discovery platforms in Asia and on TaiwanPlus. The winners will be announced on 23 May on Discovery Channel’s website and Discovery Taiwan’s Facebook page.

“The contest is in line with TaiwanPlus’ mission to deliver independent news on global and local events, bringing stories from Taiwan that will resonate across the world. TaiwanPlus also celebrates the culture, lifestyle, and best of Taiwan’s food, travel, music, and entertainment as a global community,” Discovery said in a press statement.

Interested filmmakers are invited to submit their story ideas in the form of a 600-1,000-word proposal along with a portfolio of videos here. The contest is open for submissions from 25 April to 15 May, 2022.