Singapore – As it gains more traction and public knowledge, the metaverse space opens limitless possibilities for brands and businesses alike. But because many still seem to be intimidated by its concept, how will marketers be able to instil their metaverse activations in their consumers and audiences?
MARKETECH APAC, in partnership with consumer intelligence platform Talkwalker, gathered industry leaders to give light to this question through its recent webinar titled, ‘What’s NEXT 2023: Metaverse Marketing Activations in APAC’. Benjamin Soubies, managing director for APAC and Japan for Talkwalker, delivered a keynote presentation that tackled how metaverse can be leveraged to effectively engage communities.
In his presentation, Soubies shared that the metaverse has paved the way for people to create connections that are even further engaging and with it, brands may be able to reach their consumers and potential consumers in more ways than earlier imagined. He also shared about the metaverse conversation hotspots in the APAC region, different ways brands are engaging their communities in the space, key features of metaverse brand campaigns, and the metaverse-gaming connection, amongst others.
“As more players join in the game, it is extremely important to leverage consumer insights in order to identify the most promising opportunities in the metaverse that you should be investing in,” he said.
To further discuss the topic, a panel discussion was conducted which was joined by industry leaders Ramakrishnan C.N., managing director for SEA and metaverse lead at Accenture Song, Amrita Mallik, vice president of HSBC, and Chris Gurney, group creative director for APAC at Virtue Worldwide. Each of them discussed the trends, opportunities, and challenges, amongst others, that the metaverse space presents to the marketing industry.
The experts also shared their insights on how to activate marketing campaigns in the space through their perspectives from the brand and agency sides as well as some metaverse marketing initiatives that have proven to be successful.
The webinar was attended by 180 professionals from various industries such as marketing, advertising, banking, and technologies, amongst others. Brands and companies ePLDT, Inc., Estée Lauder, Metrobank, Netflix, Nielsen, Philips, Publicis Groupe, TBWA, The Coca-Cola Company, and VICE also took part in the event. The top markets present were Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore.
Concluding the webinar, MARKETECH APAC’s Founder & CEO Joven Barceñas, who also hosted the webinar and moderated the panel discussion, remarked, “We began the discussion with the goal of discovering the different challenges and opportunities in the metaverse that await brands and agencies as we enter the new year filled with new trends. I am sure our audiences looking to adopt the virtual space are more than excited to explore the opportunities we’ve talked about.”
Soubies further commented, ”I hope the webinar gave some clarity to brands out there who are contemplating their own 2023 metaverse activations. After discussing the ways brands can engage communities in the metaverse, and hearing from our expert panelists on trends, opportunities and challenges in the space, it will be exciting to see how the newer players find their spot in the metaverse.”
He also added that in order to succeed, brands and marketers must ensure that they have a solid understanding of their consumers to create “relevant and impactful” metaverse experiences.
Learn more about marketing leaders’ insights on metaverse by getting your on-demand access to the webinar here.
Manila, Philippines – Every time a year nears its end, marketing and advertising leaders are always on the lookout for what they must anticipate next. And whilst challenges may be ahead – especially coming from a post-pandemic era – come with them are also fresh opportunities raring to be activated. Nonetheless, for both to be conquered, we would need a deeper understanding of strategies based on the forecasted trends and behaviours in the industry this coming 2023.
As the world begins to open from the folds of the pandemic, marketers need to take in the learnings of the past two years and use it to push forward. But in an industry increasingly shifting due to the fluidity of consumer behaviour, marketers need strategic and intelligent foresight to ensure that the right direction is being coursed through.
For the first time ever, marketing-centric digital media for APAC, MARKETECH APAC, launches What’s NEXT 2023: Marketing in AsiaPacific – its first foray into a hybrid conference. The 2-day conference, which will be held from February 28, 2023 to March 1, 2023, aims at gathering some of the biggest marketing leaders in Asia-Pacific to discuss the various opportunities across a wide range of marketing sub-industries.
What’s NEXT 2023: Marketing in Asia Pacific is part of MARKETECH APAC’s What’s NEXT 2023, a four-month-long festival that discusses how marketers can prepare for the upcoming year of marketing opportunities and challenges through the perspective of various marketing leaders and through various mediums.
Some of the topics included in the conference are neuromarketing, composable commerce, customer engagement, metaverse marketing, cookie-less advertising, branding strategy, content marketing, and influencer marketing, among others. The first day (February 28) will be held both at Crowne Plaza Galleria in Manila, Philippines and virtually at the same time, while the second day (March 1) will be held virtually only.
The lineup for the marketing leaders that will be speaking at the conference includes:
Gino Riola, chief marketing officer at Allianz PNB Life
Mary Eunice Lodripas, associate director for marketing at Ascott International Management Philippines
Diana Boo; chief marketing officer at Boost
Bea Atienza; impactful brand experience lead at Colgate-Palmolive
Denice Sy, chief sales and marketing officer at Ever Bilena Cosmetics
Sheila Paul, chief marketing officer at Home Credit Philippines
Mark Opao, communications planning partner for APAC and META at Kaspersky
Waikuan Wong, global head of marketing at Malaysia Airlines
Weldon Fung, social solutions lead for Southeast Asia at Meltwater
Anna Henwood, chief executive officer at Stickybeak
What’s NEXT 2023: Marketing in Asia Pacific is sponsored by Carousell, Hubilo, Meltwater, and Stickybeak.
Check out the full agenda of the What’s NEXT 2023: Marketing in Asia Pacific conference here.
Interested industry leaders may contact Katherine Sy at [email protected] for speaking opportunities and Joven Barceñas at [email protected] for sponsorship opportunities. For general inquiries, contact us at [email protected].
Singapore – Influencer marketing has been gaining traction within the industry because of its ability to help brands get in front of new audiences and drive consumer engagement. Yet as a growing channel, it’s inevitable that marketers will still have to contend with the challenges of new platforms, new trends across social and evolving audience interests.
As part of MARKETECH APAC’s ‘What’s NEXT 2023: Interview Series’, Aaron Brooks, co-founder and president of influencer marketing platform Vamp and Pauline Linton, head of brand communications and advocacy at Adobe shared their insights on how brands could face these challenges in the inaugural episode of What’s NEXT’s interview series. In the conversation, they provide an insider’s perspective on how the influencer marketing space is evolving, emerging key trends, as well as what’s in store for the industry moving into 2023.
How has influencer marketing evolved from a tech enabler and top brand’s perspective?
Kicking off the interview, Brooks shared how Vamp came into existence. Starting from content generation and using social platforms to help brands source creative, Vamp later developed into an influencer marketing platform designed to make collaborating with influencers simpler and easier.
“It was an opportunity to build a single solution that would just simplify that whole process. We wanted to simplify campaign management workflow, facilitate direct communication between collaborators, and build a proprietary algorithm that would help match-make brands to creators. Of course, you’ve got to have access to first-party data to be able to track performance and campaign ROAS, as well. So really, that’s where we’ve been focusing our efforts,” Brooks explained.
Coming from the end user’s perspective, Linton shared how Adobe’s approach to influencer marketing has evolved over the past years. “There was never really an influencer marketing programme when I was agency-side or when I first started at Adobe. I think influencers were always seen as ‘how are we going to continue to amplify’ or just as another distribution channel for our marketing campaigns,” she commented.
Linton also added that their use of influencers has evolved as the market has changed, and as their communications got more sophisticated. She said, “We realised the value of social media in our broader comms programme and how important influencers were to [localise] content creation for us across Asia Pacific.”
The value of influencers in the ideation stage
Influencers are valued for their ability to amplify a brand’s marketing initiatives. But as influencers are now seen more as ‘creators’, the multiplier effect of having them involved in both the ideation phase, as well as being the means to generate mass-awareness of the message, is something we expect to see more of.
Linton gives a nod to this – and references how Adobe’s campaign approach has changed over the years from having influencers simply boost messages to audiences, to involving them in the ideation and planning stages.
“We’ve evolved our strategy from influencers being put on every campaign to extend our campaigns as amplifiers, to really bringing them in at the very ideation and planning stage, and thinking about them more [as] content generators and ideators, and not just to amplify our programmes,” she said.
Moreover, she said that giving influencers creative control could ‘surprise’ marketers. “We started off as being really protective with our brand, and then we realised that, actually, influencers had better ideas than we did, so we’ve learnt to relinquish some of that creative control.”
On the other hand, Brooks also mentioned four key things that brands should consider when activating their influencer marketing strategies. These are (1) defining why your brand wants to work with creators, (2) treating influencers like the content experts they are, (3) testing and learning by creating various content to find the right format and channels, and (4) treating creators as brand ambassadors.
“We’re seeing now, more than ever, brands building up relationships with creators, and then using that squad for multiple and repeat activations. Not just activating on a project-by-project basis, but having a long-term view of creator and influencer marketing as well,” he added.
‘What’s NEXT’ for the influencer marketing space?
The coming years can be unpredictable for the marketing industry. That said, Brooks and Linton also gave their insights into where the influencer marketing industry is heading, including indications of some of the plans Vamp and Adobe have moving forward.
According to Brooks, influencer marketing has already reached a point where it’s already become a mainstay within the marketing mix. He added, “Once an emerging channel, it really has gained acceptance as a performance marketing channel.”
Speaking of his experience, Brooks mentioned that brands want access to better data, as they want to understand how their organic performance is creating impact, as a means to justify budget spend. To address this, Brooks said that Vamp continues to evolve its technology to prioritise their analytics capability, and providing deeper insights.
Of course, the talk on the future of marketing would not be complete without reference to the metaverse, and VR/AR technologies. To this, Linton mentioned that Adobe is thinking about mixed mediums or realities where they can create different modes of engagement with influencers.
“The insight that we get from influencers [are] really shaping the way we approach 2023. There’s a lot of exciting stuff to look forward to,” Linton concluded.
There’s certainly a lot to look forward to in the marketing industry for 2023. From a tech enabler and top brand’s perspective, you can hear more influencer marketing insights from Brooks and Linton by watching the full interview HERE.
With the creator economy continuing to boom every year, brands are increasingly recognising the reach of influencers and the impact they can have on campaign success. As a marketing and advertising channel, we have started to transition away from tapping popular celebrities and A-list personalities, to seek out content creators that have built successful profiles on social media thanks to their content and fanbase. The overarching question still remains: how do brands know which influencers to tap, and which trends should they get into?
To answer this and further explain the upcoming trends within the influencer marketing industry, industry leaders Ruben Ahmed, director of marketing for HP Australia & New Zealand; Isabel Falco, chief digital and marketing officer of L’Oréal Philippines; Jonathan Gerard, head of production of VaynerMedia Asia Pacific; and Aaron Brooks, co-founder and president of Vamp–recently sat down for a panel discussion as part of the What’s NEXT 2023: Influencer Marketing in APAC webinar–to talk about the trends and top tips for brands and agencies.
Influencers are typically considered to be ‘key opinion leaders’ (KOLs), an umbrella term frequently used in the marketing industry. However, it is worth noting that the term ‘KOL’ among present-day influencers is referenced in a much broader context. KOLs may still be most commonly associated with paid partnerships, but they are the creatives and content creators who also promote their work organically to their follower audiences.
This was a point L’Oreal Philippines’ chief digital officer Isabel Falco expressed, who said that influencer marketing has been a key objective for the company. She acknowledges the fact that with the booming creator economy, social media users are now looking at KOLs to learn more about brands and what they should try out next. KOLs have become an influential voice in helping brands retain loyalty.
“The balance has tipped – creators have the power, and they are not “beholden” to brands anymore. Therefore, brands need to attract, vs “demand from” our KOLs & creators; we need to give them a reason to want to partner with us,” she stated.
She also notes the fact there is a greater need for brands to team up with micro- and nano-influencers: those that don’t have the biggest number of followers, but have built a close community thanks to the content they share.
“We need more micros and nanos as well, especially as we see that the “lower” tiers typically have higher engagement rates, as they have a more dedicated following. For this level of scale, we definitely need the right agency partners to also operationalize,” she says.
This is a view supported by insights from VaynerMedia’s Jonathan Gerard, who notes that with the massive shift between influencers and brands nowadays, brands should stop asking influencers to make ads, but rather engage with them as content creator partners.
“They won’t stay and consume ads, so optimising for a 3-second view means you’re creating the wrong thing. Create the right thing and you’ll get much more attention. There is so much appetite for content and consumption is higher than ever,” he explained.
He also adds that brands need to also loosen the reins they put on creator partners and give them more creative freedom to execute the campaign, aside from the mandatory elements of a traditional ad campaign.
This was later reinforced by statements from HP’s Ruben Ahmed, who shared insights related to their recent campaign with local artist Mulga to produce original artwork to promote their Instant Ink subscription and printers. For him, they had a clear objective in combining KOLs and some growth marketing tactics in tandem, with some paid marketing to drive both organic and paid reach.
“Understanding the role of social for your brand is critical – understanding how your audience uses the particular social platform is the key to unlock engagement, because it shapes the direction in a very different way to just running your typical advertising on a social platform,” he said.
Ahmed also noted that brands need to ask themselves if they need an influencer to be able to create online reach, or if they need someone to help cut through by making a ‘splash’.
“Social is quick and short-lived, so we designed for this – lots of creative variations, combinations of videos, images, carousels, polls, competitions were put into a plan together with our media team and set up in the platform so that we could quickly pivot behind what was working or not,” he concluded.
Learn about other insights from the influencer marketing industry, including strategies for storytelling and raising awareness through social media campaigns, by checking out the full on-demand webinar here.
Singapore – The influencer marketing industry and creator economy is booming thanks to a wave of new innovations we’re seeing happening across social media channels. Influencers are becoming household names across the globe, and brands are responding by jumping into the influencer channel to drive successful marketing strategies. As we head into a new calendar year, how should brands maximise the value of their investment in content creators to reach more audiences at scale?
MARKETECH APAC’s latest webinar, ‘What’s NEXT 2023: Influencer Marketing in APAC’, provides answers to this question. In his presentation, Aaron Brooks, co-founder & president of influencer marketing platform Vamp, discussed the evolution of influencer marketing as a brand strategy, the key trends to watch out for in the space, and shared insights on how brands can best participate in the creator economy moving forward.
According to Brooks, the emergence of digital web 2.0 technologies changed the way marketers interact with their audiences, and that said evolution has greatly benefitted the influencer marketing space. In fact, global influencer marketing is expected to reach $143b by 2030 — amounting to a compound annual growth rate of 33.4%.
Despite this anticipated growth, brands are looking for a seamless experiences collaborating with creators, and there are still actions the company is taking to remove the complexities of the creator economy. To this, Brooks said, “For this efficient experience to happen, we need to think of ourselves as being part of a broader ecosystem that connects the brands and the agencies to the community that helps them activate social content. We already have the critical masses on each platform, and it’s where brand activity needs to happen. Our role as a technology provider is connecting all these parts back to creators, who really exist at the core of this ecosystem.”
He shared key insights brands should consider adopting, in order for them to future-proof their influencer marketing strategies. This includes moving away from a one-size-fits-all perspective and instead thinking of platform-based approaches to be in line with the brand’s overall marketing objectives.
Speaking from his experience with Vamp’s clients, Brooks likewise mentions the importance of boosting creators’ organic content to drive results. “This is really important for a few reasons. When clients boost their organic content through paid media, you are basically giving the content a second lease of life that helps push customers further down the purchase funnel and drives the performance element of a campaign,” he explained.
He specifically mentioned the importance of leveraging the power of video for content creation. According to Brooks, about 79% of TikTok users said they discovered new brands through the app. From a content format performance perspective, he referenced Instagram reels being 29% more efficient than stories, and 3.8 times more cost-efficient than feed posts. Reels also have 25% more return on ad spend (ROAS) than other IG content.
As Brooks wrapped up his presentation, he shared some actions brands can apply to their influencer marketing approach. His first tip is to apply a squad strategy when selecting a creator mix for your brand, in order to reach all consumer types and sub-niche audiences. This includes recruiting micro-creators who tend to have much more engaged audiences, and using creators from a broad selection of interest groups. He also mentioned it is important for brands to “mirror the fabric of everyday life” by creating authentic advocacy content. Lastly, he recommended using creators to build a digital asset library that has a constant stream of original content, so brands can rise to the challenge of continuously engaging with consumers on different online channels.
Brooks was later joined by industry experts for the panel discussion during the latter part of the webinar, including Ruben Ahmed, director of marketing at HP ANZ; Isabel Falco, chief digital & marketing officer at L’Oréal Philippines; and Jonathan Gerard, head of production at VaynerMedia Asia Pacific.
Singapore – Brands are now realising the importance of building communities to build greater relationships with their customers outside of the traditional way of customer retention. Communities are a helpful way for brands to get a deeper understanding of their consumer base. The question is: in a commercially-driven event, how do you monetise such a community organically?
This is what Sophie Ahmed, Senior Vice President of Market Strategy at Hubilo, discussed during her fireside chat in the recently-concluded webinar hosted by MARKETECH APAC and Hubilo.
In the conversation, Sophie explains that a 365 community is a meeting place where all of the brand’s community can come together to do business, meet, network, learn and to feel part of something bigger. Using the example of book and school clubs, she says that a community established is to belong to something, and taps into the tribal part of someone.
“Any brand that can use events to build their leads and grow their business can keep their event alive 365 days. By providing a single sign on access to this community of prospects, customers and partners, they will be able to get greater insight into their behaviours and on a deeper, more emotional level,” she explained.
Sophie noted in the chat that there are two ways to consider when monetising an event: either use it to build growth and indirect revenue, or do it under a subscription model. She notes that in executing these revenue models, brands need to ensure their customers are being offered perks and other advocacy-driven updates in order to retain them in the longer run.
“Within the community, you can have smaller meetups, focus groups, customer workshops, tier it, gate it, host on-demand content [amongst other things] and then have a larger annual event,” she added.
Furthermore, when asked about how these 365 communities allow commercially-driven events to be more personalised, Sophie explained that brands need to use insights from their customer base to decide how an event is oriented to be personalised and deemed effective for a content marketing strategy.
“So you can watch their behaviour, also temperature check their feeling towards your brand and what the market is like. You can now spot industry trends earlier and translate this into how you then personalise their experience at your master event and also pre and post-event messaging, so it resonates,” she said.
Want to learn more about what Sophie has to say in regards to kickstarting your 365 community? Explore how an event tech company can become a partner in your journey. Watch the on-demand webinar here.
The webinar, with the theme ‘What’s NEXT 2023: Events in Asia Pacific’, also gathered industry leaders to deep dive into what it takes for brands to successfully plan their events. Joining the discussion were Amit Wadhwa, chief executive officer at Dentsu Creative India; Milca Javier, head of marketing at Generali Philippines; and Razlan Manjaji, director of global events at South China Morning Post.
Singapore – On 8 November, marketing leaders from APAC gathered in an industry discussion to share expert insights into the continuously evolving channel of influencer marketing, and the creator economy that’s sprung from it.
Influencers – whether macro, micro, or nano – have long been used by brands alongside other more traditional forms of advertising, as a means to build authentic and relatable engagement between audiences on social. As the industry continues to develop, the important question on everyone’s mind is, ‘what can we expect next from influencer marketing?’.
In a recent event hosted by MARKETECH APAC in partnership with influencer marketing platform Vamp,the What’s NEXT 2023: Influencer Marketing in APAC webinar brought together leaders representing the brand, tech, and agency side. Our experts imparted their top tips for influencer marketing, highlighting what trends we can expect to see moving into 2023.
The webinar began with a presentation from Aaron Brooks, co-founder and president of Vamp, who later joined a panel discussion that included Ruben Ahmed, director of marketing for HP Australia & New Zealand; Isabel Falco, chief digital & marketing officer of L’Oréal Philippines, and Jonathan Gerard, the head of production of VaynerMedia Asia Pacific.
In his presentation, Brooks gave an overview of the influencer marketing landscape. He discussed the forecasted growth and investment expected into the channel, the key factors powering the creator economy, and how creator content is being activated to drive outcomes at each stage of the marketing funnel. In addition, the presentation touched on the different elements critical to deploying a successful influencer marketing strategy such as the essentiality of video, recruiting creators with a ‘squad’ mentality, and the importance of representation and advocacy.
The panel discussion—moderated by Shaina Teope, regional editor of MARKETECH APAC, gave the industry experts an opportunity to share how influencer marketing is being leveraged from the perspective of their brands, and how they’ve been involved to date in the creator economy.
Ahmed, Brooks, Falco, and Gerard discussed how the demand for key opinion leaders (KOLs) is moving brand engagement into co-creation and collaborating on social strategies. The panel explored ideas around how brands can stand out in their content direction amidst the growing saturation of ‘me too’ content.
Important takeaways for marketers emerged such as the best approach to managing and maintaining brand-creator collaborations, moving away from creating inauthentic ‘ads’, using influencer marketing for advocacy-driven initiatives, as well as understanding the purpose of each social platform in delivering creator content. Our experts rounded up the discussion with examples of how influencer marketing has become a vital part of an always-on performance marketing channel strategy for their brand.
Overall, the webinar drew 168 attendees out of 598 registrations. Those who participated came from a variety of industries, including retail, e-commerce, travel & hospitality, consumer products, financial services, F&B, and media & entertainment.
The top markets represented were Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, India, as well as the US. More specifically, those who took part were from brands and companies Danone, Electrolux; Love, Bonito; Netflix, Ninja Van, OPPO, Philippine Seven Corporation, Pomelo Fashion, RedDoorz, and Summit Media.
Teope commented, “We may think we’ve exhausted the best out of influencer marketing, but with the emergence of popular content formats such as short-form video, we’re attracting new audiences towards creator content. With this industry discussion, we had a diverse and well-represented panel who gave us actionable insights into how the influencer marketing landscape will continue to evolve. The webinar is an essential guide to helping us all prepare for what’s to come next in this exciting space.”
“In a challenging economic climate, brands should approach influencers as a scaling mechanism to help you reach every consumer type and every sub-niche audience,” says Brooks. “Find those creators who are advocates of your brand already. Don’t be afraid to be bold and go outside of the confines of conventional advertising as you start building out your influencer marketing strategies for 2023 and beyond.”
If you missed out on the live session, there’s still time to dive into the content presented by our industry experts. As we enter a brand new year, don’t miss out on this insight-filled industry discussion. Register HERE to access and watch the on-demand version.
Singapore – With social restrictions gradually easing down and the world slowly returning to normal, we are now realising the full potential of the phygital world: a space that brings a combination of digital and physical experiences. From SMEs and institutions to large enterprises, this blended experience is being incorporated into their day-to-day operations because of its numerous advantages.
The year 2022 saw the marketing industry flourishing in more ways than one. This includes the rise of influencer and content marketing, the continuous boom of the e-commerce space, and the metaverse getting more known in the digital world, amongst others. But amidst this upward trajectory, there are still challenges that the marketing industry will face and will have to overcome now that hybrid marketing strategies are in place.
MARKETECH APAC, in its quest to share key trends, insights, and relevant predictions for the preparation of the marketing community for 2023, has brought back its future-oriented industry series – but now much broader and larger to give the community a 360-degree view of what to expect in the coming year. ‘What’s NEXT 2023’ now comprises of four main pillars – article, interview, webinar, and conference – and to kick the series off, the digital media starts with the launch of its thought leadership article series.
The article leg of the industry series features the views, predictions, and some tips from various marketing leaders across APAC on different industry-relevant topics for 2023 and beyond. This includes exclusive written insights on integrated campaigns, personalisation, and B2B marketing, amongst others.
Part of the series is Andrea Chuang, head of marketing for Malaysia-based used car platform myTukar, who will be discussing the importance of integrated campaigns and things to consider in doing these campaigns; and Jan Harling, director of new customer acquisition for APAC at foodpanda, who will be sharing his knowledge about personalised marketing and what brands need to know about their consumers. He will also be providing tips on how media and creatives can work together for their personalisation initiatives, and how to target consumers in a world that’s becoming less targetable.
Check out the initial line-up of published insights by marketing leaders under the series:
Kick-starting the article series, Amperity’s Area Vice President Billy Loizou explained the consequences of having fragmented customer data for businesses. He also enumerated three reasons why a great identity resolution strategy is a must-have for brands.
In this insightful read, James Campbell, regional manager of SnapLogic for ANZ, stressed why it is important to incorporate intelligent practices into companies’ data integration, how vital it is to leverage modern technology, and how automation helps enterprises deliver and achieve their goals, amongst other things.
With tech companies and governing bodies making stronger restrictions when it comes to data privacy, businesses might find it harder to access customer data. In this article, Billy Loizou, area vice president of Amperity, shares how you can empower your business despite the stricter privacy rules, unlock the value of customer data to drive growth, and use ‘messy’ data to make the year 2023 for your business a success.
At present, B2B marketers still believe that they should always talk about how ‘good’ their products and services are. Donovan Chee, head of marketing and communications for SEA at Bureau Veritas says that marketers don’t have to do this, and instead learn to understand their customers and “win their hearts and minds,” amongst other tips.
The fifth installment of this series features Negar Mokhtarnia, director of productatAustralian retail brand Pet Circle, weighing the importance of focusing on customer lifetime value over customer acquisition for e-commerce companies. She also shared her own take on leveraging data to boost brands’ customer experience and establishing a relational e-commerce experience to ensure sustainable growth.
Consumers today expect brands to be more vocal about social movements and contentious topics, which puts the responsibility to brands being an advent of change. In this article, Aaron Brooks, co-founder of influencer marketing platform Vamp, gives his insights on purpose-driven marketing, why it is important, the value of authenticity, its four key elements, and some advice for brands looking to leverage this approach.
Conventional business knowledge implies that sales and marketing should be tied together to drive profit and define a brand’s success. In this piece, Mark Opao, communications planning partner at Kaspersky for APAC explains why the two are hard to fuse and exposes the underlying realities of marrying Brand Building and Sales Promotion.
In the post-pandemic era, we just might see economic environments and market situations evolving. So, how can companies leverage these evolutions? Hongchia How, vice president of Appier for APAC answers this question by enumerating three MarTech strategies that can help companies seize great business opportunities and make smarter business decisions.
Asia-Pacific’s share of the global connected cars market reached 42% in 2020, and is anticipated to register a CAGR of more than 19% in the coming years. But how can this drive the growth of media tech platforms? Sharon Soh, chief planning and audience officer at UM APAC shares with us how, as well as its impact on brands and marketers in this thought-leadership piece.
As data and measurement becomes a cross-functional effort with marketing research and technology teammates – how can marketing lead the way in being more agile and achieving more success? Anna Henwood, CEO of Stickybeak shares how creating a mindset of experimentation and team collaboration – with your customer deciding if your hypothesis is right.
With many companies investing in customer data platforms and data agency partners, the real question is how marketers can make the most out of it? Antony Yiu, chief executive officer at PHD Hong Kong explains the process on how marketers can make their first-party data ‘dance’ in harmony and bring impactful revenue to someone’s business.
In an era of increasingly targeted marketing and limited budgets, how can brands effectively reduce wastage and improve performance by ensuring that their ads reach the right audience? This is the question that Jan Harling, chief executive officer at Virtus Asia Consulting asks in this latest article, centered around the topic of personalised marketing.
Watch this space as we update this article with details and links for other What’s NEXT 2023 thought-leadership articles.
If you are a marketing leader and would like to share your insights and predictions under the series, email us at [email protected].
Enterprises are creating billions of rows, articles and pieces of data every minute of every day. With multitudes of applications and information sources all creating mountains of data, ensuring the data is managed and delivered to the right team at the right time can be overwhelming.
As organisations look to building resilience in 2023, they must find better and simpler ways to access and analyse their data efficiently – doing so is key to making better data-driven decisions and winning in a saturated market.
In the recent ‘Demystifying Data Integration: Automation Hacks Every IT Professional Should Know’ webinar hosted by SnapLogic, a leader in intelligent integration and enterprise automation; SnapLogic industry experts Jeremiah Stone, chief technology officer, and David Wilmer, principal product marketing manager, broke how enterprise automation makes organisations more competitive in today’s cut-throat landscape.
Data integration is more critical than ever
Data integration is critical to the success of organisations today. And yet, according to recent SnapLogic research in partnership with Vanson Bourne, 83% of ITDMs (IT decision-makers) are not completely satisfied with the performance and output of their data management and data warehousing solutions. This dissatisfaction stems from issues relating to data formatting, regulations and speed of data movement and accessibility within the organisation.
“Organisations know that integrated data instils data trust and that trust is critical in basing important business decisions on analytics,” Wilmer says. “But regardless of data integration’s importance, many organisations are still finding it difficult.”
On average, enterprises have approximately 254 applications, 40-60 tools per team and more than half (56%) of SaaS applications are not owned or managed by a company IT department. As app sprawl increases, data from each app gets siloed and becomes inaccessible to other parts of the organisations, teams and apps.
According to the same SnapLogic research, more than half (53%) of respondents say they do not entirely trust their data for decision-making. Wilmer says this isn’t surprising, considering the number of disconnected data sources organisations typically have.
“At the same time, 40% don’t completely trust their data for decision-making because poor integration means data is missing or incomplete,” he points out. “Disparate data sources increase data silos. That means your data can’t flow between systems, which lowers the confidence in data.”
No data integration means no data insights, which leads to impaired decision-making – it’s an equation that adds up to adverse business outcomes and poor user experience. In fact, the average organisation reports losing more than AU$1.45m each year due to poor data management. To remedy this and leverage the power of SaaS, data must be integrated.
Tip to streamline and simplify
Leveraging modern tools and technology is the ultimate hack organisations can implement to streamline and simplify complex integration processes. The first way to do this is by eliminating manual coding.
“Manual coding is tedious,” Wilmer says. “It’s prone to errors. It requires specialised skills. So you want to look for a modern platform that provides low/no code solutions.”
Low/no code solutions benefit entire organisations because they can be used by everyone, regardless of profession. These easy-to-use solutions empower staff to solve complex problems without relying on IT engineers to make sense of the data first.
“Everyone from tech-savvy engineers to business-savvy analysts needs to have access to data when and where they need it,” Wilmer stresses. “It should no longer be the bottleneck to business success.”
Stone agrees, adding that while he loves expressive development, code-centric integrations reduce the accessibility of the business rules that are codified into those integrations.
“Organisations reap tonnes of benefits by taking a visual, no/low code approach to integration,” Stone explains. “For one, it’s accessible to people with business knowledge. But also, customer after customer that I’ve worked with finds that it reduces the risk of management and maintenance of those integrations because they’re actually easier to hand off between team members.
“Integration is a clever way to solve a difficult, persistent problem,” he continues. “The combination of seeing how you can empower different skill sets to participate in the integration process and using a model-driven or visual way to create, support, and maintain the integration is a powerful approach to solving any problem.”
Another way to simplify the complex is to focus on event-driven circumstances. Wilmer says there’s still a time and place for ‘bulk and batch’ processing, but an agile business needs real-time insights, which can only be achieved through streaming and API event-based data movement. “Modern applications need to be connected to share data,” he explains. “Event-driven data sharing powers enterprise automation.”
Beyond that, it’s important to scale with the cloud. “Obviously, when batch and high-volume process is necessary — and it will be — we want to scale with the cloud,” Wilmer adds. “Cloud computing has brought a seemingly limitless ability to reach peak performance and data processing.
“A data integration platform cannot be the bottleneck to achieving this agility. Look for a data platform that is born on the cloud and has the same ability to automatically scale with the cloud to maintain the desired performance.”
Finally, when it comes to simplification, think: consolidating integration. “It shouldn’t take four separate tools that specialise in only one or two methods of data integration to achieve business goals and objectives,” Wilmer insists. “Look for a complete integration platform that can do all four simultaneously to achieve integration, application integration, API management and governance.”
Winning with intelligent integration and automation
The enterprises that will win in the data economy are those that can harness data from every source and turn it into powerful insights. With data as the driving force of the future, it’s imperative to have an integration platform that can seamlessly integrate, automate and mobilise data to any data warehouse with a simple, powerful solution.
Successful integration leads to positive business outcomes and desirable user experiences. That’s why data-driven organisations integrate data to build a single source of truth. “This takes blending operational data with historical data, which involves data warehousing, capturing real-time data and streamlining data for analytics — all things that deliver immediate and tailored customer experiences,” Wilmer says.
“The more automated this becomes, the quicker you can achieve these outcomes. Enterprise automation drives efficiencies in technology, so you can deliver the goals and promises of your business.”
Stone adds, “Think of it this way, everyone always wants to eat the ice cream first. But you have to eat your broccoli first. Integration is like eating your broccoli to get strong and get those payoffs and benefits.”
SnapLogic is an intelligent integration platform that enables enterprise integration and automation. “With SnapLogic, you will accelerate the value of your data through ease of use and intelligent designs,” Wilmer says.
“SnapLogic simplifies your integration in the cloud by mobilising the data and automating the processes that drive your business, enabling you to achieve enterprise integration and automation in a single platform — one that is purpose-built for the cloud and works with any cloud platform.”
Having that ability and the agility to pivot with technology and respond to challenges swiftly gives enterprises a leg up on the competition — competition that is scrambling to connect, reconfigure and rebuild their data integration processes.
This article is written byJames Campbell, regional manager of SnapLogic for ANZ.
The insight is published as part of MARKETECH APAC’s thought leadership series under What’s NEXT 2023. What’s NEXT 2023is a multi-platform industry initiative which features marketing and industry leaders in APAC sharing their marketing insights and predictions for the upcoming year.
If you are a marketing leader and have insights that you’d like to share on upcoming trends and practices in marketing, please reach out to [email protected] for an opportunity to be part of the series.
Singapore – Influencer marketing has now reached its maturity, but as we all know, the creator economy is very fluid, and even the tiniest disruption can create ripples to give birth to entirely new innovations in this area. For those that have influencer marketing as a key part of their marketing arsenal, this reality can be intimidating.
As the digital media for the marketing and advertising industry in APAC, MARKETECH APAC has partnered with influencer marketing platform, Vamp, to lead this very important conversation for brands and marketers. To loosely refer to ‘creator economy’, in itself, hasn’t shaken its novelty off among us; when before, influencer marketing is looked to as a vain strategy or an afterthought, it has now swelled its importance and presence to have its very own ecosystem with players and stakeholders that aim to keep the brand-content creator interactivity alive and flourishing.
The webinar, What’s NEXT 2023: Influencer Marketing in APAC, will be focusing on what more can we expect from influencer marketing in the future – in 2023 and beyond. Aaron Brooks, the co-founder and president of Vamp, will be giving a keynote presentation on how brands can best leverage their position in the new creator economy in 2023. Brooks will be sharing valuable insights on what brands can do to successfully navigate current macroeconomic trends and what marketers can learn from other brands that have successfully used creator content to unify their digital and offline presence.
Meanwhile, a panel discussion will be touching on the developing and newly-emerging trends in influencer marketing today. Together with Brooks, Jonathan Gerard, the head of production of VaynerMedia APAC,Ruben Ahmed, director of Marketing for HP Australia & New Zealand, and Isabel Falco, chief digital & marketing officer of L’Oréal Philippines will be gracing the virtual discussion to talk about how influencer marketing is evolving to change the imperative for content creation and strategy. Furthermore, the marketing leaders will be sharing their expert views on how influencer marketing is now being leveraged to achieve objectives that go beyond branding.
“As influencer marketing continues to mature as a performance channel, what brands want and expect from creators and vice versa will naturally evolve over time,” commented Aaron Brooks, president and co-founder of Vamp.
He added, “For the relationship to be effective, it needs to work like a partnership, starting with building an understanding of the motivations of each side, and acknowledging the expertise each party brings to the table”
“Our role as a platform provider is to help facilitate this dialogue between creators and brands, to collectively drive the best outcomes. I look forward to sharing some of our learnings during the webinar,” said Brooks.
Shaina Teope, MARKETECH APAC’s regional editor, commented, “Influencers, and the whole influencer marketing phenomenon for that matter, has been regarded only as secondary, for so long, to the budget-heavy and big-celebrity initiatives by brands. Its significance is changing now, and comes with this is the evolution and growth of how we must realise our strategies in launching and developing influence marketing campaigns today. Let this industry discussion help you step up and sustain your influencer game for 2023 and beyond.”
The said webinar kicks off its parent industry multi-platform series, What’s NEXT 2023. Through its four main content platforms – webinar, conference, interview, and article – we will be gathering the best in the industry to help the marketing community gear up and be ready for the upcoming year’s challenges, opportunities, and trends in marketing.
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