Taobao Marketplace launched over 200 self-pickup service points in Hong Kong today by collaborating with Hong Kong Post, 7-Eleven, S.F. Express, 4PX Worldwide Express and ZTO Express.
Teddy Lui, head of Hong Kong business at Taobao International Business, said, "Hong Kong is a very important market for our business."
"We have been operating transshipment services for a long time but we realised it's not that suitable for Hong Kong where everyone is very busy. That's why we wanted to provide more flexibility with the new self-pickup service."
The new self-pickup service will lower shipping costs to customers receiving goods at residential addresses, for which shipping companies usually charge more compared to shipping to commercial addresses.
Self-pickup locations include 125 Hong Kong Post offices including outlying islands, and around 110 7-Elevens. For 26 of those 7-Eleven stores, Taobao is the only e-commerce platform for which they offer self-pickup services.
7-Eleven has collaborated with Taobao in the past, such as by offering walk-in customers the option of purchasing Alipay currency.
Albert Lai, head of eBusiness and service in Hong Kong and Macau said, "There will be an increase in foot traffic for our stores but our focus is on improving our customer service."
Lui says he will not exclude the possibility to expanding the number of self-pickup locations in the future if the company can find quality partners.
"We will not blindly open up new locations. Instead, we will go with the flow in terms of customer needs," he said.
In 2012, Taobao Marketplace had over 1.4 million users and its gross merchandise grew by 56% in 2012 compared to 2011.
Lui said, "We've kept up a high level of growth in the last two years."
Malaysian MRT Corp chief executive Datuk Azhar Abdul Hamid has resigned from the role following a deadly site accident.
Hamid told Malay Mail Online, “As the head of MRT Corp, I am taking personal responsibility for the incident and this is the correct thing to do. I have informed the Chairman of MRT Corp, Tan Sri Dr Ali Hamsa, of my decision”
In the accident, three workers were buried in the rubble after a 490-tonne span fell from its berth under construction. Construction has been ongoing since 2011 and The Klang Valley MRT project is said to be reaching completion by 2016. Through the project, the Greater Kuala Lumpur area will be more interconnected through a three-line rail transit network.
Meanwhile, Malaysian netizens are lauding Hamids move to step down. Here are a some of the comments:
Prior to taking up the position, Hamid was managing director of Sime Darby Plantation. Concurrently, he was divisional director of Plantations and Food Division of Sime Darby . He also served as chairman of the Malaysian Palm Oil Association, board member of the Malaysian Palm Oil Board and the Malaysian Palm Oil Council.
Two recent Singapore government entity tender awards for media agency work caught my eye for the low commission levels charged by the winning agencies. As a tax payer, I am happy that government entities are no longer seen as ‘cash cows’, and are aggressive in using marketplace tensions to maximize their advantages. Here are a few things I hope these entities kept in mind as they awarded the contract.
A low-cost bid in a high-cost market like Singapore means only two things:
Your media agency is using its other clients to subsidize you.
This is not something you would worry about now.
But soon enough, you will end up subsidising the agency’s other clients.There will now be a new race to the bottom in local media agency commissions. If I am one of the winning agency’s clients, I am definitely looking at my contract right now.
Your agency is going to make money off your spend volumes i.e. rebates & AVBs.
There is no free lunch. The agency will make money off your business. You just won’t realise or know how this money is being made. The risk of course is that in the quest to turn a profit on your account, the agencies may look to make media decisions based on their bottom-line, not yours.
The government entities have got significant value from the lower media prices & the lowest agency commission. However, they are leaving multiples of that value unrealized on the table.
Define a clear scope of work, have tight commercial terms, pay fairly according to the resources invested by the agency, have a fee linked to KPI, and ensure that you get the most of the intellect, people & resources that media agencies can offer.
Trust but verify. That will unleash the best of what agencies can offer.
The writer is Bharad Ramesh, founder & chief analyst at eMVC-a media advisory firm. He was previously head of trading & partnerships for VivaKi South East Asia, the region’s second-largest media buying group.
Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft has stepped down from his current position on Microsoft’s board.
Ballmer (pictured) in a letter to current CEO Satya Nadella said that think it would be impractical for him to continue to serve on the board given the multitude of new commitments he is currently under taking.
“I had not spent any time really contemplating my post-Microsoft life until my last day with the company. In the six months since leaving, I have become very busy. I see a combination of the Clippers, civic contribution, teaching and study taking a lot of time. I have confidence in our approach of mobile-first, cloud-first, and in our primary innovation emphasis on platforms and productivity and the building of capability in devices and services as core business drivers,” he added.
Nadella in response thanked Ballmer for his 34 year long contribution.
“While your insights and leadership will be greatly missed as part of the board, I understand and support your decision,” he added.
(Read the full exchange between Ballmer and Nadella below)
Recently Microsoft announced that it will be slashing 18,00o jobs which is its biggest ever job cut in 39 years. This is nearly 14% of its work force. In a public letter to the employees, Nadella said the Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers that will be slashed. He added that the majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months.
Full exchange between Ballmer and Nadella:
Dear Satya,
As I approach the six month mark of my retirement and your appointment as CEO, I have been reflecting on my life, my ongoing ownership of Microsoft stock, and my involvement with the company. I have reached some conclusions and wanted to share them with you. I know August is the key month during which the company starts to prepare the proxy statement for the next shareholders’ meeting, and so these thoughts are probably timely for that too.
First, Microsoft has been my life’s work and I am proud of that and excited by what I see in front of the company and this leadership team. There are challenges ahead but the opportunities are even larger. No company in the world has the mix of software skills, cloud skills, and hardware skills we have assembled. We draw talent as well as any company in the world. We have the profitability to invest in long-term opportunities and still deliver superior shorter term performance. You’re off to a bold and exciting start.
Microsoft will need to be bold and make big bets to succeed in this new environment. Writing great software is a tremendous accomplishment and selling software has been a fabulous business. In the mobile-first, cloud-first world, software development is a key skill, but success requires moving to monetization through enterprise subscriptions, hardware gross margins, and advertising revenues. Making that change while also managing the existing software business well requires a boldness and fearlessness that I believe the management team has. Our board must also support and encourage that fearlessness for shareholders to get the best performance from Microsoft. You must drive that.
I had not spent any time really contemplating my post-Microsoft life until my last day with the company. In the six months since leaving, I have become very busy. I see a combination of the Clippers, civic contribution, teaching and study taking a lot of time. I have confidence in our approach of mobile-first, cloud-first, and in our primary innovation emphasis on platforms and productivity and the building of capability in devices and services as core business drivers. I hold more Microsoft shares than anyone other than index funds and love the mix of profits, investments and dividends returned in our stock. I expect to continue holding that position for the foreseeable future.
Given my confidence and the multitude of new commitments I am taking on now, I think it would be impractical for me to continue to serve on the board, and it is best for me to move off. The fall will be hectic between teaching a new class and the start of the NBA season so my departure from the board is effective immediately.
I bleed Microsoft — have for 34 years and I always will. I continue to love discussing the company’s future. I love trying new products and sending feedback. I love reading about what is going on at the company. Count on me to keep ideas and inputs flowing. The company will move to higher heights. I will be proud, and I will benefit through my share ownership. I promise to support and encourage boldness by management in my role as a shareholder in any way I can.
All the best,
Steve
Satya Nadella's response to Steve Ballmer
Steve,
First, thank you for all of your support during my transition this year and for the past 34 years. It’s been a great privilege to have worked with you and learned from you. Under your leadership, we created an incredible foundation that we continue to build on — and Microsoft will thrive in the mobile-first, cloud-first world.
While your insights and leadership will be greatly missed as part of the board, I understand and support your decision.
As you embark on your new journey, I am sure that you will bring the same boldness, passion and impact to your new endeavors that you brought to Microsoft, and we wish you incredible success. I also look forward to partnering with you as a shareholder.
On behalf of all of Microsoft and the Board of Directors, thank you.
When Facebook went public two years ago, many criticized it for having almost no presence in mobile advertising. In the last quarter Facebook silenced all its critics by reporting that mobile advertising brought in more than 60% of its $2.9 billion ad revenue.
The urgency with which Facebook went after mobile just goes to show how important mobile advertising has become to marketers. And why not?
With more consumers glued to their smartphones, it is only natural that marketers reach them there. However, many marketers are not yet sure of what works on mobile. Folk wisdom is that contests, games, and coupons should attract more attention and lead to more efficient mobile advertising. But will it work for every product? In a recent academic study, researchers found that mobile advertising is effective only for utilitarian and high-involvement products. Although these results can’t be generalized easily, they suggest that there might be systematic differences in mobile ad campaign effectiveness based on factors such as the type of product, type of consumer, and temporal aspects such as time, day, month, etc. Marketers need to put on their researcher hats in order to find out what does and doesn’t work in mobile advertising.
Micro-Experiments
Micro-experiments (MEs) are short randomized experiments that can be performed continuously. What kind of MEs should a mobile marketer conduct? There are almost infinite possibilities. Therefore, marketers must identify the most critical factors that they believe affect consumer behavior.
For example, if you want to run a contest then a mobile ad that uses the color red is likely to drive more engagement. This is not an established fact; however, academic research shows that red makes people more competitive, which can help companies such as eBay make people bid more aggressively. Therefore, extrapolating this logic to mobile advertising can lead to a simple hypothesis that you can test easily.
Similarly, men and women show wide variation in their risk preferences. This knowledge could be used to formulate a hypothesis and MEs can be designed to specifically test campaigns where the risk preference becomes gender neutral.
With MEs the main threat is marketers going all over the place rather than narrowly focusing on certain key hypotheses that they want to test. Therefore, I suggest marketers should pay attention to the new knowledge created in academia and not what’s published in pop psychology books by the likes of Malcolm Gladwell.
Attribution
One of the key challenges to mobile, if not all of digital advertising, is to extract the attribution. What’s the ROI of your mobile campaign? What if people are watching your ads on mobile but buying the product on the PC? How will you attribute these purchases to mobile advertising? Although there are many solution providers in this space, I suggest you additionally use MEs to get an idea for yourself. For example, you can set up a simple experiment whereby you expose around 10% of your customer base to a mobile advertisement. This has to be a random assignment, meaning you shouldn’t select the customers based on any specific criterion such as geography or age. Next you compare the purchase behavior of these customers with that of the other 90% (or a separate smaller randomly selected sample that wasn’t shown the mobile ad). As the only parameter you changed was the presence or absence of the mobile ad, you will be able to attribute the difference in purchase behavior to the mobile ads with much greater confidence. By conducting this ME regularly, you can get an estimate for the mobile ad attribution, which you can use as a benchmark.
Analytics
MEs are meaningless if you don’t have capabilities to analyze the data. However, for MEs you don’t need 'big data' analytics expertise. Instead you can use simple data analysis tools to determine how your MEs are performing. As you control the sample size of your MEs, you could tailor them to be analyzed in Excel. Multiple regression analysis, analysis of variance, and other simple statistical tests can take you a long way in analyzing your data.
The author is Ashwin Malshe, assistant professor of marketing at ESSEC Business School.
Malshe will be sharing more on mobile marketing strategies at Marketing magazine’s annual Mobile Marketing Interactive conference, on 4 September.
To attend the event, please contact Carlo Reston at carlor@marketing-interactive.com or call +65 6423 0329. Further information can be found by clicking here.
Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) has bought a 22% stake in pre-school and enrichment provider MindChamps Holdings. SPH paid approximately SG$12 million in cash for 110,000 shares in MindChamps Preschool (Worldwide).
This is SPH's first investment into the education business. MindChaps first started in 2008 and has over 20 pre-school outlets locally.
This is one of SPH’s many recent acquisitions.
It recently made an investment into real time bidding platform Smaato where Smaato has said the funds will be used to fuel growth, operations and development of its platform, focused on self-serve automation. SPH has been pushing heavily for a move to digital, introducing several initiatives including launching a content marketing studio for advertisers to market content across its assets.
Meanwhile, last year SPH acquired popular online classified site for cars SgCarMart.com for SG$60 million. The deal came shortly after it snapping up Chope, a local restaurant booking site earlier this year for SG$1.8 million.
Speculation has been rife as the beleaguered Malaysia Airlines (MAS) hunts for its new lead.
Reports have said that it is unlikely that current CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya’s term will be extended.
The spotlight has fallen on current CEO of Celcom Axiata, Malaysia’s oldest mobile phone firm, Shazalli Ramly; with Idris Jala, MAS’ former CEO and presently Malaysia’s chief of economic reforms to be its chairman, according to several reports.
According to the Business Times, Ramly is a “favoured choice given his acumen in marketing and corporate branding.”
Before his time at Celcom, Ramly spent 18 years in marketing before joining broadcasting. The BT article also mentioned that in order to fill Ramly’s inexperience in the aviation sector, an ex-MAS veteran would likely take a secondary key post.
From 1 October 2014, Wing Hang Bank (WHB) will be known as OCBC Wing Hang.
The new brand logo incorporates OCBC Bank's signature Chinese sailing vessel symbol, which is said to be inspired by the enterprising spirit, resourcefulness and resilience of Southeast Asia's pioneering immigrants. The words 'OCBC' and 'Wing Hang' are rendered in OCBC's corporate red, and black.
“By extension, it is emblematic of OCBC Bank's vision and drive, its readiness to pursue opportunities and its emphasis on innovation. These characteristics are expressed in the products and services it offers to meet customers' increasingly sophisticated needs. OCBC Wing Hang will similarly embrace and demonstrate these values over time as part of its embedded corporate culture,” said OCBC in a press statement.
OCBC added that the new name signifies a new beginning for WHB as a subsidiary of OCBC Bank and OCBC Bank thereby further entrenches its Greater China presence from which to execute its Greater China strategy for higher business growth.
The integration of WHB with OCBC Group will be “implemented in a balanced and seamless manner, adopting best practices while preserving the franchise value of WHB.”
“Rather than integrating purely for uniformity, the approach will be a considered one that seeks to understand and accommodate differences in operational practices, markets and customer segments.”
In a conversation with Marketing, Graham Hitchmough, regional director of Brand Union said that the move was a wise one for smoother transition into the Greater China market as it retains the WHB's familiarity factor. While the short term plan would be to simply leverage the brand name, Hitchmough speculates that OCBC certainly has a long term plan put in place to extend its own name while phasing out the WHB brand. This is naming migration strategy is one commonly undertaken by banks and telcos.
“Some brands are able to jump right to the end and rename an entity completely if there are no barriers. However, the co-brand approach gives the best of both worlds. Through the naming, OCBC is able to extend its name into the Chinese market whilst retaining the trust of the WHB customers,” said Hitchmough.
OOH company Clear Channel has partnered with media agency Initiative Singapore to launch visually interactive panels for Reckitt Benckiser’s new heart supplement, Schiff MegaRed. The creative agency behind the campaign is Havas BKK.
These panels feature a LED heart beat like a healthy heart which is lit up. It sends across a simple message to consumers that Schiff MegaRed is scientifically proven for a healthy heart. The campaign is aimed at raising top-of-mind awareness for Schiff MegaRed, amongst health conscious individuals and educating them about the benefits of krill oil.
The campaign will also run on TV and online until the end of the year. This will run alongside a static 6-sheet poster network targeted at 100 locations around supermarkets and convenient store, distributed island-wide.
FOX Sports has acquired the exclusive broadcast rights for the UEFA Europa League in Hong Kong for three seasons, starting with the 2015-16 season, and ending with the 2017-18 season.
This is the first time FOX Sports has acquired the rights to the UEFA Europa League in Asia.
The multimedia platform deal covers linear channels, IPTV, internet and mobile with access to all 205 matches over 15 match-weeks.
The UEFA Europa League has also increased in significance as the winner from the 2014-15 season onwards will gain direct entry to the UEFA Champions League for the following season.
This key acquisition is another step in the network’s road to being a household name in sports and its aim to make sports viewing more locally accessible.
The news follows the FIC’s recent re-launch on August 15 of an all-new FOX Sports network, which saw the introduction of 3 new channels – FOX Sports, FOX Sports 2 and FOX Sports 3 - complemented by FOX Sports News, a 24-hour sports news channel, and non-linear platforms FOX Sports Mobile and FOX Sports Play.
The re-launch also sees more local language commentary and a more locally-focused acquisition strategy, all to cater to the differing tastes of sports fans across countries, such as with the UEFA Europa League.
This latest acquisition also strengthens FIC’s portfolio of sports properties in Hong Kong which includes exclusive rights to three of the four tennis Grand Slams (The Australian Open, Roland Garros and Wimbledon), all the golf majors (The Masters Tournament, The Open Championship, The US Open, The PGA Championship), Formula 1, MotoGP, Ultimate Fighting Championship, Major League Baseball and the Bundesliga from the 2015/16 season.
“Our acquisition of the UEFA Europa League rights is another great win for us and helps us be an even better partner to our affiliates,” said Cora Yim, SVP, Head of Chinese Entertainment and Territory Head for Hong Kong at FOX International Channels.
"We look forward to working with them to bring great football to fans in Hong Kong,” said Cora Yim, SVP, Head of Chinese Entertainment and Territory Head for Hong Kong at FOX International Channels."
Trampoline park Ryze in Quarry Bay has been bustling with excited teenagers and parents since it opened on 18 July, with a whopping 1,000 visitors per day.
Ryze Hong Kong general manager Gavin Grissom says the park has done no formal advertising or marketing campaigns since it announced that it will open in Hong Kong early this year.
The park's social media posts have gone viral on Facebook and it has received plenty of free press.
Grissom shares Ryze's secret to success and how he plans to grow the business after children and teenagers, the park's main source of customers, go back to school in September.
At a time when the purchase journey for airline tickets has progressively been brought online, offline strategies remain very relevant as travellers exhibit strong omni-channel behaviours on both online and offline platforms during the purchase journey, a GfK study has found.
On the digital front, search engine emerged to be the main portal for travellers in Hong Kong to gather travel information (91%), followed by travel aggregator and information sites (83%), travel booking sites (79%), airline companies (69%) and social media sites (38%).
Meanwhile, 65% of travellers in Hong Kong utilised PCs, tablets and smartphones throughout the purchase process to gain access to information.
Though 96% of respondents utilise a combination of the internet and traditional brick and mortar channels, traditional mass media remains the most dominant offline touch-point that triggers the gathering of travel information.
About 74% of respondents were prompted to action after they saw an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine, while 70% said they had read an article in this medium.
More than half said their travel plans were sparked by TV or radio ads.
“Advertising in the mass media is an effective platform to garner the interest of intended travellers and a good complementary channel that helps them shift from offline to online,” said Laurens van den Oever, global travel director at GfK.
“Over 98% of respondents said they took their research online and 54% eventually completed their purchase during this process.”
The purchase decision is also demonstrated to be long. A typical consumer spends almost five hours researching online for their trip on average.
During this period, they make an average of 92 visits to 22 travel-related websites and apps before actually purchasing their bookings via the internet.
“It is especially important for industry players to understand the consumer purchase journey as they plan their trips so that travel service providers can more thoroughly understand the complexity of the process,” said Van den Oever.
“This will ensure that they are effective in their offerings and present in the relevant phase of the journey, both online and offline, and from the planning stage right to the very end when the purchase is eventually made.”
The findings revealed search engines were used intensively at the very beginning of the process for both online and offline purchasers, he added.
“With the widening coverage and global reach of online service providers, consumers are increasingly focusing on specific established brands popular in their local market, reinforcing the fact that having a strong presence and top-of-mind awareness provides these companies with a head start.”
The nine-week survey from March to May 2014 polled more than 700 Hong Kong travel decision-makers who intended to purchase an air ticket in the next three months, and who agreed to instal GfK Nurago’s online tracking software on their digital and mobile devices.
OMD Malaysia has appointed Kelvin Lim as digital director, effective immediately. In his new role, Lim reports to Margaret Lim, managing director at OMD Malaysia, and will be supporting her in creating new business opportunities and managing existing clients with a focus on digital strategy.
Prior to his appointment, he was the head of business development at Digital News Asia, an independent news portal, responsible for developing and refining revenue creation, particularly in the areas of product development and platform management.
He was tasked with reviewing company content and ad performances, and worked closely with the CEO to develop medium to long-term growth strategies for the company as they headed towards market expansion and content innovation.
He brings on board a diverse skill set, having worked with numerous blue-chip corporations and PR agencies on digital strategy. This includes a tenure at Social@Ogilvy & Technology as director in Kuala Lumpur, where he was responsible for directing social and digital strategies across the office’s disciplines and practices, and led the overall development and growth of the team.
Margaret Lim said: “Kelvin will be instrumental in strengthening our digital offerings and initiatives, and has an amazing ability to translate data into insights and strategies that align with business and brand objectives. We are confident that clients will benefit from his extensive experience in the industry, and warmly welcome him to the team.”
Ipsos has appointed Mick Gordon as the managing director for Ipsos Hong Kong, succeeding Darlene Lee, who will be relocating back to New York City.
Gordon is currently managing director for Ipsos India.
Lifeng Liu, CEO Ipsos Asia Pacific, said: "As the first managing director for the combined Ipsos following the Synovate merger, Darlene has created a strong culture of innovation and business development as well as taking on various regional accountabilities.
"Darlene helped transformed Ipsos Hong Kong into the regional hub for thought leadership and innovation in the industry. She will be greatly missed by all”.
A financial specialist by trade, Gordon was previously Head of Business Services and finance director for Synovate, before becoming India MD for Synovate and then Ipsos following the combination.
Liu said: “Given his reputation for ensuring quality deliverables to clients and taking care of his teams, Mick is the right person to succeed Darlene for this critical market for Ipsos in APAC. “
Mick Gordon said: “I’m very excited about this opportunity and will be working closely with both clients and the team to ensure we continue to innovate while maintaining the high standards and excellent reputation that Ipsos HK is known for."
Marc Dillon, co-founder and COO at Jolla, a phone maker founded by ex-Nokia engineers, says product differentiation in the mobile space is difficult.
"You can buy an expensive or a cheap smartphone and you would get the same user experience," Dillon said.
"The user experiences of the dominant OS systems from Apple and Google are around five years old. It's very hard for mobile phone operators to differentiate because so many of the phones run on Android."
So how do you attract new customers?
"You can only do it by lowering the prices of the phones, and it puts everyone in trouble - that's not healthy competition."
He adds that smartphones have reached a stage where product differentiation has stopped at specifications and the appearance of its exterior.
"The Hong Kong market is a beautiful example of how the smartphone market has reached a stage where all people can do is to buy the next iPhone, or the biggest Android phone with the most memory and processing power," Dillon said.
The Jolla phone was launched in Hong Kong this month exclusively through Three Hong Kong, owned by Hutchison Telecommunications.
Developed by ex-Nokia engineers and launched in Finland last November, the Jolla phone is a relatively niche product, running on the Sailfish OS instead of Android, Windows or iOS.
As a small company, Jolla needs local operators such as 3 Hong Kong in order to scale up the sales of its phone in different markets, although Jolla opened an office in Hong Kong two years ago and its chairman is based in the city.
Raymond Ho, corporate and marketing communications director of Hutchison Telecommunications Hong Kong says the Jolla phone was marketed mostly through online media such as placing Facebook ads and online banners.
Ho said, "We didn't place any newspaper or TV ads, because digital marketing is how they launched the phone in Finland."
That's also probably why the phone can only be purchased online at Three.com.hk, with 3 Hong Kong retail stores offering only pick-up services for Jolla. Even if a walk-in customer asks to purchase the phone, sales staff would have to go online to order it for them.
3 Hong Kong also ran four experience workshops where users could experience and learn about the functions of the phone in its Causeway Bay store as part of the launch campaign.
The Jolla launch comes at a time when 3 Hong Kong was looking for 4G phones to help promote its 4G network, in a larger ad push.
Jolla typically selects one operator per market to help launch and market its phone.
The next market Jolla plans to launch the phone in is India, where it will collaborate with Indian homegrown e-commerce giant Snapdeal.
The smartphone is already available in the European Union, Norway and Switzerland. Since this summer, Jolla was made available on Taobao. The company currently has no plans to sell the phone in North America, preferring to focus on Europe and to move East from there.
The launch of Jolla phones in Hong Kong and other markets serve as a soft kind of promotion for Jolla's operating system Sailfish.
Dillon said, "Part of our road map for growth is talking to other mobile phone manufacturers about putting Sailfish onto their devices."
If you haven't seen (or participated in) the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge this week, you should reconsider your role in the marketing industry. But why has it worked so well? Wayne Arnold, global CEO joins On the Couch to explain.
Crystal Wilde has been appointed Coconuts Hong Kong's managing editor.
She will oversee editorial content for the online publication's Hong Kong website and manage one full-time editor, interns and four freelancers.
Wilde had previously worked as online media site Localiiz's digital content editor for a year and a half.
"I wasn't looking for a job but I was head-hunted for the role. It was very flattering. I had been following Coconuts ever since I lived in Thailand and I liked their style. It's a big company that is always looking to expand," she said.
For her, the move is a step back towards traditional journalism, which is oriented towards hard news.
"Coconuts has more of a focus on hard news. Localiiz is a hybrid - it is an online marketing platform that also has editorial content and we did a lot of advertorial writing. At Coconuts, the editorial team doesn't have to think about advertisers," Wilde said.
"It's a step back towards pure journalism as opposed to the public relations and marketing type of journalism."
She hopes that once the Hong Kong office becomes more established, Coconuts Hong Kong will be able to hire more staff members to gather hard news rather than sourcing them from large news organisations.
Her vision for the future of Coconuts Hong Kong is to maintain a breadth of editorial coverage and not to obsess over clicks and page views.
Wilde said, "I want to make sure we don't become too niche. We need to cover as big a range as possible, including hard news, features, reviews and guides."
"While we will create viral content, it is our responsibility to cover important and hard news even if it's not going to bring lots of traffic or go viral."
Young & Rubicam Singapore has appointed Wedad Sunny as client services director.
This follows a slew of new business wins including Land Rover Southeast Asia and Kallang Wave Mall, said the agency.
Sunny has more than 18 years of integrated marketing, advertising and public relations experience across multiple markets.
She was previously with The Gate Worldwide as client services director, where she was responsible for building agency capabilities in digital marketing strategy, digital advertising and media strategy, planning and buying. She also held P&L, general management and business development responsibilities.
She has worked on brands such as INSEAD, AIA, Rabobank, Citibank, City Index, ABN AMRO, Schroders, Templeton, HP and Juniper Networks.
