Essence has appointed Stephen Tompkins (pictured left) as head of media activation, APAC and Haruna McWilliams (pictured right) as regional strategy director, effective immediately with both individuals based in Singapore.

In his new role, Tompkins is responsible for a team of social, display and search media activation experts across Asia Pacific. He will sit on the regional leadership team and report to Oscar Garza, global director of media activation. Tompkins has over 15 years of digital media experience in Asia and North America.

He was previously the vice president of programmatic at DigitasLBi North America for close to a year, where he developed and scaled DigitasLBi's programmatic practice nationally, according to his LinkedIn. Tompkins also assisted in the development of a transparent financial model that benefits both clients and agency, as well as served as a high-level escalation point on all programmatic issues.

Before joining DigitasLBi North America, Tompkins spent six years with Publicis Media across Singapore, Beijing and New York handling operations, activation and strategy for the programmatic practice. Additionally, he was part of the initial Vivaki Media Technology team which developed the original audit process for all ad tech vendors in Asia Pacific and North America.

Tompkins was part of the launch team to setup Vivaki's biddable media practice in Southeast Asia across eight markets. Prior to joining Publicis, he worked in marketing and account management for Microsoft, Mediaplex and Nielsen.

"I am excited to work alongside an industry stalwart like Garza and I believe my deep industry knowledge combined with my global operations experiences will only enhance Essence's regional footprint in APAC," Tompkins said.

In her newly created role, McWilliams will work closely with Alastair Boyle, global strategy lead, to coordinate Essence's regional and global viewpoint. She will report to Kyoko Matsushita, CEO of Essence Asia Pacific. With more than 15 years of industry experience, McWilliams most recently served as global planning director at Leo Burnett, Singapore, where she played a key role on P&G brands.

Previously she held roles in Japan, US and the UK with Ogilvy & Mather, BBDO and JWT, where she was responsible for strategy for global clients such as Unilever, Danone, AmEx and Cisco Systems. Before moving to Singapore, McWilliams built the strategy capability for IPG Mediabrands in Japan, where she was the lead on key global clients including J&J and Coca-Cola.

“Essence's mission to make advertising more valuable to the world always struck a chord with me. It’s an exciting time for Essence in the region and I look forward to working closely with the regional and global leadership teams to make impactful contributions.” said McWilliams.

“The collective knowledge and expertise that Stephen and Haruna bring to Essence further strengthens our ability to deliver world-class, data-driven advertising. These appointments reflect our continued commitment to growing and investing in the APAC region,” said Matsushita.

In a bid to boost the agency's Asia Pacific growth plans, Essence promoted client partner and head of strategy for APAC, Kunal Guha, in January to the newly-created position of managing director Singapore. Former senior planning director Vincent Niou was also promoted to the role of senior programmatic and partnerships director, APAC.

Mobile attribution and marketing analytics company AppsFlyer has unveiled that ad fraud is now costing advertisers an estimated US$1.1 billion to US$1.3 billion, while accounting for more than 50% of all app install fraud.

According to the company, when looking at the global heat map by fraud rate, Asia has the highest share of fraudulent installs coming from DeviceID resets, followed by North America and Europe.

DeviceID reset fraud is a new type of advanced fraud, where phone farms are being used to reset IDs generating a colossal amount of fraudulent traffic that bypasses all other anti-fraud technologies.

“DeviceID reset fraud is a particularly sneaky type of fraud because it is seemingly legitimate app install activity. Fraudsters utilise real clicks on real ads, to create real installs and engagement from real devices - all of which are perpetrated in phone farms,” said the company.

These actions are repeated at scale through DeviceID reset marathons, or by hiding behind the "Limit Ad Tracking" setting (on iOS devices). So while the app install and engagement activity appears to be real, none of it has any actual value to advertisers or the apps’ growth.

The company says DeviceID reset fraud is responsible for over half of mobile app install fraud. It added:

Marketers have been looking at click patterns and install validation to detect fraud. By ignoring device-based fraud, marketers remain exposed to over 50% of mobile app install fraud.

Currently, nearly 10% of all non-organic installs are fraud. This means that out of every dollar spent on mobile advertising, US$0.10 go directly out of your budget and into the pockets of fraudsters. Advertisers will lose an estimated US$2.2-$2.6 billion to app install fraud in 2017.

The company also said that Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia account for half of the financial loss in SEA, which accounts to about 7% of the global financial loss.

This new type of fraud isn’t limited to a specific country or region. Fraudsters mainly target countries where there is a high CPI payout. In addition, DeviceID reset fraudsters target regions with a high volume of campaigns and users, in order to seem genuine and remain inconspicuous to advertisers and networks expecting traffic in these areas.

"For example, while in North America and Western Europe the volume and payout are both high, Southeast Asia has a lower than average payout, but a very high volume of users, so that region is still very attractive to fraudsters," said the company.

Tiger Beer has collaborated with sneaker customiser and artist Mark Ong of men's contemporary fashion brand SBTG Surplus & Co., to launch a limited edition commemorative t-shirt in celebration of 50 years of National Service.

The t-shirt featuring SBTG's distinct militia-inspired style, unites two distinctively Singaporean elements - National Service and Tiger Beer. According to Ong, those elements can be viewed as two "rites of passage" for young males in Singapore.

"I have always pursued art forms that merge with day-to-day life, allowing interaction and an injection of my personality to be brought to life via my designs. I am proud to create a design that combines these defining elements of Singapore life," he added.

Venus Teoh, marketing director, Asia Pacific Breweries Singapore, said Tiger Beer and National Service bind and bring back fond memories for many of Singapore's servicemen.

"We felt that Ong was the ideal artist for this project, uncaging the values represented by Tiger Beer and SBTG through design and art. As we enter a new chapter of National Service in Singapore, Tiger Beer is proud to go the mile with our servicemen and be part of many more special memories in the years to come," she added.

Data has always been an important factor in marketing, especially when used in business intelligence (BI). Coupled with data, business intelligence tools not only enable companies to improve decision-making and optimise internal business processes, but also drive new revenues.

When it comes to BI solutions, one major challenge companies face is there is no specific team that acts as a bridge between the business and the IT departments to help drive an analytical culture in the company.

“Why we say our BI solutions are well used is because we have someone who is really trying to bring the business and IT side together and align them with each other,” said Carsten Schleicher (pictured), senior area manager of business information management at Tetra Pak, during a recent Smart Data conference organised by Marketing.

The Swedish company established a Business Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC) with the management comprising six full-time employees and a business information management team of three full-time employees. The aim is to drive the analytical culture among its 24,500 employees worldwide, set best practices, as well as deploy and devise the BI strategy.

According to Schleicher, project management is an important skill for BI managers to have. While an individual doesn’t necessarily require IT skills, he or she needs to have an interest in BI analytics. He said:

You need to have an interest in tools and how they work, co-ordination skills and good people skills.

He added that good people skills are required because it can be tough to communicate with individuals from the IT and business departments if they are not from the same field.

To further enhance the efficiency of the BICC, Tetra Pak created four different roles – report owner, BI co-ordinator, BI expert and super user.

Report owner

“We were struggling for many years with the ownership of solutions. Who is the owner of an analytical report? The business side says it is IT, but IT says it is the business side,” he said.

Hence, all report ownership was transferred to the business side, resulting in the creation of the report owner role. The report owner is responsible for the accuracy of report specifications and answering business-related questions on reports. According to Schleicher, Tetra Pak has about 650 reports and having a report owner for each one of them has “helped a lot”.

BI co-ordinator

Deployed in various geographical regions and in central organisations, the BI co-ordinator oversees the roll out of the BI strategies such as the BI strategy and learning methodology. A BI portal has also been created to allow end users to easily and intuitively access their solutions. This is also managed by the BI co-ordinator, who is tasked with customising the portal for different geographical regions.

To ensure its BI co-ordinators are onboard when driving central initiatives, Tetra Pak holds regular open door meetings and discussion forums for people to voice their opinions. “Open door in a sense that the theme could be relevant to one co-ordinator and not to another, and we leave the door open for those who want to attend.”

BI expert

The BI expert plays a key role in boosting data literacy across the company. The individual is responsible for ensuring the agility of Tetra Pak’s BI solutions, reducing the time taken to turn the requirement into a solution and creating BI solutions based on existing content on the front end.

According to Schleicher, the IT department is increasingly seen as an enabler of BI solutions rather than a team that should develop reports. Hence, the decision to transfer the responsibility of the BI expert to the business department.

“We don’t expect that these people are IT trained, but of course they shouldn’t be scared of an excel spreadsheet either. They have to have certain skills and the modern BI tools that are now being deployed are increasingly enabling individuals to perform this BI expert role,” he said.

A certification programme inspired by the martial arts colour scheme was also rolled out to recognise employees who take on the BI expert role. If someone has built a first solution, he or she gets the green belt certificate. If they create more than five solutions, they get a blue belt certificate. More than 10 and they get a black belt. Schleicher said:

That has turned out to be extremely successful in our quest of transferring data literacy and analytical capabilities into the business.

Super user

Last, the super user acts as the first point of contact for end users, allowing their peers to reach out to them immediately instead of calling someone else in another geographical region. Super users receive training and are expected to train the end users. The concept of open door meetings and discussion forums are also employed for super users, allowing them to voice their opinions and attend meetings relevant to them.

Mindshare launched a campaign titled #HearMeOut, focusing on encouraging individuals to speak out no matter how small the idea is, in line with its 20th anniversary. The idea of #HearMeOut spawned from an eight-hour marketing hackathon on Mindshare Day on 15 February 2017, and aims to support non-profit organisation Writing Through.

Among the list of partners involved in the campaign are Outbrain, Pokkt Media, Inmobi, Adcolony, The Asian Parent, Unruly, LinkedIn, Clear Channel, Facebook, Twitter, and Bareface. The video, titled "Big Ideas have Small Beginnings", originated from the struggles of expressing oneself due to a lack of self-esteem or one's circumstances.

Writing Through aims to harness and release the creative thinking power of at-risk children and adults through writing, helping them develop conceptual thinking skills which in turn help boost their self-esteem. Through workshops in Singapore and Cambodia, Writing Through teaches students to think critically and conceptually, as well as gain confidence in writing more fluently and creatively in English.

https://youtu.be/-dcOtf14SiQ

"It is an honour to be able to support Writing Through’s initiatives and Mindshare Day was the perfect time to mobilize our teams’ expertise and resources to tackle and create awareness around societal challenges. Mindshare’s belief in nurturing talent and elevating potential really aligns with that of Writing Through’s, and that’s why we wanted to make their ambitions a reality," Melissa Tang, managing director, Mindshare, said.

This post is sponsored by Isentia.

Singapore will continue to host the only night race in Formula 1 at least until 2021. This decision came through against a backdrop of dwindling ticket sales and growing uncertainty, especially after Malaysia pulled the plug on its Grand Prix last year. From a Singaporean perspective, Isentia witnessed interesting and significant differences between online conversations and real behavior on the ground.

What netizens said vs. what happened on the ground

Prior to the race, there was a lot more skepticism about the race’s renewal as most felt that the race had lost its shine as a lucrative business opportunity for Singapore.

But things took a turn for the better, with more than 260,000 people turning up at Marina Bay Street Circuit this year, a 19% increase in attendance rate as compared to 2016. On the ground, excitement around F1 was well captured by key influencers who turned up for the event. They leveraged on Instagram to showcase the enjoyable time they had, citing reasons like the opportunities to view the race up-close as well as the top-notch music performances.

With the stellar line-up of off-track entertainment accompanying the thrilling track action of the night race, F1 Singapore is truly an event that extends well beyond the parameters of the race itself.

“Its unique offering as an iconic and highly anticipated night event might very well be the perception-changing factor," Casey Koh, Isentia’s Insights analyst, said.

Singapore Airlines – the real winner of F1’s brand race

“The relationship between F1 and brands goes beyond just having logos on cars. It’s an opportunity for brands to communicate to their consumers,” Han Meng, Insights Analyst, Isentia, said.

Isentia also monitored the race on F1 brands’ share of voice (SOV) in the digital space. Among all the F1 brands, Singapore Airlines (SIA) stood out with a 13% increase in SOV, driven mainly by calls for the flag carrier to continue its title sponsorship. To some, it seems, SIA is more than just another brand.

“Singapore and partner sponsors’ association with F1 have turned them into recognized and popular global brands, not only offline but also on the digital space,” said Rufus Wong, Insights Analyst, Isentia.

This reveals a deep connection between SIA’s brand equity and Singapore’s country equity.

SIA’s title sponsorship is as much financial as it is symbolic. F1 contributes positively to Singapore’s country equity, or the Singapore brand. As an iconic national brand, SIA was the real winner of the brand race (against major automotive brands) in one of the most anticipated events of the year.

Microsoft has joined the Coalition for Better Ads (CBA) in a bid to support and collaborate with the online advertising industry, to develop better standards and make the digital ecosystem function better for consumers, marketers and publishers.

In a blog post by Rik van der Kooi, corporate vice president, Microsoft Search Advertising, he said the company trusts it can make a major contribution to improving and protecting advertising standards on the web through its advertising platforms and consumer services.

He added that the company is devoted to collaborating with industry partners and CBA, "to continue the development and implementation of standards that will have a positive impact on consumers and the entire online advertising community".

Meanwhile, the company has also made some senior hires in the Asia Pacific region. In June, Microsoft appointed Wendy Johnstone as marketing and operations lead for Asia Pacific, to spearhead all marketing activities and operations for Microsoft in Singapore and the region, including Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, New Zealand, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and other emerging Asian markets such as Bangladesh, Brunei, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Earlier this year, the company also named Andrea Della Mattea its new vice president of its Asia Pacific operations to lead Microsoft’s business across the region, including over 2,000 employees and more than 11,000 Microsoft certified partners. Former general manager of Microsoft Hong Kong Horace Chow, was appointed chief operating officer of Microsoft China in July. Cally Chan, former vice president of enterprise group and managing director for Hong Kong and Macau at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, succeed Chow as general manager.

Despite the senior hires, Microsoft also laid off its entire consumer marketing team in Singapore, which amounted to more than 10 staff in its sales and marketing departments. According to a report on The Straits Times, which added that according to its sources, only one person has been left on the team to manage Microsoft’s distribution of products to retailers in Singapore.

Pfizer China has appointed Leo Burnett Shanghai as its strategic creative agency for Viagra.

Due to the strict marketing policies for prescription medicines, Viagra as the brand has almost never done any creative campaigns in China. Now, through this new partnership, Pfizer hopes to increase brand awareness of Viagra in China and help more people enjoy healthier and happier sex in their lives.

Thanks to its diamond shape and blue colour, Viagra often dubbed “little blue pills” or “Wai Goh” (meaning strong big brother) largely from movies even before it entered into China. However, after a survey, Leo Burnett found some interesting facts:

• “Wai Goh” is more recognised as a category than a specific brand;
• Viagra users are aged from 18 to 65, which is a much wider range than most people had thought;
• In China, Viagra can only be sold in hospitals and formal online/offline pharmacies, and not in sex shops as many people supposed;
• The quality and quantity of sex are very relevant to a happy life. And turns out that this is not just a problem for males – more and more females are now speaking out about their sexual expectations.

Pedro Pan, senior marketing manager of Pfizer’s men’s health division said, “We found that many people in China were not enjoying satisfactory sex, because they didn’t realise they had a problem that could be solved. As a leading brand in the erectile dysfunction category, we wanted to help people understand that Viagra is a scientifically proven and reasonable way to bring improvements to their lives.”

Angie Wong, managing director of Leo Burnett Shanghai said, “We are thrilled to extend our partnership with Pfizer to include such an iconic brand, and in such an interesting category. It is certainly an exciting opportunity to inspire some excellent creative work.”

Scoot is calling for a closed door creative and social pitch, a spokesperson from Scoot confirmed the news to Marketing.

Marketing understands that currently the local SIA-owned budget carrier is speaking to over several agencies with regards to the pitch, and this will be narrowed down further in the upcoming weeks. The initial contract is for a period of two years, with options to extend. Scoot is looking to conclude the pitch by January 2018 and work will roll out from its next financial year starting April 2018.

The airline has often been lauded for its cheeky campaigns and has worked with Publicis since 2013 for many of its award-winning executions. Last year, the brand landed a hat trick at the fifth Marketing Excellence Awards in Singapore, being named Marketer of the Year for the third consecutive year in front of over 500 marketers.

(Read also: Triple win for Scoot at Marketing Excellence Awards Singapore)

Scoot and Publicis first started their journey four years ago. The two worked on campaigns across markets such as Singapore, China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.

Marketing understands that the current review is part of the procurement process. Most recently, after Scoot and Tigerair announced their intention to pursue a single brand and operating licence under the enhanced Scoot brand, Scoot changed its “Get Outta Here!” tagline and adopted a new slogan “Escape the Ordinary”.

“Scoot’s new tagline, Escape the Ordinary, is reflective of our growth as an airline brand,” Scoot CEO, Lee Lik Hsin, had then said. This was to be more relevant to the global market now that our network has grown as it is aspirational to our inner wanderlust, and inspires us to travel and explore the world.

After launching in 27 countries, UberEATS has finally landed in Malaysia.

Beginning 21 September 2017, Malaysians who downloaded the UberEATS smartphone app will be able to purchase and order food listed on the app to be delivered right to their doorsteps.

Asked on how the company plans to promote UberEATS, Leigh Wong, head of communications for Southeast Asia at Uber said the company will first utilise its usual "default" channels such as digital and PR to further create awareness on the new app to the public.

"There's the initial low hanging fruits of early adopters who are aware of the product and have been waiting for it to be available in Malaysia," he said.

"We're a three sided marketplace which covers consumers, restaurants and delivery-partners. So we need to reach out to all three to ensure a balanced marketplace that is optimised for a great experience for every party. But for now, we will keep our standard marketing engines running, via digital and PR," Wong added.

Beginning in Kuala Lumpur, the service aims to not only connect Malaysians with the food they love, but to also contribute positively to the economy by providing additional earning opportunities and growing the markets for Malaysian restaurants. The company said it has partnered with over 200 restaurant partners available on the UberEATS app.

(Gallery available on web)

Global food and beverage giant Nestle launched its own artificial intelligence (AI) product with Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com, in a move to meet the demands of increasingly tech-savvy Chinese consumers.

Nestle XiaoAI, an AI family nutrition assistant, is a smart speaker equipped with nutrition and health knowledge that can answer questions from users on custom recipes, music and nutrition.

The AI nutrition assist was launched after China released a national nutrition plan for 2017-2030 in July, which encourages the spread of nutrition and science knowledge through personal electronics.

The device is built into JD.com's DingDong smart speaker system, which was co-developed by JD.com and China's AI voice tech supplier Iflytek. A limited edition beta version of Nestle XiaoAI is now available on JD.com.

Nestle's AI attempt is part of a global trend to go beyond traditional products with digital services offering convenience, entertainment and education for healthier living, according to Rashid Aleem Qureshi, Nestle Greater China chairman and CEO.

He said Nestle would keep upgrading the device based on consumer demand and looked forward to cooperating with more partners in this field.

China's leisure market continues its strong growth. According to OC&C Strategy Consultants' latest survey, the market is currently standing at USD$479 billion, accounting 11% of China's total consumer expenditure, and the ratio is expected to grow as much as those in the US (21%) and UK market (17%).

Of all the categories, cruise holidays and theme parks had shown high planned growth in spending last year, contributing to 8% and 9% of the leisure market respectively. Domestic travel, sports event and food delivery also saw growth in spending.

Jack Chuang, partner, Greater China, OC&C Strategy Consultants, said the post-80s generation, which are usually more willing to spend time and money to indulge themselves with material possessions and leisure services, will further contribute to the growth of the leisure sector.

Businesses of different sectors should segment their customers to provide tailored offerings, he added.

Theme parks

With several international players joining the field, including Disneyland Shanghai and Fantawild, the Chinese market is now more competitive than ever.

Disneyland Shanghai, which was opened in 2016, saw a total of 11 million visitors in its first year of operations. On the other hand, local operator Fantawild, which is currently the second largest theme parks group domestically, plans to build another 20 theme parks in China and abroad over the next five years.

To stay ahead of the field, Pascal Martin, partner, OC&C Strategy Consultants, encourages theme parks to define their target customers.

"Currently, theme parks focus on catering for families to include child-friendly rides and attractions, making less room available for tailored offerings for thrill-seeking teenagers," he explained.

Young parents, for instance, would look for theme parks that are suitable for family purpose, which children-friendly rides and interaction with cartoon characters will be relevant in this case.

Young excitement seekers, on the other hand, would look for high intensity experiences.

Cruise holidays

According to Cruise Line International Association, the number of cruise passengers in China has been growing at about 76% YOY for the past four years to reach 2.1 million in 2016. Yet, the number is only representing 0.2% of the total population in China, a significantly lower portion when compared to Australia (5.4%) and the US (3.5%). This indicates potential growth in the industry.

The Chinese market differs from the western market in terms of the target demographics. In the western market, retired and elderly are the most common customer groups for cruises, yet in China a higher portion of customers are at their 20s and 30s.

New customers usually enjoy basic new activities like sightseeing on board on a cruise ship. Returned customers, on the other hand, would start looking for different activities. The cruise operators should cater to the two different groups.

Sports

The Post-80s generation, especially white collar workers, have become active pursuers of fitness in recent years.

However, the report points out that sport infrastructure development is lagging behind. The number of gyms per capita, for example, is significantly lower than more established gym markets: on average, there's two commercial gyms for a million people in China, whereas in South Korea there's 135 commercial gym for a million people.

In short, the Chinese sports leisure market would need more venues and facilities.

Food delivery

Chinese customers no longer see eating out as part of the special occasions like business meals or celebratory occasions. Instead, they have started incorporating it into part of their daily life.

In addition, Chinese customers show a stronger tendency to increase consumption of western food such as steak, BBQ, pasta and pizza at generally higher prices than Chinese food, indicating a trend of customers trading up.

In a response to the latest evidence that Facebook's advertising tools had allowed ads to be targeted at users posting racist comments or hate speech in their profiles, Facebook said it will change how ads can be targeted.

Last week, Facebook temporarily disabled some of its ads tools following a report from ProPublica that slurs and other offensive languages could be used as targeting criteria for advertising. For example, if someone self-identified as a “Jew-hater” or said they studied “how to burn Jews” in their profile, those terms would also show up as potential targeting options for advertisers.

The latest report prompted Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer to directly address the issue in public. On Wednesday, Sandberg expressed in a post on Facebook that she is disgusted by the offensive sentiments or language used, as well as “disappointed that [Facebook's] systems allowed this.”

“Hate has no place on Facebook – and as a Jew, as a mother, and as a human being, I know the damage that can come from hate. The fact that hateful terms were even offered as options was totally inappropriate and a fail on our part. We removed them and when that was not totally effective, we disabled that targeting section in our ad systems,” she said.

She then said the systems have in the past been particularly powerful for small businesses and in order to allow businesses, especially small ones, to find customers who might be interested in their specific products or services, Facebook offered them the ability to "target profile field categories like education and employer."

"People wrote these deeply offensive terms into the education and employer write-in fields and because these terms were used so infrequently, we did not discover this until ProPublica brought it to our attention. We never intended or anticipated this functionality being used this way – and that is on us. And we did not find it ourselves – and that is also on us," she added.

Following this incident, Sandberg also announced that the social media giant is working towards strengthening its ads targeting policies and tools.

First, Facebook will clarify its advertising policies and tighten its enforcement processes, to ensure that content that goes against its community standards cannot be used to target ads. This includes anything that directly attacks people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender or gender identity, or disabilities or diseases.

“Such targeting has always been in violation of our policies and we are taking more steps to enforce that now,” she said.

Secondly, it will add more human review and oversight to its automated processes. After manually reviewing existing targeting options, Facebook said it is reinstating the roughly 5,000 most commonly used targeting terms such as “nurse,” “teacher” or “dentistry” to ensure they meet its community standards. From now on, Facebook said it will have more manual review of new ad targeting options to help prevent offensive terms from appearing.

The company said it would increase its 3,000 employees in the team to the 4,500 members to exclusively review and remove content that violates its community guidelines. Thirdly,

Facebook is now working to create a program in encouraging users to report potential abuses of its ads system that will feedback to the social giant directly.

“We have had success with such programs for our technical systems and we believe we can do something similar with ads,” Sandberg said, adding it hopes these new changes will prevent abuses similar to cases like this going forward. She also said, in cases which Facebook discovers unintended consequences in the future, it will be unrelenting in identifying and fixing them as quickly as possible. Sandberg added,

We have long had a firm policy against hate on Facebook. Our community deserves to have us enforce this policy with deep caution and care.

This is not the first time the social giant encounter sensitive issues about race and its targeting tool. Last year, Facebook was reportedly allowing its advertisers to exclude users based on their ethnicity while posting their ads. The news came after ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism group reported on what it has tested on the system that it said, not only allows advertisers to target users by their interests or background, but also shows an option to exclude a specific group called "Ethnic Affinity” for housing and employment ads. Races listed under the "Ethnic Affinity” group include African Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanic people.

In response to the allegation, Facebook’s spokesman shared with A+M earlier that it believes that multicultural advertising should be a tool for empowerment and takes a strong stand against advertisers misusing its platform. Facebook has since updated the term to “Multicultural affinity” and it no longer allows that classification to be used in ads for credit, housing or employment.

While the company is still working toward mending its relationship with big advertisers after it revealed on some of the flaws over its measurement tools in delivering accurate results, online revenue ads remains one critical income segment for Facebook. The company's majority annual revenue now comes from online ads, which has more than tripled in the past four years to US$27.6 billion in 2016, with its net profit at US$10.2 billion.

Safari's "Intelligent Tracking Prevention", which was rolled out yesterday with the new iOS 11 launch, is now closely monitored by the advertising industry.

The feature has been under spotlight as it restricts ad technology companies from tracking users across sites for ad targeting. After its public reveal last week, six of the leading players in the US advertising industry panned an open letter to Apple, calling it to "rethink its plan to impose its own cookie standards and risk disrupting the valuable digital advertising ecosystem that funds much of today’s digital content and services."

"Apple’s unilateral and heavy-handed approach is bad for consumer choice and bad for the ad-supported online content and services consumers love," the six groups said in the letter.

In which, Apple is completely fine with.

"Ad tracking technology has become so pervasive that it is possible for ad tracking companies to recreate the majority of a person's web browsing history. This information is collected without permission and is used for ad re-targeting, which is how ads follow people around the Internet," it said in a statement to The Loop.

The new feature would not block ads or interfere with legitimate tracking on the sites that people actually click on and visit, at the same time handing users back their right to privacy, Apple added.

Still, similar to companies in the US, most Hong Kong advertising agencies acknowledge that the new feature makes a hurdle for brands and advertisers.

Local agencies: an expected hurdle

"We typically see around 30% of traffic coming from Safari for most of our clients," Saron Leung, head of business development & strategy, iProspect Hong Kong explained.

"For advertisers with products which require a longer consideration lead time before purchase, such as airlines, cruises, insurance and banking, the impact would be more significant."

Ego Lau, general manager, Carat Hong Kong, added that it would be harder to analyse and understand internet user behaviour and pattern over time.

"We've been moving toward personalisation to improve relevancy and connection with audiences, thanks to the rise of technology, but this is doing the reverse," he explained.

"It will be a challenge for all the advertisers and agencies. We will have to take note of this new feature and keep a close eye on the performance change in the coming."

On the other hand, Antony Yiu, head of digital, North Asia, head of search & performance APAC at MEC, thinks the impact will be minimal as many marketers focused on the re-marketing part that is associated with specific audience.

"Many of the ad networks and premium publishers are still selling on a site visitor basis," he explained. "For advanced programmatic partners, there have been a gradual trend to move away from cookie-based audience profiling to more on user ID based."

"In 2015, when Microsoft initially decided to set their then new version of IE with 'Do Not Track' as the default option before their reversal, as well as the implementation of EU cookie laws, I think most publishers and users have seen the days of cookie-based tracking to be limited."

A price rise to come?

Furthermore, Yiu said he would not expect a price rise for the inventory on browsers.

iProspect Hong Kong's Leung agreed, adding he couldn't see advertisers up bidding on their remarketing dramatically within the 24 hours.

"Typically, many advertisers heavy up their re-marketing activity based on most recent cookies. Inventory is typically not an issue with programmatic, hence the biggest challenge remains how to convert a potential customer to a lead or sale within a shorter time-frame."

"I actually see this as a positive challenge and would encourage advertisers to put more focus on stronger remarketing creative or offers."

Marketing has reached out to several brands and agencies to learn their opinions.

MTR Corporation has put its advertising sales agency service for the Hong Kong Section of the Express Rail Link up for tender.

The advertising sales agency will be appointed to undertake the operation, sales and marketing, management of the advertising media in the Hong Kong West Kowloon Station and the Express Rail trains.

The Hong Kong section of the Express Rail Link (XRL) runs from West Kowloon, heading north to the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Boundary, where it connects with the Mainland Section.

The prequalification process for the tender will take place in October 2017. Only qualified companies with the relevant experience and financial capacity will be invited in November 2017 to submit tenders.

Interested companies are requested to express their interest and write to MTR's purchasing manager - property and marketing.

Hitz FM has apologised over a video sketch which had angered some netizens, with some saying it could promote negative perception against the transgender community in Malaysia. Owned by Astro, the popular radio station posted a video on its Facebook yesterday, but has since taken down the controversial content.

In the short sketch, Hitz FM’s morning crew deejays Arnold Loh and RD (Ryan De Alwis) were seen crossing paths and checking out someone, presumably an attractive long-haired lady, but the person turned out to be transgendered. Both DJs were seen vomiting upon seeing her, because they had mistaken the person to be female.

Despite the fact that the video is no longer available on its official pages, savvy internet users have managed to download and repost it on Twitter and Facebook, with some calling it "transphobic" in nature.

“We at Hitz would like to apologise for the said video, and have since removed it," a spokesperson from Hitz FM told A+M.

Transgender activist Nisha Ayub was among those who condemned the said video. Ayub expressed that she's sad to see that the transgender community in Malaysia which already faces much discrimination, potential violence and hate crimes, now having the media jumping on the bandwagon to perpetuate such messages. She added it could be a joke to the radio station, but the "joke could also effect someone else's life".

Below are some of the posts by netizen expressing disappointment, circulating on Twitter:

Distasteful transphobic video by @hitzdotfm

Thank god that the internet does not forget pic.twitter.com/JZCfOnP0cq

Hey @hitzdotfm, perhaps in the time that you replay the same 5 songs for 10 hours you could take a moment to learn some ethics https://t.co/4QjfxnfaDE

— alia ✊

Astro Radio said earlier this year it remains the most popular radio network in Malaysia, with 15.6 million listeners every week accumulatively through its nine brands. This makes up 77.8% of Malaysia's radio-listening audience. It added that Hitz FM, ERA fm, MY fm and THR Raaga are once again the No.1 radio brands in their respective language. The network has gained over 13.4 million social media fans, with its nine radio stations gathering digital listenership of over 17 million streaming sessions.

LinkedIn has unveiled the 2017 Power Profiles in Indonesia. According to LinkedIn, this is the first time professionals from Indonesia joined other LinkedIn Power Profiles from Australia, Singapore, India, and Hong Kong.

In Indonesia, LinkedIn Power Profiles list featured 30 leaders and experts in the categories of marketing, top leaders, under 30 (years old), and human resources. LinkedIn currently has more than eight million members from Indonesia. According to a press statement, the Greater Jakarta Area is amongst the top five most connected places on the platform. This is after global cities such as London, Amsterdam and San Francisco.

The ranking found that more than 60% of Indonesia’s LinkedIn Power Profiles list were professional from fields such as e-commerce, social media and digital services. This includes companies such as Go-Jek, LINE and Tokopedia. 18 Power Profiles were leaders from technology-enabled industries and 11 were women who advanced in their careers as business women or entrepreneurs.

Marketing and advertising

Here are the marketers and agency folk who know how to best market themselves on LinkedIn:

Top leaders

Meanwhile, here are the top leaders in the Indonesia space on LinkedIn:

Under 30

Here are the experts in their respective field who are under 30-years-old.

Human Resources

Meanwhile, here are the professionals who are branding themselves best in the field of human resources.

LinkedIn Power Profiles celebrates members who are not only great at what they do, but have also invested in their professional identity on LinkedIn. This is to become the most viewed professionals in their fields.

Indofood brand Indomie has launched a new spot which celebrates its 45-year history by tracking its local heritage from 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to the present day. The spot was produced by MullenLowe Group Indonesia and Seven Sunday films, shot by local director Mark Toia.

The video follows a young man as he goes through the most important stages of his life. This is from 1972 as a boy, the year where Indomie was launched, to starting his own business and seeing his children grow up.

The young man’s story also overlays with key periods in Indonesian history, such as the construction of landmark building Monas, Indonesia winning the Thomas Cup, the Asian financial crisis and in 2008, when the country was acknowledged as the original creators of Batik.

The commercial also aims to showcase the global expansion of the Indomie brand, especially in Africa, according to a press statement. Watch it here:

The video garnered over 675,000 views, 393,000 reactions and 679 comments at the time of writing.

Credits

Client: PT Indofood CBP Sukses Makmur
Product: Indomie
Agency: MullenLowe Group Indonesia
Production Company: Seven Sunday Films
Director: Mark Toia
DOP: Mark Toia
Executive Producer: Rodney L. Vincent
Producer: Yugi Darmawan
Audio House: Bumble Bee

In today’s world, many marketers are still facing the issue of having a large amount of data collected without much clue on how to best utilise it in targeting consumers. Speaking at the recent Smart Data 2017 event, Yuhui Yao, vice-president and group head of customer analytics and behavioural insights at FWD Singapore, said marketers who faced this problem needed to identify that “sweet spot” using smart data.

Smart data in his context refers to insights gathered as a result of so-called reverse engineering, in transforming your big data to small data. These insights will allow marketers to predict and capitalise on the customer life-time value, and hence, cultivate higher conversion rates.

Quoting Alibaba’s Jack Ma, Yao said in the past it was IT time, but “nowadays it is DT time” – which is essentially the rise of data technology. Companies are also keeping up with this data era, creating infrastructure such as a data lake and data warehouse to collect data from different sources – be it structured or unstructured data.

He said it was imperative for marketers to “transform” big data to small data or smart data which offers meaningful insights to find that sweet spot in acquiring customers. To accurately acquire your customers, Yao said it always has to start with analysing the business problems and identifying what you need to solve.

Where is the sweet spot?

Giving an example of one of the biggest Chinese insurance companies which Yao worked at, the three main factors he looked at to identify a sweet spot in targeting customers were the insurance needs, money and relationships. At FWD, he uses the same set of factors.

On insurance needs – it looks at customers’ life stages by asking questions about their marital status. Also, if the targeted client just had a baby, chances are they may start to think about buying education insurance. Other factors include location, industry, education and event triggers such as accidents or big-life events.

When it comes to money, the company uses different data to gauge how well-to-do a customer is to determine the type of products to sell. Factors to look into include car brands and prices paid. For example, people who drive a Maserati would likely have a different appetite for products than ones driving a Toyota.

The same applies to the type of home and AUM (assets under management), which is the total market value of assets that an investment company or financial institution manages on behalf of an individual. If a consumer invests a lot of money on unit trusts, chances are they may be able to purchase higher premium insurance products as well.

Last, and very importantly, is the relationship factor.

“We have to look for data from so many different angles such as campaign response, how many products they bought from us, contact tenure, number of calls, latest contact time and even the talking time,” Yao said.

All these factors help in gauging the relationship the consumer has with the brand. Despite the challenges brands face when it comes to loyalty, he said talking to customers and showing you care helps.

With the method above, Yao said FWD increased its conversation rate by four times.

“How we can do data enrichment, be it internally or externally, to come up with that sweet spot? This sweet spot essentially points to the most effective customer acquisition for your brand. It all boils down to how you use that data, which is essentially your most valuable asset.”

As a fully digital life and general insurer, FWD Singapore is a relatively new entrant in Singapore. But it has been aggressively trying to capture the market. FWD Insurance started operations in Singapore in April 2016, providing employee benefits insurance to corporate customers.

In September, FWD launched its direct-to-consumer business and currently offers a suite of life and general insurance products, including term life, car, travel, maid, motorcycle and personal accident insurance.

FWD is the insurance business arm of Pacific Century Group (PCG). PCG, established in 1993, is an Asia-based private investment group with interests in financial services, technology, media, telecommunications and real estate.

Besides Singapore, FWD provides life and general insurance in Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines.

According to Singapore GP, the overall attendance at the 2017 Formula 1 Singapore Airlines Singapore Grand Prix was approximately 260,400, a 19% year-on-year increase. The number is higher than the average overall event attendance in its 10-year history. On the first day of the three day event, STB also delighted many race fans with the announcement that it inked a deal to host the FIA Formula 1 World Championship for four more years from 2018 to 2021.

According to Meltwater, which tracked online reactions during the F1 event between September 13 to 18, 76% of reactions to the last-minute deal were positive, while 23% remained neutral. Only 1% reacted negatively to the news. Neil Brennan, area director, Meltwater Japan and South East Asia, said that while the Singapore F1 Race generally creates a "huge amount of interest" across social media, and it was the renegotiated deal by the Singapore Government and the organisers that further bolstered buzz.

Data from Meltwater showed that Singapore Airlines (SIA), the official sponsor of the Grand Prix, accounted for 85% of social media chatter, with sentiment surrounding the brand mostly positive during the F1 period. Positive mentions of SIA peaked at 88% on 14 September, eventually settling at 68% on race day. Other sponsors such as Heineken (9%), Rolex (4%) and DHL (2%) also generated online reactions.

“F1 is a huge opportunity for brands to engage with existing and potential consumers. Not surprisingly, Singapore Airlines has done a tremendous job of the sponsorship deal – but the brand that stood out for its marketing efforts is Heineken, given that its association with the sport only began last year,” Brennan added.

(Read also: Marketers, think beyond the Grand Prix race weekend)

And despite all the online buzz generated during the weekend, there are still some who call the 3-day event a "vanity project" for Singapore. Refuting this claim was Russell Young, managing director, APAC, Sojern, who thinks the F1 Grand Prix is a "brilliant strategic move" by the Singapore to stay ahead of the curve.

"By playing host to a global sport like F1, it has once again firmly cemented its status as a global city. It would certainly be a mistake to underestimate the positive impact the F1 has had on the economy and in helping to put Singapore on the map," he said. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Seah, former media agency veteran, said the F1 Grand Prix has evolved into "a transactional contract rather than a vanity or awareness project, as compared to the past".

"The original aim of getting on the world map has been achieved. The timely change of F1 ownership has lubricated the renewal process," Seah said.

Benefits for business owners

Adi Satria, vice president sales, marketing and distribution for AccorHotels Malaysia, Indonesia & Singapore said the F1 Grand Prix enabled renewed interest in Singapore not only as a tourist destination, but also a sports and entertainment hub. He added that "effective" management of the event for the past 10 years has helped Singapore build a strong reputation.

There is definitely a halo effect that makes travellers from around the region eager to experience or revisit the thrill and excitement that comes with the night race.

Kat Olender, PR and marketing manager at CE LA VI and Peter Draminsky, general manager at Regent Singapore, concurred that the F1 period has brought about an increase in revenue and the number of travellers. In CE LA VI's case, the restaurant saw a jump in revenue from last year's F1 period, but did not share more on what the exact figures were.

According to Olender, CE LA VI is now planning to build strong partnerships and create a focused strategy to target relevant audiences and remain competitive. "Being on top of the ball and releasing information early is also key. You don't want to be caught chasing your tail in the last few weeks leading up to the event," she added.

On the other hand, Regent Singapore has experienced a shift in the type of hotel bookings. "Early on there was definitely a belief that closer to the course was better, but international race fans have discovered that transportation is easy and you can actually enjoy more of Singapore from other locations," Draminsky said.

For the past three years, Regent Singapore has been collaborating with STB through the Grand Prix Season Singapore (GPSS), and Draminsky said it has began working more closely with STB to be more involved in GPSS through initiatives at its Manhattan Bar, such as the Golden Glamour Jazz Night.

Meanwhile, AccorHotels' Satria said it takes a longer term view of the impact of the F1 Grand Prix by looking beyond occupancy and revenue to measure the success of the night race with its business. The hotel also sees this as an opportunity for it to leverage on marketing and customer engagement.

For example, AccorHotels collaborated with FOX Networks to co-create video content and animated vignettes featuring FOX Sports presenter Brendon Julian, exploring Singapore during the F1 weekend. It has also ran contests targeted at its loyalty members in the previous years.

Tips to remain competitive during the F1 Grand Prix period

Sojern's Young stressed that the retailers and F&B companies that will truly stand out are those that have an "intimate" understanding of consumers' needs. He said:

What we've noticed is that consumers are increasingly craving that money-can't-buy experience, which they can then show off about on social media.

He cited the autograph sessions with F1 drivers at Raffles City Shopping Centre this year and photo opportunities with a mock podium as examples, which demonstrated that the mall understood the ways of bringing the experiential element to the fore. Customisation is an aspect that consumers also appreciate, Young said.

"To truly delight customers, it’s not just about slashing prices, but about showing a thoughtfulness geared to the occasion," he said. Young cited limited-edition bespoke cocktails crafted just for the F1 Grand Prix as an example.

If you can offer both of these – an unforgettable, customised experience – you’ve won.

Lawrence Chong, CEO of Consulus, said one way to stay ahead of the game is to consistently reinvent themselves, but merely talking about productivity or introducing robots alone is not enough.

"What makes your experience stand out, what is the emotional bond that you seek to build with a global class of experience seekers becomes critical to thrive in this age of mobility," Chong said. He advised marketers to not be "simplistic" and aim to understand what is truly going on as the retail scene becomes more "sophisticated".