Traveloka has teamed up with Ensemble Worldwide, IPG Mediabrands Malaysia’s creative agency to create a heart-warming video titled "Wander with Wonder", for Chinese New Year. The film follows a young mother making an honest living as a taxi driver, while raising her young son despite all the challenges life brings forward. All the while she keeps a spark of wanderlust and shows her son the excitement of the world around us.
The campaign is currently running in Malaysia with a tagline that says, “This Chinese New Year, we would love for you to wander the world with someone who means the world to you.”
Ensemble Worldwide and Traveloka are working together on a project basis, and this is their second collaboration together. The film was produced by Reservoir Production. Check out the three minutes and 30 seconds video below:
https://youtu.be/-DfbuNrlRM8
Halif Hamzah, Traveloka’s country manager for Malaysia and Singapore said, “the idea of being able to ‘explore the world with someone who means the world to you’ really resonated with us. Although we promote beautiful destinations and offer great hotel and flight deals, we also genuinely believe that the journey and company one keeps when traveling matters just as much to our audience."
Halif said, it helps by listening to its customers, and keeping a close track of what their needs are - in order to "create stories that resonate with them through content that is authentic, relevant and memorable”.
Executive creative director of Ensemble Worldwide, Chan Woei Hern added, "The campaign came to life through conversation with the clients at an earlier shoot."
"We all fell in love with the idea of wanderlust and family, and started scripting almost immediately, drawing inspiration from our own lives. There is that touch of love put into the film from all involved, including the clients, director and composer of the tune. And you can feel it move and draw you in the moment you set eyes on the piece," Chan said.
Dentsu Aegis Network has appointed Susana Tsui (pictured) as CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network China. Prior to the move, Tsui was the CEO of PHD Asia Pacific. Marketing understands that Tsui's replacement at PHD has not been named. Before PHD, Tsui held senior leadership roles at agencies such as OgilvyOne and Neo@Ogilvy.
In her new role with DAN, she will join the network in China to drive the business and bring the agency brands together.
Teeman was most recently the CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network China, and was its managing director for three years, where he was tasked with driving growth and collaboration within the group. According to the press statement, Teeman has a long history of client leadership and agency management, and in his new role will work with leadership across Southeast Asia to find growth opportunities.
The appointments will be effective in April 2018, with both Tsui and Teeman reporting to Nick Waters, CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific.
“We are delighted to bring Tsui into the group. She’s an energetic and dynamic agency leader, hugely respected across the region. She has a great diversity of experience at media, digital and advertising agencies, well suited to today’s integrated market. Waters added that the network is also fortunate to be able to transfer Teeman to lead its Southeast Asia business. He explained that Teeman is a high calibre leader with a wealth of global experience who will build on its current momentum.
“I’m excited about the possibility of working with the incredibly fast moving and diverse countries in Southeast Asia. The wide range of capabilities and strengths that can be found in our businesses bring huge opportunity for growth. I look forward to working with the teams to bring together those capabilities and provide the best solutions for our clients," Teeman said.
The DAN network has seen a fair bit of shuffle over the past few months. Most recently, Kelvin Walsh, CEO of Carat Asia Pacific, stepped down from the role and left the business. As such, former APAC CEO Sean O’Brien had to step back into Carat as interim CEO.
The network also appointed Duncan Pointer to the role of CEO of Vizeum Asia Pacific, while Kristian Barnes assumed the newly created role of regional chief client officer for DAN. Both appointments come into effect immediately, and they will report to Nick Waters, CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific.
With Chinese New Year (CNY) fast approaching, Google Malaysia has taken a look at what Malaysians are watching on YouTube Malaysia and what they are searching for during 2018 CNY season.
According to Google, about 75% of Malaysians (24 million out of 32 million) own an average of 3.1 internet-connected devices per person, and with more than 1.8 million Chinese households in Malaysia, the internet has become a major staple for entertainment and commerce during CNY celebrations. During the month of January to February, Google noted that YouTube watch time for CNY related videos was on a year-on-year increase of 250%. It also noted that during CNY, watch time on YouTube in Malaysia is slightly stronger in the morning, with the golden hour being from 5pm to 9pm.
On top of that, the internet giant said brands targeting the Malaysian market should create content around topics related to family, friends, funny and food, to connect with the Chinese community. An example would be, a modern twists on classic CNY songs and feature a short snippet daily during the magic moments, for 15 days leading up to Yuan Xiao Je (lantern festival). For brands which are targeting at scale to build awareness for its CNY offerings, Google suggested "the use bumper ads twice a week for a month leading up to CNY."
Check out also on, the top content Malaysians are watching on YouTube during the CNY season this year:
Search on Google during CNY
Meanwhile, Google also observed that CNY's online interest starts to accelerate about five weeks before the celebration, and peaks during CNY week itself. Google's spokesperson said, brands can use this information to intelligent connect on CNY searches, rather than demographics.
One of the CNY search campaign suggestions is a countdown to CNY with personalised, mobile-friendly eCards. Malaysians are observed to be more likely to search for CNY greetings and cards on their mobile devices. Companies here may want to scale campaign across different ad formats for greater reach. Brands can also partner with online grocery sites and offer discounts or cashbacks for CNY purchases.
Searches for supermarket discounts grew twofold during the 2017 CNY.
Malaysians particularly searched for: discount and promotions, product catalogues, online shopping and delivery options, and locations of supermarkets.
It is also critical to maintain brand presence across CNY search topics, so they would be able to "cover top slots when consumers are searching for them." Create hype around CNY-related landing pages via quizzes, food blogs and zodiac charts are some of the top suggestions by Google on this.
FOX Content Labs, FOX Networks Groups’ advertising arm, has appointed Andrew Edelson as APAC head of FOX Content Labs.
Working with the FOX IP network – Fox Entertainment, Fox Sports and National Geographic, Edelson is responsible for leading the company in experimenting with new ways to tell brand stories that attract consumer engagement - leveraging FOX original production capabilities, celebrity talent assets and consumer insights to help brands deliver entertainment to their target audience.
Edelson joins FOX Content Labs with extensive experience after successfully building GroupM/MEC China’s entertainment unit. During his last 10 years in China, he has worked on feature films and TV/web shows such as Iron Man 3, Now You See Me 2, What Women Want, 72 Stories and Road to the Runway (Victoria Secret) for brands including Amazon, Baidu, Darlie, Mercedes-Benz, NBA, P&G, Pernod Ricard, Pfizer, Sands, Uber and Volkswagen.
Prior to MEC, Edelson helped develop DMG Entertainment’s branded content unit though producing original branded films and monetising US studio co-productions as they stormed the China market.
Edelson said, “It’s an honour to join such a household name in entertainment. I look forward to focusing on a few key initiatives - transforming the FOX brand into something more culturally relevant in each local market, leveraging our creative production resources to deliver bespoke branded work for all screens, and capturing data across all our channels to help clients know consumers better. If we can do all this, it won’t feel like advertising, it will feel like the new FOX.”
Mike Rich, executive vice president, sales and content partnerships, FOX Networks Group Asia said, “With Andrew’s wealth of experience and vision for Content Labs, I am confident we will reenergise advertising across the region, and further drive the digital transformation of branded entertainment. The launch of FOX Content Labs and this latest senior hire pave the way to our vision of giving brands a new and fully tailored solution to deliver content their consumers want.”
Audio technology company Bose has appointed a roster of agencies from WPP as its global agency partner covering creative, media, localisation, production and digital marketing.
According to Adweek, the agencies are tipped to be Grey, Hogarth, Wunderman and MediaCom. The report added that WPP was also up against other networks such as Publicis Worldwide and Omnicom Group. Marketing has reached out to Bose for comment, while WPP referred to client for comment.
In a press statement confirming the move, the appointment follows a review and affects markets such as Asia Pacific, Europe and the Americas. The partnership is effective in the Spring of 2018, with Bose declining to give details on the specific agencies chosen, the scope of work and financials.
Nicola Emsley, head of global marketing for Bose, explained that the business has grown in every market it serves, and every category it is in, due to its customer-first approach. As such, an integrated model is the best way to focus on customers, and the right fit for Bose’s plans.
“We’ve learned so much from every agency we’ve worked with over the last several years, and every team we met with during this process had impressive capabilities. But WPP had the best understanding of our brand, with the best network, talent and vision to help us,” Emsley added.
Singapore Airlines (SIA) has made headlines once again. This time it upset consumers by automatically including travel insurance as part of the purchase, unless travellers carefully opt out. According to The Straits Times (ST), this new online booking feature was introduced in 2017 in Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand.
The brand also saw a credit card debacle recently which caused a fair amount of uproar, and eventually caused SIA to scrap the idea of imposing a credit card service fees for selected classes of fare types – namely its Economy Lite fares -a day after being implemented.
However, the negative headlines did not stop SIA from making digital a focal point for 2018. In a New Year message to staff members, chief executive Goh Choon Phong said the airline will push forward with "digital transformation" that will not only be "significantly enhanced", but foster a digital mindset and digital-first culture amongst its employees.
While "digital transformation" is probably one of the most over-used terms in the past few years, to embrace it, is not easy. Jeffrey Seah, partner at Mettle & Salt, and venture partner at INCUVEST and Quest Ventures, said transformation itself means restarting the business with a new mindset and operational structure. If SIA really has transformation in its agenda, it has to "depart from the established topping up mindset" that is prevalent among many government bodies and MNCs.
According to Seah, the "topping up" mindset comes from adopting best practices from other companies (or start-ups) to gain ideas, and add that to the current business model. But it doesn't necessarily mean hitting the restart button as transformation ideally should. Seah said:
For SIA's transformation to work, it requires the company to have the mindset that it is changing the business from the core.
Also, transformation has to occur across the board concurrently rather than by departments, Seah said, adding that all parts must move together, instead of prioritising and focusing only on the top three areas that require change.
The business process needs to be redesigned across all divisions, from the way SIA obtains market information to make decisions, to the speed of decision-making and the way decision-makers are involved in the process. While this might result in some losses and cannibalisation by smaller airline brands in the short-term, the benefits will pay off in the long-run, Seah explained. He added:
SIA is so focused on protecting its revenue that it shies away from having to carry out any initiatives that will require it to lose business in order to see results.
"However, it needs to realise that the whole business will be impacted if it does not change," he said. Transformation, at the end of the day, requires companies to accept the hard truths. While such a move will not be easy for an established company with a strong operational culture such as SIA, the company has the financial girth and muscle to do so.
Agreeing with Seah is Luke Lim, CEO of A.S. Louken, who said that it is important for SIA to move away from its legacy framework and reorganise its workforce according to the user experience of consumers, as the existing organisational structure might not be ideal for a digital branded experience. When it comes to digital transformation, certain sacrifices such as getting out of one's comfort zone and departing from the old service structure have to be made, Lim said.
Reorganisation, preparation, training and retraining, as well as testing the user experience are crucial elements that will enable digital transformation. Depending on what the purpose of the core transformation is, such as establishing a digital touchpoint from online to offline for example, SIA's transformation focus needs to be on the area that will significantly change its customer experience and have it implemented across the board.
Unlike Seah, Lim said that once the focus has been established, the other areas can be progressively transformed.
"Value creation is important when it comes to remaining competitive against disruptors such as budget airlines. SIA needs to think about the type of values it is creating and building that consumers will appreciate," Lim said. He added that continuous innovation is key to making a brand relevant and engaging in the market place, and that "SIA seems to be lacking in the area of innovation for the past few years". He added:
Complacency can be a factor for brand leaders to lose their shine.
Ogilvy & Mather has confirmed that Adam O’Conor, president, global brand management for Ogilvy Asia Pacific, has left the agency in the first week of January.
Marketing understands that O’Conor decided late last year to explore new opportunities, and has yet to decide what his next steps will be.
Meanwhile, the agency is not announcing any replacement, but its co-CEOs for the network in Asia Pacific, Kent Wertime and Chris Reitermann, will be leading its efforts at the time "given (the role's) importance with managing our global client relationships across the region".
O’Conor had more than 20 years with the Ogilvy & Mather network in Europe, Australia and Asia Pacific. Currently stationed in Hong Kong, his position as president of global brand management placed him in charge of more than 20 global brands, and accounted for more than a third of business for the network in Asia Pacific.
Prior to this role, O’Conor was the CEO of the agency's Hong Kong office.
This saw Chong reprising her role as “Leticia Bongnino” from the TV series The Noose, and sharing a story about how the actions of her employer withholding her salary impacted her day to day life.
While likely made with good intentions, the use of Chong’s “Leticia Bongnino” character raised several eyebrows in the ad industry. This was because in the video, Chong was seen playing the role of a Filipino domestic worker with a heavily emphasised accent. Chong’s character has also been known to exhibit certain stereotypes associated with domestic workers, such as having a boyfriend of Bangladeshi descent and also portrayed as someone who congregates at Filipino-frequented areas such as Jollibee, a Filipino fast food brand.
In a conversation with Marketing, Robert Gaxiola, creative director/co-founder of manghamgaxiola mcgarrybowen said that while he liked The Noose, as well as Chong’s work, this is one character that made him feel a little uneasy, despite knowing the show is a satire.
“This is a curious move by MOM. I liked The Noose myself. But I always wondered how public television in Singapore would allow this character to carry on as long as it has. I don't know if we'd see the same kind of character using an Indian, Malay or mainland Chinese person,” Gaxiola explained. He added:
I am very curious how domestic workers feel about her accent and characterisation of a domestic worker from the Philippines. Do they think it is re-enforcing a stereotype or do they think it is funny?
“For arguments sake, what if we see a Chinese person doing a similar act as an Indian in black face with a heavy accent? Is that more or less racist than this character's portrayal of a Filipino? If it isn’t okay to do it to Malays, Indians, and those classified as ‘others’, then it should not be appropriate for any other race. Especially one with so little a voice,” Gaxiola explained.
Also weighing in on the topic was Farrokh Madon, chief creative partner at J Walter Thompson Singapore. Madon explained that while playing off stereotypes is never desirable, it is also one of the most common devices used by stand-up comedians in the world. This includes Chris Rock, Russell Peters, Singapore's own Kumar and a whole lot more. He added:
The important thing to consider is whether this is just for a laugh at someone’s expense. Or is it using humour to get us to rethink our preconceived notions.
For Madon in this case, it is the latter and the message is getting across to large portions of the population. For him, the eyebrow-raising bit isn't the type of humour, but the fact that viewers live in a society where campaigns need to be run to give workers the rights they should have had from day one.
Patrick Low, founder and creative partner at Goodfellas Consultancy, also said that at first glance, he thought the video was a sitcom from Mediacorp. But it turned out to be a video on employers withholding their employees’ salary. He added that given the seriousness of the topic and the fact that most of the domestic helpers are from the Philippines, employing a Chinese comedian to act as a Filipino is not a wise casting decision.
“It’s as insensitive as having a white comedian mimicking an African American highlighting racial inequality. The video would have been more believable and effective if a Filipino actress had been hired instead,” Low explained.
Fiona Bartholomeusz, MD of Formul8, said that while she understands the bigger picture that MOM was putting across, along with using humour to gain better traction, the execution was so stereotyped. It was also quite unnecessary to make her sound like such a simpleton, she explained.
She added that if another race in Singapore was mocked with similar portrayals, there would probably have been a huge outcry because it is insensitive. It would have also come across as picking on a marginalised race.
“It is quite derogatory to have a Singaporean play a stereotypical character with such an exaggerated accent for a national campaign and I was actually quite surprised to learn that it was endorsed by a government entity. MOM need to be cognisant and more self aware of the day and age we happen to exist in,” Bartholomeusz said.
As such, more care needs to be taken in how races are portrayed in the media, more so ones that are integral to many families in Singapore. Even though the video was targeted at employers and not the domestic helpers themselves, it can also perpetuate the myth that most domestic helpers are like Chong’s character.
“I’m pretty sure this video has been seen by the Filipino community and it really does set us back in all our efforts to promote racial integration,” Bartholomeusz added.
Stereotypes such as this are so overdone. It might have worked 20 years ago, but times have changed and we have to recognise that there are many domestic helpers who are well educated and fairly articulate and are only here because of their life circumstances.
Agreeing with Bartholomeusz was Joan Lim, ACD of Wild, who added that while this video may be effective in reaching out to employers, who are the target audience of the spot, the delivery cannot disregard the sentiment of Filipino domestic helpers.
“This is especially when MOM is a governmental body who supports both the employer and the helper. As such, the video needs to consider both audiences as the stereotypical image may not sit well with helpers,” Lim added.
LG Electronics intends to open eight more LG brand stores in Malaysia this year. According to managing director K.T. Kim, the company will collaborate with local partners to open the LG brand outlets, The Star reported.
Kim added that the cost for each new store is approximately RM200,000. He added that the company is aiming for a double-digit percentage growth in sales in Malaysia this year, and that it intends to aggressively promote the sales of its "premium and innovative products". These include TVs, audio-visual home entertainment products and washing machines. According to Kim, LG opened 25 brand shops in Malaysia in 2017.
A+M has reached out to LG for comment.
LG saw a revenue of KRW15,224.1 billion in the third quarter ended 26 October 2017, a 1.2% decline from the previous quarter last year. The company said this can be attributed to continued business risk caused by trade conflict from increasing US trade protectionism, as well as strong price competition risk from entering the year-end peak season. It aims to increase premium product sales through "differentiating" marketing activities, as well as gain competitiveness in its B2B business by leveraging its strengths in its B2C business.
FCB Malaysia is changing ownership and transforming into a Malaysian-first agency. The agency is now owned fully in an equal three-way partnership between Ong Shi-Ping, chief creative officer; Liew Kok Heng, CFO and Shaun Tay, CEO. Tay confirmed to A+M that it is a full buyout and the senior management team on ground will remain unchanged.
In an exclusive interview with A+M, CEO Tay said that despite the buyout, the agency remains “very much a part of the FCB Worldwide network” as an affiliate business partner. The new structure, he explained, gives the agency the ability to operate quickly and efficiently based on market conditions. However, being an affiliate of the FCB Worldwide brand, the agency will continue to have access to a pool of global clients, agency tools and resources.
“The result is that we really are a best-of-both-worlds agency - a locally focused boutique agency with the ability to call on the power and muscle of a network giant,” he said.
“We’re still FCB Kuala Lumpur and we still identify with the greater FCB creative vision of being ‘Never Finished’,” Tay added. He explained that the equal split was also a vital aspect of the new found independence, as it represents the “real dynamics of running a creative business where people with complimentary skill sets align” for a positive outcome.
“I’m very conscious of the limitations to my own ability and know that the best chance of success for the agency is to have its most experienced talents fully invested in a shared goal,” he added.
Future plans
As part of its long-term strategy, the agency will now allow additional members of the senior team to take a stake in the business. While it is currently not hiring any new members and stabilising its 40-member team, a next generation of the leadership is also being established with the promotion of Syed Ferohaizal to head of creative and Jamie Tan to operations director, to join Natasha Aziz, head of account management and LiLian Hor, head of digital.
Tay said the move to independence was spurred by the difficult year the agency had in 2016, which necessitated a major restructuring of the agency.
“We devised an ambitious turnaround plan that we were confident of pulling it off, but this meant us making a commitment to the future of the agency, and its people. We had to ‘walk the walk’ and not just talk glibly about it,” he added. As such, last year the agency saw 11 new client wins including RHB Bank, Motorola Asia Pacific and TARH’s Desaru Coast. When asked for his vision for the future, Tay said creativity has always been its focus and will continue to be its future.
“This is our focus and being locally owned allows our people to focus on doing great work this without the distraction or fear. Call it old fashioned and simplistic, but that’s why I joined advertising - to create ideas that influence people,” he added.
State of advertising in Malaysia
He added that the Malaysian advertising agencies, at the end of the day, needs to clients grow their business.
“ We’re getting distracted from what really matters. We’re spending too much time on gimmicks, publicity stunts and building personal profiles. Yes those can be fun for a while but we should be focusing on the work and adding real value to our client’s business, that’s the business. Everything else is out-of-scope,” he added. Tay also said the drive for creativity is also a major reason why the agency shifted its base of operations to Common Ground at TTDI.
"Working alongside other like-minded creative people with entrepreneurial spirits is perfect environment to incubate great ideas. After all, one might say we’re a ’start-up’ ourselves," he added.
IPG Mediabrands has announced the appointment of Dr Grace Liu as the incoming CEO of Reprise, Mediabrands’ digital experience agency.
Liu most recently served as CEO of Isobar China and will be joining Reprise Australia at a date to be fixed in the near term, the press release said.
Liu has led Isobar China’s development of full-service digital marketing programs that encompass digital and social media, content, e-commerce, customer experience and digital creativity. Her more recent focus has been on helping clients achieve higher standards of optimisation in data and technology.
“Grace’s acceptance of our offer to be CEO of Reprise Australia represents a step-change in our digital leadership and vision for the Reprise business, its clients and the broader Mediabrands group,” said Danny Bass, IPG Mediabrands Australia CEO. “She has some of the strongest credentials I have seen as a driver of engagement across digital channels and her skills will further energise our very successful Reprise business.”
Prior to Isobar, Liu was Chief Executive Officer of Kantar TNS China where her focus was across cultural integration, implementation of new communications practises, corporate repositioning and business transformation focused on technology, social, mobile and big data programs.
Liu said, “Mediabrands Australia has been through a massive transition in 2017. In meeting with the group’s senior management, I have been so impressed by the focus on how client success is implemented and measured. It’s an impressive operation and I am so keen to get started with the Reprise team. Watch this space!”
Dr Liu has a Doctor of Philosophy (Economics) from the Imperial College of London that focused on corporate entrepreneurship, innovation and new technology.
While M&A in the marketing services industry was generally flat year on year, 2017 saw significant shifts beyond the agency groups in terms of acquisition volume. Based on R3’s analysis, Consulting Firms such as Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, KPMG and McKinsey invested US$1.2b in agency acquisitions in 2017, a 134% increase on 2016.
By contrast, agency holding groups including WPP, Dentsu, Omnicom, Interpublic and Publicis declined by 46% to US$1.8b.
According to R3, spread throughout the year was an increasing number of unconventional buyers, outside the traditional acquirers.
"From Snap Inc. to the New York Times to boutique Private Equity groups, this was truly a year where investment ideas could come from anywhere," said the report. Meanwhile, according to Greg Paull, principal of R3, it’s clear that the consulting firms have seen the opportunities and are more willing than ever to open their wallets for them. Paull added that Accenture alone invested more in 2017 on acquiring agency assets than WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic and Dentsu combined – most of who had depressed stock value through the year.
R3 assessed 401 deals across the year in the marketing communications space, just a slight increase on 2016’s 398 deals. Overall, US$13.5b of M&A funds were invested in these deals, a 3% decrease on the previous year.
By region, Europe saw the largest increase (34%) with US$3.7b in deals despite the decrease in the overall number. R3 said that all of the top ten Europe deals involved at least US$100m in transaction value each as WPP, Dentsu and some non-traditional acquirers took advantage of slower business conditions to make some significant moves. Both Asia (-34%) and Latin America (-45%) declined in terms of deal size through 2017, led mostly by China (-77%) where there were just 16 deals completed.
“China has become a ‘wait and see’ situation for a lot of the global holding companies – given that most of the sales transacted this year involves local firms,” said Paull. “There’s no shortage of interest, though and we would expect this to pick up through 2018,” he added. The US continued to lead the other regions, on both the volume (US$6.6b) and number of deals (202) through the year, including Williams Lea Tag, Turn and Rocketfuel.
“With the growth of the duopoly, the issue for Adtech firms is really fight or flight – so it won’t surprising to see a flurry of more M&A in this space in 2018,” said Paull. The report also said 2017 was a strong year for digital and digital service acquisitions, with these two categories representing US$6b combined in value over 2017. The creative number was bolstered by Bain Capital’s December acquisition of ADK Japan.
“As marketers are grappling internally with true digital transformation, they will continue to look towards agencies for support in this area,” said Paull.
Khazanah managing director Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar last week said, it is confident the national carrier Malaysia Airlines Berhad (MAB) will profitable by end of 2019. This is despite the fact that the airline is already behind the schedule outlined in the five-year 12 point MAS Recovery Plan (MRP), according to New Straits Times.
Azman said the delay of some "six to 12 months of the plan" was due to external factors beyond its control, in which he blamed on the weakened ringgit and oil price fluctuations. He added that Malaysia Airlines is on track to be a listed entity by 2020 as outlined in the MRP unveiled in August 2014.
Azman said the struggling airline is also expected to "break-even by the end of 2018, if not, latest by first half 2019 before becoming profitable by the end of 2019," adding its end goal is not just profitability, but "sustainable profitability." The first half of MRP saw the airline trying to fix its most pressing issues, which include a cost cutting measure in downsizing staff and cutting multiple routes. The airline is now in the second half of the MRP, which it focuses on "rebuilding the brand, increasing the capacity and gaining loyalty".
Just today, news emerged that the airline is on a serious mode in tapping the Muslim pilgrims market. MAS’s Airbus SE A380s are reportedly flying full on trial services taking Muslim pilgrims to Saudi Arabia, with the airline saying it will establish the operation as a new division as early as the end of this year, according to New Straits Times.
While the brand is gung-ho about its recovery plans, Lawrence Chong, CEO of Consulus said beyond cost cutting and rationalisation of routes, Malaysia Airlines needs to define itself more clearly in terms of business model, service concepts and what unique value do they bring to customers.
As of now, Chong said Malaysia Airlines as an airline brand is still not very clear about its differentiation.
"This is a very competitive period in the airline business. Even strong brands are under pressure, so MAS has to be willing to think and act differently or else the trend is consolidation," Chong said. Agreeing with Chong is Lars Voedisch, principal consultant and managing director of PRecious Communications, who said it's critical to question, "What does the brand actually stand for?"
Voedisch said, in the past year, customers saw that routes and frequencies were cut and the airline was competing on low prices. "But what will Malaysia Airlines bring to a highly contested airline market in Asia? The domestic audience will not be sufficient to reach profitability," he said.
Bringing Malaysia Airlines back on track is a big task, especially considering that it went through multiple CEO changes in the past years. Despite getting its own business fundamentals right in a challenging environment, Voedisch said, building trust and confidence in the brand will be absolutely crucial. This applies to its own employees, as well as partners and first and foremost current, past and potential future customers.
For Simon Bell, managing director of FITCH Singapore, the airline's service is one that should not be forgotten, apart of the key brand focus of Malaysia Airlines itself.
On the road to profitability, Bell said, "Malaysia Airlines brand must be a key focus. New brands such as Uber and Airbnb get this, by investing in and forever innovating services for its audiences. The result is creating great experiences that consumers value. It’s no different for heritage brands such as Malaysia Airlines."
He added, if Malaysia Airlines begins by challenging every aspect of its service, to reveal a truly better experience, it would be a massive "leg-up" for the brand.
Malaysia Airlines has been in the spotlight a significant amount in recent times due to a leadership change which saw Captain Izham Ismail come on board late October last year, just a few days after news of its former CEO Peter Bellew’s departure broke on Deepavali eve. Branding players had then said that it "take some time to determine what the greater impact on the brand will be".
To reclaim its brand, MAS has made conscious efforts and partnered with the likes of Amadeus Customer Experience Management to better understand its customers and deliver highly personalised offers across all touchpoints. In a statement, its new group CEO Captain Izham acknowledged that technology offers the airline the ability to "truly delight our customers, to know them better than ever before, and be able to propose to them the right offers at the right time through the right touchpoint, all along their journey."
Captain Izham said that collaboration will be an important differentiating factor for Malaysia Airlines. In August last year, Malaysia Airlines also launched its first in-house Innovation Lab, or iSpace, as the airline entered the third phase of its digital transformation, towards becoming the digital airline.
But problems for the airline still persist. Last Friday, it issued a statement apologising for an emergency landing in the Australian town of Alice Springs due to engine issues.
Publicis Groupe has appointed former vice chairman and global chief creative officer of R/GA Nick Law (pictured), as chief creative officer of Publicis Groupe and president of Publicis Communications. His appointment is effective May 2018, and he will report directly to Arthur Sadoun, chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe.
He will be responsible for leveraging, curating and nurturing the Groupe's creative talent, as well as harness the power of data and technology to deliver the most relevant creative solutions to clients, brands and businesses. Law will play a crucial role in forming and accelerating the Groupe's transformation to a platform that connects, empowers and showcases the creative potential of Publicis employees.
As president of Publicis Communications, Law will be responsible for formulating a "unified creative ethos" across the Groupe's creative brands, including Leo Burnett, Saatchi and Saatchi, Publicis Worldwide and BBH.
In his previous role, Law was responsible for R/GA's strategic and creative vision. He led a diverse group of creatives including designers, creative technologists, copywriters and interaction designers. Law joined R/GA since 2001 and has worked with clients such as Nike, Beats by Dre, Samsung, IBM, HBO, Google and Johnson & Johnson.
“Throughout his career, he has delivered world-class work that builds on what we believe all our clients need: the alchemy of creativity and tech. This modernity in ideas, combined with his obvious leadership skills, make Law the perfect person to play such a pivotal role in our Groupe. His partnership will be a game-changer in our journey to lead the change in our industry,” Sadoun said.
“I am incredibly grateful for all Law has done for R/GA, our clients, and our staff over the past 17 years. Among many things, he leaves a legacy of developing some of the best talent in the industry. It is that talent, spread across the entire R/GA network, that will continue to push boundaries and produce award-winning work designed to drive our client’s businesses forward," founder, chairman and CEO of R/GA Bob Greenberg said.
Iflix is launching a new dedicated iflix Kids Channel which will feature content from Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr, Disney-Pixar Animation Studios and Disney.
iflix Group Chief Content Officer, Sean Carey said: “Kids is a core segment we are focusing on this 2018. User metrics reveals increasing and sustained engagement. We have seen tremendous growth in usage stats, with a 74% increase in session times on Kids content including a 630% jump in minutes viewed in 2017 compared to 2016. We are thrilled that both our young and young-at-heart users can now easily discover and enjoy some of the world’s best studios, brands and titles for Kids – unscheduled, and on-demand.”
Now available to over one billion consumers across 25 territories throughout Asia, the Middle East and Africa, iflix has established itself as a major player in video streaming.
The BAT companies — Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent — combined will account for the lions' share of programmatic expenditures in China, eMarketer predicts.
By the end of 2019, eMarketer predicts programmatic digital display ad spending in China will reach US$29.61 billion, representing 69% of total digital display ad spending in the country.
Thanks to the high smartphone penetration in China, mobile will continue to be a major growth driver of programmatic spend.
“eMarketer raised its estimates on programmatic ad spend in China, thanks to the growing influence of the BAT companies,” said Shelleen Shum, senior forecasting analyst at eMarketer.
While over 60% of digital advertising spend already goes to BAT, their influence on the programmatic market is even more dramatic.
“Despite the relatively sophisticated ad buying technology on the BAT platforms, the players outside the big three remain few and undeveloped. China's programmatic market still remains behind the US and the UK as BAT's outsized influence stymies the growth of a competitive ad tech ecosystem.”
Only 5% of media and advertising professionals trust commercial research studies on digital advertising to be of good quality. Commercial research covers all research activities directly or indirectly funded by for-profit organisations such as adtech companies, industry associations and media sellers and buyers.
According to research from Inskin Media and Research Now, which surveyed 220 media industry professionals online in UK, between August and December 2017, commercial research projects are viewed by 23% of respondents to be "nothing but marketing/sales tools".
Meanwhile, 19% consider these projects to be "largely useless" due to quality issues.
More than half (57%) of industry professionals surveyed cited the influence of the sales agenda of the company owning the research to be the biggest obstacle when it comes to producing good research.
Respondents listed research agencies as producers of highest quality research, scoring them 4 out of 5.
This was followed by industry associations (3.9 out of 5) and measurement/ad validation vendors (3.6 out of 5). Media sellers (3.1 out of 5), on the other hand, came in last in terms of the perceived quality of research. The quality and detail of the methodology (61%), as well as the relevance to current industry issues (54%) were the top most important factors in assessing the research's validity.
Face-to-face presentations (56%), infographics (45%) and trade magazines/blog posts (37%) were the top three methods industry professionals preferred to hear research insights from. Meanwhile, webinars (14%) were the least favourite method.
Additionally, a "seal of approval" awarded by an independent industry body is viewed by 71% of respondents as the most effective way to improve how people perceive digital advertising research. Having a detailed methodology explanation for every study (70%) was seen as the second most effective way.
According to Inskin Media's chief commercial officer Steve Doyle, the industry has been inundated with digital advertising studies over the past decade, with most of them being used as a "Trojan horse" to promote a sales agenda.
This has also created the problem of undermining authentic findings by a company that has commercial interest in proving the research it has done. Hence, the results might be mistakenly ignored when it comes to improving strategy and planning, Doyle said.
“The rise of online survey platforms means anyone with a few hundred quid can produce a survey but hopefully the industry will start demanding far more rigour and detail about the methodology, as well as taking into greater account the agenda of the company producing it,” Doyle said.
Research Now SSI was commissioned by Inskin Media to understand the attitudes of advertising and media professionals towards the quality of commercial research studies produced on online advertising.
Spirits company Bacardi has fully acquired Patron Spirits International and its ultra-premium tequila brand PATRON for US$5.1 billion, a decade after it first acquired a minority stake in the company. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2018.
Patron's leadership team, including CEO Edward Brown, COO David R. Wilson and CMO Lee Applbaum will continue in their roles. Co-founder of Patron John Paul DeJoria will serve as the company's ambassador in the role of chairman emeritus, following the closing of the deal. He aims to collaborate with Bacardi to further advance both company's dedication to philanthropic projects and environmental consciousness.
Marketing has reached out to Bacardi and Patron for more comments.
According to CEO of Bacardi Mahesh Madhavan, adding Patron to the Bacardi portfolio creates a "tremendous opportunity" for the brand outside of the US. Madhavan added that Bacardi's international distribution network will help grow the scale of Patron worldwide.
In 2015, Bacardi made a major rejig to its marketing team by scrapping the global CMO role and establishing Centres of Excellence (CoEs) in Europe and North America. Each of the markets is currently headed by a CMO who reports to Bacardi's CEO. As a result, former global CMO Dima Ivanov departed the company six months into his role.
Last year, Bacardi was among 11 global companies in the alcohol and beverage industry that signed an agreement to further commit in developing new robust and responsible marketing standards for digital channels. Among the list of brands include Asahi, Carlsberg, Diageo, Heineken and Pernod Ricard.
Australian-born American media mogul Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp and executive co-chairman of 21st Century Fox, has issued a statement where he weighs in on the ongoing discussion about the role of social media and how it has changed the media landscape.
Soon after Facebook announced big changes to the Newsfeed, which would essentially show less content from brands and publishers and more content from friends, and Facebook's desire to feature 'trusted' media sources to combat fake news, Murdoch expressed a number of concerns over the strategy - not least that publishers are not getting paid for content.
In the statement, Murdoch addresses Google and Facebook, and how the internet giants "have popularised scurrilous news sources through algorithms that are profitable for these platforms but inherently unreliable." Moreover, he outlines how the remedies these companies have suggested are inherently not good enough.
"There has been much discussion about subscription models but I have yet to see a proposal that truly recognises the investment in and the social value of professional journalism," the statement reads. And in a time where Facebook has faced serious charges of allowing (and even profiting off) the promotion of dissent and division, particularly in the USA, through its lax handling of fake news, he argues that trusted media sources are more important than ever.
Moreover, some 62% of American readers primarily get their news from Facebook and other social media platforms, with 18% doing so often, according to a study by Pew Research in 2016.
The solution? Pay publishers for their efforts and help sustain the 'traditional' model.
"The time has come to consider a different route. If Facebook wants to recognise ‘trusted’ publishers then it should pay those publishers a carriage fee similar to the model adopted by cable companies. The publishers are obviously enhancing the value and integrity of Facebook through their news and content but are not being adequately rewarded for those services. Carriage payments would have a minor impact on Facebook’s profits but a major impact on the prospects for publishers and journalists,” he concludes.
While the proposed solution looks elegant on paper, there are a number of hurdles to overcome. For starters, determining who exactly qualifies as a 'trusted' news source would be a difficult task, with many likely disagreeing with whichever media outlets get picked.
Additionally, in the traditional cable model viewers decide what they want to view, and pay substantial fees to access that content - which puts cable companies in a much better position to 'share' the revenue with publishers and channels, while Facebook's users are monetised more passively through ads - and those users are passively monetised in much the same way once they visit the publisher's websites.
The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) and Grab have signed a three-year memorandum of understanding (MOU). The partnership aims to improve the travel experience for tourists and includes a range of initiatives that will be rolled out in phases. This will cover the areas of cashless payments, mobility preferences and access to travel information.
Firstly, STB will roll out GrabPay, Grab’s payments offering, to places frequented by tourists such as hawker centres, dining establishments, cultural and lifestyle precincts, shopping centres and tourist attractions. Both parties will also look to raise the adoption of cashless payments in a targeted manner by exchanging insights on visitor preferences. Through the move, tourists will be able to experience the hotspots without exchanging currencies and redeem GrabRewards points through the Grab app.
Secondly, Grab and STB will launch a joint study aimed at understanding which transport modes tourists prefer when travelling to Singapore. This is to help both Grab and STB to tailor offerings that are more relevant and enhance the overall visitor experience. Thirdly, Grab will also share its booking application programme interface (APIs) in phases through STB's Tourism Information & Services Hub (TIH) in a bid to facilitate easier access to travel information. This will allow certain tourism businesses to integrate Grab tools into their own digital platforms, with the aim of enabling visitors to better plan travel routes. This includes providing easier access to information about estimated fares and waiting times.
Lastly, through the partnership, Grab will offer mobility solutions through its services, targeted at business travellers. This will range from services such as GrabCoach to GrabCar Premium, which will be accessible to STB's partners in the meetings, incentive travel, conventions and exhibitions (MICE) industry in Singapore.
"STB brings onboard its deep understanding of tourism trends, patterns and behaviours in Singapore. Our collaboration with STB will help ensure that locals and visitors alike can enjoy the same quality experience as they explore our city using the Grab app," Lim Kell Jay (pictured right), head of Grab Singapore.
Quek Choon Yang, chief technology officer, Singapore Tourism Board, said that its collaboration with Grab extends beyond transportation to include sharing of consumer intelligence data and spearheading innovation and technological initiatives.
“With Grab's extensive presence in the Southeast Asian region, which contributes a very large share of our visitors, we are confident of reaching a sizable audience through the multi-faceted touch points offered through the Grab app," Quek added.
