Jumping off the icebreaker of the year, the list this February is another group of brands showcasing innovation and over-the-top creativity. Three out of five are marketing campaigns hailing from Malaysia, with one region-wide; while stories of new leadership appointments, with new hires tasked to take the helm of an Asia-wide team, continue to inspire this month.
Based on Google Analytics from 16 January to15 February, here are the top 5 stories for February.
Top 5: SUBPLACE’s ‘Founder Story’ campaign
When SUBPLACE launched in December, it became the first-of-its-kind, offering an all-in-one marketplace for products on a subscription-based service. In order to encourage merchants to hop on the said business model, it rolled out its ‘Founder story’ campaign.
The unique proposition that SUBPLACE offers pushed it to similarly offer innovative marketing strategies. In the ‘Founder story’ campaign, it roped in the founders and CEOs of five of its partner brands to talk about each of their brand stories and why they chose the subscription model. The brands featured were probiotic drink Yakult, health and wellness retail chain store, Ogawa, and intimate health and aesthetic clinic, Clinic Rui, among others.
SUBPLACE CEO Mak WH shared to MARKETECH APAC, “We invited our biz partners to be storytellers, to talk about why they chose to adopt the subscription model in these challenging times, and what their inspiration for doing so was. Through these short features, we also introduce the subscription business model to viewers and convey how this model differs from other business models through first-hand accounts from business owners,” said Mak.
Top 4: dentsu announces new chief growth officer for CXM
Global media and marketing network dentsu international is continuously bolstering its leadership, unveiling veteran hires from time to time; and for its customer experience management business in APAC, it has appointed digital and tech veteran, Rachel Ooi, as its chief growth officer.
Prior to joining dentsu, Ooi has worked for professional services company Accenture as managing director for Industry X.0, the firms’ digital and tech solutions for businesses; and for multinational conglomerate General Electric (GE) as general manager for the ASEAN enterprise sales, as well as leading GE’s Ecosystem Alliance for the APAC region.
For her role, she will be responsible for bolstering dentsu’s CXM regional footprint through new business and organic growth, working closely with the leads of the network’s Media and Creative divisions on integrated opportunities.
In an exclusive conversation with Ooi, she said that the pandemic has turned the CXM landscape around, where everyone is transiting to a ‘Digital Genesis’ era.
“In the past, database marketing is the way to go, direct marketing is the way to go. [Right now], we’re talking about leveraging not just on technology, data, but also enhanced creativity, working closely with the ecosystem,” noted Ooi.
“Here in dentsu, even Merkle, we aim to achieve [and differentiate] by giving competitive advantage to brands and clients. We do that by having a different perspective, no longer just advertising, marketing in siloes, sales, and commerce; we look at it as a full perspective [on] how we can be a strategic partner to clients.”
Top 3: Creative tech development company Adaptis appoints seasoned business development executive Joven Barceñas as head of growth
Joven Barceñas, former head of advertising and sponsorship sales at Lighthouse Independent Media, the publisher of Singapore-based Marketing Magazine, has been named as head of growth at Adaptis.
Adaptis is a collective of digital development studios strategically located in Europe and Southeast Asia, providing experience-led technical capabilities to global clients.
With the role, Barceñas will be responsible for growing the business of the firm through business development and marketing, as well as improving processes within the function.
Having almost a decade of experience in media, marketing, and technology, Barceñas shared that he chose to further focus on the latter as the industry of technology keeps on evolving and that he aims to be in an environment that presents consistent innovative offerings to improve results for clients.
“In my current role at Adaptis, I was very fortunate to have been working with very talented people in technology development, and I’m learning a lot about UX, UI, and how machine learning or AI works,” he said.
Top 2: Kingdom Digital delivers 300 personalized digital ‘thank you’ cards for its 2020 wrap up
Social and content agency Kingdom Digital in Malaysia exercised its expertise in social media and digital creatives when it went the extra mile for its 2020 year-ender special, delivering and publishing over 300 personalized ‘thank you’ cards, to clients, media partners, and employees.
In the form of 8-second clips, the agency curated a sincere and unique message for each receiver, all posted and published on its Facebook and Instagram Stories.
Its Head of Strategy Edmund Lou let us in on the agency’s conceptualization process for the initiative, sharing that the team decided to push through with it, knowing how digital cards increased in popularity during limited physical contact at the middle of the pandemic.
Lou said the team had to appoint designated writers and make use of a proprietary system, Digital Creative Automation (DCA), in order to pull off the moving banners which required 170 varied visuals and copy.
Top 1: Colgate’s ‘Made for Greatness campaign’
The top story for this month can be considered as a dark horse in its own right–Colgate’s ‘Made for greatness’ campaign which was first released a little while back – in November 2020 – and coming through the ranks, garnering the most views for the month.
The campaign is for its hardworking formula, Colgate Total, where it featured professional climber and Academy Award-winning documentary director, Jimmy Chin. The spot shows Chin climbing an arduous mountain, but succeeding in the end, bringing the message of strength and ‘greatness’ in tandem with the Colgate brand.
In an exclusive conversation, Lyndon Morant, Colgate-Palmolive’s regional marketing director, shared that the theme of greatness came about in answering the question “Why did we make Colgate Total?”
“The answer is that we designed [it] for those people, for whom the highest grade [and] the highest performance in everything that they use makes [a] difference,” he said.
Watch the live report of the top stories for the month on our YouTube channel, where we give you exclusive appearances from the newsmakers themselves.
This is in collaboration with Malaysia-based media company The Full Frontal.
