Growing successful brands during economic volatility

Executive Speakers
Chloe Neo, CEO, Omnicom Media Group
Glenn Tan, Deputy Chairman and Managing Director, Tan Chong International 
Parminder Singh, Chief Commercial & Digital Officer, Mediacorp

Question and Answer

For an SME, is it worth it to invest in Martech? What are some examples of Martech that is proven to be effective?

[Chloe] 
It depends. First thing first, the cost of Martech should not outweigh the returns on Marketing to make proper business sense. You can refer to https://www.lxahub.com/stories/top-5-martech-tools-for-2023 for some cited examples. There are cost effective alternatives to most solutions and depending on the volume of data, not every company needs a CDP, DMP, integrated dashboard etc or the Rolls-Royce offering. There are workarounds.    

Personally, I do advocate SME that has identified a gap and a need for MarTech to invest in a basic full-service marketing platform to augment their marketing capabilities and leverage tech to improve their marketing efficiency, and over time effectiveness, vs building their own.
Why
•    Unless the company has the technical know-how and there is investment committed to L&D for talent upskilling and capability building, it is more viable to maintain a full-service marketing platform vs trying to build and integrate technologies. Especially in the current talent crunch and inflationary business cost environment.
•    Time and resource efficiency in Martech design and development 
•    Progression over perfection, evolve as you go. Most platforms allow for basic customization and/or integration with complementary tech, or you always have the option of migrating to a future-fit platform (sight the T&Cs on migration policy when adopting any data platform or engaging any consultant/agency)  

[Glenn] 
For Singapore’s context, Martech may not be necessary as the volume of leads generated or the effort required to generate the leads may not outweigh the cost of implementation of Martech. However, the only one I would recommend is a Content Management System for webpages, as that would allow SMEs to quickly customize their websites spontaneously instead of relying on a vendor to do it which could take days. 

Given competitors and ourselves are doing similar performance marketing and media buy on almost the same channels, what else can we do to make our brand stand out above the noise and reach out to our consumers to buy our stuff?

[Chloe]
First principles:
•    Share-of-spend does not equate to Share-of-buzz/ Share-of-mind
•    Creativity/innovation when done will result in disproportionate ROI. Doing the same thing produces the same results and most likely, after some time, diminishing result. This is what many marketers experience when they look at performance marketing and optimisation without introducing new thinking and new way of working to achieve cut-through.
•    Use data and research effectively for inspiration and action. 

Without knowing the specific category and having no visibility on the business, campaign and competitive data, it would not be reasonable to make a recommendation on what needs to be done.

What key branding activities should a new business embark on to build the brand and attract customers?

[Chloe]
It depends on the Brand Strategy. What works for one Brand, may not work for another, even if they are in the same category and have similar objectives. The new business would most likely have clear business vision, positioning, market sizing, audience understanding, good competitive knowledge and OKRs. The business strategy and positioning would provide guidance on the Brand strategy which will determine how the Brand should behave, be seen and be felt by the intended consumer. This will in turn inform the branding approach, tactics/activities and measurement framework.

[Glenn]
Once you have defined what your brand stands for and what your product appeal is to consumers, you can effectively communicate these USPs through the use of social media posts and videos that explain how the potential customers can see themselves enjoying your products or services as well as how your products or services enhance their lifestyle.  

Promoting your brand at events and roadshows like pop ups at heartland malls, as well as through product seeding and sponsorships may also give your brand the visibility to the right audience.  
As I shared, KOLs are an interesting way to promote your brand because they are articulate content creators who lend their perspective to how your brand improves their lifestyle. Through this social-first approach to leverage on the lifestyle of KOLs, KOLs drive social conversations with their fans about your product or service. The other benefit is that you don’t need to create the content for them, as they would create the content in a way that suits your brief and their following. You then also have the option to discuss various boosting options of their content on your Social Media pages, which will build your brand’s own social media presence.

There are so much talkability about metaverse but how effective is Metaverse? Any organisation would require huge investment to create and maintain the platform. Is it worth the investment?

[Chloe]
The effectiveness of Metaverse or any marketing platform needs to be framed in the context of the organizational OKR (Objectives and Key Results).

Brands do not have to build a Metaverse to capitalize on the opportunities it brings. There are different ways to experiment, learn and scale through partnerships/collaborations and integration of tech. Here’s a good read to your question https://blog.alleninteractions.com/does-your-brand-need-a-metaverse-strategy. 

[Glenn]
Given the size of Singapore, the metaverse may not be practical or necessary, given the development costs and time. This is especially true if your product is new to the market or an innovation that consumers need to compare, see, touch, feel, experience.  

In our local context, road shows or sampling events are more practical and far less prohibitive in terms of costs and much faster to put together, getting you almost instant results and feedback than the metaverse which usually involves large development costs which are hard to justify in Singapore’s context.  

*Responses are the opinions of our speakers and may or may not reflect Mediacorp’s position on the subject.