Transcript:

Magnus Ekbom, Co Founder and Chief of Strategy at Lazada

I would say is that there has never, I believe in history, been a more important time for great marketing than where we are today. Over the last 10 years, the discussion in the discourse, in the marketing domain and the marketing realm has been very much about online marketing

What happened to the discussion about what really makes great marketing great, what happens about the marketing that really touches peoples hearts touches people’s minds and really are relevant in ways that that creates memories and brand associations that don’t go away and I think that you know marketers have a tremendous challenge to be visible, relevant, and recognized in a very noisy marketplace.

Algorithms can make that distribution more efficient and yes, data is there to help us evaluate but the discussion has become a bit that marketing is about the evaluation; using the data that is available and nothing could be more wrong in the way I look at it. Data is about, sorry, marketing is about connecting with our users with our partners and really telling that story about our brand and the data is is is there to help us guide how to do that in the best way but it’s not the primary purpose and I really hope that that that is the way marketers take.

Hari V Krishnan, CEO & Managing Director of PropertyGuru Group

Marketing one thing that is difficult to understand is digital products, is marketing is as much about the media and communication as it is about the product experience. So we invest a lot in product development and making sure that we can deliver on the promise that our marketing campaign needs. And so for us it is sort of two arms essentially working hand in hand together, the marketing campaign going out and making promises to the consumer and the product actually delivering on those promises.

So for us, I think that it’s critical to understand both phases I think some companies get it wrong by focusing much more on their marketing campaigns and their advertising slogan but not focusing enough on the product experience itself, in the end for digital company brand is really about the product experience

Kaajal Shivdasani, Head of Marketing, SEA & Haagen Dazs Brand Leader, AMEA

I have to say it’s a brand, we’re probably moving away from online versus offline and into a more omnichannel approach And the idea behind that is really to be where our consumers are at all points in the journey
So as you walk a High Street in Singapore or in Malaysia or in Thailand, you might come across one of our shops and that really is a big part of the offline experience But even as you walk into that shop, you could choose to become a member and join our loyalty program and then the engagement moves off online

Most of our marketing dollars are actually spent online, it’s really about being where our consumers are And they’re on social media and so, YouTube and Instagram have become an important part of our marketing mix But really, it’s about what gets us the best reach and efficiency We also experiment with platforms like Spotify and Tiktok, to see how we can learn and grow with our consumers on those platforms.