Publicis One Malaysia hands Andrew Leong growth officer role

Publicis One has appointed Andrew Leong (pictured) to the newly-created role of growth officer for media in Malaysia.Leong, who was previously in the role of managing partner for Arc Worldwide, brings over 20 years of experience in communications to oversee the media agency brands including Starcom, Blue 449, Spark Foundry and Performics under Publicis One umbrella in Malaysia.“Leong has a proven track record in the industry with experience ranging from creative brand strategy to media engagement strategy and we are truly delighted on his move to this new role. His professional expertise and business accomplishments will bring valuable insights to our organisation and the media strategies in the integrated nature of our business,” said Tan Kien Eng, CEO of Publicis One Malaysia.“There is no better time than now to focus on media and communications planning as the worlds of media and creativity are rapidly converging. This is a great opportunity to fuse the world-class creativity of Leo Burnett, Publicis and Saatchi & Saatchi Arachnid, with the media planning and buying capabilities of our media agencies,” said Leong.Commenting on the future of the Malaysia media scene, Leong said the world of media is undergoing 5 key trends.Media Transformation: the world of media and communications planning is constantly changing with new digital/ social platforms and touch points emerging constantly. Consumers’ behaviour and daily routine are also changing as they adopt and adapt to new technology. For example, video-on-demand has reached 5.8% penetration in Malaysia, while mobile video viewing has surpassed video viewing on PCs. As such, media agencies need to stay one step ahead in order to target them more effectively and with more precision.Synergizing Creative with Media: In order to maximise the communication opportunities brands have with consumers, we need to utilise the best combination of creativity and media planning talents to help achieve the most impact. Working in silos is obsolete in today’s world, and marketers need unified and integrated teams to come up with effective messaging at the right time, to the right person. For example, marketers have had to work through many rounds of alignment between their creative and media teams, when a single unified creative-media team is more agile and responsive.Targeting with Data & Technology: Communications teams now have an integral data scientist or analyst on board in order to tap into the wealth of first party to third party data available. Utilising the data in a relevant and timely manner makes the messaging that much more impactful and targeted, rather than it getting lost in the clutter. For example, programmatic media allows for precision targeting of potential customers via custom audiences and look-a-like audiences created with data from Google and Facebook. Different audiences can be created based on whether the person viewed or interacted with your ad, or not, and can be re-targeted with a different message.Shift from Awareness to Conversion: Nowadays, the path to purchase is not linear, nor does it follow a time pattern. Consumers can jump from awareness to purchase with a single click. E-commerce and mobile commerce strategy and execution needs to be now fundamentally linked to online communications plans, paired with an impactful call to action.Social platforms are now de facto CRM platforms: Marketers today, achieve many of the same functions as their own first party database, just by using Facebook. Most marketers currently only employ social listening to determine brand sentiments but by using social tracking tools, one can mine data such as fan duplication across different brand pages, as well as track the brand’s performance over a variety of social channels such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and even LinkedIn.