Grey next to launch SEA commerce outfit with Richa Kapse at helm

Grey is bringing together its retail and commerce units across Southeast Asia to form Grey Commerce Collective (Grey CoCo) SEA which will be led by Richa Kapse, who reports to Grey Singapore CEO Konstantin Popovic.

According to Kapse, the name "Collective" was chosen by design because it is truly about collaboration across the Grey network. The new commerce outfit includes some of its specialised agencies such as retail interactivity agency Vinyl-I in Seoul, as well as its social and data experts in Singapore. Grey CoCo has been in the works since Jun 2019, with all the individual commerce and shopper units of nine countries working on forming a unit to collaborate on expertise and talent. With the launch, the unit will now expand its offering to eCommerce and social commerce.

She added that over the past year, the agency has seen a growing demand from clients to coordinate the in-store design and communication with complimentary social media assets. "Increasingly, we see the shoppers are expecting brands to have the same storyline across social, eCommerce and physical retail channels. This has prompted us to build a robust social commerce offering here in Singapore," he added.

As a sign of its commerce expertise, Grey recently tied up with Olay for a new campaign done in partnership with Shopee. The campaign targeted Millennial women across key Southeast Asia markets using bite-sized content spread out like a mini series. The campaign also aimed to bring about the engaging and innovative shopping experience to consumers, who are also given access to exclusive promotions during Shopee's Super Brand Day.

Additionally, Grey also partnered with MAC earlier this year for a holistic campaign titled "Spotlight ready", ranging from digital and social content, eCommerce and physical retail store. "Spotlight Ready" was the spring campaign for the Asia Pacific restage of MAC's Lightful C. range across Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Japan and South Korea. The campaign was done by Grey Singapore while the retail, event and eCommerce design was specifically done by Grey Shopper, now known as Grey CoCo. It ran from February to May 2020.

Grey is the latest agency to launch its commerce offering, with Dentsu Singapore most recently unveiling its commerce solution to take ideas from PowerPoint to profits. Last month, Reprise also pushed out Reprise Commerce which combines the agency's traditional eCommerce media capabilities with the retail expertise it has been adding over the past year. Meanwhile earlier in October, Omnicom Media Group also launched its end-to-end commerce, Transact, in Asia Pacific to help brands pivot their business by improving their digital availability as well as focusing on new retail opportunities and eCommerce channels.

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Photo courtesy: 123RF

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