VMLY&R COMMERCE unveils insights hub Muslim Lab

VMLY&R COMMERCE has launched Muslim Lab, a new data and insights hub which aims to help brands explore and understand the needs, aspirations, and behaviours of Muslim consumers with a focus on Malaysia and Indonesia. The Muslim Lab aims to provide brands in Southeast Asia with a stronger understanding of the countries’ 250 million strong Islamic communities, across all market segments and Halal product categories.

Filipe Lampreia (pictured), chief strategic officer, Malaysia and Indonesia is overseeing the project with the help of Saurabh Dahiya, VMLY&R head of planning Indonesia and under the guidance of Hari Ramanthan, VMLY&R chief strategy officer, Asia. According to Lampreia, Muslim Lab is part of the VMLY&R & VMLY&R Commerce Malaysia and Indonesia strategy department to uncover data and insights. However, the agency as a whole can tap on it to provide new campaigns, unique ideas, and efficient business solutions for clients.

According to VMLY&R COMMERCE, the new hub unifies data from across multiple sources and partners to uncover intelligence and insights across all cultural touchpoints, spanning values, lifestyle, commerce and media behaviours. It hopes that clients will gain access to build meaningful strategies, gaining valuable insight and understanding around Muslim consumers’ personal shopping habits, media channel consumption, social and entertainment preferences, among others.

Leveraging the findings from the Muslim Lab, the agency has piloted campaigns for brands including Malaysian satellite television provider Astro and Southeast Asia's integrated car e-commerce platform Carsome. "Muslim Lab is available to all of our clients, but we foresee that it will play a big role for Heinz ABC Indonesia in uncovering data and insights around Muslim families, Muslim mums, cooking, Halal ingredients and meal occasions," Lampreia added.

According to him, brands need to reset their priorities and shift from brand centricity to human centricity. "It’s not about how people need to adapt to a brand, but how a brand needs to adapt to people. Brands want to be more relevant to their consumers but lack the knowledge," he explained. Unlike other research studies on behaviour, Lampreia said Muslim Lab is more interested in shopping habits because that is how creative commerce connects with brand experience and customer experience to complete the entire consumer funnel.  

It is currently concluding a study looking into how the pandemic has impacted behaviours. According to him, some of these behaviours will remain post-COVID, including behaviours around rituals, the use of tech, shopping habits, and sentiment around human connections.

Kenni Loh, CEO, Malaysia and Indonesia said that Muslim consumer habits are vast and diverse, due to differing cultures, geography, income and urban/rural living. “With Muslim Lab, brands will be able to have quality data that leads to unique insights, and with unique insights come great opportunities for brands to better connect their messaging across their connected commerce channels,” he added.

Loh was recently promoted to CEO for VMLY&R’s Malaysia and Indonesia offices last month. Mudit Trivedi, MD of VMLY&R Indonesia now reports to Loh while Eric Ho, MD of VMLY&R Malaysia will move to VMLY&R Singapore to take on a new role as client success director. Meanwhile, the agency also appointed Chan Woei Hern last December as ECD of Malaysia and Southeast Asia following the merger between Geometry and VMLY&R to form VMLY&R COMMERCE in November. The agency is said to be central to the VMLY&R network’s total brand and customer experience offering, and will help brands grow by unifying client strategies around commerce.

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