Abstract

Asia (including China, Japan and South Korea) is America’s largest trade market both with respect to sourcing from as well serving the Asian markets. As the recently negotiated Transpacific Partnership (TPP) is unlikely to be implemented, there will be alternative trade policy which will transform international trade and investment between the United States and Asia. Singapore has a number of comparative advantages (location, infrastructure, capital, education and good governance) which will benefit both private and state-owned enterprises as the realignment of trade and investment between Asia and America takes place. This includes public-private partnerships in large scale infrastructure projects, private equity investment and relocation of Asia Pacific headquarters to Singapore.

Sustainability will become the competitive advantage for this century. As companies promote quality among its stakeholders such as suppliers and customers, sustainability will be promoted among nine different stakeholders including the community, government, investors and the press. In his recently published book Sustainability Edge: How to Drive Top Line Growth with Triple Bottom Line Thinking (with Suhas Apte), Professor Jagdish Sheth will share his research findings of how world class companies engage their stakeholders to embrace sustainability.

Past Event Media

KEY POINTS

• Common trends
• Young people have more faith in peer opinions nowadays than corporate speak. As a marketer you cannot be directive anymore.
• The power of social media in China helps people to share with each other which doctors are good. Chinese doctors have low base pay, and they get a cut of pharmaceutical receipts.
• Apple promoters are not compensated by sales, but by net promoter score. They try to maximize the customer experience in the store. It doesn’t matter if people actually buy in the store or online.
• Word of mouth referrals for doctors are also important in India. So a lot of Indian doctors are putting patients on treatment far too early because they can make money from diagnostics.
• In e-commerce, the availability of credit cards is a constraint in both India and China. Also, people don’t have proper addresses, especially outside the metros. The last 2km in a small town can be a big area. So the company What3Words, a UK-based company, has given three randomized words for a 3x3m space (27 trillion squares across the world).
• In Japan, people refused to buy a product for older people. They say that “It’s for my grandchildren.”

KEY POINTS

• Strategic account management (SAM) is done for strategic accounts (SA) where the accounts contribute a disproportionate share of firm revenue, and the company can put in efforts that make a difference and bring value to the client that they will pay for
• It takes time and commitment to develop SAM. We send our general management sponsored by Johnson and Johnson to SMU’s management courses. This to build their competencies, where in the immediate term J&J get nothing back, but the managers get exposed to J&J and how it works
• So how do you know when an account should be an SA?
  You must have in the long term a leading relative market share, and the quality of that share must be solid. It has to be resistant to tactical attacks
• Strategic discussions should take place between CEOs

Gallery

KEY POINTS

Although the newspaper platform is still the dominant media-of-choice for advertisers in Singapore, there is certainly no guarantee that this will continue for all that much longer.  In fact, with the accelerating rise of digital, it will only be a matter of time before the balance is toppled.  The question remains - do we continue to be in denial and merely strive to milk print for what it is worth, or do we change the game and go all out to woo readers and advertisers with a myriad of new-age strategies?

• There is a shift in mindset to integrate all the service offerings under the brand to achieve higher impact with customers by being a 'one-stop shop' facility.
• Now it is important to have inter-divisional corporation, such as between marketing editorial. Though there are still strict rules concerning advertorials.
• Salespeople have also progressed from single-title sales to media sales, over the span of 30 years. Now we stop selling inventory, but ideas and consult with clients on solutions.  
• Advertisers are now freely allocating their finite advertising budgets across paid, owned, earned, and converged platforms.  
• Online you compete with the whole world, the whole world can see you and advertise with you.
• The news day has been restructured according to the new cycle. Five years ago, the newsroom used to operate on two speeds (next day or longer term articles). Now it operates on four speeds (breaking news and same-day).
• The owner will always have some influence on news reporting. It also depends on the financial position of the newspaper, whether it is able to say no to a particular ad or story.  The separation between editorial and marketing is more blurred online.

Key Points

Re-imagine business

e.g. Weather Company - weather forecast company becoming a data company

Value chain

Every part of the value chain can be affected by technology

e.g. UPS using tracking chips to tell driver which is the best route to take – cost savings

Reconnect with customers

If everyone is doing it, how do we stand out? And does this fit with our brand image?  

e.g. Tesco Korea -  grocery shopping at the train station using the mobile phone – drove up downloads of mobile app dramatically

Rebuild organization

How do you structure the P&L for e-commerce vs retail units so that they do not compete? It’s about incentive structures.

PHOTO GALLERY

Photo Gallery

Key takeaways:

• Senior management should know the importance of social and digital marketing, in terms of the impact and things you can do, and things you cannot do
• If you are a start-up, doing lots of changes that you mentioned is easy. If you a big organization how do you create an organization with a soul of a startup? These are the things that really bother the big company guys.
• Leaders can do social and digital marketing, but they need to create a culture and an environment for that.
• The senior management actually understands what social and digital marketing is. But the question is that how that message can be passed on to the rest of the other teams. So we need to have very committed and dedicated teams, and believes in changes.
• For B2C, social and digital marketing can be easily understood and applied. For B2B, it will be difficult to adopt.
• The gist of doing social media is not you doing something, but the crowd is doing something.
• The companies need really talented and genuine people to translate consumer behaviors to consumer insights.

Effective marketing should change human behavior. What can we take away from all this as marketers:

1. Work with creative
2. Blend the online/ offline experience
3. Mobile

This takes us to the next evolution of marking: the Age of You.

Mass customization – personalization – coke for example.  There a name on the coke and it’s not customized, it’s the same product.  This is a fad because it’s the experience that is customizable. The product may not be. And this raises customer expectations – it’s here to stay.