Marketing trends you need to know

like the year ahead. I invite a great panel who are here to kind of hold your hand a little bit and to give you the encouragement, um, for what you need to do, what you need to look at, need to. Get on the back of right away. So, let me start by introducing, um, my guest today. I'm so happy to have them on board. We've had some dry run sessions and I, looking at the content, I'm very excited for them to share. So, first of all, I want to say hi to Munas. Hi, Munas.

Coming for our managing director of Southeast Asia for months. Then we have um Eric, Eric from um OMD. Hi, Eric. And then, of course, um. I'll say an old friend, Guan Hin, um, from, um, the One Club for Creativity, um, but also, Guan Hin, congratulations on your recent induction into the advertises um into the Association of Advertising and Marketing Singapore Hall of Fame, right? Um, one of the luminaries in, in the, in the Singapore

advertising industry. So very proud to have them on board. Now, I am Tashan Toh. I actually head up commercial planning industry. Solutions for Media Corp. Um, we've been doing these webinars since COVID, and they've only gone from strength to strength. Um, if I'm not wrong, we've already had more than 150 speakers, and we've had, um, more than 6000 people who attended these webinars over the last couple of years. So, all of you who are in the room are in the

right place, right? And we're gonna kick off the year of snake in a spectacular fashion in the next hour. Now, we've looked at the materials that We have, it's, I'm gonna say it's all very inspiring, but we're likely to run a little bit long today. When we did this session last year in the beginning of 2024, we said that there were three key things that you, we're going to see explode in 2024. 1

was that social commerce is going to reign. So what we've seen is that in 2023, um, you know, GMV was estimated to be 1.6 billion, it's going to grow to. 1.4 billion. I think we can all say that since, you know, in the past year, we've seen all, we've seen this space grow. Um, the exact number, we're still trying to, we're still trying to triangulate and get a, uh, reading on it, um, as the year has just ended.

But with the explosion of TikTok shop and all the live streams that you're seeing, I think we can all say that this is happening. OK? So, one call, correct. Second of all, short. From video content dominates, right? The rise of TikTok, I mean, even though TikTok's reach in Singapore is about 40 or 40, 45%, um, it is really a platform that continues to grow, um, nonstop, and which is why, you know, as they say, um, what do you call it, imitation is the best form

of flattery. You've got other platforms that are now also going on short form content. Now, there is something that, that's been happening in China. Those of you who know, know, micro dramas have. Boomed, right? And happy to note that in Singapore, this trend is now catching on and bearing fruit. So, um, we've had two very successful micro dramas that in a span of, let's say, you know, 2 or 3 weeks

have garnered 6 to 7 million views. So we know that this format works, and we're happy to have called it, and we're, and we're on, and we're on this, on this riding this wave. The third one, Is that gender of AI, you know, is the game changer.

And um I think Guan Hin was invited to a futureproof, um session, a thought leadership session with us, and he shared a lot about this, about a year and a year and a half back, and this has, this is starting to bear fruit, and we see um all this happen, and I think um Munas, uh, everyone will talk a lot about a lot about. AI and what it can do for your business and

how to utilize it. OK. So, I also wanted to give you a sense, you know, at Mediacorp, I get, I have the privilege of working with over 3000 brands. And these are some sound bites of what these brands are telling us, right? They want better in-show integration. They want the content, they want to be integrated, they don't want to be a logo mention or a product placement. They want their, their US.

be in integrated into the storytelling itself, right? Clearly, everyone wants to collect social media data and they want to profile um their users. So this has also been a big ask from us. Um, many brands are saying, you know, with the way budgets are, Guys, branding budgets are, you know, shrunk, and everyone's going for mid-final conversion. In fact, we have many clients coming to us to say, OK, Tashan, I don't need you to convert. I need you to show me clear.

Consideration, consideration lists. OK, so how are you gonna do this for me? Then clearly all that is, all this is coming on the back of demands for more content creation, clearly something that everyone in the room said, OK, where is that going? How can we do this? And um and I'm gonna say that much of this is being done, not with us saying that we know everything, but with us.

You know, bringing in partners from throughout the industry because everyone's going to be a master of some skill in this, in this ecosystem and we can't do it alone. So with partners and as you will see, my partners in crime today are going to give you a great um showing of what's available out there. OK, now I'm gonna bring you to look, to look at some numbers. Now, look at these numbers. This is what we. Have triangulated to, you know, this is kind of the

SG marketing budget spend graph in Singapore. So you've seen about 1.3 billion in 2019, it's kind of tapered down in 2023 to about 1.77 billion, we think. Right? But you, but what's more important here is look at the shifts. So search remains very, very strong. Content and commerce related social media and that has grown at a very, you know, strong caer, right? And that's coming really on the back of, you know, how brands are really looking at their pure display and inventory guys.

Right? Now, not, not to say that that's, that's not important and I think Eric is gonna bring up that point, but it's about the fact that the reallocation has been happening where inventory is then being used to amplify the content, um, content commerce related social media, um, investments that you're making. OK. Now, with this, and so, so when I see the 1.77 billion, guys, I want you to know that makes my job really, really tough, right? Because all of

you are demanding far more of the network. OK? But that's where, that's what wake, doesn't keep me up at night, but it wakes me up in the morning, right? And gets me back on the horse. OK, so the next chart is, I think this is the, the one that's looming. OK. We have this thing called the RTS that is

launching in 2026. We've been having conversations with key brands since last year about how we, together with them, are going to partner to deal with this potential leakage of about 1.5 to $2 billion in um retail revenue. That's huge.

Right? Because if I imagine 1.52 billion in retail, retail revenue leakage, if I take, let's say a 5%, you know, estimate of that in terms of what you would be spending on marketing out of your budget, right, from, from your cost of sale, you know, we're talking about $70 million straight out of this market. So you guys are potentially in hot soup. We are also, you know, you know,

walking the line on tenterhooks. So. The key here is we need to work together to make sure that we don't come out of this, this RTS opening worse off, or that we pivoted in some sort of an interesting innovative way. Right? To still secure the retail spends or the client or the consumer engagements in Singapore. Now, enough of this, enough of this. I hope this wasn't doom and gloom, but I wanted to just set the stage to say that this is what we're really looking at in the next,

you know, 12 to 18 months, right? And I encourage all of you, if you've not. Thought about what how the RTS will affect your business in the next 6 to 8 months, please, please start putting it high up on your agenda. OK? So now with that, I wanted to hand over to Eric, um, you know, coming from the media landscape perspective to tell us some of his best, um, pieces of advice, tips and tricks of how to optimize for the year ahead. OK, so over to you, Eric.

Alright, thank you, Dacheng, let's get straight into it. Um, I think firstly, the theme for 2025, uh, I feel it's less about making massive leaps and, and more about taking what already works and making it work smarter for you. I think you kind of touched on it just before. Whether you're an agency and advertiser or a vendor, I,

the headline still really reads do more for less. So what is happening in the media landscape that can help us drive the effectiveness and deliver on that task that's been put on, uh, put on us? So we go to the next topic, or the first topic, which is the evolution of search. Now we're not quite there yet, but we are steadily sprinting towards this idea

of the death of the 10 blue links. Now when I say 10 blue links, I'm referring to the stacked URLs um that we used to kind of get in our search engines, but this is evolving. Um, it's really being pushed by the expectations of users. Now if we look at, um, where we started back in the day, um, it was really about putting exact bullying search queries into your engine. Now you would typically flick through many pages before finding what you really need

buried deep in the results. There were obviously other challenges during this period, such as poor ranking algorithms, limited indexing, but all that meant was a really poor clunky user experience.

Now we're asking conversational queries to our search engines, so the way in which we're interacting with them is almost how you would type um something or how, how you would speak to a friend really, and you see it all the time, so mid conversation, you'll stop and ask and hang on, you know, uh we'll just go back one side, hang on our mermaids reel, and you pick up your phone and and type the exact question in and in the exact conversational tone, you get your response.

Now, I grabbed a quote um from an article I'd read a while back, and I think most of us resonate with this, and the quote reads, I have to admit it, when browsing the internet, my patience has become low, like really low, and I demand nothing but accurate personalized answers fast, and they're right. I think we all kind of want this instant gratification from our search engines. Now if we go on to the next slide, we can have a look at what is driving the hunger

for this immediate information. Two things worth highlighting, which I'm sure we're all across AI and social media. So I'll spend a couple of minutes if I can talking through those a little. Now AI search results have had a bit of a staggered approach in terms of their availability, um, and if you're not familiar with AI search, I put a reference in the middle, but it's, I'm referring to that overview that you can get in the

top of your results. So here I've asked in a conversational way, what is a good pet for a small apartment. Now what I get is a succinct overview of the perfect pets for my tiny little apartment. Along as well with a snapshot of the key animals that were referenced in the overview so that I can learn more in case I wasn't familiar with them. Now this overview is being pulled from multiple different sources and content ecosystems to create what it deems as the snappiest

response that can really help me. Now, this is obviously extremely helpful to people browsing, but what about us as advertisers? So perhaps if we change this search query to one about your specific product, um, and think about that for a second. As an advertiser, it's important to know how and why people are searching your category. Do they want to know what the best network coverage is? Do they wanna know what is the most value for money? Is it the

most sustainable, what suits their lifestyle? Once you know what people need, and I'm sure everyone knows this already from the SDM and their current marketing activity, you then need to ensure that you have content in the right environments that answer these questions. That way AI is able to pull all of these pieces together. And put your products front and center in the perfect

search result. Now, if we think about it from an FMCG brand as an example, where it's really difficult to win mental space, it's like quick turnaround product research, you'll need to have answers as to why you're the best in comparison websites and articles, online reviews, online forums, obviously, as well as your own website. Only then will you kind of top the top, uh, get to the top of the search uh search results.

Now we're yet to hit mats velocity on AI overviews, so whilst I'm sure everyone here has a robust SEM approach, I think it's really time we think about how we can improve our content strategy to fuel product discovery. Um, we're also seeing product discovery on TikTok. Uh, we have a couple of stats here to show you on the next slide. Not only is it um evolving in search engines, we're really seeing a shift from typical search engines into TikTok, uh,

specifically in our SEA region as well. I think Indonesia is one of the biggest globally. Now 20% of TikTok users in SEA are using the platform as their primary search tool, and not just because they're addicted to the platform, 56% of them are actually finding it more than traditional search engines. And Dasen spoke

about TikTok Shop before. To be honest, you now have TikTok Search, all of your infeed, you have Shopable, so you have a complete marketing funnel within that ecosystem that we need to start considering. So the 3 things, yeah, Eric, we've also heard um some new improvements coming on the YouTube platform too, to, you know, to enable, to enable quick purchase, you know,

in stream. So, yes, this space is really buzzing. Um, we're covering a lot, so I'm really gonna encourage everyone in the room that if you have a burning question, please go into the, the chat box or Q&;A and type your questions in, right? And because we're reviewing them as, as we're presenting. And as moderator, so sometimes I can float your question out immediately. Thank you. Back to you, Eric.

Yeah, cool. And just to, yeah, on your point, Dashane, I think like the influx of Shopable driven by TikTok shop, you have all of these platforms within this region that, yeah,

it's just e-commerce and, and shop attainment is, is crazy. Uh, the three things I'd say, uh, to take away from what we've spoken about diversify, so think holistically about your search strategy, uh, what we spoke about, what role does TikTok play, but really think about intent-based discovery, because that's what we're seeing. Content strategy, huge one, review it, make it easier for AI driven engines to interpret your brand's information accurately, uh,

and monitor and monitor the evolution. I think with what was happening in TikTok in the US we saw like spikes in Xiaohongshu as an example, are people gonna start shifting to that and use that as a search engine, so we really need to kind of, you know, Keep our eye on this um at the moment. Next topic, agentic error, um, simply means AI tools or agents talking

to other AI agents. Now without getting into the details too deep, there is a bit of a line of separation between how traditional AI works and agentic AI. Put simply, traditional AI models simply respond to prompts or execute predefined tasks and they're quite rigid. Agentic AI uh is a scary AI it can talk with AI components, they can perceive the environment, plan and take actions, and even learn from experiences. Now I'd say most of the. Conversations and what you see in the trade press now

about benefit workflow and driving efficiencies. So what do we need to know? Here we're looking at, um, basically the consumer lens. Again, it's all being driven by consumer expectations. People want to offload their digital errands and get more time back for themselves. They want responses that are more and more personalized, but they also still want to have, um,

or feel like they're in control. So these three key behaviors are accelerating the adoption of AI agents and kind of why we need to keep our eye on it. Um, I'll give you an example on the next slide to help put it into context. Uh, this is a working example from a colleague, so he may be on the call. Um, as part of their role, they're always traveling within APAC.

For those of you that travel frequently for work, you know, there's a lot of admin that comes with it, templates that you need to fill for approvals and so on. Now what they've done is essentially create a multi-agent collaboration. So 3 agents that work together and curate a response that answers their needs and then can be put into

a Need Excel for their EA to approve. Now when prompting Find me tickets to Sydney in March and the best hotel that's close to my office, it's all filtered through a supervisor agent. So this is the one that orchestrates and governs, and

remember these all speak to each other, right? Now there's agents under that that understand the user's personal preference based on their history, um, their digital patterns, etc. One that understands airline price fluctuations, fill rates for specific flight paths, and another that knows the most talked about, uh, hotels for social clout and um also the most reasonable costs. So they all talk to each other.

Pull the information together, send it to the supervisor agent, which then gets passed over to the person, they then can say, yep, go ahead and book it. It all gets dumped into um the template and sent to the EA. So it's easy to see how it works for consumers,

but again, you know, what about us as advertisers? So in this scenario, um, if you're an airline, if you are a hotel, if you are travel insurance, if you are a taxi company, You need to be thinking about how these agents can help pull you into these options, so your brand again um is becoming front and center, and that's the challenge we need to prepare for. So 3 things, um, on this, I would say is examine and understand what large language

models are saying about your brand. Um, it's really about knowing how we're being recommended in response to user questions, that's critical. Second is experiment with your search approach. I think experimenting with director agent strategies is something new

for us, but something we'll need to be considering. Essentially, we'll need to know how we can win valuable digital shelf space, because based on, you know, the velocity of e-commerce, it's gonna get to a stage where AI is doing the shopping for us, scary, I know, but I think it's heading that way, um, and elevate our product data. So the, today's agents at least, they need information to be structured and detail, um, oriented.

So we need to focus on attributes and descriptions that are optimized for AI agents to be able to, to take on board. Yeah, so Eric, you're recommending that everyone do sort of, sort of a mind map, right, of, of potential of, of what their potential ecosystem looks like and how they can plug into partners.

100%, and I'd say like at the start we talked about, you know, AI and search, so that's one thing, there's AI searching, you know, the web ecosystem, but now we're thinking about, OK, how is, how are these agents um kind of collecting information, so you're 100% correct, it's like, alright, how How do I pull all of my um information and put it in the right ecosystem, so if it, it's either AI or if it's, you know, large language modeling, it's able to be collated and put front and center.

So yeah, mind map 100%, big room, whiteboard, get all the, get all the pieces of paper on the, on the, on the wall. Alright, I think last one, I'll be quickly on this, it's the age of abundance, um, if we go on to the next slide, we talk about a few media planner complaints, but essentially a challenge we all talk about in agency land is the fragmentation of media. You, you can't stop hearing about it. And it's true. It's made it more difficult to plan as audiences are strewn across

multiple environments, multiple devices. Um, something that I find quite common in Singapore is when faced with the challenge of spreading your budget into multiple channels, and I know we all hate spreading budgets thin. Clients sometimes opt to consolidate into 1 to 2 performance channels, um, obviously because you can see more immediate returns on your dollar. But what this fragmentation is really forcing us to do

is consider how we plan for attention overreach. Now it can be done through planning for this idea of ecosystems, so think AV or screen strategies rather than channel silos. Now I've grabbed two graphs from Walk um on the next slide. Back in the old days, we used to call it the multiplier effect, but even now we still see when we execute an effective omni-channel campaign, There are multiple benefits, but in short, the messaging has

a better chance of sticking with the consumer. Um, when omni-channel planning, we need to also be clear on the role of every element within our ecosystem, but furthermore, we need to know what the attention levels are of each of those to inform how we communicate, along with the

long-term profit that they can deliver for us. So you can see clearly on the graph on the right that a smart screen or AV strategy can help, Build the reach on social, use your short form content that we've spoken about, but also you can use brand building and some of those other AV channels so that you can get, you know, a mix of that short-term and long-term, and obviously, yeah, brand is, I, I think,

you know, brand is number one. So the three key takeouts I'd say in this regard are, Moving forward, I think it's important to not lose sight of omnichannel channel planning. Obviously it depends on your objectives and brief, but we need to start viewing um media ecosystems rather than channels in silos. Know what the attention decay is on all of your channels, your media agencies should know this.

Also know that sometimes sacrificing reach in favor of attention can deliver you more effective gains, not just um in the long term but short as well. Um, if we have the time, but I know Mis and um Guan Hen are gonna talk about this, I'd love to talk about Story worlds, but essentially it's how all of these channels in your ecosystem can add something to the greatest

story you're trying to sell. So if you are running longform brand in online video as an example, what is your short form social doing to extend and, you know, benefit that larger story? Yeah, I think that's the whistle tool for me. Well, Eric, you, you've kind of, kind of sped through everything that you've had to share. I'm, you know, and there were questions that were just buzzing along, and I'm, I'm very happy that you, you came to this point where I think very often humans like to think in

terms of left and right, right or wrong, and all that. And, you know, for the longest time, I would say that if we live not in a world of or, but in a world of and, which is what I think Guan Hin will touch on a little bit later on, I think we'd be all. Better marketers, right? So there was a question about, you know, so where does the, what, how does Media Corp play

in all of this or whatever. So, you know, in the same spirit as the animal of the year, the snake, I think we've become so incredibly flexible, knowing that, you know, a 32nd TV spot also works as, you know, um, some that could be transformed into something on radio, which could also be transformed into something on social. So, you know, with 33 platforms and more than 400 influencers and, you know, our studios and everything.

You know, in the bag, we actually have flex, and we're no longer the, the Mediacorp of your, of your mom and dad anymore, right? Because we're looking at cutting edge solutions, understanding that it is not a world of or. You know, you need to do branding, but the branding really needs to drive consideration. The consideration needs to drive a conversion. And so we've got through the line solutions. And so, thank you for sharing that. And I want to then now turn the attention over to Munas.

And who has some really good examples to share with us, especially in the social space. Hi Monas. Hi, thank you so much, uh, Dashin. Uh, I'm Munaan Boonstra, the managing director of Southeast Asia at Mons. We're an integrated agency driving creativity, media, technology, and innovation. So you can connect with me on LinkedIn. Happy to answer any questions you have in the future. At this and Munas has actually made time out of

a very busy trip to Jakarta. So she's actually zooming out from Jakarta and I just love how integrated we can be on this online platform. So thank you so much for making time for us, Mua. No worries, thank you. OK, let's start with the next slide. So the pace of marketing has accelerated like never before, right? Um, driven by the explosive growth of social first content, uh, real-time engagement and the demand for hyper personalization. So what used to take months for brands to create

campaigns now can happen in days or even hours. Yet, despite the speed, the reality is the marketing ecosystem is very, very tangled. This is the reality of what brand and marketing managers go through. The current model is very fragmented, complex, and layered, uh, involving multiple teams, agencies, and approval processes uh across various business units, products, regions and channels. So the result is very long production cycles, higher costs, and a slower go to market process. And like what

Eric said earlier on, everybody wants lesser, better, cheaper, right? Production. He's the brand manager or marketeer, like all of you here and his call, you guys are drowning in endless workflows, approvals and production efficiencies. And a lot of that also really drains your budgets, right? So, but here's the game changer. Next slide. AI is rewriting the economics of social and advertising, right? So next slide. AI is, um, truly collapsing speed, cost, and creative volume

through a powerful ecosystem of tools that assist. And you can use AI for copywriting and translation. So, of course, everyone's very familiar with chat GPT, but there are many, many others out there. Uh, also using AI for photography. So what used to be long photography sessions that are costly, takes days, times, edits, can now be done via AI. Uh, also simple AI background editing and changes for all

of you who are going into e-commerce. Uh, also, with social first approach and digital approach, uh, you will need your campaigns to be in different sizes, right, to fit for IG, fit for TikTok. I mean, it's endless today, right? Hero banners, digital banners, whatever. So you can also now use AI to resize and adapt. So that speeds up the process by a lot. Um, and also using AI to do all the different versions for scale. So the result is better, faster, cheaper,

marketing assets without compromising quality. Yay, for all marketeers. It's something that you guys want to hear. Um, now, with all this talk of AI, you might wonder, does creativity then disappear, right? Uh, quite the opposite. Uh, AI is not replacing creativity. In fact, it's amplifying it, and I think, you know, Guan Hen will give you very, very good in-depth knowledge on that later. Here is a perfect example of how AI and human ingenuity can feel massive creativity and hyper

personalization for a brand. So today's consumers crave hyper personalization and creativity because we're in this world of content, content, content, content, right? Everything has to be entertainment. So especially in this case for for Burger King, uh, which is the food and beverage industry, where taste is very personal and experience is everything, right? So gamification fuels engagement with interactive challenges and it rewards by increasing participation

by about 48%. The, the thrill of competition and achievement keeps customers coming back for more, right? So that's that gamification, curiosity like, OK, what's next, what's next, you know. Um, so, AI is definitely reshaping marketing, right? Uh, a report shows that, um, 81% of consumers are open to AI-driven personalization that enhance their brand experience. So even though you know AI is probably the one that's delivering this

to you, you're OK. You are absolutely OK with it already. So, Burger King took uh innovation. To the next level, whereby they developed an AI driven platform that lets users create unique Whopper ingredient combinations. You all know the Whopper, uh, through a bespoke web experience, leveraging advanced AI and diffusion-based technologies, whereby they then transform user-generated ideas into personalized AI generated ads with immersive thematic visuals,

which are then expanded to social platforms. So, The result, it's a groundbreaking fusion of creativity, AI and gamification that redefines customer engagement. So let's watch how all this comes to life in the Burger King Million Dollar Whopper case study. No, you're here to make a whopper. I'm your trusty AI companion Grillio. Now how are you going to top your whopper? Oh, now we're talking. That could be a million dollar combination. Yeah. Look at what you've made

No Whopper is complete without a world class ad. Let's crown your Whopper creation. This is my Cotton candy and other toppings with some gummy bear and licorice in there try and top that if you dare. your way How are you gonna top it? OK, so there's a question in Q&;A, like how, how did AI campaigns, you know, bring value or sales? Well,

this basically resulted in 2.93 million AI Whoppers created. Um, it created 1.27 million free Whopper UGC ads that went online on social media platforms, but most importantly, there was a massive surge of Whopper sales by 28%. So this goes to show that an AI driven campaign can lead to sales. Southeast Asia is one of the fastest growing digital markets, right? Driven by hyper-social mobile first consumers. We, we're all on the mobile, we're all on the apps, right?

So to stay ahead, brands must expand beyond the usual Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, just as what Eric had mentioned earlier on, right? Omnichannel marketing is very, very important. Um, so, but we need to tap into the unique strengths of the emerging and dominant social platforms in the region, right? Each platform serves a different purpose. Understanding the strength and role is key in maximizing engagement and impact. So take WhatsApp for example, while traditionally it's a messaging.

A, it has evolved into a powerful social commerce tool, integrating even with AI chatbots for direct to consumer engagement. So this has also now become social commerce platform and also a social channel, WhatsApp, which is something we never

thought would be possible, right? Uh, and in places like Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, especially, brands are definitely leveraging WhatsApp business as a lead generation channel, a conversational commerce tool, and customer service and retention driver. Again, this is something that's a huge thing and it's actually not even costly for businesses to do. So sometimes people think oh omnichannel like what Eric said, oh your budget be thinned out. That's not true. There are very

cheap options, right? We have the rise of relatable uh influence, right? Local and micro nano influences are leading the way. So according to Meta, about 70% of Southeast Asia. consumers are relying on influencers before making a purchase. So Sephora here is a great example. They utilize local influencers in the TikTok and Instagram strategy. So forget macro, mega, or celebrity influencers. The real game changers today are actually the micro and nano influences. Uh, these are everyday people

who are highly active on social media. That could be any of us, and We are deeply connected to the communities. You no longer need to have high followers to be this person. Why? Because higher engagement and authenticity and conversion rates is what gives consumers the trust for real voices over polished celebrity endorsements, right? So local micro and nano influencers, they connect directly with niche audiences for localized impact. So it is a very cost effective and scalable uh

thing to do for brands. Uh, you can work with multiple influences uh to reach diverse demographics without breaking the bank. So, in this final example is how a brand turned a nobody to a brand icon, an absolute nobody. It could be any one of us, right? And this is a Cannes gold winning case study, uh, in a bold move, Mercado Libre, which is the Amazon or Shopee of Latin America, uh, they turned this absolute nobody into their own celebrity brand influencer without anyone realizing it, right?

So with by infiltrating a popular TV show, so you guys can think of these ideas and contact Morp. No ads, no logo. Right? And, and this is the thing that they did, very unbrand. There was no ads, no logos, right? Something that we don't think works in marketing 101. It's just organic storytelling. They ended up educating millions about their brand, turning an absolute unknown figure into a viral social media sensation.

This is the power of unbranded storytelling, providing, proving that sometimes going unbrand is the smartest way to build the brand. So I hope this inspired new ways for you guys to disrupt, engage and create brand love in unexpected places. Um, and next to Guan Hen, the creative maestro. Heyn. Wow, bring us home to a big finish. Yeah,

fantastic presentation, Mona. Hey, um, I just wanted to say thanks Dashan for also introducing a great introduction for me and just want to let everyone know that Dashan is also a Hall of Fame for the media mongol, so congratulations to you. You know, it's been proven that creativity, right, can maximize with each dollar spent and to get the eyeballs needed to improve your ROI. You know, as Eric mentioned just now, how creativity can be used to beat the algorithms, which

is fantastic. Creativity, as you know, we all know, has been the lifeblood of innovation. So in 2025, I think the way the brands connect with the audience is evolving rapidly as you You can see from both the presentations. And today, I'll explore three trends driving the most inspiring campaigns, right? Purpose driven innovation, AI driven personalization and gamification, paired with multi-sensorial

engagement from award-winning examples from the Asia Asia Awards. So I'm the APEC regional director of the One Club and we do um you know, foster these.

Creative awards and we hope to share as much as possible. Also, I'll be exploring from my book Collide embracing conflict to boost creativity, a bestselling penguin, and want to share with you, creativity doesn't come from a vacuum, it also comes from a friction, right, where unexpected ideas collide, technologies collide, cultural shifts collide, and innovation will, will just spark and expand.

So let's go to the next slide. The first trend I want to talk about is purpose-driven innovation and social impact. You know, purpose is the new currency, right? Today's consumers demand brands for stand for something meaningful, right? So two examples I shared with you from Vaseline skin for skins done in Singapore for the region and to

match burn burn victims who donated skin. And there is another example from New Zealand for pedigree adoptable campaigns to help shelter dogs to find homes, right? And these societal challenges isn't always easy, it's not very comfortable, but when brands step up to make these challenging spaces, they create powerful, authentic stories that resonate. So let's go to the next slide. This is an example for pedigree adoptable campaign and it's

a perfect example. As you as you've seen from Muna's work, right, again using AI, but I thought this particular work not only won tons and tons and awards, right, it's using AI for purpose. It created Personalized at showcasing, shelter dog's personality and preference, and also potential adopters connected emotionally well to each dog's story, leading to increased um you know dogs being adopted. This campaign was a collision of compassion.

And technology. So again, combining AI with emotional storytelling, pedigree made a a world-class impact, reinforcing the brand purpose. Let's watch the next case study. Purpose advertising. Pedigree and Nexus Studios present. Adaptable Adaptable uses machine learning to transform a basic photo of a shelter dog into studio quality photography. That shelter dog can then be inserted into any digital pedigree ad.

Each ad directs people to a personalized landing page. Here they can learn more about the dog they just saw and when adopted, that dog is instantly dropped out of media rotation. Now every pedigree campaign can feature an adoptable dog

that we do. Now, every $1 we spend on digital out of home will not only help to bring our products to the world, it will help bring adoptable dogs to the world too. The second trend is AI driven personalization and creative augmentation. You know, for example, campaigns like Play Library, which I'll share with you in a second, which turned literature into gamification, interactive experience, and the adoptable you just saw shows AI potential to create deeply personal and relevant stories.

As you can see, right, AI doesn't really replace creativity, it enhances it. It allows us to analyze behavior and tailor make the experience in real time. And the most important thing is that we need to embrace um you know, AI. AI isn't creative on its own. I mean, AI is not going to take over our jobs, but people who know how to use AI will. The breakthrough comes through from the collision of AI's capabilities with human imagination.

So the next slide is the example done in Singapore by um Lear, right, and it combines transforming literature into interactive experience. They turn static literature into interactive sensory experiences. So as you know, you know, book reading is not that popular. You see bookshops are closed.

But this great example uses AI to employ large language models like JGBT train on extensive, you know, um, books, data sets, and the AI transform very linear, boring, um, you know, traditional storytelling into a game mission based on the key plots and character development. This campaign really demonstrates the power of creative collision between all traditional media like you know, books.

Into new ways of playing with your customers using AI and this intersection really leads to fresh perspective, but most important, as you can see from this creativity, it's exciting, it's engaging, it will help hopefully improve your ROI. So let's watch this. Let's face it, kids don't read anymore. For decades, technology keeps giving them more tempting things to do. And now with AI teachers think it's the final blow to reading. I was absolutely panic. But what if the problem could

become the solution? Introducing Playbrewery, an AI that turns books into something kids love the video game. And for this we hired someone who has read all the books in the world, Jet GBT. It is capable of telling famous stories preserving the original writing, the author's unique tone of voice, and character dialogues again and again. We've launched a custom built version of Chad GPT that deconstructs a linear plot into a branching story allowing readers

to become players. Pick a book, Playbury will transform it, introducing characters and turning each scene into a mission. We want some graphics. I want some graphics. It will even prompt itself to generate Pixel art graphics for every step of the story. You choose or prompt how the story unfolds and it adapts to you. After a few chapters, Playbury offers to borrow the actual book for free from the library and read the full story.

Launched in libraries across Singapore, it offers visitors a radically new way to read, extended to schools where kids could finally play games. Singapore was playing books and kept asking for more.

and shorter. We need consumers to really capture, um, you know, we need our work to capture their attention and gamification taps in their love for play. So campaigns like Vaseline from ONM, virtual skins, gafiess meaningful causes, social impact, as you can see from the last two campaigns I've just shared with you, multi-sensory storytelling, you know, engaging the sight, sound, touch creates really emotional bonds and

moments that audience will never ever forget. The magic comes from emerging entertainment with purpose, crafting experiences that are both joyful and meaningful. In the next slide, I want to share with you this Vaseline virtual skins, offering gamers a chance to help raise awareness for burn victims through an integrated in-game experience. You know, this game. Succeeded because it raised the collision of two seemingly unrelated worlds,

the gaming and the social impact, right? And then when these collide, extraordinary experiences, creativity emerges. What connects these trends is their emotional impact, as you can see from these examples. Purpose engages the heart. You know, purpose doesn't need to be so big, right? People need to care about what they're selling because if people don't care, they'll never share. AI engages the mind and gamification taps

into the joy of participation, right? Again, you know, all these come from a friction of unexpected ideas colliding. technology, in humanity, traditional and innovation, data and emotional. And that's where the magic happens. In conclusion, right? What does it mean for all of us, right? Be bold, right? That's what I'm sharing with you. Be authentic, be experimental, because when you align with clear purpose, authenticness happens. Make

it real, make it relatable, make it relevant. Second, embrace AI. not as a competition, but as collaborator. You know, AI is not just called artificial intelligence. Let it be amplified imagination, amplified imagination, and finally, designed for play because joy brings deeper connection between your brand and your consumers with what Mona's section was all about, right? She speaks about gamification and that's so true.

So, importantly, just embrace creative collisions because innovation thrives where ideas, cultures, and technology meet and collide and that's how we create future ready brands. Again, if you like to explore how your brands can be future ready, I'd love to help. Do connect with me on LinkedIn and I hope these trends will be relevant in what you're working on right now. Over to you, Dashin.

Yeah. Um, one, thank you, thank you for that. Actually, I'm very happy you brought up the whole point about purpose, right? And it's the purpose of the brand. Many marketers focus on the fact that their purpose is to sell rather than what is the purpose of the brand, which actually is the thing that creates that emotional connection that allows you to storify, allows you to then. Connect with the audience and then eventually the outcome is

that you will sell something, right? But we're so, um, because we're looking through the questions in the Q&;A, I know we're running a little bit late, but I thought that there was one question that I kind of just wanted to throw out there before we close. Um, all of you who put in questions, thank you so much. We, we will send out an EDM post this. Session that will have all the answers um by the, by the relative by the, by the speakers, OK? So

for all of you, so watch out for that. But the one question I wanted to ask, I wanted to put that out there about purpose, because there was one question that said, now the question is, how do people measure ROI in this world where attribution of Efforts is so difficult, given all the wall gardens for platforms and publishers. How can you be confident that it's a specific campaign that's causing uplift versus anything else that's

going on? That's a very big question. I, I'm not sure how we're gonna answer this, but, you know, I'm going to throw this at Eric and have him take a stab at this one. Yeah, tough question. Uh, I feel like, um, yeah, I, I'll give it a crack. Um, I think, look, measuring ROI, uh, it's always a tough one. It also depends on, you know, how deep into the funnel you're looking. Um, probably the best but most expensive way is to do some form

of market mix modeling. Um, I'd say then if you don't do that, which is I think a lot of brands can't, if to be confident on your specific campaign, you probably first need to know your base levels. I know it's very difficult for us to, Isolate a specific campaign, especially for those that have always on running, but then you can start to like work in this world of proxies, and I think at least, you know, what we do, um, on Apple as well is we work with a lot of proxies also because

we don't look at people's data. So I think it's really just figuring out what your base is, knowing what that key um objective or return is, and then looking at it that way, and then I mean AI for better audience engagement in multi-channel marketing. There's multiple ways in which you can do it. I think something that I'm doing right now is more from

a discovery level. So using AI to really help me hone in on which audiences I should be reaching based on what I need, and then I kind of build um my insight development, my media strategy from, from there, yeah. Right, Eric Eric, just to add on to that, I mean, you know, having, having privilege of working with all these brands that I that I get to work on, I will say, um, in response to that, that question, I will say those top tier market leading MNC global brands.

You know, they're talking about 2030 different data signals that they're, that they're pulling together to form a picture. You know, we're not even talking about triangulation, right? So we're talking about it's so multi-touch point. So I, I will say that I fully agree with Eric, you need to know what your baselines are, then you need to kind of map out your, your, your plan over a year and with each.

Engagement, have a specific data signal that you are looking out for, so that over time you're building a view on your ROI. You're, you're absolutely right, there is no one, you know, magic source of this ROI data. That's why um I know for my team, you know, we actively hire people from the data side of things because we need them to look at the data and be able to. Punch it and to then make it into a story that, that says one thing or another, right? Because, yeah, it

all lies in data and how you're collecting it. So I fully agree with that. Um, we're at 11:04. I just wanted to, and, um, people are leaving the room, so, but I just wanted to close with one question to everyone on, on my panel. Um, we, and the question is, Now, panel. What will be keeping you awake? In 2025. What is the, what is that one thing that will be keeping you awake in 2025? Muna, do you want, Mona, do you want to start? I'm gonna I hate myself for saying this, but it's

how can we make it better, faster, cheaper for everyone. Yeah, I think so. Um, um. It's um the fear of keeping up the change. Every time when I learn something, something new comes up and it's really tough to obviously learn restart again. So the fear of keeping up with the change. And I think on that one, I would say it's, let's all be kinder to ourselves. There really is a lot going on

in the world. So unless you start from a point of You know, where you're kinder to yourself and giving yourself time to absorb information, rather than beating yourself up every day and looking in mirror, waking up, looking in the mirror and going, Why am I not there yet? I, I think you're, you're going to be the biggest block to your, your success and your progress. So I, I totally agree with you. I'm going in on that. You know, I,

I fear that as well. Um. Um, but I have learned to be a little bit kinder to myself and say, OK, you know, there's some things that are, I must know now, there's some things that it's OK if I know next month. There are some things that are OK if I know 6 months from now, it's OK. You know, it will be OK, but just pace yourself, right, and not beat yourself up

about it. Now, Eric, last but not least, Yeah, I think, I think about it a lot at night, whether we need to rethink about how we reach people, is it less about reaching people with pure product and more about reaching people with product opinion. So that's kind of where my head's at these days, yeah. OK. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you to all of you who, who came and joined us today for our first webinar

of the year. I hope you enjoyed yourself, and I hope I've kept, um, to the promise that it was going to be a scintillating session. Um, I really enjoyed all the examples and I, I personally learned a lot. Thank you so much, everyone, for attending.