MAM
Dentsu Aegis Network acquires majority share in Flexmedia
MUMBAI: Dentsu Aegis Network has acquired Thailand based digital advertising agency Flexmedia.
Joining one of Dentsu Aegis’ eight global network brands – global performance marketing agency iProspect – the agency will be known as Flexmedia iProspect. The acquisition will significantly scale iProspect’s digital credentials to become the largest performance marketing agency in Thailand and strengthen the already significant Dentsu Aegis Network business locally.
Founded in 2005, the digital agency led by Nathamon Kongthananon as CEO, Komjak Kamthornpasinee as chief marketing officer and Pichit Chearjaraswongs as chief technology officer, has grown to a team of 33 marketing professionals currently servicing international and local brands such as Sumsung, Sansiri, and Siam Commercial Bank.
Nathamon will continue as CEO of Flexmedia iProspect, reporting to Dentsu Aegis Network Thailand CEO Amornsak Sakpuaram.
Dentsu Aegis Network Southeast Asia CEO Dick van Motman said, “Over the last five years, admittedly starting from a very low base, the estimated number of Internet users in Thailand has increased sixfold. The country continues to rank among the top 30 economies worldwide and second among emerging economies of East Asia on the ease of doing business. The combination of iProspect and Flexmedia in Thailand will allow us to bring best-in-class performance marketing, data and analytics to our clients, thus adding to a strong, dynamic network in a robust market like Thailand.”
iProspect Asia Pacific CEO Ruth Stubbs added, “With the improved scale and diversity of product and skillset, a combined Flexmedia/iProspect offering will allow iProspect to not only better manage global and local clients, but also to provide true leadership in performance marketing.Flexmedia offers us a seasoned team that can represent the iProspect brand to create relevance in the emerging Thai digital landscape.”
“We are thrilled to join the iProspect and Dentsu Aegis Network family. This new partnership will strengthen and grow the company and I look forward to harnessing the global skills and resources to deliver great work for our clients,” said Kongthananon.
MAM
The Merit of Madness: How AI is Changing the Game in Advertising
By Ritz Malik, founder, Ritz Media World.
MUMBAI: When it comes to growth in a competitive landscape, a businessman always has to be a firm believer in Darwinism. You either need to bring a better product, or a better price, or both to the table to get customers and scale. Without this value proposition, you remain unnoticed, and staying unnoticed is not something that a brand wants to do.
You have to do all this and also make sure that you stay cashflow positive at the same time. Otherwise, you’re at a real risk of becoming a large hollow balloon that your competitors are just waiting for to explode or implode under its own weight.
As we’ve entered the era of AI, the notion of a product’s efficacy, cost efficiency, marketability, workflow management, and logistics reliability has become increasingly relevant and prevalently impactful. None of this is background noise anymore. It is the difference between bleeding money on traditional media and actually engineering a profitable campaign.
For example, META’s AI Algorithm has finally given us the ability to measure the ‘CREATIVE’ for a business’s promotions. The best part is that we can do so organically. Content that is actually relevant to the target audience gets more views through reach. This tells us exactly how the audience is reacting before we even scale the budget. This is how we have been gifted the ability to provide merit to the madness of the creative process.
So, our process is as follows:
A set of creatives is built for social media
Their performance is closely monitored for reach and engagement.
Based on the best organic performance, we choose the creative.
Make micro adjustments to add a sales proposition and CTA (but keep it subtle)
Publish the modified creative as an ad.
There’s a lot that goes on in between, but this is the basic method for getting it right. And this is just the AI that’s being used by platforms across the world.
AI utilisation is something that has greatly made the creative process a lot easier. As an agency that thrives on coming up with ideas that are out of this world, we have made the most of leveraging AI to bring ideas to life without spending a fortune.
So, this way, the ability to create high-impact brand stories is no longer under the tyrannical gatekeeping of large budget organisations. It is now that merit solely falls on the storyteller.
Now, AI-powered content production and the AI algorithm on Social Media platforms are asking the question: Is your content compelling?. If yes, the audience will watch your content, share it, and engage with it.
And when it comes to keeping budgets down, we can surely say that it holds the capability to execute million-dollar shoots at a fraction of the cost.
For example, we recently came across a creative challenge by a major Real Estate Developer from Gurugram. They had signed a celebrity couple for their brand ambassadorship a few months ago. They were now about to launch their new project, but for some reason, they could not get their shoot done.
What we came up with was to use the likeness of this celebrity couple and place them throughout the project’s feature video. With the help of AI generation, we were able to rebuild a completely new feature video with their brand ambassadors in 2 days, and no additional physical shots were required.
Imagine being able to save 50-60 lakhs in production costs, 15-20 days in production time, and comfortably be ahead of schedule to launch the project.
This has changed the game entirely. With AI, you can now just acquire the likeness rights of celebrities, and you can just build environments and scenarios with them. The balance between creative and artificial intelligence isn’t a battle for control; it is simply the ultimate tool for survival and scale in a landscape that rewards the fastest and the smartest.
