- 2 days ago
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If you’re still measuring success by ‘reach’ and ‘clicks’, you’re flying blind. Dennis Kam of growth consultancy Juno joins Cynthia Ng to explain why Malaysian brands must stop chasing mass attention and start building communities to win in the attention economy.
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00:10Hello, you are watching AwaniReview. I'm your host, Sin Ke-Un.
00:13For business leaders, capturing attention is getting harder and it is getting more expensive.
00:19In a market where attention is currency, one growth consultancy argues that the strategy, or the answer,
00:26is not to spend more, but to go deeper.
00:30Dennis Kam, Chief Strategy Officer at Juno Growth Consultancy joins me now.
00:35Thank you so much, Dennis, for coming on the show.
00:36Thanks for having us.
00:37So let's start with Juno, the company.
00:40Now you call yourself as a growth consultancy, not a marketing agency.
00:46What's the difference here and why does it matter?
00:48Hi, so first of all, it may sound like a technicality, agency versus consultancy,
00:54but for us it signals a big difference in the way we are accountable.
01:00The traditional agency title suggests that we are accountable for outputs, production, artwork,
01:10let's say pretty pictures, pretty words, hours billable.
01:13That's what the traditional agency is accountable for.
01:17On the other hand, a growth consultancy, we are accountable for outcomes.
01:21So whether brand revenue grows, whether brand equity is uplifted,
01:27whether people would prefer the brand or not.
01:30Commercial outcomes is what a consultancy like Juno, that's what we prioritize.
01:35So there are also many differences between a traditional agency and a growth consultancy,
01:41but we can get more into it if we want.
01:42But your background is in marketing, right?
01:44So at what point in your career that you feel that the old model of a marketing agency
01:51or a marketer does not work anymore?
01:54Yeah, so my founders and I, we all come from advertising agencies.
02:00And we all left because we were in some way disillusioned with some parts of the system.
02:07Not the entire industry or the entire marketing industry, not the entire model is broken.
02:12But a very key thing is broken there, which is the assumption that better creative work can solve business outcomes.
02:22As long as you have better creative, the old adage goes.
02:26As long as you have a better idea and prettier pictures or nicer words, you can really affect business outcomes.
02:34But studies have shown, and that's what we are championing now, it's not so much the creative, it's more the
02:42diagnosis.
02:43Because with so many things screaming for attention these days, platforms, even AI content coming in,
02:50content and creative are being commoditized.
02:54But what hasn't been commoditized is the human expertise to judge whether something is the right question,
03:01whether you're solving the right problem or not.
03:04And Albert Einstein famously said,
03:07if you give me one hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes figuring out what the right
03:13question is to ask.
03:14Once the right question is asked, then the solution comes easily.
03:18However, the traditional agency model focuses on just creating outputs to address problems or questions that may be wrong.
03:28So for us, we really believe in diagnosis, a sharper diagnosis, meaning questioning what the right problem is,
03:36what the right question is before we actually start work.
03:39So going to the root of the problem, identifying that, and creating a strategy based on that particular problem.
03:47I do want to take your point on business outcomes, because if you look at businesses today,
03:53everyone is trying to get heard, everyone is trying to get attention,
03:58and business outcomes come in the form of likes, engagement, reach.
04:03Is that system broken? Are we looking at the wrong things now when it comes to really building a brand?
04:09Yeah. I think many Malaysian marketers get the ratio or balance proportion wrong.
04:16There's a time and place for likes and engagements.
04:19However, if you look at the trend now in the Malaysian market and Malaysian brands,
04:25they are interested in short-term metrics that light up on a dashboard.
04:30So imagine, let's say, there's a bit more jargon here, the next few things I'm going to say,
04:34but imagine your marketing campaign runs.
04:36Big tech platforms give you dashboards, campaign analytics,
04:41and they focus on things like impression, reach, engagement, conversion, click-through rates.
04:47Things like that flash, and when they go green, you're happy.
04:51You feel like your money is spent correctly.
04:54A CFO is as happy as a CMO.
04:57However, these are just leading indicators.
04:59What a dashboard doesn't show you are three things.
05:02The first thing is the increasing acquisition cost.
05:06If more and more brands or companies clutter the space and target the same buyers,
05:14the acquisition cost goes up.
05:15The dashboard doesn't show that.
05:17It is only trackable if you look year on year or a few years at a time.
05:21The second thing is because to necessitate conversion,
05:28you have to throw a promotion or a discount.
05:31Increasingly, when you do that, your brand means less and less to the next wave of buyers
05:36who will just be interested by clicking on an offer.
05:41And thirdly, what doesn't show up is the cost of conditioning your market or your audience
05:48into expecting discounts or promotions only.
05:51And when you do that, you condition them to only wait until you have a discount
05:55because otherwise, why would I even consider you?
05:58So these are the three things.
06:00Increasing acquisition costs, your brand meaning less and conditioning your buyers to be discount goers.
06:07So marketers in Malaysia, they skew towards short term metrics.
06:13But the ideal ratio, and this is proven through a lot of research, not done by Juno, but empirical market
06:18research.
06:20The ratio between short term versus long term brand building.
06:24Long term brand building should hover around the range of 60 to 70% versus 30% short term.
06:30But in Malaysia, we have it topsy-turvy.
06:32And we're not blaming the system.
06:34It's just how things have progressed.
06:37And we identified, we diagnosed that as the problem.
06:40Most brands gravitate in Malaysia 60 to 70% short term metrics.
06:44And with geopolitical uncertainty, with conflict, then they double down on short term
06:51because they just need to get to the next quarter.
06:53They just need to get to the next year.
06:56What are you hearing when you talk to business owners?
06:59Why are they not moving towards that direction?
07:02Is it because of the fear of losing relevance?
07:04Or is it fear of losing sales?
07:05What is it that is preventing them?
07:07Number one, they're afraid of…
07:09It's formal.
07:11It's the fear of missing out on opportunities, even short term ones or low hanging fruits.
07:16They're losing out to their competitors if they don't say something.
07:19If they don't create a promotion here.
07:21If they don't create an ad here.
07:22If they don't create a campaign here.
07:24They're afraid of losing out.
07:25And the other thing is, and this is the tougher nut to crack, internal stakeholders,
07:31such as the CFO, such as the product teams, such as the sales teams, that pressure marketing
07:38teams to want to go for short term metrics, right?
07:43And they also act as sometimes, sometimes, they also advocate against long term brand building.
07:50And there's a lot of reasons to justify that, of course.
07:54And nobody's really right or wrong.
07:56But that's where we come in as Juno.
07:58We help them sort out their differences and refocus on long term brand building.
08:03Because the brands that we all love as Malaysians growing up were a result of long term brand building.
08:09Okay, so now this brings us to Juno's core idea, because when we often talk about going big,
08:14you have to scale, you know, go big and to get people's attention.
08:17But your idea is rooted on zooming in, going hyper local.
08:21Tell us more about that.
08:22So when we say hyper local, and this isn't a Juno creation.
08:27Globally, it's been gaining a lot of traction, just in different forms.
08:31Hyper local could also be community marketing, could also be fandom.
08:34When I say hyper local, it doesn't mean small budgets or small audiences.
08:40No.
08:40Hyper local, if you think about the word hyper, it suggests obsessive or intense.
08:46Hyper local here doesn't restrict to a certain geography, though it can be.
08:52But you localize it to a community.
08:55Usually when we talk about hyper local, we're talking about community marketing.
08:59And this is a group of people with the same purchase behavior,
09:05the same like-minded interests, the same kind of fandom.
09:10They all are obsessed about one thing.
09:12And an example of a hyper local community would be, let's say, a mother's group.
09:19Or it could be, it's a little bit cliche, but a gamer's group within youth.
09:24But youth, there are many.
09:25There's also STEM, there's robotics, and there's music lovers and all.
09:30And another example would be things like, in the sports community,
09:35there are a lot of hyper local.
09:36It's not just, I do sports, what kind of sport do I like?
09:39Do I like MMA?
09:40Do I like pickleball?
09:41Do I like tennis, right?
09:43Now, hyper local is about brands going deeper to build trust within those communities.
09:50Not just as sponsors, because that has happened many times already in the past.
09:55Not just as sponsors, but as real co-creators.
10:00Brands are there to be present and also to try to belong, to fit into the community.
10:05How do you actually identify the community that you would like to build around?
10:10Because there's not always an obvious decision for a brand.
10:16The number one prerequisite a brand needs to have before they do this is,
10:21are they willing to experiment a little bit?
10:23Are they willing to adapt to the changing times?
10:26Are they willing to not go broad?
10:28That's the first prerequisite.
10:31The second prerequisite is, brands know what their customers are roughly.
10:36Right.
10:37And they have a lot of reports that show them the customer's demo, their buying habits,
10:41and how much they spend their income groups, where they live, and all that.
10:44Their family sizes.
10:46But what brands don't, they focus on the point of purchase.
10:50But if you go further into the purchase intent, further before,
10:54even before they reach the purchase action itself, the purchase intent.
10:58So how brands start identifying these communities, they look at purchase intent.
11:02Take a pair of shoes, for example.
11:05Let's say sporting shoes.
11:07Don't look at where they're buying.
11:09How do they even start to consider buying sporting shoes?
11:13Naturally, you go to the neighborhood courts.
11:15You go to the school clubs.
11:17You go to the community centers.
11:18You go to the venues where people actually play these sports.
11:21So that's the second prerequisite is to really go into where purchase intent starts to form.
11:28How much of it is data-driven and how much of it is instinct?
11:32Because you said brands know their customers, right?
11:34But hyperlocal insight isn't always, they don't always appear on dashboards.
11:39So how do they make that decision to rally behind a community?
11:42Instinct is one.
11:43But at Juno, we also pair it with a lot of data insights.
11:48Ethnographic study, long word for just going down to the ground and talking to people
11:56and interviewing them or even getting it through surveys.
12:01But mainly it's just talking to people and having them tell you what matters to them
12:05and what changes their purchase intent.
12:09An example that I want to pull in here is Juno's work with Big Pharmacy.
12:13And we had to come up with a campaign for their rehabilitation, rehab,
12:19wheelchairs and equipment that helps people recover from their injury, mobility injury.
12:26We didn't focus on who's coming into the store.
12:30We looked broader.
12:32We looked at the different caretakers, communities, children,
12:36physioclinics that work with this group of people trying to recover.
12:40We found that rehab is sometimes a taboo.
12:43People don't like to talk about it.
12:45But we are saying, let's go into the communities and work with them.
12:51And that way Big Pharmacy can play a bigger role there.
12:54So that's an example of hyperlocal marketing in play.
12:58And how do you quantify success in a hyperlocal strategy?
13:02Because it's harder to quantify than reach impressions, no click-through rates and all that.
13:08I think it takes some time.
13:11So it won't be as immediate as a dashboard, a performance marketing dashboard.
13:15It won't be as immediate.
13:17But a few things will shift.
13:20A, people will start to word of mouth and refer and talk about you,
13:26even when you don't pay them for UGC.
13:29It's organic recommendations, right?
13:31So referrals, word of mouth.
13:33And the second thing is the brand might be invited back,
13:36will be actively invited back into the community for a future event,
13:40for a future partnership.
13:42And third, usually brands will run surveys before and after.
13:47After that, you will find that people will start to prefer the brand
13:51and will start to talk about it and will start to say,
13:54I would choose this, top of mind increases and all.
13:56So going deep allows the brand to build better brand health equity.
14:01So brand health is another metric.
14:04It takes some time, though, to measure brand health.
14:06It takes a period of months or even years.
14:09What you're pointing to, it makes a lot of sense
14:12because attention is so fragmented now.
14:16You want to be there, you want to be in the community.
14:17But how does one justify this internally to a CFO, for instance?
14:23How do you make that case that we need to spend maybe as much,
14:28but we need to spend longer to really get into a market?
14:32I'll probably say this one sentence to the CFO.
14:38Reach is now cheaper relative to trust.
14:41Trust has become even more expensive.
14:43And the CFO would understand if I say, if you go back to the 90s,
14:47if I buy an ad on TV, the reach there is expensive.
14:53But once you get there on TV, you know you'll be trusted
14:57because not everybody gets to go on TV.
14:59And you know that at 8pm, that many people will be in front of a TV set,
15:04for sure, in the 90s.
15:06In the 2020s, today, people are not in front of the TV.
15:11There are 20 different platforms, a thousand different ads,
15:15trying to talk to them.
15:16So reach is cheaper, but trust becomes so much more expensive.
15:20I would tell the CFO or the stakeholders,
15:23we need to build for the future.
15:26We cannot think short term,
15:27because thinking short term will torpedo the brand.
15:32We need to start building for the next generation of buyers,
15:35the next waves of buyers, in the next 5 to 10 years even.
15:39And some of the brands that do this right locally,
15:43I'll give an example even though they're not a client, Milo.
15:47All of us grew up with the Milo truck.
15:50The Milo truck was an example of hyperlocal marketing.
15:53They decided that going to schools, distributing free Milo,
15:57was the way to create lifetime value.
16:00So that's the sort of long term thinking,
16:03to stick to it even though it doesn't really drive the bottom line as much,
16:07immediately.
16:08To build these communities up,
16:11to build with them to be there where they are.
16:13And Milo trucks belonged at sporting events.
16:17And they were invited there, people wanted them there.
16:19So that's the feeling we're trying to push brands.
16:24It's almost like going back in time then.
16:25Red Bull, Milo.
16:26Trying to find that connection again.
16:28Now bringing that closer to home,
16:30in a market like Malaysia,
16:31where you have multiple languages, cultures, communities,
16:35does hyperlocal, is it more powerful,
16:40or is it more even complicated for brands?
16:41How do they navigate that?
16:42It's both complicated and because of that more powerful.
16:46And the nuances are what people don't miss.
16:49People will celebrate those differences.
16:51In a monolithic culture, such as let's say the US,
16:57or let's say a Western country,
16:59where people are more homogenous.
17:01Malaysia is a very diverse country.
17:04And the more hyperlocal we get, the more nuance we get.
17:07That kampong, or that village, or that school, or that club,
17:10or that office building, that specific ethnicity or racial group.
17:17If we can be more specific,
17:19it will be even more powerful.
17:20Because people will feel represented.
17:22People will feel seen.
17:23People will feel heard.
17:25How hyperlocal can you get?
17:26Can you go down to, you said kampong,
17:29but can you even go down to a street?
17:31We worked with TikTok shop last CNY.
17:35And instead of doing big promos,
17:36like TikTok shop's competitors,
17:38we focus it on hometowns.
17:40So that's the most hyperlocal we've been to now.
17:44So we got people to try to support their hometowns,
17:47because they're already buying a lot of things during CNY.
17:49So why not support your hometown businesses?
17:53So the hometown market was the idea.
17:56Can it go down the street? Ideally.
17:58But we do see like,
18:01it will be very difficult to convince them,
18:03to convince stakeholders on scale and reach.
18:05But I think small wins,
18:08we start with even a neighborhood will be good.
18:12Long term street, yes.
18:14But definitely specific, being specific,
18:17being as nuanced and as local as possible.
18:21Student clubs are another good example.
18:23They're a smaller number,
18:24but there's a lot of talent and potential there.
18:28So ideally in the future,
18:30we can even get to that sort of appetite
18:32to do street by street pride.
18:34And there is a lot of pride there also.
18:36Now you've worked with both large corporations
18:39and smaller brands.
18:40Is the brand strategy for going hyperlocal,
18:43is it fundamentally different for a large organization
18:45compared to SME?
18:48Or are the principles the same?
18:49The principles of going hyperlocal are the same,
18:52but the format and the speed are different.
18:54For an MNC, a lot of the time will be to align stakeholders
18:59to try to go hyperlocal.
19:01A lot of the strategy will be to,
19:03how do we put together a plan that's agreeable
19:06by different departments?
19:08Then how do we have an executable, sustainable plan?
19:11So it's not just a one-off event that people forget.
19:15Because if you're just doing a one-off event,
19:17people are just, you're just renting their attention
19:19and they forget about you after, right?
19:21For an SME, the main thing is to get them out and try.
19:27For an SME, it's smaller.
19:29There's less to lose.
19:30And they are a lot more nimbler and agile,
19:34so they can go and try.
19:35So for SMEs, the main thing about hyperlocal
19:39is being a lot more creative, a lot more courageous.
19:42Alright.
19:43Now let me just push you on that a bit
19:45because I feel like if you do focus too narrowly,
19:48you might risk missing certain things.
19:52Perhaps being too niche might impede your growth, for instance.
19:57Is that something that business leaders should be thinking about?
20:01Or do they think about that?
20:02Yeah, I think it might.
20:05There's actually a net positive long term
20:07because your efforts in that niche community
20:11are not gone unnoticed to the wider market anyway.
20:14And the idea is to go deep and then radiate outwards.
20:18And your existing buyers will take notice
20:21and they might feel even more reinforced
20:24and they might even reinforce their support
20:26because you are doing this with a hyperlocal community.
20:29Then it validates their choices.
20:31They will tell someone new about it.
20:33So we don't see any loss in terms of...
20:36No tunnel vision when we go to hyperlocal
20:40because ultimately you can still radiate outwards.
20:42You can take that content,
20:43you can still blast it out to more people.
20:47But the idea is to not think that hyperlocal
20:50is a replacement for broad-based.
20:52We're not saying that hyperlocal
20:54should totally replace a brand strategy,
20:56but a hyperlocal deserves a higher proportional ratio
21:00of that brand strategy.
21:01Going back to that ratio that you pointed out earlier.
21:03Okay.
21:03What kind of resistance do you get from companies
21:05when you go in and propose this sort of idea?
21:08Going really niche.
21:09Yeah.
21:10What's the reach?
21:10The main thing is.
21:11What's the reach?
21:12What's the return?
21:15When do I see the return?
21:17But mainly is the numbers.
21:18It's so small.
21:20What are our customers really passionate about?
21:23And they go to study.
21:25Then they will ask for studies
21:26and the studies will attract the same few things
21:28that every other brand is in.
21:30A good example of that is e-sports.
21:33And when brands say they want to target youth,
21:36they say,
21:38okay, tell me what youth are interested in.
21:40Top two things.
21:41Music, e-sports, maybe food.
21:43So as a result, you see all the brands just go there.
21:47Right?
21:47So that's what we're also trying to push back against
21:50and try to advise.
21:52There's a lot of white space.
21:53There's a lot of gaps.
21:55Unowned territories.
21:58Underserved communities that brands can go to.
22:01But I think by and forward, to answer your question,
22:04the main pushback is so small, so niche.
22:07So then we have to convince them that it's about going deep,
22:10building that trust with the community
22:13and then radiating outwards.
22:14And it's about doing many different types
22:17of hyper-local community engagements.
22:21It all sounds really good.
22:23And I see the logic.
22:25I see the investment that the company needs to put into
22:29to build that long-term trust.
22:30But why is there still a gap between what marketers
22:34or what people like you know,
22:36and the gap between what they know and what they actually do?
22:38How do you breach that?
22:40Because companies and brands are not designed
22:42to embrace change immediately.
22:47The bigger the company gets, you don't change as quickly.
22:50But also, a lot of brands also take shortcuts.
22:53They rent or lease content creators.
22:57And that's a viable strategy, but it also makes you a tourist sometimes.
23:03It makes the brand a tourist.
23:04Meaning the brand doesn't stick with the community long enough
23:07before it moves on to the next thing,
23:09before it terminates that engagement.
23:11So a lot of brands are going to...
23:13I mean, content creators are already doing hyper-local.
23:16And then content creators then take this and sell to brands, right?
23:19So what we're trying to do is repurpose...
23:24Get brands to repurpose some of the content creator budgets
23:28that they're using to spend and to work with content creators.
23:32Because some really good content creators charge a lot.
23:34They do...
23:35And for good reason.
23:36They have good content and they have great followers.
23:40But brands should think less about leasing from content creators
23:44and renting it.
23:45Because when you work with a content creator,
23:47you're essentially partnering them for a short time, right?
23:50But instead, you can still work with them,
23:52but think about trying to build something that's your own within that community.
23:56Bring your own activators, like from the brand,
23:59and pair it with activators in that community, right?
24:02And the content creator can come in to juice things up a little bit,
24:06but don't rely on content creators to tell your story.
24:10Go and tell your own story.
24:11Genuine, with a genuine, sincere heart, right?
24:14Go and build.
24:15So brand A brings in activators and pairs up with community B's activators.
24:20When I say activators, I mean really passionate leaders within that community
24:24who are already there and they don't need a brand to keep doing what they're doing.
24:28A brand would certainly help, but they don't need a brand.
24:31So it's really coming in to build together.
24:35All right.
24:36Last one from me.
24:36If a Malaysian business leader wants to act on this tomorrow,
24:40what's one thing that they should change?
24:43I think there are three things.
24:44I'll give you three things.
24:45First is they got to know their purpose.
24:48What do they stand for?
24:49And is it aligned with the communities you're looking at?
24:52Are you aligned with the community you want to support and create with?
24:55And what you stand for is basically why you exist.
24:58Your big purpose question.
24:59The second thing is, like I said earlier, activators.
25:02You need to have a group of people within your company, your brand,
25:05that is passionate enough to want to go to the ground to activate with that community.
25:10And likewise, does the community have activators ready to embrace your brand coming in?
25:14And thirdly, do you have a powerful idea, a rallying cry, a slogan?
25:20The traditional word is tagline or slogan, but a rallying idea.
25:25And recently, Juno has been working with Spritzer, Flow of Joy.
25:28And we're working with the fitness and wellness community.
25:32And the rallying cry is Flow of Joy because life is so stuck often in urban settings.
25:37So you've got to flow with joy.
25:38And being a water brand such as Spritzer, we feel like it's powerful to rally the different hiking community,
25:47sporting community, student communities and such to flow with joy.
25:51So the third one is powerful idea.
25:53So first is purpose, second is activators, third is powerful idea.
25:58And definitely Juno can help a brand or company achieve that.
26:03Fascinating insights.
26:04Thank you so much, Dennis, for coming on the show and sharing your thoughts.
26:08Great to have you.
26:09Thanks for the questions.
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