The boardroom image of marketing as a cost to be controlled rather than a driver of value reverberates throughout the value chain, with internal pressure on marketers to rein in spiraling media prices felt in turn by agencies and media owners alike.

Interactive media however, potentially making life yet harder by ceding more control to consumers, could also turn things around, reinforcing the importance of consumer insights and connections in a world of increased choice while providing an even richer communications palette to shore up engagement and loyalty.

Marketing could get an automatic boost from major IT investments made by larger advertisers to harness the wider possibilities in the masses of data they are accumulating company-wide, but such developments also risk sidelining marketers who aren’t directly involved.

“Big brands have plenty of data they have invested in, the CIO has been all over it, customer services has been all over it but marketing has not been at that table,” said Siva Ganeshanandan, director for Adobe Systems’ digital marketing suite in Asia-Pacific.

“Marketing needs to have that data real-time within a campaign, rather than looking at the campaign three months after it happened. The big data is there, being able to use it in the right way isn’t always there.”

Marketers with access to data stand a better chance of justifying their value to CFOs, Ganeshanandan added, and those without it need to assert their claim or develop their own.

“Marketing-led companies like Unilever and P&G, where marketing is at the core of the business, are doing really well. In banks and telcos, where data is owned by someone completely different, marketing hasn’t come to the table yet.”

A bigger picture

Many brand owners have acknowledged the importance of online media, with some mandating minimum levels of spend to facilitate the marketing transition towards digital platforms.

Such a focus can be counter-productive however, without recognizing how interactive media changes the way consumers relate to brands.

“The bigger question is what we are trying to do with the marketing, which then steps back to what are we trying to do with the business,” said Shu Fen Goh, co-founder and principal of marketing consultancy R3.

“When the CMO can say to the CEO the way to drive business is to understand your consumer, big data means understanding the consumer better and faster, and therefore being more relevant and authentic.”

Much of this potential will remain hidden however, if data, which has been collected by different departments to suit their specific needs, remains siloed.

“With marketing or business in a digital age, you can’t have three different sources of data,” Goh added. “There’s a lot of integration that needs to happen.”

Content and creativity

Despite the data explosion, success in digital marketing still hinges mostly on creativity and content, said Aseem Puri, Unilever’s marketing director for fabric care in Asia.

“Data is more like the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “What’s below the water is how good quality your content is and whether your brand has a personality to offer that content to consumers almost like a friend.

"That’s where brands need to get to. There are some good role models like Red Bull, Starbucks, Coke to some extent, and Dove, but there’s a long way to go and many will fall during this journey.”

While Unilever’s ad agency roster continues to deliver traditional advertising, Puri is having to look elsewhere for suppliers of digital content, which tends to have a lifespan of three to five days. This means creating around 100 pieces a year to maintain an online channel, which agencies appear ill equipped to do.

“We just did a review of how much money we spent last year on advertising conventionally,” Puri said.

“We found we were paying 25% of that total budget to really small players creating content in various parts, people we didn’t know existed two years ago.

"The pie for the conventional agencies has already shrunk. They just haven’t woken up to it.”

Openings for entrepreneurs

Changing marketer needs will spur increasing agency fragmentation, though the cycle will continue as these new companies are in turn acquired, or at least courted, by the larger agency groups.

“We have always been under threat from various areas,” remarked Sean O’Brien, Asia-Pacific CEO of media agency Carat. “Around the fringes of what we do, there will be continuous opportunities for entrepreneurs to set up new specialist businesses.

"Our business is about delivering to clients and what they need. The big issue is how do we deliver all of these specialist services such as mobile and social but also bring it together in a way that we can deliver a single business solution to our clients.”

Siloed structures within large agency groups can be hard to change, remarked Calvin Soh, himself an alumnus of major advertising agencies, including a stint as vice chairman and chief creative officer at Publicis Asia, before setting up his own venture Ninety Nine Percent this year.

Soh’s new company seeks to give consumers a more active role in the marketing process, which he sees as a natural evolution for marketing and business success in a world where interactive and social media amplifies the voices of people brands want to engage.

“People are asserting themselves with the internet,” Soh said. “Rather than fight, let’s embrace that and use their energy rather than you being the one person to create something.

"If large networks can’t do that then the new era will be people like me and a lot of others setting up their own small shops, because we have the will and capability to change.”

This year's Asia Media Summit, organized and staged by Media Partners Asia (MPA), was held at the Capella Resort in Singapore. For a full report, with overviews of all the sessions on the day, please write to [email protected]