Mediaboss Marketing

Mot Hennessy has extended its digital creative remit with Malaysia-based Trad3mark Group to cover Singapore, focusing on digital strategy and executions for total brand campaign across the company's portfolio of brands. Mot Hennessy initially appointed the Group to handle the Malaysia remit in January and extended duties due to strong performance.

At the same time, Heineken Malaysia has also awarded trade solution duties to Trad3mark Group for 2022. The job scope involves developing and driving a strategy to increase brand salience beyond modern-on-trade, creating an always-on model, increasing business preferential to Heineken outlets through an O2O model, as well as improving footfall and revenue to partner outlets.

Aside from Mot Hennessy and Heineken, hair care brand Schwarzkopf also awarded social media duties to a full-fledged digital agency under Trad3mark Group named Gravitas Integrated, in February. Schwarzkopf and Gravitas Integrated first worked together last October for 11.11 and 12.12 to drive awareness on Lazada covering strategy, creative, social marketing, and performance marketing. More campaigns were later awarded to Gravitas Integrated and the agency was eventually awarded the retainer.

Gravitas Integrated counts Patrick Yap (pictured left below) and Paul Lim (pictured right below) as its partner and ECD respectively. Yap was previously Wunderman Thompson Malaysia's MD while Lim was Grey Group Malaysia's ECD. Founded in 2020 by Syafeeq Zaki and initially known as Gravitas, the agency eventually rebranded to Gravitas Integrated last year when Yap and Lim joined, turning it into a full-fledged digital agency with a "Last Mile First" ethos.

In an interview with A+M, Yap explained that it is not just a creative agency. Instead, its belief is to help clients improve campaign efficacy through commercial solutions that drive the difference for businesses.

"We look at the last mile where sales is the main objective and reverse engineer the process to understand the pain points to unlock the challenge. An approach like this creates a holistic model which sharpens the creative ideas, improves thorough output and focuses on the ideas that actually matter," he explained.

Gravitas Integrated currently has 38 individuals and is part of the Trad3mark Group. Aside from Syafeeq (pictured left below), Yap, and Lim, its leaders comprise directors Carey Khoo (pictured second from left below), Kendra Chen (pictured second from right below), and Chloe Yap (pictured right). The leadership team combined has a wealth of experience in the advertising and marketing industry, including C27, Naga DDB Tribal, Astro, Ogilvy, Loki, Accenture, VMLY&R, Cheil, Wunderman Thompson, and InterContinental Hotels Group.

According to Lim, everyone's expertise complements one another and they each bring a different set of skills and thinking from diverse backgrounds, "creating a potent mix in dynamic problem solving". This drives the aggregation of ideas, allowing Gravitas Integrated to take on a holistic approach, delivering a sharper solution model. "This is what makes us different and it cannot be achieved in more conventional agency setups which have a fixed structure," Lim said.

Gravitas Integrated touts itself to be a digital-first agency with strategic and creative capabilities. The past experiences of its leadership team have inspired them to create a flatter organisational structure that "drives richness in diverse thinking, while keeping connectivity and speed at the forefront", Lim added.

Meanwhile, Syafeeq told A+M that change is a constant and it has seen the rise and fall of brands, which begs the question of being adaptable to survive. "This has been our guiding light and practice in Gravitas Integrated. We take pride in doing the best while adapting to change and we ensure our clients are brought along this journey. We value resilience, grit, delivery of high-quality work and creating work that thinks business-first," he added.

Among the list of brands Gravitas Integrated has worked with include Prudential, airasia rewards, 7 Days, Lotus's, Suria KLCC, CGS-CIMB, iBilik, Watsons, and the National Cancer Society Malaysia. For Prudential, in particular, Gravitas Integrated was responsible for the Asia regional website revamp project initially covering Malaysia, Cambodia, and Laos. This was later extended to other Asia countries in 2021. The agency's scope was also extended to cover UI and UX for the global implementation of an employee experience platform in Asia and Africa.

Meanwhile, airasia rewards brought on board Gravitas Integrated to manage social media content last September. The agency was also tasked to come up with a creative direction and content plan across social media.

How the Trad3mark Group partnership came about

According to Patrick Yap, Trad3mark Group shares the same values and vision of Gravitas Integrated. It is a high-performance organisation focusing on delivering measurable results. Additionally, Trad3mark has a strong network of clients giving them experience in commercial solutions.

"This has allowed Trad3mark to strategically expand its business ecosystem driving true commercial solutions. The partnership was the final piece of the puzzle for Gravitas Integrated to complete an end-to-end solution model," Yap said. He added that having known Trad3mark Group's MD Jin Chan for 14 years, he understood Chan's vision and has seen what he has achieved. "I believe with the partnership, we can truly complement and disrupt the current model," he added.

For now, Gravitas Integrated's focus remains on building its pool of local clients because Yap said the agency is designed to address a need in the market, resulting in a focused approach that has all the capabilities under one roof. Yap described this to be "a one throat to choke approach".

Having spent time in traditional network agencies such as VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson, Yap said some of the do's and don'ts he learnt include authenticity and transparency going a long way; respect and empathy being its greatest asset; and culture being the beginning and end of everything the agency does. "Don't always aim for perfection, aim for results," he added.

Meanwhile, Trad3mark Group's Chan (pictured left below) also told A+M during the interview that Trad3mark's approach has always been to look at solutions that help improve a client's ability to cut through and deliver on commercial objectives. Chan is further supported by group commercial director, Chris Lim (pictured right below), who has experience in commercial thinking having worked at British American Tobacco.

Trad3mark Group previously won bronze and silver for Best Use of Events and at A+M's MARKies 2018 and 2016 respectively, and also took home the silver award for Event Marketing Agency of the Year at A+M's Agency of the Year Awards 2017.

Founded in 2007 with the ethos "Value Before Profit", Trad3mark Group has four other companies under its wing aside from Gravitas Integrated: trad3mark, Humanomics, b3nchmark experiential, and Herman Corporate Solutions, according to its website. It has about 180 employees in total.

The Group is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur with offices in Indonesia, Myanmar and Laos through its sister companies. It is currently focusing on the change journey locally in Malaysia before expanding its footprint more significantly.

"The change journey externally will focus on building credibility with MNCs and local conglomerates improving awareness towards a wider network of clients. Secondly, the internal change journey focuses on our people with the aim to drive a high-performance culture, execution excellence and driving the ethos of Last Mile First across the network," Chan said.

Chan likened the Group to a swiss army knife - a multipurpose agency with solid marketing and commercial skillsets. According to him, different components take turns to lead a campaign depending on its demands. Thus enabling the Group to develop truly holistic solutions that connect marketing ideas with sales, delivering sharp ideas for impactful results.

At the group level, Trad3mark has been driving awareness of the transformation of its capabilities and services among its current clients. Additionally, Gravitas Integrated has also been driving initiatives on social platforms including LinkedIn and Instagram, as well as raising awareness through FutureLab.

Internal growth and strengthening capabilities in maintaining high standards will be the key focus in 2022, Chan said. "We believe now is the best time to aggressively drive acquisition of new business. As such we will be working with our current clientele first and leveraging the network of the group to extend our services and to aim to deliver more commercial solutions," he added.

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Mot Hennessy expands digital creative remit with Trad3mark Group - Marketing Interactive