No, Asia is not behind the West in digital marketing
Asian-based marketers frequently have to contend with criticism that their content is safe and 'vanilla'. But how can they innovate both digitally and creatively when Western-based head offices still get the final say on content and budgets, asks LinkedIn's Daniel Hochuli
If you’ve ever worked in marketing in the Asia region, one of the most common apologies you hear is we are behind the West in terms of digital innovation and performance.
There is a prevailing sentiment that suggests Asia-based marketers, including those in India and Australia, lack a level of ‘maturity’ or ‘savviness’ on digital compared to the markets of the US or Europe.
Yet reality is that marketers here are no less innovative, hard-working or savvy than their Western-based counterparts. Rather, they have more hurdles to overcome when it comes to performing even the most mundane marketing tasks. This friction primarily sits around the delivery and distribution of digital marketing in Asia, not talent.
‘Follow HP’s example and give marketers the budget to be effective and reap the results.’
This friction is caused by a couple of key factors:
- Asia-based marketers have to deal with the cultural and political nuances of over 48 countries, instead of one market with one culture, like the US.
- They regularly have minimal say on the content creation or distribution process for their region because all strategic marketing decisions sit at ‘head office’ – normally based in the US or Europe.
- Asia-based marketers have a fraction of the budget to work with to reach over 60% of the world’s population (4.6 billion people); compared to Western-based marketers who are given a much larger budget to reach just a fraction of that number (325 million people in the States).
- Connectivity is still an issue in many Asian regions meaning distribution of marketing material is still a big issue with large black spots.
- Asia-based marketers are hopelessly under resourced and are often forced to wear many hats just to deliver the basic tasks; whilst their Western counterparts usually have a much better resourced team – which includes the luxury of specialists.
The reason why regional agencies and brands are often underrepresented in many global marketing awards is this friction. It is not because marketers lacks ability, maturity or talent; it’s because they lack time and resources to make innovation and performance a priority.
Indeed, local Asian brands with properly resourced local Asian teams are actually creating some very innovative content including the examples below from Singaporean bank, DBS.
Consider what ‘Asia’ really is
One of the biggest mistakes Western-based brands make when they try and grow their markets in Asia, is they lump all of Asia into one big region (often called APAC or JAPAC). According to Wikipedia, ‘Asia’ is defined as any place to the east of the Suez Canal and Black Seas. This definition of Asia contains 48 different countries with 4.6 billion people (roughly 60% of the world’s population) speaking over 2,000 languages.
The level of diversity in Asia dwarfs that of the US. It is a region that houses countless languages, religions – indeed over 31% of all Muslims are live in South East Asia – and political freedoms.
For the Asia-based marketer trying to be relevant to the very different parts of ‘Asia’, they have to ensure that their marketing does not offend any tradition, value, religion or political persuasion across multiple countries – or find themselves with a PR crisis on your hands.
Indeed, it is simply naive to think what works in Australia will work in Thailand (because of a different language) or in Malaysia (due to Islamic sensitivities) or China (due to political censorship).
These crucial considerations inevitably affect the speed and quality of the content delivered. And as a result, the region’s content is often dubbed ‘safe’ or ‘vanilla’ because it’s better to be bland than to innovate and risk offending in such a minefield. These are hurdles most Western-based marketers never have to jump to at the same level. It also means, without this friction, the West has the luxury to innovate, both with their resources and time.
Where does the decision-making and budgets lie?
For the Asia-based marketer working for a global brand, the fact that HQ sits in New York or San Fran or London or Paris is probably one of the biggest causes of friction in her ability to do her job. Often the head office has to have the final say on every piece of content that goes out in Asia; or (worse still) all the content is created in these regions for the Asian market.
It is hard to take seriously assets generated by creators who’ve never visited the market of their core customer.
Another reason why Asian content is often created in or curated from the West is budgets. It is easier and cheaper to scale and re-purpose Western-centric marketing material to Asia, than it is to have a separate Asia-based marketing team create new content for each region. But this push for scale comes at a cost to performance. Western-centric content is often irrelevant for the Asian market, which results in lacklustre engagement and regional performance.
The marketer often has no real power, resources or budget to then ‘rregionalise” that content, so it goes out to market – under performs – and that person is stuck defending their team from sentiments like ‘Asia is just not as mature as us’. The reality is her team is highly capable, if given the freedom to control what she knows is best for her market. But head office’s fear of relinquishing control to those in region causes a lot of friction on her team’s performance.
I would love to see a Western brands really place a lot of faith in their Asian marketers. Give them the budget to be effective in both creativity and in distribution and reap the results – just like HP did recently:
Give it up for the Asia-based marketer
There are no quick solutions to the logistical issues in Asia, but it must be recognised that the region is in no way the same as the West when it comes to marketing, sales and business. A broad stroke ‘global’ marketing strategy is often governed by objectives such as scale and cost rather than regionalisation and creativity; and perhaps that needs a rethink.
To the Asia-based marketer, be proud of your ability to operate on a shoe-string and your ability to juggle multiple market nuances with minimal support.
For those marketers based in the US and Europe, understand that you are lucky to have the freedom, resources and budgets to innovate and tap into your passion. It is not always like that in other parts of the world. I encourage you to come and work in Asia for a while – see the red tape, the friction and hurdles an Asia-based marketer has to jump through just to get the job done.
Daniel Hochuli is LinkedIn Asia-Pacific’s content marketing evangelist. The full version of this article can be viewed here.
While I agree with the basic premise around budgets, resources, etc. this article’s argument lets itself down by its examples.
The DBS video you show is actually a good example of the kind of bland, generic content output typical of SEA and India that is damaging the region’s reputation. Nothing at all innovative about it. HP the same. You could swap HP with any other brand and nobody would notice the difference. Replace the laptop with a tub of Vicks VapoRub and the outcome is the same. I would like the author to justify why he thinks these are “very innovative content”.
Reply*Both these responses are mine. Tech issues.
ReplyThe we can disagree
DBS was just a huge embarrassment. Every frame is a complete cringe. The integration of product information was served with a giant hammer and defeats the purpose of whatever the makers of this video were trying to achieve. It might work in the Singapore bubble but in the wider context it is truly painful to watch. Remember, no content is viewed by the audience in isolation. It needs to compete with all the other content they encounter every day. Honestly, how do you think this stacks up against the latest Netflix offering? Where is its value? What would make someone choose to watch this over the latest episode of Masterchef?
Also, not having seen any other financial company do this is hardly an endorsement. There is a good reason they haven’t – it’s not a very good idea. It is ‘brand content’ for brand content’s sake, rather than it being good for business. You have anything that shows the effectiveness of this video? I am guessing it was not cheap. What were the results?
HP i can concede has good production values (which is not in itself an ‘innovative’ thing) but it is hardly unique in this respect. These days its harder to find a brand that hasn’t done a six minute “human” video. If HP was the first, I could credit them. But they are just copying a trend without bringing anything new to the table, or – most importantly – creating a distinctive and memorable brand connection. TC bank was doing this kind of work in Taiwan six years ago. If you think it is rare to see this kind of work from Asia, I would politely suggest you haven’t been seeing enough work from the region.
My overall argument is that you make some good points about the challenges of producing digital content in Asia, but the examples you use to support your argument are weak. I wouldn’t even consider them ‘digital’ aside from the delivery platform. Maybe take a look at some of the digital work coming out of China. Much more innovative, new, and, dare I say, actually ‘digital’.
ReplyHi m, thank you for your response, but I disagree these are bland examples.
On Sparks, while the content may not set the judges hearts in Cannes on fire, I find the series to be pretty ‘innovative’. I watch a lot of branded content and what I saw as innovation in this series is that these are essentially DBS ‘case studies’ packaged up in an NCIS-style storytelling format. Not many other banks globally deliver their case studies to their customers in this way – in fact it’s pretty unique and despite some hammy dialogue, I actually enjoyed the series and found it to be a refreshing approach to the generally generic ‘case study’ format.
On HP, again I agree that the story itself isn’t the most original, but what is ‘innovative’ is the scale of production. You might think that a big budget shouldn’t be considered ‘innovative’, but I actually think it is when we talk about creating content in Asia. It’s a complete luxury for most marketers. Most content we see in Asia at this production level, tends to be repurposed from the US or Europe or in a TVC format. HP’s Paro is high production story telling from Asia, and there really is only a handful of such brand pieces being made at this level of production in Asia. I would love to see more enterprise brands follow HP in giving budget and resources to this region.
ReplyInteresting stuff Dan!
As you pointed out, there is not one Asia, and issues around budget or overseas control don’t really apply in markets like China and Japan.
Creativity and innovation come up a lot in our workshops. Whilst overseas strategic oversight and budgets are often cited, the general conclusion has been that they’re not significant factors in limiting creativity or innovation.
The consensus has been that attitudes and approaches are the biggest factors, with cultural and industrial elements having the greatest influence.
In particular for the creative industry, great practitioners often follow an apprenticeship that’s inspired and motivated by those that came before, so a limited creative legacy can have more impact in this industry than in other more structured environments.
From a cultural perspective, more collectivist societies may have favoured ‘harmony’ over ‘standing-out’ and this may cause a drag on being different or on fuelling the unique personal initiatives that inspire creative solutions.
From an industry perspective many traditional media sectors are still dominated by ex-public service monopolies. This acts as a brake on accountability (e.g. audience research and performance measures) which means that the benefits of creativity and innovation, of breaking the rules, are not immediately apparent. This in turn leads to a lack of incentive for originality.
The good thing is that all of these things are teachable and addressable (as is dealing with overseas head offices!), and we have a range of workshops that help comms teams loosen those shackles and let their imagination run riot!
Get in touch if you think we can help you with your own needs!
Nick
ReplyAsia is not behind the west in digital marketing. They are actually leading the way in showing the world the worst practices possible.
it’s like they just apply the same conventional rules as print and tv to the online space.
The way they talk the messages they put out. Either they do garbage feel good stuff just for likes or the most grossly objectionable hard-nosed ads that just encourage ad blockers.
No they haven’t figured out anything yet….except the most predictable observation that they need to be only since that’s where the audiences are. The only ones who are trying to make it are the e-commerce because they are finished if they don;t.
Replywe’re making rounds in asia too. with companies like purplebug inc. in the philippines leading the pack in the digital marketing race in SEA just look at the amount of customers purplebug servers alone is pretty cool lol check em out for yourself at purplebug.net
ReplyMy response to Dan seems to have vanished, while two posts that are flogging services (one more explicit than the other) remain?
How’s that?
ReplyThere you go, the digital shills with illustrious CVs (mediacorp lol) have descended.
ReplyHave your say