Mumbrella Asia

  It is not just choreographed dance routines and catchy songs, but a powerful marketing machine, well-tuned to the passion points of its target audience that has driven the success of the K-Pop band BTS says Bethany Bloch of Mutant Communications “Do you know BTS?” The oft-repeated line began as a question that Jin, one of the members of K-pop group BTS, would ask random people during its early days, when few outside of South Korea were aware of them. But now, Jin asks this question semi-ironically, knowing many people around the world know exactly who the group is. Which is to say, if you don’t know BTS, you haven’t been paying attention. Since their debut in 2013, BTS has been making headlines, topping music charts, and breaking linguistic and cultural barriers across the world in a way that no other Korean act has. In 2018, BTS’ popularity boomed worldwide, and in Singapore, tickets to their 19 January concert at the 55,000-seat National Stadium sold out in four hours. Demand f...

  Swedish independent agency Forsman & Bodenfors is preparing to open a shop in Singapore in order to serve its client Procter & Gamble. Silla Levin, chief executive officer of the Stockholm-based agency, told Mumbrella that they hoped to “deepen their relationship” with the cosmetics brand SK-II. F&B was until recently the creative agency for Uber in South East Asia, an account it lost during the ride-hailing app’s merger with rival Grab. However, undeterred by the business loss, the agency now intends to officially open its new base by August with long-serving client director Susanna Fagring at the helm. Speaking to Mumbrella, Levin said: “We are happy to share the announcement that F&B will establish an office in Singapore. We will then be able to get closer to one of our biggest clients, P&G and deepen the great collaboration we have with the brand SK-II. We see an high interest in F&B in the region and that is something we will be ab...

  In one of the largest ad tech acquisitions in history, China’s Miteno Communication Technology has acquired Media.net for the reported sum of US$900m. The deal will give Media.net, 90% of whose revenue comes from the US, the opportunity to expand into Asia, an ambition of the company’s founder and CEO Divyank Turakhia, according to  Techcrunch . Turakhia has also said he wants to expand video and mobile app capabilities, while the chairman of tech conglomerate Miteno, Zhiyong Zhang, has said that his firm will provide capital support to support Media.net’s expansion plans. Media.net generates most of its revenue from Yahoo Bing Contextual Ads, connecting advertisers and publishers with its ad tech products. The deal comes in the wake of China’s Mobvista buying mobile ad-tech startup NativeX in February for $24.5 million and soon after Spearhead Integrated Marketing Communication Group buying mobile ad firm Smaato for $148 million.

Yi Wen Chan  is a former Business Times journalist who co-founded Bolt Media, a Singapore-based startup that helps businesses become media companies by matching them with content creators, in July last year. The 25 year-old, who was named in the Forbes 30 under 30 list for Asia’s media and marketing sector, tells Mumbrella in a Q&A about the content marketing opportunity in Asia, why she started Bolt, how it works, how she got funding, and why brands need locally based creators to make content marketing work. Why did you launch Bolt? I used to be a journalist for The Business Times [covering energy and commodities], a financial daily under Singapore Press Holdings group. The reason I stepped up to build Bolt is because I saw how print advertising, the main source of revenue in traditional media, was fast declining  because the readership of broadsheet papers is stagnating, so businesses are less willing to buy print ads. Another issue tha...

  Pay-TV network Fox International Channels has announced it will reorganise and rebrand some of its portfolio of sports channels across Asia, effective from August 15. The channels impacted include Fox Sports, Fox Sports Plus HD, Fox Sports 2 and Fox Sports 3, all of which will be available in both SD and HD following the changes, while the Star Sports brand will be subsumed in all Asian markets except China and South Korea. “Since we’ve taken over ESPN STAR Sports in 2012 and relaunched it as FOX Sports, our vision has always been to shake things up and change the sports broadcasting paradigm is this region,” said Joon Lee, executive vice president of content & communications for APAC and Middle East. In the wake of the changes Fox Sports will remain the flagship Channel with top tier sports, Fox Sports 2 will be focused on “Hit & Run” sports such as athletics and ball & racquet sports, such as tennis Grand Slams, Golf...

  The Beijing office of ad agency JWT has created a series of online films for Intel that invite viewers to ‘Look inside’ to find love, belief, courage and power. The films, directed by Hailong Li, feature two time Olympic champion and five time world champion badminton star Lin Dan whose tattoos tell the story. The five stars on Lin’s lower left arm signify his ‘Gold’ Grand Slam, when he earned an Olympic Gold and four worldwide titles in one year. On his lower left arm are the initials of his wife Fang Fang, herself a former world champion. Lin’s own initials, topped by a lopsided crown, are on the back of his neck. The tattoo on his upper right arm reads “Until the end of the world”, the theme song from Slam Dunk, Lin’s favorite anime film. On Lin’s left upper arm is a tattoo of a cross that represents his bond with his grandmother, who visited him twice a week at the sports school where he lived from the age of nine. Lin’s own initials are on the back of his neck. “We want...