Knowledge, insights and expertise for the creative mind.

Think the box-office Crazy Rich Asians is sending the world into a frenzy? Well, good branding can, too! When the movie hit the shores of US, it smashed records for romantic-comedies in recent times. By the time Crazy Rich Asians premiered in Singapore, it was already generating hype for its unique setting and cast. One thing’s for sure, we all can agree that Newton Food Centre does not have the best satay in Singapore.

Based on a book written by Kevin Kwan, it depicts the story of a group of rich Asians in the setting of a grand wedding with dramatic twists and turns.

Crazy Rich Asians is a trailblazer in its cast and setting and received significant success in a predominantly Caucasian men industry.

But what has the success of a locally filmed movie got to do with your brand?

Ready to learn it all? Then Action!

And with the eCommerce scene growing 4x faster than in-store retail, the massive influx of online retailers make for a highly competitive environment for brands of varying sizes.

So to give you a head start and get those gears running, we’ve a list of great eCommerce website designs that’ll get you inspired and browsin’!

As if phubbing wasn’t a deep enough problem in our digital-crazy era, a ghost from the past has come back to haunt us. Nexon released a mobile version of their heralded PC game globally, Maplestory M, on Wednesday, 25th July 1pm. Maplestory M started their page on May 14, garnering more than 200,000 followers since. It is probably the most successful launch of a mobile game since Pokemon Go. So what can we learn from this?

In early July 2018, Google announced another significant change in it’s ranking algorithms – one of which will be of concern for many businesses hoping to rank their website in Google’s Search Engine Results Page. And this involves your site’s mobile page loading speed. Just early this March 2018, Google rolled out the mobile-first indexing which uses mobile version of web pages when it crawls, index and ranks them for mobile users.

This time, the focus goes deeper into the site speed, worrying advertisers and business owners all at the same time. Whether you’re in Singapore, Malaysia or any part of the world, this change will affect you the same.

When we talk about talking selfies and stories on our socials, which side are you on? Instagram, Facebook or… Snapchat? When Facebook attempted to buy Snapchat recently, they were rejected despite a whopping bid of $3 billion. In response, Facebook leveraged on their acquisition of Instagram to compete against Snapchat, by launching Instagram stories or what’s widely known at Instastories.

Talk about life’s regrets.

With the purchase, Instagram’s platform soared in terms of the number of users and ads, while Snapchat struggled to keep up. Facebook also launched Facebook Stories to add options for the avid social media users. From there, Snapchat started to look more and more like an Instagram copy instead of the other way around, as they struggled to innovate to pull ahead of its ‘successor’.

Until now.

Snapchat recently launched a gaming platform, similar to WeChat, in an attempt to improve user engagement and move ahead of their rival. They released a series of Snapchat filter games and Augmented Reality (AR) games that users can play on the platform.

Most notably, the AR Tennis game against Serena Williams is a clear sign that Snapchat’s advanced AR technology is going to become their selling point.

Snapchat games provide an additional tool for businesses to adapt. (YAY!) That is always welcomed for creative people (*wink wink*) to adapt for marketing.

Does Snapchat still matter?

Well, it really depends.

Snapchat numbers have risen steadily over the past year, with more and more youths adopting the platform. We’ve to admit, they’ve got really nice filters. Heh. This means any strategy or business targeting youths have to take Snapchat into serious consideration.

Incorporating gaming has given other platforms (aka Facebook) a boost before and it should do the same for Snapchat.

What can businesses do with this information?

Consider playing around with Snapchat’s functions and ads viewing if you are unfamiliar with the platform. Businesses can also start looking into adapting filters and AR games to help their own cause.

Do keep the demographics of Snapchat in mind while developing and utilising them and tie in to your branding. It will be a waste of marketing dollars otherwise.

If you want to utilise them, and you are having trouble with incorporating into your brand, consult an agency to help you.

With all the hype surrounding big name international brands and their digital marketing strategies, we think it’s time to put our local heavy hitters in the spotlight. We may be a Little Red Dot but we still have massive creativity and talent!

After Facebook’s recent scandal with leaked user information and the US Election fiasco, the social media giants have decided to become more transparent with their platform. In early April, Facebook announced they were making ads transparent and marking political ads as special cases.

This has been a long time coming, given the chatter on Russian meddling since the US Elections fiasco ended 2 years ago.

How does this affect your business?

Ad transparency means anyone and everyone can now view all the ads you are running. This includes your target audience and unfortunately, your competition. The good news is that they can only see the content and the type of ad but nothing on the data and statistics that come with it.

So what should you do?