B2B Conversations: Happy Marketer, Part 9 – The Market

In our thought exchange with Prantik Mazumdar, Rachit Dayal, and David Liem of SEO & Social Media agency Happy Marketer, we’ve covered, over eight parts, a great deal about the various aspects of marketing.

The time’s come to wrap it up with part nine of nine. And what better way than with some forecasting on the market as a whole?

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this interview are the personal views of the interviewees and and do not necessarily represent the philosophies or viewpoints of their organization or clients.

 (Anol Bhattacharya – AB, Prantik Mazumdar – PM, Rachit Dayal – RD, and David Liem – DL)

AB: So let’s look at the whole thing and not in the silos like search, social and analytics. What kind of changes and shifts are you observing in Asian markets in the last couple of years, and what do you expect the scene to be in the next couple of years?

This is the last question so feel from to go as “big data” or “implementation” as you like. So what do you expect? How do you expect the market to change – it might not be right but today you can dream?

RD: I think it’s on the bright side that people are pretty late at adopting, so the innovations that Google made 10 years ago or Facebook made 5 years ago, most of the public will start getting in the next few years.

So at least from a business perspective people will finally wisen up when the people around them just force them to wisen up. So generally the outlook, I think, for business, the agency marketing, that world should be good. We should have much more mature customers who are ready to take the plunge.

In terms of consumers I think one thing that is a little bit troubling is the fickleness of platforms. Like even today people are still so insecure whether Facebook will be a permanent platform. The concern I hear in every room is the teenagers give up and then the parents have no reason to go stalk them on Facebook. Then the grandmas give up and Facebook is dead.

And so those of us who have been in here, we know there is a certain permanence to it. It might not be the peak all the time but there is a permanence to it which I’m a little afraid that everybody feels very insecure about shifting to the next platform. That shortening of attention.

And so I’m hoping that as social and search and all these become daily activities, there will be some comfort in the marketing world about knowing they are permanent fixtures. They need to be considered for consumer behavior and then we look for the next Instagram and Pinterest and the new innovations.

PM: I think if you’re talking about Asia one basic nuance of digital in Asia is mobile, which I think out of the 6% (marketing budget) 0.6% is even thought of being allocated to mobile. And if you look at Asia at large, India, Indonesia, China –  the 3 largest population bodies, it’s hugely mobile. In India and Indonesia there’s a generation that’s skipped fixed telephone lines and fixed broadband.

I think a lot of campaigns, a lot of marketing challenges will have to be solved on mobile and that too even within mobile we understand it’s fragmented. Smart phones to feature phones. So I would like to see a lot more focus going on to mobile.

DL: I think the future holds more human beings with hunched backs because we’re going to be on our phones, tablets all the time. I think an interesting opportunity is in Internet TV shows like you got your Netflix.

Now I think MediaCorp has this Toggle internet service. I think that’s one big area I see changing, like I go on the MRT, I see lots of people watching, like, TV dramas on there and I think there’s a huge opportunity there. I don’t know in terms of marketing but definitely that’s how people are adapting to life like watching TV on the internet. I think that’s something to look out for.

RD: There’s a very cool video company called Wawanana. They’re just across the road and they make these funny videos. Every week they produce one. There are studios like that – built on 3 minutes, not 28 minutes, and I think that’s really adapting to the platform.

AB: Thanks for your time and I think we should catch up again some time later and have these conversations.