Spotlight on brand power
BRAND power took centre stage at the recent Putra Brand Awards night held at the Majestic Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. Some of the winners shed light on the various issues pertaining to digitalisation, brand strategy, challenges and brand building with StarBizWeek.
Milo: Gold Award Beverage-Non-Alcoholic category Philomena Tan Business executive officer Milo Business Unit Nestle Malaysia
On how social media has impacted or promoted the brand of your business.
It helps us to reach and engage with our consumer more efficiently and allows us to bring our meaningful stories to individuals and families.
On the company’s digitalisation efforts and how it has helped in branding.
We are able to target our consumers more efficiently and also explore new consumer solutions such e-commerce to drive the company’s nutrition, health and wellness strategy.
On strategies put in place to boost the company’s brand image.
In line with Nestlé’s purpose to enhance quality of life and contribute to a healthier future, Milo has nurtured young Malaysian talent through various grassroots sports initiatives since the 1960’s.
We do this supporting the Ministry of Education through initiatives such as the 1 Student 1 Sports programme and the Malaysian School Sports Council programmes. We also organise the Milo Malaysia Breakfast Day annually to inspire Malaysians to adopt healthy breakfast habits.
Vitagen: Gold Award Beverage-Dairy category Poh Eng Lip General manager Cotra Enterprises Sdn Bhd
On how social media has impacted or promoted the brand of your business.
We have been more digitally inclined in our marketing efforts to reach out to our consumers, especially the millennials as they are spending more time using social media to discover, research, and share information about brands and products.
With millennials also more inclined to express loyalty and love towards a brand, our digital campaigns are designed to resonate with them.
Challenges faced by your company in a challenging economic environment.
With the need to be more prudent in our marketing spend in order to make the most of our return of investment, we are continuously creating more cost-effective ways to engage and resonate with consumers so that they stay brand loyal.
Another challenge is to stay relevant in the constantly changing consumer behaviour and their fickle buying motivations.
On strategies put in place to boost the company’s brand image.
We embark on marketing campaigns that reach consumers via a good mix of abovethe-line advertising and marketing activations which include interactive roadshows, strategic PR activities and content-driven digital campaigns that engage with consumers to drive our message on the benefits of drinking cultured milk drink for a healthy gut.
All these efforts further amplify our brand proposition as a market leader and custodian of digestive care.
Gardenia: Gold Award Foodstuff category Koh Chin Huat
Chief executive officer Gardenia Bakeries KL Sdn Bhd
On how social media has impacted or promoted the brand of your business.
Social media has changed the landscape of communication between brands and its’ consumers drastically in the last decade.
It has grown to become an integral part of our consumers’ lifestyle and engraving itself as a platform to reckon with.
It is a platform where Gardenia believes that we are able to have more meaningful two way interaction in todays ever fragmented market place. This proved golden. At Gardenia, we strongly believe and hold to the fact that consumers are the core of its’ brand.
On the company’s digitalisation efforts and how it has helped in branding. Digitalisation efforts provide a platform to strategically amplify and measure branding activities but most importantly paved us towards our treasured opportunity which is to increase our touchpoints with our customers and consumers.
We truly believe that this modernized medium only hastens our journey of brand value and equity into the hearts of our consumers.
Challenges faced by your company in a challenging economic environment.
Like any other company, we are also affected by economical challenges such as the soaring exchange rates, drastic increase of raw material cost and not to mention the volatility of the oil prices.
However, at Gardenia we strive to do what we are known to be good at which is to continuously review our operations and processes to improve the efficiency and effectiveness.
On strategies put in place to boost the company’s brand image.
The bakery industry is a rather simple industry whereby it is driven my traditional market drivers such as taste, nutrition and convenience.
Being true to our brand values whilst ensuring that the brand is relevant and always abreast with the changes in the market, we challenge ourselves by introducing niche products to the masses, increasing the market size almost overnight.
Samsung: Gold Award Communication devices and IT & office & business equipment categories Elaine Soh
Chief marketing officer Samsung Malaysia Electronics
On how social media has impacted or promoted the brand of your business.
For years, Samsung continuously seeking innovative ways to tap into social media to effectively reach and communicate with consumers at the different levels.
It has fostered the growth of trusting relationships between consumer and Samsung brand, making it an increasingly important to maximize brand loyalty.
On the company’s digitalisation efforts and how it has helped in branding. Samsung continues to foster digital trend and test new found ideas to reach out today’s millennial with more digital platforms.
From the digitalisation efforts, we are driving digital future and creating unimagined opportunities for our consumers.
Challenges faced by your company in a challenging economic environment.
The industry has been very dynamic, change is constant and innovation is critical to a company’s survival.
In Samsung, we constantly pursue new technology and shape the future by transforming creative ideas into innovations to retain and attract new consumers.
On strategies put in place to boost the company’s brand image.
To become an aspirational brand that inspire and create a future of new possibilities, we marry our vision, creativity and innovation to solve every day consumers’ needs.
We create human stories that are relatable to our consumers and empowering them to experience life enriching moments with our products.
IJM Land: Bronze Award Property Development category Edward Chong Managing director IJM Land Bhd
On how social media has impacted or promoted the brand of your business. We actively engage our online communities on carefully selected social media platforms to drive effective engagements, awareness and conversations around the brand and strike the ideal tone of approachability. IJM Land’s Facebook page is used to create excitement and interest in the location in which we operate and key events that take place within the properties. We also listen to their feedback and take questions. This strengthens their connection to the IJM Land brand and fosters a community of brand advocates. This initiative has quickly garnered popularity on Facebook, where it has garnered some 145,000 fans on Facebook alone. On the company’s digitalisation efforts and how it has helped in branding.
IJM Land uses social media channels to extend its brand presence into the digital space. We see that social media is playing a crucial role in bringing the online communities closer to the IJM Land brand, and connecting and resonating with them on an emotional level. In recognition of such active engagement efforts and quality content, IJM Land was awarded the Social Media Excellence Award in 2014, 2015 and 2016 for Property Development at the World Bloggers and Social Media Awards.
Challenges faced by your company in a challenging economic environment.
The soft market sentiment is affecting all industries, and the property industry is not exempted. Consumers remain discerning and have certain expectations from brands and they want the brands to deliver on their promises - on time and every time. As such, we are focused upon driving innovation, customer focus and quality excellence to ensure that our brand evolved with customer needs and expectations.
On strategies put in place to boost the company’s brand image.
We continually strive to maintain our relevance in the lives of the people, nurture community relationships and being sensitive and responsive to the needs of our customers through innovative, customer-focused and impactful contributions.
One of our priorities is to continue investing in customer experience. We are relentlessly innovating and improving our products and services that go beyond the aspirations of all customer and community segments.
Clarification
Bonia Corp has clarified that this is the correct logo of the company and not that published in the Putra Brand Awards supplement dated Nov 11.