MAA on promotion drive
Association to update govt on new ad trends and innovations
THE Malaysian Advertisers Association (MAA) is working towards strengthening its engagements with government stakeholders to ensure government policies can keep pace with the rapid changes in advertising trends.
Newly-elected president Mohamed Kadri Mohamed Taib tells StarBizWeek that a key focus will be to enhance the perception of MAA among government stakeholders.
To this end, he says the association will endeavour to keep them updated on new trends and industry innovations so that government policies can keep pace with the everchanging trends in advertising.
“We need to engage them constantly so that the regulations are relevant to the current landscape and there are no technical obstacles to prevent us from moving forward.
“If we can successfully do that, then the industry will have a clearer and more confident picture of how we can operate.
“With confidence comes investment, so I will say that if the industry is confident then our projections for advertising expenditure return on investment will also be higher,’’ he adds.
Another area of focus will be the Malaysian Code of Advertising, he says, adding that there are too many parties involved and MAA believes there could be a better way of managing the code.
Kadri also highlighted that there are many associations involved in advertising. Like MAA, they too offer beneficial programmes for their members and the industry.
He says: “For MAA, we intend to provide greater support for the other associations through participation in their events such as the Effie, Putra, Kancil, MAA-MDA awards and likewise, look forward to their support when we have our events. Together, we can work towards a common goal of improving both the industry and those working in it.”
One area that the association will need to look into to achieve this is timing and coordination, Kadri says, noting that this is important to optimise the planning of industry events so as to minimise the clashing of events and impacting participation. That way, he says MAA hopes to increase the overall participation in industry events for mutual benefit and development.
Kadri, whose term for the presidency is from 2018-2020, also takes great interest to grow the membership of MAA. The idea, he says, is to grow MAA membership while retaining the existing ones as it will be good to have the experience of the current members as well as to see the industry through the eyes of younger people.
“Existing members will stay and new ones will join only if there is a benefit to do so, which means that we also need MAA to be more relevant to the needs of the industry and be be heard.
“This can be done through local and global initiatives such as by working closely with the World Federation of Advertisers of which MAA is a country association member as well as having talks and participating in education events. We need to have more initiatives so that members can improve,’’ Kadri notes. Currently, MAA has about 1,600 members.
Some of the hurdles facing the ad industry and marketers are in the form of transparency, brand safety, ad fraud, etc. To address the areas of transparency, brand safety, ad fraud and viewability, he says there is a need to establish a framework where agencies, ad-tech companies and media platforms are in compliance with the relevant criteria if they want to secure future advertising revenues.
On his management style, Kadri says he prefers to manage by consensus as the association is quite a diverse group comprising members from different consumer categories.
“It is important to understand and appreciate that not all industries want to see the same outcomes or regulations applied. Furthermore, we are all volunteers and hold council meetings once every two months.
“So we will need to ensure we get the best outcomes from the meetings as many of the members are from senior management levels and do not have time to waste on just talking shop.
“I see training as a very important area. Accounting tools are also necessary to enable MAA to build a culture of measurement and accountability within the industry that will produce transparency and earn trust,’’ he stresses.