MANILA – The second day of the Asian Marketing Congress got off to a lively start, with Geisler Maclang Marketing Communications’ Amor Maclang talking about crisis management in her session ‘Tourism and Hospitality: Marketing After Disaster’.
Maclang began by explaining the difference between a risk, an issue, and a crisis:
A RISK pertains to an existing condition, element, or situation which may affect you directly or indirectly.
A risk becomes an ISSUE when it aversely affects you, sometimes through one of your stakeholders.
An issue becomes a CRISIS when said stakeholders make the situation known to other stakeholders or to the general public.
“It’s not actually the crisis that gets you. It’s the speed and the quality of your response that determines how good a company or a brand you are,” Maclang said.
She discussed the anatomy of a crisis, which is characterised by surprise, insufficient information, rapidly escalating events, loss of control, intense scrutiny from the outside, siege mentality, panic, and short term focus. Maclang then talked about the 10 rules of risk and crisis:
1. Are you sure this is a crisis?
2.Focus on deescalation
3. Crises need one person in charge
4. Crises need one main spokesperson
5. Explain, don’t defend
6. Never lie
7. Get onto the front foot
8. Identify key stakeholders
9. Plan for life beyond the crisis
10. What can you learn?
Maclang focused on the importance of communication, which she said is “the proverbial glue that ties your business together.”
She talked about how building a brand’s reputation is now a balancing act between control and crowdsourcing. “The reputation of your brand is not accidental. The ironic thing is brand management is what’s becoming an anachronism in this day and age of social media. How do you curate what’s said about your brand but at at the same time allow for the public to crowdsource and shape it?” she said.
With the upcoming ASEAN integration, Maclang said it would be the Hunger Games for various markets. The key to success, she said, is to ensure that our local brands and experiences are seen as a premium. “There’s a movement toward being more insular and giving a premium on what’s local,” she said.
Following Maclang, Bonsey Design creative and managing director Jonathan Bonsey delivered his talk, “Rising to Dominance: How Asian Brands Overtook Global Leaders.”
Bonsey said that while Asian businesses have grown stronger in the past years, they must continue to evolve to become more global.
According to Bonsey, the past 20 years of Asian growth were built on cheap labor and easy access to capital, but now the Asian business landscape is changing.
“Capital is more expensive, wages are rising,” Bonsey said. “Asia is no longer the place of cheap labor. Pockets of Asia are becoming far too expensive for the business model that got them to that place of success.”
Bonsey named some of the challenges that Asian businesses face going forward.
He said that the middle class is now in revolt, demanding less pollution, more leisure time, better products, and more money.
He also said that of the top 100 global brands, only 10 come from Asia, and all of them from Japan and Korea, with no Chinese, Indian, or Southeast Asian brands in the mix.
Another challenge that Asian brands face is that the value they create is captured in markets other than Asia.
Bonsey then went on to name examples of Asian brands that have succeeded in the global arena: Indian multinational Tata, South Korean tech brand Samsung, and Malaysian airline AirAsia.
According to Bonsey, these brands show how Asian brands can go head-to-head with other brands in a global arena.
“When we think of Asian brands, very often there’s this stoic, proprietarial sense of dignity,” Bonsey said, explaining that to win in other markets, Asian brands have to embrace a more individualistic, creative tone.
Bonsey also shared the success stories of Japanese retail brand Uniqlo, and Malaysian financial group Maybank.
He said that success is in simplicity: “There is no room in the future for complexity, it’s about simplicity, reduction, a singular message.”
Donald Lim, Chief Digital Officer of ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation, talked about unifying customer experience in his session ‘From Clicks to Bricks’. Lim noted that while the internet did not live up to expectations that it would be a “magic weapon to help increase sales,” it is still a powerful tool for businesses.
“In order for businesses to win in the digital age, the holy grail is not eCommerce, but the eCommerce mindset,” Lim said, noting that online and offline have to merge.
“A lot of companies today are not ready for eCommerce. eCommerce is a commitment. You’re in or you’re out, and if you’re in, you have to be willing to invest. It’s not just having a website,” Lim said.
He discussed the six social principles (social proof, authority, liking, reciprocity, scarcity, commitment, and consistency), and shared case studies to illustrate how these can be used in business.
Lim stressed that no matter how advanced the tools can get, it is still about human-to-human communication. “While technology and the internet are changing the world around us, the fundamental needs and desires of people remain the same. The brand of the future is the one that humanizes the business experience,” he said.
In the afternoon, a final plenary focused on the question, “Is the Philippines ready for ASEAN integration?”, with the Institute for Labor Studies’ Levinson Alcantara discussing the effects of the ASEAN integration on labor.
“Unhampered migration for work or free labor mobility can be one of the most tangible manifestations of an integrated ASEAN,” Alcantara said.
According to Alcantara, there are three possible pathways to mobility: overseas employment, movement of natural persons, and alternative modes of entry, such as working holidays or cultural exchange.
He also named seven priority professions in the ASEAN: engineering, nursing, architecural services, accountancy, medical and dental practice.
Meanwhile, the vulnerable occupations that “will need to be protected” according to Alcantara are domestic workers, low-skilled work, and entertainers.
The integration, according to Alcantara, opens up several opportunities for the Philippines to improve. For instance, it challenges the country to align the curriculum with international benchmarks, as well as to continuously provide on the job skills acquisition to improve competitiveness of workers.
However, Alcantara also said that the integration continues to be a balancing act “between the interest of businesses an the rights of ASEAN nationals.”
