by Ernest Kim

Campaign, Campaign Brief and Marketing magazine broke the news on this yesterday, but we’re so excited about this new launch that we wanted to share a bit more of the story behind the story.

In brief, XM Asia has created an online platform and social media strategy that’s helping power the Audi Fashion Festival (AFF), which is Singapore’s premier annual fashion event, attracting top local and global designers, as well as international top models. Taking place from 15 – 19 May, this year marks the festival’s fifth anniversary and will be its first at a new, bigger location at Marina Promenade.

But we’re not just the AFF’s agency, XM Asia is also the official interactive partner for the festival.

“We are incredibly proud that we were appointed both the agency and the Official Interactive Partner for the show. It gives us tremendous ownership over the project and makes us feel even more connected in our thinking and strategy,” said Paul Soon, XM Asia Pacific CEO. “Our staffers would kill to work on a fashion brand. With the Asia Fashion Exchange’s Audi Fashion Festival, we get to work on all of them.”

A key consideration in developing this new interactive platform for AFF was to not simply promote the festival, but, as Campaign Brief observed, to “connect Singapore fashion fans with the show’s headline designers, including Carolina Herrera, Collette Dinnigan and Hussein Chalayan.”

Central to achieving this connection was the creation of an engine for “instafashion feeds” that consolidate all online conversations by the AFF and its headline designers into one dynamic stream of social content. This will enable Singapore’s super-wired fashion fans to easily keep up with the festival’s ongoing and upcoming events, ensuring that they don’t miss a beat. Read the rest of this entry »

by WeeKoon Poh

We started Project X, an incubator programme for students who want a head start in advertising. Here’s a very honest look at what it means, how it almost failed and why it might be your best shot at greatness.

It’s not every day that you get to do something new. Chances are the moment you do, the tides of time and the currents of life will take so much of it away before it is even near completion.

Pessimistic? Maybe. But it is also a reality that I’ve learnt as I transited from school to work. The cost of failure becomes all too real, and they tend to stare at you with an unflinching intensity that is almost impossible to defy.

It might have been the remnants of my youthful idealism speaking when I suggested doing an internship programme for students. For a very simple reason, I found this crucial—I felt that I had found a gem at the place I work and I wanted to share that with others. Everything I wanted as a student was all here at XM; smart people, a daring management, a culture of innovation and (gasp) work-life balance.

I felt I was standing at the brink of greatness, and I wanted more people here. Read the rest of this entry »

As reported by Campaign and Marketing, we’re thrilled to announce that, after an open tender exercise described by Sophia Ng, assistant chief executive of the marketing group for the Singapore Tourism Board, as “thorough and fruitful,” XM Asia Pacific has retained digital duties for STB.

We’re incredibly proud to have earned this renewed vote of confidence from STB and, as XM Asia Pacific CEO Paul Soon noted after receiving word of the win, “We have learnt that where there is unity, there is always victory.”

Here’s the official release…

SINGAPORE, April 24, 2013— XM Asia Pacific, which has served as digital agency of record for the Singapore Tourism Board since 2009, retained the business after a highly-competitive pitch.

This is the first time the Singapore Tourism Board has retained any digital or traditional agency for more than four years, underscoring the strength of XM’s innovative offering and the depth of its relationship with this key client, which is one of Singapore’s largest advertisers. Read the rest of this entry »

by Ernest Kim

We’re very proud to announce the launch of our latest project, the completely re-concepted, re-architected, re-engineered and re-designed Maxis.com.my—the online home for Maxis Berhad, Malaysia’s only integrated communications service provider.

Maxis has a clear vision: To bring the future to its customers’ lives and businesses, in a manner that’s simple, personalized and enriching. And the company has worked tirelessly to bring this vision to life, having launched Malaysia’s first high-speed network in 2005, Malaysia’s first 4G LTE network earlier this year and, today, offering the nation’s largest high-speed network.

But Maxis recognized that its Web site was no longer delivering on this commitment, so the company partnered with XM Asia Pacific to conceptualize and implement an entirely new online experience.

Built from the ground up around responsive Web design principles by the XM Asia team, the new Maxis site renders beautifully across the range of devices in use today, from phones to tablets to traditional PCs.

“Maxis wanted to break away from the typical telco Web experience,” recalled Hema Thiagarajah, Consumer Experience Director at XM Asia Pacific. “The norm for the industry is to list products and services based on an internal org chart, and to sell using telco-speak that most consumers find perplexing. But Maxis felt it was crucial to connect with their customers and reach them in a way that would be familiar and useful … to have a conversation.” Read the rest of this entry »

As reported by a number of publications last week, including Campaign, XM Asia Pacific has acquired a majority stake in Thailand’s leading digital agency, Thomas Idea. Below is the complete release announcing the acquisition.

And to Polly, Araya and the entire team at Thomas Idea, welcome to the XM family!

BANGKOK, March 14, 2013— XM Asia Pacific Pte Ltd., a JWT company, has acquired a majority stake in Thomas Idea, Thailand’s leading digital and interactive media agency. The acquisition will give XM Asia a foothold in one of Southeast Asia’s most important markets.

Thomas Idea, which was founded in 1995, offers a full range of digital services, from online strategy planning to user experience design, large-scale application development and the full suite of digital and social media marketing services. The agency employs around 45 people and clients include Beiersdorf, Reckitt Benckiser, Abbott Laboratories, SB Furniture, and Pruksa Real Estate. Thomas Idea CEO Uraiporn “Polly” Cholsirirungskul and Chief Creative Officer Araya Choutgrajank, who together co-founded the company, will remain on in their current leadership roles. Read the rest of this entry »

by Ernest Kim

Kevin Mintaraga, CEO of XM Gravity, is featured in a story in the March edition of Forbes Indonesia. Unfortunately, the article isn’t available online, but the print edition should still be available at newsstands across Indonesia.

See the March issue of Forbes Indonesia for a great feature on XM Gravity CEO Kevin Mintaraga, and the secret to his agency’s success.

The piece is focused on the secret to Kevin’s and, by association, XM Gravity’s, success, and is titled Selling Happiness. Here’s a snippet:

“I believe everyone in this company should be happy, because only happy people make other people happy,” says the chief executive of the country’s biggest digital agency (measured by number of staff) … “Believe it or not, when I focus on that thing [happiness], the company grows faster.”

Some may think this a naive view, but any doubters would have a hard time disputing the results. As mentioned in the quote above, XM Gravity is Indonesia’s biggest digital agency; and, at a personal level, when the agency then known as Magnivate was acquired by XM Asia Pacific in March of 2012, Kevin became the youngest CEO within the prestigious WPP group. As he says, “happy staff want to make clients happy,” and it’s working.

An important point to recognize, though, is that Kevin’s approach is rooted in much more than just words. He’s established processes and tools to help nurture the culture of happiness that’s been so central to the success of his agency. The latest example of this is a native mobile platform called the XM Gravity Happiness App that was developed in-house for use by XM employees.

XM Gravity has developed a native mobile app for iOS, Android and Blackberry OS to “pump up the happiness quotient among its own staff.”

The app was recently featured in a Campaign Brief, Asia story, where Kevin explained its genesis: “As a digital agency, we help our clients leverage technology and social media every day to meet their business goals. This time, we’re leveraging that know-how to help us achieve our own goals—happy staff who feel connected and cared for.”

The Happiness App has been rolled out within XM Gravity and, ultimately, will be deployed across the entire XM Asia Pacific network. As Kevin has observed, “only happy people make other people happy,” and we believe this is a truth that applies across cultures and borders.