Sriram@Searchlight

Famous in China (part 4)

To try and create greater familiarity for those living elsewhere, we’ll periodically profile some China brands and businesses that we believe will be household names across the world soon. This month let’s look at Huazhu Hotels , a silent giant in the hotel category in China. The Huazhu Group has several brands, well over aContinue reading “Famous in China (part 4)”

Famous in China (part 3)

To try and create greater familiarity for those living elsewhere, we’ll periodically profile some China brands and businesses that we believe will be household names across the world soon. This month let’s look at one of the hottest tea brands in China – HeyTea (喜茶）. Background and History: China is synonymous with tea-drinking, yet inContinue reading “Famous in China (part 3)”

Do you really want “transparency” from your agency? (TLDR: It involves sharing risk and working harder)

For some time now, clients all over the world – especially in China – have been getting worked up about media transparency. They don’t believe they’re getting it. They keep firing agencies who don’t appear to be delivering it and hiring other agencies, who turn out not to be delivering it either… As someone who’sContinue reading “Do you really want “transparency” from your agency? (TLDR: It involves sharing risk and working harder)”

Famous in China (part 2)

To try and create greater familiarity for those living elsewhere, we’ll periodically profile some China brands and businesses that we believe will be household names across the world soon. This month let’s look at a very interesting brand and business – Shun Feng Express Delivery (顺丰速运）- one of the leading brands in the express deliveryContinue reading “Famous in China (part 2)”

Famous in China

To try and create greater familiarity for those living elsewhere, we’ll periodically profile some China brands and businesses that we believe will be household names across the world soon. In this first post of the series we’ll cover consumer electronics brand Xiaomi (小米）and Roewe（荣威）- a car brand from SAIC Motors. Xiaomi (小米) is a consumerContinue reading “Famous in China”

Marketing in a Pandemic – the need for business model reinvention

COVID-19 has been with us for about a year now. In that year, companies like Zoom have gone stratospheric. E-commerce and food delivery have prospered. Online trainers, home gym equipment and virtual learning have all been much in demand. Netflix has done very well indeed. At the same time, some businesses have suffered. Anything relatedContinue reading “Marketing in a Pandemic – the need for business model reinvention”

3 Top Tips on picking a new agency in the new year

It’s January and many clients’ thoughts will soon turn to the year ahead. Often, this is when a decision is made to call a pitch, evaluate different agencies and choose one to work with for the next couple of years (at least!) Based on my experience running pitches for clients over the last 3 years,Continue reading “3 Top Tips on picking a new agency in the new year”

The empirical approach to defining a target audience – Spray, Learn, Focus

For the first 20 years of my working life, I was in an advertising or media agency. In our interactions with clients, very early on, there would be a defined target audience that we set out to create communication for or buy media in order to reach. Usually, the definition of that audience was basedContinue reading “The empirical approach to defining a target audience – Spray, Learn, Focus”

3 problems with the procurement approach to media buying – and why the partnership approach is better

Long ago (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and I was a young lad skipping carefree through the meadows, placing a media buy here and there as I went) media agencies were treated as partners by their clients. We were co-owners of their successes and failures and while we never forgot that we were running ourContinue reading “3 problems with the procurement approach to media buying – and why the partnership approach is better”

Alibaba’s 11.11 (world’s biggest online shopping festival) – hype or honest opportunity?

Double Eleven (11.11, or 11 Nov), a.k.a. Singles’ Day Festival is a global shopping event initiated by Alibaba and adopted by other e-commerce platforms and retailers. For those who are not familiar with it, Alibaba’s online shopping event on November 11 every year is the biggest in the world. You could say Black Friday is Amazon’s weaker,Continue reading “Alibaba’s 11.11 (world’s biggest online shopping festival) – hype or honest opportunity?”