Parminder Singh, newly appointed Twitter MD for Southeast Asia talks about the region's momentum for native advertising, social TV and a move towards real time content marketing.
Interest in Twitter as a marketing platform is growing rapidly in the Southeast Asia region, according to Parminder Singh, newly appointed managing director for Southeast Asia, India, Middle East and North Africa.
His advice for brands in 2014: “Marketers should look at their personality and voice of brand and try to reflect it on social media.”
He also encouraged them to develop muscle memory for real time Twitter moments.
For instance, Singh, a marathon enthusiast, tweeted about the #singaporemarathon that was held over the weekend and was targeted with a promoted tweet from @NikeFuel.
He was speaking on how social has changed digital media consumption and the impact for brands at ClickZ’s sister conference SES in Singapore on Tuesday.
The former Google exec joined Twitter’s sales team last month tasked to build its business in Indonesia and Philippines, which is said to experience explosive user growth as well as explore commercial opportunity for the social network in India.
He sat down with ClickZ to talk about the region’s momentum for native advertising, potential media and agency partnerships for social TV in Indonesia, Singapore, and India as well as trends for next year.
While Twitter is still in its early days in Southeast Asia, major companies like local telco, Singtel and Samsung have started using its platform for their marketing campaigns with notable success.
In August, Samsung featured Mary Ho “the grandma of rock,” a 77-year old blues guitar player from Singapore that entertains millions of viewers online as part of its #CompanionStories campaign to promote the Galaxy S4 smartphone. The campaign aimed to inspire Twitter users to share their own tales using the hashtag.
Another campaign was based on the #HawkerHeroes hashtag by Singtel, where celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey had to compete with the country’s top voted hawker heroes to cook local street food. As a result, the hashtag trended for four consecutive days on Twitter.
Singh’s appointment underscores Twitter’s commitment to expand and grow its revenue opportunities in the region.
Twelve months ago, Twitter inked a sales partnership agreement with Komli Media to make its Promoted products solution available to advertisers in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.
The Komli Twitter partnership still stands and both companies will continue to reach out to marketers through the Twitter platform, Singh says.
