Publicis Media Links Brands to Tech Start-ups

 

Singapore, 3 November, 2016 – Publicis Media today
announced the launch of NextTECHnow in Singapore. This platform
will allow everyone within Publicis Media and agency brands to connect with
carefully curated start-up partners to deliver solutions to the C-suite and
marketers.

Through this initiative, Publicis Media
serves as an agnostic connector for the start-up community, to build upon
business, marketing opportunities and resolve challenges for Publicis Media’s
portfolio of clients. Clients across the 4 agencies will have access to start-ups
that can deliver innovative technologies to re-engineer their customer
experience, such as development of artificial intelligence and chat-bots,
augmented reality engagements, or providing deep form-level insights for
lead-generation campaigns.

“We are excited to introduce NextTECHnow to
Singapore, the third market in the world to officially launch this initiative
after London and Shanghai, with clients such as Heineken, Visa, and P&G,”
said John Ng, Head of Innovation and Partnerships, Business Transformation at
Publicis Media Asia Pacific. “NextTECHnow will bring a new dimension to
marketers by providing access to new partners and enable us to conduct
collaboration sessions or inspiration tours to lead marketers into the new
world that’s constantly evolving and disrupting businesses.”

NextTECHnow will be plugged into the entire
start-up ecosystem offering four key solutions that deliver fast innovation
against media and marketing plans, solve business challenges through rapid
prototyping, engage innovators and disruptors of businesses to drive innovation
needs and uncover market or category insights.

In a joint-statement, Ian Loon and
Christopher Harrison, Co-Heads of Business Transformation, Publicis Media Asia
Pacific said: “NextTECHnow is a new capability that represents our commitment
as Publicis Media to deliver business transformation to business leaders and
marketers. This forms a critical base for other solutions and services that we
are co-developing alongside our agency leaders to future-proof and unlock
further long-term growth for their businesses.”

In June this year, Publicis Groupe unveiled
its Viva Technology Paris, the leading event devoted to start-ups and
innovation which gathered the world’s digital transformation leaders, start-ups
and international companies. There were 300 conferences, 8 stages and 8 themes
at Viva Technology which was held at Porte de Versailles in Paris.

According to
IDC, 60% of Asia Pacific enterprises are expected to undergo digital
transformation by the end of 2017 and those who do not transform will be left
behind. Given the ballooning start-up scene in Singapore with currently more
than US$1.16 billion in funding, the time is now for businesses to latch unto
opportunities for collaboration with start-ups to drive their transformation.