The Changemakers Impact Conference | Review | Singapore

Having attended the first-ever Scotland version of The Marketing Society Changemakers conference in Edinburgh, I was keen to compare and contrast the Singapore conference. The theme for both events was Impact and I was interested to see what Impact meant to marketers in APAC. Both events explored Impact through the lens of Purpose to some extent or other.

Across the year, there has been quite a lot of event content from The Marketing Society in Singapore with a technology and/or AI focus. Interestingly, there was very little tech talk at the Changemakers event, with the exception of a session from Tik Tok (that still wasn’t all that techie).

I was delighted that the day started with a look at some work. Jeet Vijan from Unilever and Aanchal Sethi from Ogilvy shared an incredibly impactful piece of work from the Unilever brand Vaseline. Vaseline identified an unmet need within the trans community in Thailand, but rather than advertising an existing product to the audience, Vaseline worked with the trans community to develop an entirely new product line.

It was really inspiring to see the rigor with which the team approached the challenge and also to see how the trans community embraced the product that had been developed for them. The work from Vaseline and Ogilvy definitely lived up to the theme of Impact, especially at a time when the trans community is being vilified by politicians in other parts of the world.

Erica Kerner of Standard Chartered and Matthias Blume of Coca-Cola were on a panel entitled “Brands and their fans”. Their focus was mostly on sport, for obvious reasons. But they both touched on the wider world of entertainment. Matthias shared a wonderful organizational acronym from the world of Coca-Cola, where they refer to EPICS. EPICS encompasses Entertainment, Partnerships, Influencers, Culture and Sport.

Both Erica and Matthias stressed the importance of long-term relationships in the context of entertainment partnerships. Matthias shared that Coca-Cola has been a sponsor of the Olympics since 1928 and Erica shared how Standard Chartered’s long-running relationship with Liverpool Football Club is extending into encouraging sports participation as part of future career mentoring for young women. Super inspiring and another Impactful result from the brand.

After a break, Christopher Smith of Rock, Paper, Scissors presented some thought-provoking stats on the loss of experienced talent within the advertising agency landscape. It appears that once you reach your mid 50s you become invisible to recruiters and HR professionals. Christopher pointed to the massive upcoming economic opportunity that ageing populations afford being one reason to adopt a less myopic view of the value of experienced talent.

The afternoon ended with a frank and spirited discussion about “Impact Enthusiasts”, chaired by Amrita Randhawa of Publicis, with Rupen Desai (Una Terra), Lex Bradshaw-Zanger (L’Oreal) and Nadia Touil Louis (Nestle). Generally, the panel was in violent agreement that impact had to be delivered at a corporate level and not just at a campaign level and that alignment throughout an organization on impacts goals was necessary in order to deliver change.

The three most impactful takeaways of the day for me were:-

The impact of working with a community. Both Erica and Matthias talked about working with fans, but Vaseline work really showed the value in taking the time to co-create with a community that had a clear product need.

The impact of long-term thinking. Almost all of the contributors covered the need for long-term thinking overtly or by implication. Whether in product development, entertainment partnerships or sustainability practices every brand was talking about work that required a long-term approach. Even Christopher Smith’s session was implicitly critical of the industry for taking a short-term approach to talent.

The impact of shared experience. There were thoughtful and insightful questions from almost every session. The Singapore conference really underlined the value of learning from other people’s experiences, especially in areas of shared concern, like sustainability and the other UN Sustainable Development goals.

The Changemakers conference in Singapore reminded me of a recent Mark Ritson quote, in which he said “The purpose of purpose is purpose.”, by which he meant that doing the right thing is an end in itself. It was inspiring to see so many brands committed to doing the right thing in terms of their impact on the world.

Review by Rohan Lightfoot, Founder - Signal Consulting. 

Published 26 November 2024