Vibha Singh on ET Medialabs’ Singapore foray, and the importance of APAC market

After setting up its office in Singapore recently, growth advertising and analytics company ET Medialabs appointed Vibha Singh to lead international expansion in the APAC region. She will be responsible for chalking out the success path for ET Medialabs in the APAC region. The appointment reinforces ET Medialabs’ vision to strengthen its offering in the APAC market further and to expand in multiple markets across the world.

In this interview with Adgully, Vibha Singh, Director, APAC, ET Medialabs, talks about the Singapore foray, future goals in the APAC region, challenges and opportunities, scope of performance marketing, etc. Excerpts:

How do you plan to expand the company in Singapore and globally?

For establishing its strong foothold in Singapore, APAC region and eventually in the global market, ET Medialabs strongly relies on the strength of its three important pillars – Data. People. Process. These pillars had helped ET Medialabs to mark a distinct position for itself in India, and we are confident to make our mark internationally emphasizing over the same strengths. We are heavily going to invest in building a brand internationally for ET Medialabs, not just in Singapore, but in neighbouring countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam, which have a lot of similarities with the Indian market and should be able to provide us with a steady start.

How was your journey so far for you?

The last two years with ET Medialabs have been a roller-coaster ride, where we have successfully established a few extremely efficient and profitable business units within the organisation, including a dedicated APP, creative and branding vertical, where we are getting over 200% growth YoY. It has been very fulfilling to work on new challenges and learn something new every day from colleagues and clients.

What are the challenges and opportunities that you tackle throughout your way?

The two major challenges that I feel are part and parcel of anyone working in the digital landscape: To keep up with the quickly and regularly changing landscape, for example there is this data apocalypse looming with third-party data offset gradually, and the second is to train and retain good talent.

These challenges are actually hidden opportunities for us at ET Medialabs, where we have built extremely robust data frameworks with our proprietary technology: Adbytzz, an ad intelligence and technology platform that fuels our growth advertising solutions. Also, our people are our strong strength where we live by the same professional ethos and sentiments.

At the same time, the non-hierarchical fast growth environment at ET Medialabs ensures the young talent to learn quickly and deliver their best, which eventually helps us to build a strong and stable team.

What is the growth or success mantra you follow?

Being ruthlessly transparent to your clients (with help of data) and giving your 100% on every task you take in your hand: I feel that our clients are smart enough to understand if we can deliver them actual growth rather than false promises. We at ET Medialabs are extremely conscious of sharing detailed analysis based on our data strengths and decade of experience and give a clear path of growth with realistic milestones which help them to plan their business efficiently.

What are your upcoming projects?

Establishing a profitable ROI for the company in international markets and establishing a data-driven “branding” practice for brands globally to achieve efficiency with holistic growth solutions. 

What is the scope of performance marketing right now and how do you plan to ensure company presence in the competitive market of Singapore?

Performance marketing is going to be part of the holistic growth stack for sure in the coming years. However, just that the perspective might change where with constant automation of performance campaigns by measuring ad platforms and third-party data to be not available gradually, the brands need to learn to connect performance with branding, which means that every penny you invest in branding needs to be justified with right data frameworks and not just simply driven by CPMs and impressions.

What are your future goals to set a mark in the APAC region?

To establish partnership and deliver growth to some of the hyper-growth brands, which will eventually help us build a distinct name for ET Medialabs, the first Indian homegrown agency to go global.