But clearly, desperation has hit Caldecott Hill. MediaCorp, a company that dominates Singapore’s TV and radio media, recently announced an investment of “several million” to boost its new media offering.
Like the buzzword, details remained vague. Lucas Chow, CEO of MediaCorp, told advertisers to anticipate an e-commerce platform and major enhancements along all its 30-plus websites, which include some high-traffic portals such as channelnewsasia.com and todayonline.com.sg, according to Hitwise Singapore.
“It’s not a matter of us waking up too late,” says Timothy Goh, VP of new media, MediaCorp. “We have an agenda to make people aware that we’re relevant and mainstream. That we’re value-adding to advertising dollars.”
Unlike its operations in the traditional media spaces, MediaCorp’s non-traditional offerings will compete against longstanding online players: Google, Yahoo, news websites and blogs, to name a few. Even Straits Times publisher SPH, with which MediaCorp enjoys a blurry sort of competition, has hardly made a dent with its two online citizen journals Stomp and Mypaper.
So it should come as no surprise that local advertisers are all but rolling their eyes.
“Given the time people spend on the internet and the maturity of the Singapore market, I don’t think there could have been any other way for MediaCorp to go,” explains David Dahan, BBDO Singapore’s strategic planning director.
“It’s so overdue it’s shameful,” adds another media executive. “But better late than never.”
According to Goh, the strategy is two-pronged: building content and integrating media. “Soon you’ll be able to read, listen and watch news from the same place,” he says.
“We’ll cross-intersect a lot of our talents as well,” he adds, referring to MediaCorp’s business of managing local celebrities.
But ultimately, according to a source, MediaCorp’s success lies in how the online teams are run. “Its focus has always been traditional, so will it run its online properties like an offline entity?” he says. “Will it have an offline team also selling online?”
Perhaps one need look no further than MediaCorp’s new structure to find the answer. Last year, the company consolidated all its sales teams, briefing all salespeople to sell across various MediaCorp platforms — TV, radio and print — rather than specialise in one medium. And to fill in the newly-created role of head of all media sales, MediaCorp appointed James Yip, managing director for MediaCorp Radio, rather than someone with proven integrated experience.
Still, Goh appears confident. “We’re going to make ourselves known,” he says, “We’re aggressively pursuing the interactive side to become the only integrated online partner for clients’ marketing strategies.”