Werks Solutions believes that slapping a brand’s logo on to anything and everything will not cut it. Instead, it prides itself on providing fresh ideas and solutions for clients to cut through the clutter with their messaging, and connect to the right target audience. The firm’s bagged the bronze award for Best Venue Experience at the Marketing Events Awards 2020, leveraging on its rich experience in the events industry, including on-ground event management, exhibition booth design and construction, as well as logistics.
In an interview with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, Steven Cheah, MD, Werks Solutions shares its growth in a span of merely five years and how it is helping clients build meaningful relationships with audiences.
This interview is done as part of MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s winners and finalists’ interview series for Marketing Events Awards 2020. To find out more about the awards, click here.
What are some of the expectations your consumers now have for your brand?
Cheah: Our clients know that we are not an agency. In our short five years, we’ve been very fortunate to be able to work with a wide variety of client industries. These range from fitness, FMCG, oil and gas, fitness, medical, finance, entertainment/lifestyle, F&B, automotive, government sectors, and construction, among others. They each have varying needs and objectives. We started out purely as an events operations company, and this has evolved year on year with us increasing our services offered to cater to more of our clients’ needs.
Our clients have come to expect and trust our quality assurance, experience, practical ideas, genuine care for their brand and flexible solutions tailored to their situational needs. We recognise that our clients do not always need the whole “nine-course meal” (we can if they want); hence one of our pulls has always been our openness and flexibility in offering pragmatic solutions that “werk”. Werks Solutions has also had the opportunity to support many creative and PR agencies in their physical executions. The relationships built over the years has provided for even closer collaborations, whereby our advice and opinions are obtained during pre-pitch sessions and ideation phases. We have been called the “agencies’ toolbox” before and are constantly innovating to see what new “tools” we can add to our list of services offered. Our clients can expect even more to come!
How has your marketing/your clients marketing plans shifted this year?
Cheah: It has been an unusual and challenging year for the world. Marketing spend on physical events and activations has dropped, if not halted. No doubt there has been a bigger shift to digital marketing and virtual events amongst our clients. Clients have definitely been more cautious in their marketing spend. The second and third quarters saw some sort of limbo whereby clients were dealing with the pandemic internally and also waiting (hoping) it would get better or a vaccine solution would provide some sort of timeline for them to make more choiceful decisions.
More focused and relevant marketing efforts is what the landscape sees as a priority, backed by data and analytics to guide the strategy process. We have had clients being forced to scale up their digital marketing efforts and expand their offerings to new markets. Clients have come to us to revamp their corporate sites to include eCommerce functions, asset and product capture for their online shops and also digital services ranging from rebranding to social media asset creation and management. Consumer behaviour and market trends leads our strategy process, not just for the current pandemic reactions but more importantly post-pandemic norms.
What are some of the trends you see carrying on post-pandemic, and how are you readying your workforce to be ready with these trends?
Cheah: The pandemic has fast forwarded digitalisation amongst organisations and has also shown that working remotely is very much a possibility. The reduction in unnecessary face-to-face physical interactions will be here to stay. For the marketing events and activations industry, more reliance on virtual formats will continue to increase in uptake even when the pandemic is fully over. Hybrid events will be the new norm for increased participant engagement.
We prioritise investing in our talent, innovation and marketing. Over the past six to eight months we have focused a lot of our efforts and investments inward on our most important assets, our people. These cover areas of our human capital development in terms of upskilling and talent management. Innovation has also been one area where our time has been spent on in widening our core capabilities and auxiliary services offered. These include hardware like production machinery to also digital solutions as well, to allow us more flexibility in our production work.
Our organisation has also re-invested in marketing and our business processes. Closer collaboration between our Singapore and Thailand office has also proven fruitful whereby a cross of cultural and experiential inputs provides new ways of “skinning a cat”. We are now pandemic hardened and even more ready to better help our clients achieve their business objectives.
What do you think makes for great marketing these days?
Cheah: “A world in which brands build meaningful relationships with audiences.” This is our company vision and we still remain grounded to this. We believe part of great marketing should be focused and relevant to the consumer. Technology has expanded a brands ability to get closer and also reach a wider community. However, it should be a tool to fill gaps and not replace meaningful engagement.
One of our strengths has always been fulfilling the more tangible aspects of a brands engagement with its consumers, be it a physical event or a product, merchandise or service. This cannot be replaced by screen time engagement. The best pairing is where both aspects complement each other and amplifies genuine engagement.
How are you planning for 2021?
Cheah: With the interesting 2020 year ending, we’ve best utilised this year to take stock, realign our business strategies and focused a lot on our people and internal projects. Though a tough year, our team feels more energised and focused. For 2021, we will build on and improve client relationships as well as expand further on collaborative projects, both up and down stream. Our other on-going project is to also increase our diversification of our resources and supplies, this will allow us to be more agile and adaptable to new market shifts or geopolitical occurrences. Look out for a revamp and even more services added to our toolbox. We’ve been sharpening our knives and raring to go for 2021. We are here to help!
Source: Marketing Interactive