12 December 2011

AVP Oliver Chong is also the first Singaporean award recipient for this category

Singapore, 12 December 2011 – From the start, ‘Hubbing’ was StarHub’s strategy to differentiate itself from competition and to provide unique services for customers in Singapore. Now ‘Hubbing’ has once again made history for the company when it produced the first Singaporean winner for Campaign’s Client Marketer of the Year 2011.

Campaign Asia-Pacific’s Client Marketer of the Year 2011, Mr Oliver Chong, showed the industry how to market ‘Hubbing’ with great finesse when he spearheaded innovative marketing campaigns and ultimately garnered many prestigious international accolades for StarHub. This year, highly engaging marketing campaigns including Singapore’s first interactive brand campaign ‘Hub it!’, StarHub online music with fashion stores called ‘Musical Fitting Room’ and an innovative social media campaign called ‘Music MoodBox’, helped StarHub to win gold, silver and bronze awards at the prestigious Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, and the silver and bronze awards at Spikes Asia Awards.

These marketing campaigns blurred the boundaries of various platforms as they heightened the interactivity factor in customers’ lifestyle. The ‘Hub it’ mobile application gave viewers a chance to interact with its characters in the TV commercial with their smartphones, while ‘Musical Fitting Room’ connected the youth to music that matched their fashion styles and dynamic lifestyles through the use of RFID (Radio-frequency Identification) technology. ‘Music MoodBox’, on the other hand, is a Facebook application that detects emotions expressed in Facebook updates, and then recommends songs to fit these moods.

This is no mean feat for the 39-year-old Assistant Vice President of Brand and Marketing Communications as he has become the hub of StarHub’s marketing efforts while leading the marketing team and overseeing branding. In 2011, he drove over 20 marketing campaigns across the multiple platforms amid an increasingly unpredictable and competitive info-communication industry. Still, the efforts of Mr Chong and his team paid off when this resulted in StarHub achieving a 14 per cent jump in its triple-product sales for the year.

Affirming Mr Chong’s strong capabilities was Mr Tan Tong Hai, StarHub’s Chief Operating Officer, who said: “The most complex part of Oliver’s role is not so much bringing together our partners like most marketers do. The hard part for him is leading the charge in bringing together the different business silos within StarHub. His recent interactive commercial is a testament to his success. He didn’t just integrate our communication channels; he helped integrate our very business itself.”

Commenting on his win, Mr Chong said: “When I first started at StarHub, the world was a much simpler place with the markets of Mobile, Broadband and Pay TV operating as separate entities. But the convergence in technology totally changed the game plan for marketers. It was challenging to communicate and market the idea of ‘Hubbing’ to our customers because what we did had no precedence. Over the years, ‘Hubbing’ has evolved and the latest evolution sees us moving ‘Hubbing’ into a socially engaging brand. I’m very honoured to be named Campaign Asia-Pacific’s Client Marketer of the Year 2011. This is a testament of the great work the team has done and reinforces StarHub as the market leader of ‘Hubbing’ in the info-communication industry in Singapore, regionally and internationally.”

­­­Mr Chong will receive his award during the Campaign Asia-Pacific Agency of the Year Awards ceremony held tomorrow night at the St Regis Hotel. Campaign Asia-Pacific celebrates the advertising industry's top performers. It recognises inspired leadership, management excellence, outstanding business performance and overall achievements in the region's advertising and communications industry. With results tabulated by PricewaterhouseCoopers, it is the only event in the region that honours agency performance at local and regional level.

The list of marketing accolades won by StarHub in 2011 is as follows:

  • Gold, silver and bronze awards at the prestigious Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity
  • Silver and bronze awards at Spikes Asia Awards
  • Gold and bronze awards at the Digital Media Awards
  • Campaign of the Year at Institute of Advertising Singapore (IAS) Hall of Fame
  • Gold winner in the entertainment category of Effie Singapore Awards
  • Mentions by leading online and offline publications including Contagious (UK based marketing magazine) and Favourite Website Awards (FWA is an industry recognised Internet award program)