Mediabrands Malaysia launches social media outfit Rally

The integrated conversation management offering enables Mediabrands' clients to respond to opinions on social media sites as well as initiate new conversations with stakeholders.

“We have made significant investments in this area over the last year, particularly in hiring and developing core skills as well as our proprietary tools, research and processes," stated Prashant Kumar, (pictured) CEO of Mediabrands Malaysia.

To do this, early this year, Mediabrands hired a new director of social marketing and developed 'Tune-in', a social media tracking tool. "The Tune-in tool has algorithms that crawl the social media spaces, mapping and seeking relevant conversations and grading them on sentiments and their business value," explains Kumar.

With online conversations marking the marketplace, and media becoming increasingly social, marketers must consider the "soft bottom-up influence rather then the hard top-down persuasion".

"Tune-in enables brands to listen, respond and engage with its stakeholders by offering insights and ideas and present an authentic front by responding to them accordingly," Kumar says.

A recent 46-country study by CNN found Malaysians on average to have the highest number of online friends and spend the most time per week using social media.

Together with this, the recently published fifth installment of social media study Wave 5 further affirms Malaysia as one of the world’s most vibrant countries in the social media space.

“More and more brands see business value in paying attention to branding on social media sites. Rally was formed in response to the needs of this active social media space,” Kumar says.

Some half dozen clients are already onboard including Johnson & Johnson and Telekom Malaysia with others in the fray.