The agency started out in website development and believes its past gives it an edge over ‘all-creative, low-tech’ rivals
Words Sharon Desker Shaw | as seen in adobo magazine March/April 2013 issue
Movent executives are quick to admit public relations isn’t the agency’s forte. Digital marketing is, however.
Which perhaps accounts for the company’s curious lack of profile despite a relatively lengthy history for a digital shop and a who’s who client list that grew alongside local appetite for all things technology-related.
But the company’s majority acquisition by GroupM, which in typical fashion rechristened NetBooster with a name beginning with the letter ‘M’, has certainly changed all that. More than a decade after setting up shop in the Philippines, first as Yellowasp Corporation and later expanded to include a digital marketing arm, NetBooster, the agency is most certainly on the radar.
French import Sebastien Caudron launched Yellowasp in 1999 as a technology-focused business that provided software and website development services. He later partnered with Laurent Goirand to ink a deal with Europe’s NetBooster group to launch the digital marketing arm. The shop reeled in Unilever’s Axe and later added Del Monte, BDO, L’Oréal, Wyeth and Intel to the roster.
Globe Telecom was until recently a client; its arrival had in fact enabled the shop to scale up in staff numbers and capabilities to provide a full service digital marketing offer.
But with NetBooster shifting its focus away from Asia to Europe, the partnership came to a close, paving the way for GroupM to acquire the agency last year-end.
“Axe was a fun, ideal brand to start with (as NetBooster) as almost 90% of what they do is digital or digital activation,” says Goirand.
The brand allowed the company to extend beyond its technological strengths into digital marketing. Goirand says the agency launched the Philippines’ first branded Facebook page with Axe and later initiatives included creating a private online hang-out where boys could be, well, boys.
“We were a technology company going into digital marketing. In this way, we are very different from creative agencies who are now going into digital.”
As Goirand sees it, it’s Movent’s strengths in technology – the engine that powers campaigns to deliver memorable user engagement experiences – that differentiates it from the “all-creative, low-tech” approach of traditional creative agency rivals.
For the full story, grab a copy of adobo magazine’s Anniversary Issue (March/April 2013).
