Mailman expands out of China to help clients grow audiences in APAC
Digital sports consultancy Mailman has expanded outside of China and opened an office in Singapore to beef up its presence in South East Asia.
Each local market will have its own strategic roadmap, under a wider Asia strategy.
In addition, it has hired a host of executives around SEA to lead its business. They are Edoardo Lipari Agung Harsya in Indonesia, Thana Wongmanee in Thailand, Erick Bui in Vietnam and Rahul Bali in India. Mailman has also poached Goal.com’s former head of Asia, Bima Said, as its new vice president.
The regional expansion aims to provide Mailman clients with a more efficient platform to grow their audiences in APAC, while also helping client's sponsors to better activate digital activity throughout the region.
Andrew Collins, the chief executive officer of Mailman, told The Drum, “We’re really expanding for them, to ensure they have a well-managed, on brand and culturally relevant marketing proposition everywhere in Asia. More and more sponsorship value is being driven through digital engagement, this is a core focus for our business and we expect to deliver far greater value to our clients.”
Collins said the SEA business will complement its existing China work as the company will apply the same regional strategy to all its work. He added that offering APAC under the same China management structure will minimise the extra workload on the existing team.
“Each local market will have its own strategic roadmap, under a wider Asia strategy,” he added.
Mailman's Singapore launch comes in the wake of the recent market launches by sports properties DAZN and Dugout, but Collins rebuffed the suggestion the market will be crowded if everyone goes for the same share of the pie.
Dugout previously formed a distribution partnership with Mailman to expand in China with localised content.
“Firstly, we eat from different pies. While DAZN and Dugout are great media properties, our focus is on our clients and ensuring we deliver best-in-class digital services to them in APAC,” he said.
“We look forward to enjoying time with our peers in the Singapore market, and in the event, we thrash it out over a customer, may the best company win.”
Mailman also created the Red Card Report eight years ago, which analyses the online presence of European football teams across Weibo, WeChat, websites, e-commerce platforms and apps to determine their influence in the lucrative China market.