Peak branding - it's all on face value

Lawrence Chia Song Huat, executive chairman of Pico Far East Holdings, is the brains behind the company’s creative marketing ideas. PARKER ZHENG / CHINA DAILY

In brand building, creativity and face-to-face encounters with customers are the hallmarks of exhibitions promoter Lawrence Chia. He tells Lin Wenjie this is an effective way of lifting market awareness and customer loyalty.

Singaporean entrepreneur Lawrence Chia Song Huat surely has mastered the art of delivering the utmost, critical exposure for clients in return for the ultimate - brand recognition and customer loyalty.

Having been at the helm of Pico Far East Holdings for more than two decades after taking the baton from his brother, he has seen the Hong Kong-listed company grow from a regional business into a multinational enterprise, providing exhibition and event marketing services across the world for big brand names like Disney, Alipay and Holiday Inn.

Instead of straightforward marketing services, Pico's focus on brand activation - to engage and impress consumers in actual brand experiences - has won the company steadfast profit growth in the past decades, lifting its stock price nearly seven-fold to HK$3.32 since its flotation in 1992.

"We engage ourselves in building face-to-face communication on different platforms for brands and their customers, such as participating in trade shows, live events or online functions, where consumers can interact with the brand. This way, we help the brand to build market awareness and customer loyalty," Chia tells China Daily.

Citing an example of how it works, he says he would organize a live event for a car launch along with a pop concert, which is very different from the traditional car launch - renting a stadium to hold it.

"We would first identify the target customers, say, young people between 20 and 30 years old, then we would use big data to identify their favorite singer. The brand would sponsor the singer's concert, and we would exhibit the new car during the show. When the concert goers see that car, they would unconsciously link the car's brand with the celebrity, and this would increase brand loyalty," Chia explains.

Moreover, with the incorporation of social media, the concert could go live online, reaching an audience of millions of people, which means the car launch could be seen by more targeted customers. The audience can further pass comments online to interact with each other or with the brand.

"The most important thing is that there's a connection between the brand and its potential customers. As people are often more active and less shy on the internet, anyone who's interested in buying the car could just sign up for a test drive. We also engage the audience after the event to collect data to identify potential customers," he says.

Pico's creative marketing ideas and its full range services have earned for itself a distinct reputation over the years, winning the hearts of both the people who work for Pico and the people the company works for, something that Chia is proud of.

High job motivation

"With a 50-year history, people trust the Pico brand and believe strongly in our creative services and the ability to deliver the event so, in that sense, it makes it easier for us to win over customers."

Pico currently boasts a staff strength of 2,600 across 27 countries, mostly in Asia. With a comprehensive performance-related bonus scheme, the company's staff are highly motivated to accomplish their jobs. For any employee who makes a mistake, there's also a self-reflection scheme to let him or her know how to do better and how much they need to catch up.

"We've built a vision to empower our staff. The more profit you rake in for the company, the more bonuses you'll get. As the profit is shared by the whole team, everyone has the passion to do the job. But when someone makes a mistake, he or she will take less money home. We don't punish people because what we're concerned most is what can be learned from the mistake and how that can be shared with other people, so as to avoid making the same mistake again," says Chia.

He sees the biggest challenge for the company as locating the right talents, as creative people are hard to retain since they always like to move on and try new things. In addition, as technology now plays a vital role in the marketing industry, Pico also has to compete with the tech industry to win over tech people.

Training talents

"We'll continue to go out there to recruit talents and, at the same time, we're spending a lot of resources on managing and training talents and trying to keep them," he says.

What he values most when recruiting talent is not work experience or knowledge of the industry, but the person's character, because "a good character makes a good employee".

"Knowledge and skills can be trained and improved, but a person's character cannot be changed overnight. We can equip the talent with the essential knowledge, but we can't change a person's nature."

Due to fewer big projects, Pico Far East's first-half profit saw a drop of 15.6 percent for the six months ended April 30 to HK$1.71 billion, while its net profit fell slightly by 3.9 percent to HK$124 million, according to the company's interim report.

"The second half is looking promising," Chia predicts, pointing out that profit growth in the first half is usually slower than the second half, because brands tend to be more conservative in the first half when launching products and in spending.

But, with the summer holidays and the Christmas season on the horizon, brands will be more active in launching marketing campaigns, he says.

Contact the writer at cherrylin@chinadailyhk.com