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Digital media advisor Mark Challinor continues the News Horizons collection by way of chatting with the folk shaping day after today’s media. In this factor, we pay attention from Kevin Huang, who’s the executive running officer of the South China Morning Post.
Kevin is accountable for promoting and advertising and marketing answers, occasions, and company comms on the Post. Prior to becoming a member of SCMP, Kevin was once the managing director of Carousell, and sooner than that, he headed Birdie Mobile, Hong Kong’s first digital-only operator. Kevin is a founding member and the Immediate Past Chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Hong Kong. He holds a point in Computer Information Systems from Pace University. Born in Malaysia, Kevin has lived and labored in Hong Kong for over twenty years.
The South China Morning Post is a number one international information corporate that has reported on China and Asia for greater than a century. Founded in 1903, SCMP is headquartered in Hong Kong, the place it’s the metropolis’s newspaper of file, with a rising correspondent team of workers throughout Asia and the United States.
What had been probably the most encouraging spaces of expansion in your media corporate during the last 12 months?
Looking at our promoting industry’s investments, our IP occasions and branded content material that’s paying off. In the previous 12 months, the SCMP has observed sturdy call for, and we await persevered expansion as our companions recognise the expanding worth of our content material storytelling and community-driven choices.
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Can you percentage any leading edge methods your organisation is imposing? How are you leveraging era to make stronger your media choices?
Innovation is in our DNA. It stored us related for some of these years and can proceed to take action. SCMP has matured its advert tech providing considerably over the past decade with vital investments in first-party knowledge and programmatic answers in addition to upgrades to our cell presence.
In contemporary years, we’ve invested in inventive storytelling by way of our branded content material arm, Morning Studio, and rising our are living tournament providing, SCMP Live. Today, increasingly shoppers use SCMP for a complete suite of services and products. A super instance of that is our paintings for the Macao Government Tourism Office selling town’s holistic gastronomy with a large-scale tournament, on-line video and article collection, and print media.
We’ve additionally equipped our way of life content material to faucet into prosperous, curious audiences by way of bringing a recent glance to our well known publications—together with PostMagazine, which encourages other people to are living smartly; Style by way of SCMP, our quiet luxurious identify; and The 100 Top Tables Guide, which supplies an crucial eating useful resource, all of which enjoys a strong on-line, cell, in-person and print presence.
Are subscriptions the panacea for long term reader involvement and monetisation? In what method does promoting toughen your subscriptions pressure?
Advertising stays an important income circulate, because it does for all diverse media companies like ours. A powerful media industry essentially is determined by prioritising content material and network. A key industry precedence is to align our experience with merchandise and choices, allowing for our companions’ and shoppers’ evolving wishes and personal tastes, whether or not they’re a reader, an advertiser, an educator, a mum or dad, or a scholar. One of the examples is how we reimagine occasions that align with our core editorial experience and target market’s wishes, together with our very personal Redefining Hong Kong collection, China Conference, SCMP Learn occasions, and extra.
What are the important thing components of establishing a robust model in nowadays’s marketplace? How do you deal with model relevance in a unexpectedly converting atmosphere?
Media companies like ours are wealthy in accept as true with. The problem is to carry that accept as true with to lifestyles and make it related nowadays. One of the proud brand-building campaigns we introduced in 2023 is I Read SCMP. The inventive brings to lifestyles the wide and profound relevance of SCMP by way of celebrating various readership and companions, in addition to the individuals who epitomise and form the world tale of Hong Kong.
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How do you tailor your methods to other markets? Are there any peculiarities about your nation or marketplace within the promoting area?
Using Hong Kong for example, town’s distinctive accessibility and thriving social scene create thrilling bodily interactions and tournament alternatives. This drives a more potent urge for food for partnership and tournament sponsorships. You want to include the original traits of a marketplace; what’s labored in a single metropolis doesn’t essentially paintings in every other.
How do you achieve more youthful audiences in 2025?
Social media and influencer engagements play a the most important function in our technique for attaining more youthful audiences, and that’s why we’re actively making an investment in those channels to enlarge our readership.
We have additionally observed an important call for from our shoppers for those platforms. We now collaborate with shoppers to function influencers in our occasions and branded content material, and feature matured the social media merchandise we provide to shoppers. A major instance of that is our contemporary award-winning marketing campaign, ‘Cathay Cargo – VIP Panda,’ an interactive content material collection featured prominently on Instagram.
What is your general view of the state of the promoting marketplace? How are you adapting to any decline?
The promoting business is projected to revel in just right expansion charges over the longer term. Recognising the evolving information media sector, SCMP has strategically broadened its portfolio to incorporate enticing occasions and branded content material.
We have known way of life and tradition being a high-potential expansion space, that’s why we relaunched PostMagazine closing 12 months to mirror the importance of lifestyles and tradition in Hong Kong’s ever-evolving tale, sponsored by way of an inventive city-wide advertising and marketing marketing campaign to show off PostMagazine’s new pillars: lifestyles, tradition and discovery, in collaboration with 3 influential Hongkongers who’re shaping tradition globally – Kevin Poon, Vivienne Tam, and Derek Tsang.
The key to good fortune in nowadays’s dynamic atmosphere is finding out and experimentation. We are continuously iterating and discovering new techniques to deepen engagement with our companions and shoppers.
Do you spot a long term the place new gross sales crew constructions, approaches, or talent units are required—possibly extra consultative promoting or AI-led functions? How will we construct long-term relationships with businesses and advertisers?
Some of {our relationships} with manufacturers have lasted over 120 years. We pay attention to constructing relied on connections and proactively addressing our shoppers’ demanding situations, and we now have taken to industry advertising and marketing actions comparable to CMO engagements, Agency White Paper release occasions, per 30 days newsletters, and concept management content material collection to have interaction with our shoppers and company companions.
Does print nonetheless have a task on your promoting portfolio? If so, how do you promote print as a part of an general proposal, and the way do you get it at the radar of more youthful media planners and consumers?
People are living past electronic monitors. While on-line channels be offering comfort, offline channels construct lasting accept as true with and emotional connections.
Today, a lot of our shoppers let us know that their effectiveness research display that they’ve overinvested in electronic channels, specifically right through Covid-19. Now that individuals are out once more, they’re reaccessing their channel combine. Clients want to achieve their audiences on the proper second with the appropriate message, which doesn’t at all times occur on-line.
Today’s information will at all times be a digital-first medium, however print has a distinct function to play. Our day by day published newspaper provides a curated evaluation of key tales. Our weekly print PostMagazine evokes other people to are living smartly right through their Sunday downtime. Our Style by way of SCMP per 30 days mag evokes quiet luxurious in dwelling rooms, golf equipment, lounges, and salons around the metropolis. The 100 Top Tables supplies an crucial eating information to one of the vital highest that town has to supply.
What is SCMP doing within the occasions area? Do you host unique occasions for subscribers? How are those created, and do you’ve a specialized crew operating them?
SCMP’s occasions crew, referred to as SCMP Live, has been thriving and effectively bringing our journalism to lifestyles via real-world occasions that foster connection and network. We proceed making an investment in our flagship China Conference and the Redefining Hong Kong collection.
What promoting developments are you seeing at the horizon? Is video promoting the longer term?
Our branded content material department, Morning Studio, has skilled really extensive expansion in video and social codecs as a result of shoppers an increasing number of wish to interact the target market. While print and electronic takeovers seize consideration and construct model, our video and social codecs generate engagement and motion. Clients want each, and the ones utilising more than one SCMP codecs generally tend to succeed in the very best go back on funding (ROI).
As we glance additional into 2025, do you’ve any phrases of convenience or recommendation for media corporations who skilled advert income losses closing 12 months?
As we adapt to the evolving atmosphere, fostering a tradition of experimentation and shut collaboration throughout groups can be paramount (to us and to all media corporations). This collective effort can be key to optimising our methods to ship high quality content material whilst accelerating income expansion.
More about Mark Challinor: Mark is a business and media promoting strategist. He not too long ago led the International News Media Association’s (INMA.org) Advertising Initiative (the inside track business’s deeper dive into media promoting). He has additionally been European and international president of INMA. He produces a per 30 days Future of Media Advertising publication on Linkedin, in addition to operating an promoting committee made up of senior executives from internationally’s media. Mark is now CEO of News Media UK Consulting. Follow Mark on X: @challinor and RelatedIn.Digital media advisor Mark Challinor continues the News Horizons collection by way of chatting with the folk shaping day after today’s media.
Last week, we stuck up with The Irish Times Group’s Gemma Kelleher.
