Vietnam’s Digital Agency of the Year and PR Agency of the Year pushed the envelope with a year of innovations.
AOY Insights is a new content series celebrating some of the top wins from Campaign Asia-Pacific’s Agency of the Year awards. Join us as we take a closer look at the entries that struck gold this year.
Categories: Southeast Asia Influencer Marketing Agency of the Year, Vietnam Digital Agency of the Year, Vietnam PR Agency of the Year
Key clients: SABECO/Bia Saigon, Unilever, Nutifood, Taiwan Excellence, BUV, TikTok, Visa, Amazon Global Selling, Spotify, ZaloPay, VPBank
New clients from 2022: The Coca-Cola Company, Traveloka, MSD
Highlights: Success so often begets success and that was the case for T&A Ogilvy as it capped off the year with three golds. The Ho Chi Minh City-headquartered team has established itself as the leading local expert on PR and Digital, allowing the agency the credibility, expertise, and case studies to take the lead on influencer marketing in Vietnam and beyond.
Some brands in Vietnam had traditionally been reluctant when it came to digital. In such cases, T&A Ogilvy helped build the bridge between digital strategy and execution. The focus was on collaborative experimentation between the agency and its brands with transformative experiences made available to a wider swathe of clients.
General Director of T&A-Ogilvy Nguyen Dieu Cam said, “In a fast-changing and challenging market of Vietnam, T&A Ogilvy’s innovative solutions have helped our clients and partners adapt and maintain steady growth. In 2020, we completed our 10-year transformation and acceleration of social services. We have then rolled out our growth plan heading to automation marketing, enhancing digital experiences, and launching breakthrough solutions with AI Influencers. Numerous big client wins, successful campaigns, and the industry accolades have proven us right.”
Nguyen Tra Linh, managing director of T&A Ogilvy (second from top-left), with her business partner Hoang Tien Giao (second from top-right) and the winning team
T&A Ogilvy noticed that the influencer space and social commerce were among the fastest-changing areas in the industry. This necessitated a shift in the role of PR beyond just perfecting brand image. The goal was now to allow brands to forge an impactful connection with consumers via experiences and content.
The agency moved past social and digital to fully embrace AI- and machine learning-driven models, and marketing automation. It also localised new experiential technologies such as extended reality and the metaverse.
Such was the success of T&A Ogilvy’s approach in Vietnam that the model is being exported out of the country, with the agency-appointed AI Influencer Leader in the Ogilvy APAC network.
Case studies:
T&A Ogilvy developed AI-powered virtual influencer Ha Wonder, an AI-based persona of popular Vietnam-based entertainer Hồ Ngọc Hà for VPBank, integrating the brand ambassador to provide authentic human-like product consultancy and personalised customer service. This was powered by the DATAx approach: DATAxDEMAND detected consumer interest and served matching personalised content; DATAxCONVERSATION produced conversations at scale, and DATAxINFLUENCER used Ho Ngoc Ha’s real social media data to guide Ha Wonder’s content. The results were more than 16 million views on YouTube with above-average click-through and view-through rates.
For ZaloPay, T&A Ogilvy renovated the UI/UX for the brand’s app ahead of the Tet holiday. This involved integrating messaging app Zalo into the transaction experience. More than 30 million transactions were made through the app during Tet 2022 with upticks in brand awareness, favourability, and consideration, alongside usage.
“We are proud that the prestigious awards from Campaign Asia positively recognised T&A Ogilvy’s achievements. This motivates us to continue exploring the power of strategy, technology solutions, and innovative thinking to deliver comprehensive brand experiences, especially when digital is leading the market,” concluded Nguyen Tra Linh.
Judges say:
The panel loved the agency’s approach to influencer marketing and use of tech, data, and relationships with A-listers. AI-powered virtual influencers “takes this to a new level,” they said. “It was great to see PR taking the lead on creative ideas and delivering very strong business results.”
