GroupM partners with Lazada, consolidates e-commerce capability across Asia Pacific

MANILA, Philippines — GroupM, the media investment group of WPP, has announced an industry-leading partnership with Lazada Group—Southeast Asia’s largest e-commerce platform. It will cover all six markets where Lazada Group has operations.

GroupM has been designated a Lazada Preferred Partner and gives its clients preferential access and pricing for Lazada Group marketing assets.

In addition, Lazada will empower GroupM with in-depth e-commerce knowledge and tools to help brands under the LazMall channel deliver a premium and seamless online shopping experience to customers.

As part of the partnership, Lazada will help GroupM and its agencies to leverage its Sponsored Solutions to support brands and sellers optimize their return of investment and ensure growth in sales through digital marketing and media optimization. Lazada will also transfer best practices and knowledge on optimal store management operation and usage of the platform tools to grow the client’s sales.

The partnership will be managed by GroupM Commerce, a dedicated team that consolidates e-commerce expertise across the group to meet the growing needs of Asia Pacific marketers. As consumer purchase behaviors continue to evolve, they will help marketers connect media and e-commerce at scale with strategic support and activation capabilities that increase sales and revenues.

GroupM’s agencies—MediaCom, Mindshare, Wavemaker and Essence—will leverage GroupM Commerce to deliver to their clients an end-to-end solution spanning strategic planning, optimizing on- and off-platform marketing investments (search and display), traffic generation, social, affiliate marketing, KOL, livestream, on-platform traffic management, content and creative development, online store management, analytics and reporting, and e-commerce operations.

With successful operations already established in China and India under the leadership of Jerman Zhang and Suraj Dhillon, respectively, the GroupM Commerce team was completed with the Q4 2019 appointment of Roger Dunn in Australia and Toni Ruotanen for Southeast Asia.

This was followed by the hiring of commerce leads in each of the local markets, as well as agency dedicated commerce leads in Mediacom, Mindshare and Wavemaker.

Jon Thurlow, chief operating officer for GroupM Asia Pacific, will lead the GroupM Commerce capability in addition to his existing responsibilities.

“Over the past four years, we have innovated a successful e-Commerce service model in China, and subsequently rolled out to India where it is rapidly growing. Our learnings have been valuable to understanding how to meet the needs of clients across the region, and now we are ready to accelerate deployment to help clients drive their marketing objectives with winning e-Commerce strategies and activation. We have seen a marked increase in client activity in e-Commerce since the beginning of COVID-19 and we are pleased to partner with Lazada to further enhance our capabilities,” said Ashutosh Srivastava, chief executive officer of GroupM Asia Pacific.

“We are pleased to partner with GroupM given their expertise and dedication to the e-Commerce space. Lazada Sponsored Solutions enable brands to better interact and engage with customers on our platform using our knowledge and insights about online consumer trends,” said Mary Zhou, chief marketing officer of Lazada Group.