#MARKiesAwards MY 2021 spills: Lalamove commits to empowering local communities with deliveries

Established in October 2013, Lalamove was created to make on-demand and same-day delivery possible for consumers at the touch of the button. Today, Lalamove operates in over 20 markets, connecting over seven million customers with a pool of over 700,000 driver-partners, said its LinkedIn. From independent brick and mortar stores to large restaurants, retail chains and eCommerce businesses, Lalamove helps enterprises from a wide array of industries to scale and outsource their deliveries according to their needs.

This year, Lalamove also clinched the silver award in Most Effective Use - Out-of-Home for its "Lalamove Unlocks OOH Audience Data, Making Big Impact During Lockdown" campaign done together with Moving Walls at A+M’s MARKies Awards 2021. 

Lalamove's head of marketing, Veronica Wong (pictured), told A+M that what makes the platform so special is how it constantly takes effort to improve its delivery fleet and solutions to support the local communities, especially the SMEs who are the pillars of the country’s economy. Wong added that with Lalamove’s on-demand delivery technology and fleet, SMEs can instantly boost their operation efficiency, flexibly scale their delivery fleet following the market demand and create a better shopping experience with same-day delivery for their customers. 

This interview was done as part of A+M's winners' and finalists' interview series for Agency of the Year Malaysia 2021 and MARKies Awards Malaysia 2021. To find out more about the awards, click here.

Tell us about your brand and what makes it special?

Wong: Lalamove is an on-demand delivery service provider that is currently operating in more than 30 cities across Asia and Latin America. It entered the Malaysian market in 2018. Besides on-demand deliveries in Klang Valley, Lalamove has expanded its coverage to both Penang and Johor in April 2021.

At Lalamove, we commit to empowering the local communities with fast and simple delivery. We support our regular customers and SME clients to deliver things that matter while providing a platform for our delivery partners to generate extra income.

We constantly take effort to improve our delivery fleet and solutions to support the local communities, especially the SMEs who are the pillars of the country’s economy. We offer a full range of delivery vehicles from motorcycles to cars, pickup trucks to lorries for SMEs from all industries to deliver small to big items at an affordable rate. With Lalamove’s on-demand delivery technology and fleet, SMEs can instantly boost their operation efficiency, flexibly scale their delivery fleet following the market demand and create a better shopping experience with same-day delivery for their customers.

Our dedication to supporting the SME clients made us become the SMEs’ choice of brand and stay ahead of other competitors in this market. We are currently serving up to 250,000 regular customers and SMEs with a proven delivery record of more than one million orders completed monthly, while providing income opportunities to more than 40,000 active delivery partners across Klang Valley, Penang, and Johor.

What do you think is needed for brands to succeed in today’s day and age?

Wong: A successful brand needs to be equipped with a good understanding of the behaviours and needs of your target customers, and remain agile by allowing customisation on your brand or solutions according to its target customers’ interests.

When Lalamove serves the local customers, SMEs or delivery partners, we always ensure our delivery solutions are customisable for all types of delivery needs. This mindset led us to launch different vehicles for the market, along with additional services such as moving services, buy4U, door-to-door, multistop, GPS real-time tracking, drivers favourite system and many more customisable features for the market.

How do you attract the right talent for your teams?

Wong: When shortlisting a talent, on top of their technical skills and marketing knowledge, we will also assess the talent’s interpersonal skill and personality, to identify qualities that align with our company’s core values - passion (excited in what they are doing), grit (never give up), humility (admit mistakes) and execution (always look for solutions).

We believe soft skills are important in helping both individuals and companies to grow simultaneously.

What do you think makes for great brand-agency relationships today?

Wong: We emphasise having good teamwork with the agency. Instead of brand-agency relationships, we treat them as our partners. This mindset will help us in building good synergies with them, encourage them to proactively share their insights and improve the overall conceptualisation and execution process. 

What capabilities will you build on as we head into 2022?

Wong: We hope to develop more effective 360 integrated marketing campaigns to build strong and seamless marketing strategies that can effectively drive the target market across the awareness, acquisition and retention funnels.

Lalamove Malaysia has launched a couple of effective marketing campaigns across offline, PR, content, communications and digital channels. We aim to develop an impactful integrated marketing campaign across all these channels that are impressive, viral and results-driven while aiming to have the campaign be benchmarked by the market as a successful case study for other marketers and brands to adapt.