Stan Chew steps down as APAC sales lead at Knorex

Stan Chew is stepping down from his role as head of sales, Asia Pacific, at cross-channel cloud marketing platform Knorex, at the end of July. Chew (pictured) has been with the company for more than two years, first joining in 2018 as country manager for Malaysia based in Kuala Lumpur. Knorex's spokesperson confirmed the exit to A+M but declined to comment on his replacement.

In a statement to A+M, Chew said he is leaving on really good terms with the management. The past three months have given him clarity in terms of what he hopes to do and Chew feels that it is time for him to explore new opportunities. "We've done a great job at Knorex building up agency partnerships, the product has also matured as well. I'm still a big fan and evangelist of Knorex. I'm not going to rush into things right now. It's been a really busy few years and I want to spend some time to get ready for it," he said.

According to Chew, he was the second agency hire for Knorex when he first started and he is proud of the fact that he managed to build up its agency partnerships across the region. Upon taking on the regional role, Chew said he began building agency partnerships in Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand. "We made a very clear decision to focus on empowering the agencies and in-house programmatic teams and right now, the strategy is coming true," he explained.

Prior to Knorex, he was GM of Publicis One for more than a year, according to his LinkedIn, overseeing key specialist teams including product and growth, content and social, performance marketing, digital strategy, new business, as well as research and analytics. His responsibilities included managing ongoing and fostering new client relationships, and meeting financial targets. Before Publicis One, Chew was GM for Performics in Malaysia and also spent more than 12 years in Starcom. 

Chew explained that there has never been a bigger need for clients to take more control over their entire digital spend. According to him, there is a common misconception between multi-channel marketing and cross channel marketing. When brands make a digital media buy on Facebook and Google, they might see it as a integrated digital marketing plan. However, that is considered multi-channel marketing, Chew said. He explained that in reality, the brand's data is sitting in walled gardens and the brand does not delve deeper into how it can make the data talk to each other and personalise the entire customer journey.

Brands should also be turning their focus towards eCommerce and the content that drives it, for example live streaming, Chew said. He added that they need to figure out what their promotional strategy is and whether their foray into eCommerce will come in the form of a marketplace or an online branded store.

"I hope to see more integration between creative and media post-pandemic. Conversions are very important and the future media planner or creative strategist needs to know both worlds. Very often when I talk to a creative director, he or she may not understand what is happening in media or digital. For example, how can the agency adapt a user experience into multiple different formats?" he said. 

Chew also added that while the bigger agencies have multi-disciplines, the ability to offer truly integrated solutions still remains a challenge. "The people who can talk media and numbers are not necessarily the best when it comes to understanding messaging. But if we know how to control the messaging and distribution, that will be powerful. This requires a bit of reimagination of the agency structure and this is a really good time to think about it.